Dear Body,

Dear Body,

You have been good to me. You were born big, as if you already knew there would be times when we would go hungry. Times when we would draw on our own reserves to make it through.

You should have been broken long ago. Broken by grief and neglect and hunger. Broken by hands too skilled in hurt to leave scars and those who took what was never offered. But the only marks left now are those of sustenance. Stretch marks that spread across your shoulders and slide down your sides. Like maybe our skin never thought we could make it this far.

You made room for me. Me who was never meant to make it to woman. Never meant to fill out the curves you created for me. I remember you, three years old and fingerprint bruised. Remember how he nearly fractured your girl jaw with his grip. You let me sink deep inside of you. So deep it looked like leaving. You absorbed what I couldn’t and still kept fighting. Even when fighting just meant staying still.

I can still feel that little girl. I see her in the mirror when I look at you. I see her childlike defiance and your will to live. They are foundation for the woman you let me grow into. And when I look at us now I see green eyes that shine with knowing. I see shoulders strong from holding horror and cradling joy. I see breasts and thighs that let me know we were made for loving. I see fat that tells me that we are, and always have been, abundant.

I wish there were another word for grateful. One that could hold the weight of all the holding you’ve done. One that could come close to thanking you. A word capable of conveying the respect and awe and profound appreciation I have for you. Perhaps that word is love.

You, sweet body, have showed me how to open in all the sacred ways. You showed me how healing comes from connection. How grace only shows itself in flaws. Because your skin has stretched to show what once was raw and lacking but now those marks sing only of survival.

You, dear body. You are the love of my life. Together we are whole. Together we are living.

With all of me. Always.

Blyth


Photo Courtesy of Shameless Photography

A Letter To My Lover Self

This is what I know: your thighs are steady, your cunt is wet, your mind is open and your heart is present.

There is an investment when you fuck, a way of saying what you love about the persin pressed up against you. There is sight, there is patience, there is vision. And yes there is skill. Like how you can hold that balance between suck and hum, or how your fingers can feel out hir sweet spots and listen. And now, so many years after getting slammed shut you have learned to expand again. Your cunt is wide and embracing. Your clit is large, unashamed, present. It is clear that there is want and you have found the words to ask.

This is what I know: you give voice, give pleasure, give yourself.

*written at Jen Cross’ workshop, Declaring Our Erotic, part of SafetyFest 2010. because knowing what we cherish about ourselves as lovers is powerful. and shame has no place in our bodies or our beds.*

Check out SafetyFest! April 8th-18th

Write with Jen (seriously!). She has new classes starting soon.

Work

*read at Holiday Dirt 12/17/09*

I met her on a Thursday, pants low slung on her ass. Denim broken and faded like a woman who knew how to work.

We’d met eyes in the corner store; me practicing my femme glare as we passed silently over dirty chipped tiles, electric in our distance. I was getting better….

I was on my way to meet Becca, a girl I’d known for months, but had just realized her want of me. I didn’t know until she leaned too close in a bar one night and let her fingers slip through mine as we parted ways. I was disinterested in general but exploring the possibility of casual sex. But as I maneuvered that cramped corner store aisle, as I slid past that strong jaw and those blue eyes, I knew my sex could never be casual. Knew I could never spill over for could-be-attraction or for Becca. I needed a heat I could taste.

Six pack of bottles and a bag of gummi bears in hand, I found those jeans, that swagger, climbing the same stairs I was meant to. My would-be date introduced us. “This is Jess, we grew up together”. Her hand slipped into mine, firm but not harsh. She smiled, broad, like her shoulders, and a flush came over us both. “Nice to meet you”, she said. And I did well not to mention how I’d felt her gaze wash over me just minutes before. Or how I watched her hands as she flipped through bills and dug deep for change. I just glanced from her to Becca and knew there was nothing to be done. Not that night. Not until any lingering desire had fallen away from that childhood friend of hers. “Nice to meet you”, I said.

She found me again in that dark dance hall. I was high heeled, moving past her, when she reached for me. Hand grasping fingers. I threw a look over my shoulder and found her, leaning, elbow on the bar, cocky but gentle. I paused. We smiled. “Hey”. Her eyes were on me again. Moving over my bare shoulders, the soft cloth of my dress- pause, stay- then thighs, calves, the heels. “Love that dress”, she says. Code. “Thanks”, I say. We’re pushed closer by the crowd and there is contact, her knee slipping beneath my dress, between bare thighs. Pause. Pulse. Smirk. “I’m on my way out”, she says, “but I couldn’t let you just walk by”. She stands. “I’m glad you didn’t”, I say. Our eyes lock and I can smell her, feel her just inches from me. I tilt my chin. “Hope to see you soon”. Code. “I’m sure you will”, she says. And I watched her walk out, felt my cunt pull after her. Felt that want soak through everything that was trying to hold it back.

