Lily Lloyd's Blog

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

No Muss, No Fuss Sexual Health

I’m writing this because I read this.  It’s a terrified screed by a 21 year old girl who’s had sex a few times and is now worried she has HIV.  Given the kinds of sex acts she’s described, she stands a much greater chance of getting in a car accident on the way to the lab to get her blood drawn than she is of getting a positive result.

But!  I recognize testing and sexual health issues can be scary for people, and since they aren’t for me, let me tell you how I do it.

As anybody who’s been reading this blog for longer than a week knows, I’m not monogamous.  I have two serious, very long term relationships, one 18 years and one three years.  The CDC says that folks who have multiple partners (and that includes you serially monogamous folk who have more than one partner a year, by the way!)  should be getting tested twice a year.

I use one of the many, many online anonymous testing services.

But wait, you say: that sounds sketchy.

Except for the fact that all you use the website for is to make an appointment and pay for your tests.  When you get your blood drawn and pee in a cup, you go to the same lab your doctor would use.  The one I use is actually in a world-famous teaching hospital.  It is legit as hell.

I go in there with a 13 digit number I get from the website.  I don’t give them my name, my phone number, my address or even my astrological sign.  It’s about as personal as pumping gas.  If you’re worried about getting a humiliating, shameful talk about your sex life, forget it.  Going to a lab where all they do all day is draw blood and have folks pee in a cup pretty much guarantees that they are barely going to notice your presence while they talk about their weekend plans, and that’s just the way we all like it.

I get my results via text message.  The first time I used the service I had to call an 800 number to talk to a human being; now, they just send me a text.  I can print out as many copies of my results as I choose in the privacy of my own home, and save ‘em as a PDF for handy emailing.

So if you’ve never been tested but think you should start and you’re worried, the experience does not have to be a big deal.

My way of testing is about to change; since I’ve got a doctor who doesn’t completely flip out at the mention of nonmonogamy, I’m going to have them do it…and have my insurance company pick up the tab.   I intend to use the cash I save on ice cream.

Now, the way I do it is expensive, especially if you’re paying out of pocket.  But you can get confidential HIV testing FOR FREE in every state in the union.  So if money is an issue, check out this humongous list of folks who want to help you out for free.

(STI testing is only one part of comprehensive sexual health, of course. Maybe I should talk about that more?  How many of y’all are out to your doctors about being kinky or poly?  Want to know how I did it?)

Clean

 

I’m looking at Holly over the sunny expanse of the kitchen table, eating french toast, and I’m thinking.

I’m thinking about what I want.

It ain’t fucking.  I fucked her on damn near every surface in the living room last night.

Holly’s been working for a week solid on a new solo show that hangs this week.  After our fun, we stayed up until three in the morning putting mounting hardware into the frames, sanding, adding hanging wires.  We had a grand old time doing it, including a midnight showing of Flashdance.  (Y’all.  Y’all just have no idea how BAD that movie is.  It is gloriously, enjoyably bad).   We did it so long I got a little dent in my thumb from twisting in the tiny eyebolts that still showed hours later.

A big part of what’s real about my dominance comes from connecting with what I want.  Not what I think I should want.  Not what I want in general.

What I want right now, now, right this very minute.

“Have you got one clean towel?”

“I think I have at least one,” Holly says.  (You know it’s an emergency if Holly doesn’t have a full linen closet of clean towels.  She is an awesomely  organized individual, so even in the run up to a solo show she knows where her towel is).

As we walk into her bedroom she hands it to me and I lay it vertically on her bed.

“Have you got a washcloth?” I ask.

She runs off to get it.  I call after her. “It should be damp.  And warm.”

I strip down to my shorts and lie down on the bed, making sure that my feet are on the towel.

“Wash me,” I say.  ”Start at my feet.”

It is. So. Wonderful.

My body feels lax and lean as she slowly works the damp washcloth up from my toes.  She starts working her way up my torso.  ”Oh,” she says.  ”I shouldn’t touch there.”

“No, it’s okay,” I say.  ”I have some numb spots.  And some tingle.  But what you’re doing feels good.  Don’t stop.”

She circles my breasts with the warm washcloth and I groan with pleasure.  So good.

She comes closer and I catch her by the hair, kissing her deeply.

She stops and begins to clean my face and someone cares, someone gives a shit about me and I can feel it.  I can feel it!  I mean, I know that there are a handful (wait, no a bit more than that now that I count it) that care about me, but most of the time I feel like my overwhelming and exhausting alertness puts a pane of glass between me and that feeling of being enveloped in their care.

She washes my face and my ears and my lips.  It is enough because it is everything.

 

 

 

 

 

Why We Are A No Veto Couple

 

“Would you say we are a ‘no-veto’ couple?” I asked Bryce.  I mean, I thought we were, but the first rule of polyamory is communicate.  (The second and third rules are also Communicate).

“Yeah.  I don’t think I have veto power over your partners.”

“I don’t have it and don’t want it,” I say.

So yes, Bryce and I are a “no-veto” couple — we’re in an open marriage, but we don’t want and don’t seek to have “veto power” over any outside relationship our spouse might have.   That means that Bryce can’t (and wouldn’t) ask me to dump Holly.  I won’t ever ask him to dump another partner.

“I’m trying to think of someone who would be so crazy that I’d say GIMME THAT VETO POWER VETO I WANT IT NOW!!  I mean, if someone shot up the house, maybe — but then, I wouldn’t need it, because you’d dump them anyway.”

“Yeah,” Bryce says.  ”You trust me not to be crazy, and I trust you not to be crazy.”

Trust.

****

Like a lot of married couples who decided to open their relationship, we started out with tons of rules that were designed to “protect our relationship” and “put our relationship first.”  Most of them went by the wayside, because the rules were developed in response to our fears, which bore little resemblance to anything we encountered in real life.

For a lot of people, “protecting the primary relationship” just seems like a no-brainer.  So why don’t we have a veto rule?

Two reasons:

We’ve switched our mindset from “protect” to “build.”  If I’m not getting my needs met inside my relationship with Bryce, and he’s not committed to doing something about that, closing our relationship will change nothing.  When we switched our mindset from “protect” to “build”,  I immediately felt less defensive and anxious — it’s hard to be anxious when I see Bryce working every day to make our relationship better.  In short, transitioning to nonmonogamy changed our ‘game plan’ from defense to offense.  There’s a reason so many people admire our relationship, and that’s because we work hard at having a good sexual bond, going to the gym to stay healthy (and energetic and sexy), and thinking of what we can do to make what we have not just adequate, not just good, but this-is-the-only-life-we-get fantastic.  We could do home renovation, but fuck that nonsense.  Except for the first 3-6 weeks of a partner having a new partner, I actually spend zero time fretting about what Bryce does with someone else.  I care about what he does with me.
We believe adds an element of unfairness to any nonprimary partners we have a relationship with.  If I “put my foot down” and told Bryce that he had to dump someone he was dating, what does that look like from the point of view of someone dating him?  Basically, it means that they got dumped because of the opinions/feelings of of someone who they’re not in a relationship and might not have ever met.

As a primary partner with nearly two decades, two kids, and a mortgage with Bryce, I have an overwhelming power and “sunk cost” advantage over anyone coming into our relationship.  To layer on a veto rule seems completely over the top to me.

I believe that people should get out of relationships what they put into them — and even if Bryce is dating someone and they have one or two dates, that’s their investment.  It’s not fair of me to use veto power to “zero out” their investment, even if theirs is small and mine is big.  It doesn’t mean that a new partner gets to reduce the value of my investment in my relationship with Bryce either — but just because my investment is big doesn’t mean that their emotional investment, and their investment of time and attention, doesn’t exist and doesn’t have value.  It does, and I feel like if I want to get the benefits of non-monogamy, I have to honor that.  That’s why we’re a no-veto couple.

Here’s some stuff I’ve read that has helped me:

 Non-primary partners tell: how to treat us well
 Franklin Veaux on couple privilege
 Nonmonogamy for Men: The Big Picture  (this is one I recommend ALL THE TIME)

Your Questions Answered

From Sofia:

i have questions!

How did you decide – what made you decide – to start blogging?

What is your favorite kink-based memory?

Well, the blogging part is easy: I was one of those little girls with a diary — you know, the one with the “Genuine Gold-Tone Lock”?   Dear diary…  As I got older I got cooler notebooks and called them journals.  When blogging came to be, it was a pretty natural transition from paper to pixel.  I have always written to make sense of my own experience.   I guess one of the things that’s related to your question is: “Why blog about sex?”   Blogging about sex isn’t exactly like blogging about knitting: it has risks, mainly because we live in a society where sex is a private matter.