Weeks later the phone rang. “Hope you don’t mind”, she says. “Becca gave me your number”. I laughed. “That’s a good friend”, I say. Then there was a date in the daylight where I studied how her mouth moved, wondered if her breath would catch the first time I slid into her and reveled in each moment our skin met and stayed. Palm on knee. Elbow on forearm. Shoulder on shoulder. Coy. Charming. Restrained. Our eyes skipping from face, to sky, to body. Shying away from the sex that settled between us. Our desire polite in public.

But then there was dusk. And caresses that warmed as the air chilled. And we found ourselves in a room that sang of her. Sheets undone. And our gaze lifted. Locked. Pause. Pause. Pause. And then there was no code. Just her hand and the small of my back. Her full lips, that mouth, meeting mine. My fingers gone to flip, click, slide at her belt. That faded denim falling to the floor, finally. Her chest kissing my nipples. My hair in her hands. Her breath caught in her throat. My cunt open and spilling. Those hands a part of me. And she proved that she knew how to work.

--------------------------------------------

Here is the other piece I read that night.

It's The Laughter...

It pierced and gave me permission, somehow brought all of me into the room. She was above me. Defined, solid, firm in how hir shoulders moved as she showed me exactly what she meant by love. But it was the curve of hir neck bent back, jaw slung open,… It was the roll of the giggle that skipped into my ears and made my cheeks round again. That is where I really found hir. Us.

I’ve craved laughter in my bed more than cock or clit combined. I’ve needed that humynity, the authenticity, fuck – I needed the joy. Cause the hard fucking is great. The moans, the screams, the growls. But it is the laughter that climbs through your ribs and sticks.

A Thumbs Width Away

Dykes are always talking about their fists. About the ecstasy of being pushed open. But the first time a lover put all that inside me I cried for hours. Had to leave, put myself on a bus and watch late night tv until I numbed out enough to crawl into a bed again. But it wasn't that it was too much to take. It was my amazement that I could.

I could let hir slip in, inch by inch. I could feel stretch and pain. I could give so much access, allow hir so much privilege. I could be healed. It was the possibility of having sex that was no longer defined by the blood on those sheets years ago, that instead was blessed by a different kind of swelling. But for the most part, I still don't want that pinch of reminder. Because even in freedom it still pulls at the past. But I want to want it. Want to crave connection that creeps in bit by bit, burrows and grows.

I feel it slipping in with you. That almost there. A thumbs width away from being fully inside me. But that last slide is always the hardest, requires the most grace. And you have that. And already I can hardly live without your hand inside me. Without it's pushing and probing into spaces nobody ever cared to notice before. You fill me without that unmanageable ache. Without that too far too fast, but yes sometimes that. Because with just a breath more, a tug in the right place, on my part, you'll have all of me.

Secret Borders

Secret. Our secret. Us. We were the secret. No. Not hir. Not really. Just me. I was the secret. Hir secret. To be kept by hir. Held by hir. Seen by only hir.

We used to fuck in cars. Hir run down pickup truck that never seemed to match hir Kenneth Cole, but somehow did. I’d refused. Said the first time she came into me my knees would hug hir back. I deserved a bed. We deserved some romance. But months passed and my desire surpassed my dignity.

I was tired of only coming together when there was a phone line between us. Hir voice hushed so low I could hardly hear hir already faint submission to sex. Studs were meant to be silent after all. And I lay in the cold garage where I slept, trying to will the warmth of hir into my sheets. But instead there was a dank echoing, a distance I longed to close.

So I let hir into me. Without the romance. I let hir pull my need from me. Let it stain the seats. So that maybe we could have something that belonged to the both of us. And my knees spoke the story of us. Folded into not enough. Bruised as they pushed at the dashboard and other borders that would never move.

The First Time

The first time I had sex with a girl there was 180 proof vodka, three other womyn in the room and a boyfriend that stormed out the door. Hir boyfriend. My door. She’d leaned over him to kiss my neck. A neck that hadn’t been kissed in months, years really if we’re only counting the times it was done right.