Nonetheless, there was a time, around 1992, when putting any personal details at all about our lives — what we had for lunch, what we thought about the ballgame — was considered really weird.   Now everybody does it and we call it “Facebook.”

I am not proposing that it’s going to become normal to talk about sex publicly — at least not as easily and swiftly as living the rest of our lives online has become.  But I do think that we are better off as individuals and as a society if we are able to speak freely about our sex lives, even if they are very unconventional, to people who consent to listen, without anybody worrying if they’ll be kicked out of the Parent Teacher Association.  Sex is a serious subject, and we deserve to be able to talk about it openly if we choose to.

Now, what is my favorite kink-based memory?  My goodness.  I’m not being coy when I say I really, truly don’t know.  I am so lucky that there are so many wonderful moments.   For me, many of the wonderful moments have involved moments where my partners demonstrate that they love the parts of me that I cannot bring myself to love.

From fiona:

As a switch, do you crave one side more than the other? Do you find one more fulfilling than the other – I guess?

Also…What’s something that you fantasized about but haven’t yet explored? Do you think you ever will?

To me, kink is a way to connect with a partner; topping or bottoming is really just a means to that end.

That doesn’t mean that they’re the same, however.  One of them is much more difficult for me.   Topping is really much more natural to me; it’s closer to my day-to-day persona; I can do it, perhaps, with more flair.  Bottoming is much further from my day-to-day personality.  It’s harder and scarier and riskier.

Now, some of you reading might think, “Well that means bottoming is better, right?  It’s emotionally deeper, the payoff must be bigger.”  Nope.  Our experiences are as deep as we make them.  When I top, what I have to guard against is “performing,” which is something I do all the time in my work.  People don’t know how I feel unless I tell them.  But that’s no way to run an intimate relationship.  When I top, my big challenge is to turn off that performance and tune into what I really, truly want, and instead of doing what every sane person ever would do, namely, hide it, share it with Holly.

For me, topping is immediate, visceral, undeniable.  I can’t pull back from it once I get into it.  With topping?  I could pull back any time I wanted.  But I have to recognize that Holly can’t, and I have to honor that by being emotionally present and being just as open and real as she is.

In bottoming and topping, I’d say that I just have different work to do.

Also…What’s something that you fantasized about but haven’t yet explored? Do you think you ever will?

You know, I’m someone who spent about 35 years with her sexuality bottled up tight, and then let it all out.  At this point, unless I think up some new ones, I have no sexual fantasies that I haven’t already experienced except for the ones that are illegal, unethical, or require the intervention of science fiction.

You know what I think about that, now that I’m on the other side of it?  That I’m free to explore now.  I can encounter a new sexual experience and take it or leave it.  I’m not being chased and pursued by the ghosts of my sexuality that were going to haunt me until I satisfied their otherworldly demands, yanno?  We’re friends now, me and my sexuality.  We’re not at war anymore.

The experience of acting out my sexual fantasies was interesting.   One of two things happened upon acting out a sexual fantasy:

For some fantasies, all that was hot about it was the taboo.  Once we’d done it, the taboo was broken, and it wasn’t hot anymore.  (For me, this included pretty much all things anal, which I used to have excruciatingly embarrassing and hot sexual fantasies about, but is now totally absent from my fantasy life, because I tried it and thought, “Meh.”  Some people say that you should worry about “ruining” a sexual fantasy that way, but that’s bullshit.  Sexual fantasy is like the subway: there will be another one along in five minutes).
For other fantasies, they were like the magical gift that just keeps unfolding; they were hot and stayed hot or got hotter.  Those became a regular part of our sexual repertoire.

But I’m sure I’ll have new fantasies, and we’ll see where those lead, right?

From LSAM:

How has being a switch added to your experience as both a s-type and D-type?

Well, as a D-type, I have a huge advantage because I understand what it’s like to be the submissive.  I get the emotional intensity, the weird and unexpected bursting into tears after an orgasm, the fact that one toy one day feels great and the next day you just can’t tolerate it.  I get all those things because I’ve been there.