She leaned farther and found my lips. Lips that had grown accustomed to being dry or conciliatory. Lips that had lost their pleasure long ago in a dark room with a best friend turned harsh before them. There was no moisture after that.

I sat stiff, uncertain, as she stretched for me. And then she was there, on my lap. My hand wound through hir curls, the other holding firmly the small of hir back. She was there – like she had always been – like maybe she always would be.

A door slammed and he was gone. And I was glad. And she was undone. I laid hir down, soft, sure, certain. Hands fumbled around us. Messy, drunk, frantic. Pausing only occasionally to stare at our stillness, our intention. Like when my nipples stroked hir stomach as hir breath became steam and moans and sex and yes. Or the sweet resurrection of my tongue as it found hir clit and hir back arched, became my steeple, and I followed. I followed the wet, the slick scent of hir, and it brought me back.

I Remember Mint and Citrus

“porque tu eres la mejor….la mejor parte de mi…es que tu eres ese amor…que es la razón de mi vivir”

I sing a now familiar song and I get it. I understand the love. The love of possibility. Of pride. Of passion. Of hir.

I remember singing in my kitchen, my hips swaying in Spanish as I prepared a meal that was new for me and nostalgic for hir. I sang and thought perhaps I would end up in Nicaragua, in love and making vegan indio viejo. I would grow accustomed to the heat and my hands would always smell of mint and citrus.

I remember sitting beside hir, hand warmed by hir thigh, the air thick with the smell of hir. We drove beside the ocean and I listened as she dreamed aloud about how beautiful our children could be. And I thought, maybe I want that. A piece of hir inside of me. If it were possible. To grow something that mixed us both, hir complexion and my eyes.

I remember the certainty in hir mouth as she worked. The steadiness in hir shoulders as she held more lives than hir own. Smooth control surpassing obstacle after obstacle. I swelled with pride as passion poured out of hir and into the musty darkness that surrounded hir.

I remember how the roll of hir tongue filled my ears, my mouth, my heart. Corazon, te quiero. I remember thinking maybe that was enough.

I sing a now familiar song and I understand that it wasn’t.

From Sex To Solidarity

I'm hungry. But I'm hungry for all the wrong things. I want cheese and pizza and grease and fried. I want all the things that leave me feeling trapped and lonely. I want things that don't nourish me, that don't lift me up. So for now, I'm content sitting with the slightly hollow feeling in my belly. The same feeling I get when I'm holding onto something I should let go of. Holding on so tight that I can't move, can't do much of anything but lay in bed and search for distractions.

It's as if I'm being given everything I could want and it just doesn't fit. I'm living this strange fairy tale of a life. I have a tall, dark and handsome lover who sweeps me off my feet in hir white pickup truck. She whispers beautiful things to me in languages I can't understand, feeds me food I've never tasted, brings me bouquets of birds of paradise and red ginger, just because. Because I deserve it she says. But deserve sounds heavy, like I've been paying into it forever. Paying high. And all I get are some fucking flowers. Like she couldn't possibly understand how much I deserve and neither could I.

Since I've moved to San Francisco I've found myself talking about womyn in an entirely different way. I used to rant about solidarity, sexism, shame. I spoke mostly of the struggles womyn faced and how elated I was to be a part of a community fighting back. Now I talk about the dyke community. A world where I have found an unlikely sense of belonging. A bay area bubble that feels sooo good, if you're lucky enough to get let in.

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure how I got here. Not sure who snuck me in the back door. Perhaps it was Linda when she pulled me behind hir into the Lexington that night and kissed me in front of the jukebox. Perhaps it was me. Perhaps my desire paved the way. All I know is I'm here. And I've met some of the most amazing womyn you could imagine. Craigslist "date" turned great friend. Quick drink turned weekly dinners. Sly look turned unprecedented sex. Secret attraction turned four months and counting.

Now I find myself talking about the handsome butch in the corner of the taqueria. What kind of sex I had the night before. The womyn my friends are dating. The actual amount of "scissoring" done in lesbian relationships. Whether or not it's ok for hir to pay for dinner every time. Where I may or may not fall on the femme spectrum that day. Etc, etc, etc. My life is a queer sex and the city. And what's worse is I don't feel like I'm losing anything. Well perhaps I do, but right now I'm so overwhelmed by the romance of it all that I don't really give a shit.

I seesaw between feeling embraced and rejected everyday. For the first time in a long time I feel as if I'm seen. All of a sudden I'm desirable, fun, creative, beautiful. I'm all of the things that felt lacking for so many years. For so long I was the activist, the organizer, the caretaker. People called me for help processing paperwork and their shit, but rarely for silly adventures or outlandish dates. I was practical not pretty. But now that I've reclaimed some of that, people (new sf people) seem shocked when I know how to start a propane bbq, troubleshoot car problems, lift something heavy, or help them wade threw emotional shit beyond my years. All jobs that would have immediately been assigned to me just one year prior.

I suppose we are all struggling to learn how to be all of ourselves at any given point. Meanwhile, I've never felt younger in my life. That is to say, I've never felt my age until just now. Once again I am searching for balance. Searching to remember who I am. Searching for the girl between batted eyelashes and oil changes, between tragedy and joy. Searching for what I want and what I deserve.

Writing Our History

I went to see a documentary the other night about a man named Baynard Rustin. He was one of the most influential people in the civil rights movement and guided Martin Luther King Jr. through the complexities of non-violence, tirelessly putting his body on the line to push the movement forward…but nobody’s ever heard of him. Why you may ask? Well Baynard lived his whole life as an openly queer man, though maybe not “out” as we would think of it today. He took many lovers and was comfortable with his queerness, but as time went on it became obvious that he would have to choose between (politically) being a black man or a gay man. In the late 60’s he was caught having sex with two men in the back of a car and convicted of being a “sexual pervert”. Shortly there after he was pushed out of the organizations he had fueled and was shunned by those who called him comrade, including Martin Luther King Jr. Over time he “quieted” down his sexuality and went on to organize the March on Washington where King delivered his I Have A Dream speech, and if you look closely you can see Baynard standing right behind him.

After the movie there was a panel discussion and the director spoke at length about how hard it had been to get to the persinal side of Rustin’s life. “As a community we don’t record our history”, she said. Someone from the GLBT Historical Society joined in by sharing how difficult it is for them to piece together the lives of queer folks who have purposely left nothing behind. It made me so sad and reminded me how important written and verbal histories are. It also made me question if my queer relationships were being given the same focus as my straight relationships, especially when it comes to sex.

It occurs to me that other than writing a few dirty emails to the persin I was sleeping with, I’ve never really sat down and written about the queer sex I’ve had. I have pages and pages of sappy/sexy love poems and dirty journal entries about the boys I’ve slept with, or wanted to, but not for the womyn and queers. This shall be a new years resolution. In the beginning I think I probably avoided writing about it because I had no clue what I was doing, what terms to use, how to use them, what was “normal”, or even what I was allowed to call sex and what I wasn’t. I mean, how DO lesbians have sex anyways, right?? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked that and each time the persin is met with annoyance, but in truth part of my annoyance is because I still don’t know what to say (other than mind your own fucking business you skeezy ass dude). Sex outside of that comfy heteronormative bubble gets wonderfully fuzzy and it can be confusing, for queers and our straight counterparts. If dick in vagina no longer equals sex, then what the hell are we talking about? Is it all about going down on each other? Kissing? Finger fucking? Tribadism (huh?!!)? Fisting? Strap-ons? What is acceptable and what isn’t? AM I DOING THIS RIGHT? I was terrified that someone would figure out that I was just making shit up as I went along and that it would somehow discredit my place in the queer community. I was so unsure of where I stood that I couldn’t afford to have anyone tell me I was doing something wrong. In fact my lack of writing about queer relationships may have more to do with the fear of being condemned by the queer community than it does with being outed in the straight world.

Now I’m much more confident in my queerness, which in and of itself is bizarre for me. There was a time when I thought there was only one womyn I would ever be with. That I wasn’t queer so much as I was just head over heels in love with hir. But now we’re broken up and I’m in a place where I can’t imagine dating a (non-trans) man. I still don’t know all the terms, how to deal with “dyke drama”, or where exactly I fit…but sexually, politically and spiritually my “queerness” nourishes me.

I’m still learning about myself and the community I’m a part of, but I know what kind of sex I like, what I’m good at, what my insecurities are and (luckily) I know better than to feel guilty about any of it. There will always be lesbians out there that would say I fuck like a straight girl and boys out there that could never see me as anything but a dyke, but the truth is that most folks I know have sex that blurs definitions and gender. Girls top boys, femmes top butches, queers fuck straight folks and what may feel like sex with one persin might not with another. So I’m going to work on not being so intimidated about writing about my experience. There are few things that have been as empowering for me as being queer and if I died and the history of my queerness was lost I would be real, real sad.