As a submissive, it’s made me more patient and realistic.  Like a lot of s-types, I sprung all my wants on my husband like a kid with a 143 item Christmas list.  What I understand now that I didn’t understand then is that dominance is not a microwave dish.  It takes time for people to grow into the kind of dominant they will become.  I should have been more patient; I had a lot of magical thinking going on, that somehow dominance was just like throwing a switch or something, and that Bryce would magically become a kind of InstaDom.  I also know that initially I was looking for a kind of dominance that was so confident and perfect that it would make submitting effortless, instead of being sometimes scary, frustrating, or sad.  In short, I wanted to transfer all the emotional risk of having a D/s relationship to my husband, which I now realize is 1) totally unfair and 2) complete bullshit on my part.

Sorry you folks had to wait so long.  My work is very “bursty” — I’ll be incredibly busy for awhile, and then I’ll have some slack.  My blog reflects that, of course!  :)

Feel free to ask more questions anytime  :)

Just finished reading your book, Discipline, and it really had a profound effect on me. You can read more about how on my blog (where I’ve pimped your book a few times) http://drinkskinksandlife.tumblr.com/

The biggest impact was when you talked about Behavior Modification Doms. After years of lurking in the lifestyle and never seeing anyone like me it was like someone turned on a light in a dark room. I cannot express the relief and joy it gives me to know I am not alone. Thank you.

So can I ask you a question?  Does that mean you’re a behavior modification dominant (for those who haven’t read the book, a dominant who is interested in “training” a submissive over a long period of time)?  (Nevermind, I just went and read some stuff from your blog.  You are one!  So listen, I think you should read this:  Raven Kaldera and Josh Tenpenny on “Real Service”

In any case, I’m really thrilled that the book gave you some ideas that have helped you out in your own life.  That makes me really happy  I’ll be reading your blog!

Impatience Is A Virtue

 

It’s not easy being the primary partner.

The nonprimary partner — well, every date with them is date night, right?  One is primped, prepared, primed.  Sex-ready right out of the box.   The nonprimary partner may also be new and shiny, but most critically, the nonprimary partner is *elsewhere.*

While my relationship with Holly has grown to be far more than “date night,” my sexual appetite for Bryce remains undimmed.  I don’t feel right if our sexual bond is not strong.  Part of that may be my own conception of marriage; though I’ve grown a great deal by listening to people like David Jay and would never say “I want a mate, not a roommate” anymore, for a long time, I believed that sex was what made our relationship different than a friendship, and perhaps I still do a little.  Nonetheless, whether sex makes our marriage “real” or not…

…I still want it.

Which leads us to the enormously complex psychological-logistical issues of sex with a long term primary partner.   Our sex life is embedded within our enormously rich and varied life.  Laundry, parking tickets, the car, my mother, your dad, the kids, the dishes, the pure cacaphony of domestic life; the XBox drowns out the siren song of lust.

Trying to find the sex in all that is like trying to land a jet fighter on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a pitching, rolling sea.

Nonetheless, we set up for the landing.  Bryce prepares the room.  Sure, we’re going to gloriously fuck up the bed but that doesn’t mean we don’t make it first.  We’re not barbarians.  Then there are the candles, and the white-noise machine, and the music, and the careful selection of rope and implements of ouch.

Then he says, “Come in when you’re ready.”

Most of the time I’m still waiting for my mojo to arrive, for that little red dot to appear on the bullseye screen of my libido’s radar.

We’re trying to get matched up, and that’s the part that is different, the part that takes more skill, than it does with a nonprimary partner: matching up our readiness amid the distractions of our life together.

So I end up sitting at the living room table.  Thinking.  Generally attempting to think of something really filthy.

Bryce is an enormously, almost preternaturally patient man.  I swear he could win a staring contest with a gargoyle.  But through building his own specific dominance he has learned to cultivate his impatience.

I guess I waited too long.

He comes out and stands in the doorway.  I stand up, ready to follow him, but he yanks my hand behind my back and now I’m bent over the dining room table, my nose about an inch from one of the uncleared dinner dishes (broiled trout, roasted peppers, braised escarole with shallots)

He yanks down my panties and fucks me, pressing my head to the table with the palm of his hand, growling.

It feels amazing, even with the uncleared dish an inch from my face.

We triumph, once again, over the circus of glorious domestic distraction that we have built.

Yes, patience is a virtue.

At times, so is impatience.

 

 

Oh, The Places You’ll Go

OMG YOU GUISE!

I GOT A NEW COCK!  I’d squee if it weren’t undomly.

Okay, fuck it.  Ima SQUEEEEEEE!

I’ll tell you all about it and the many places it goes later, mkay?

OMG YOU GUISE!

I GOT A NEW COCK!  I’d squee if it weren’t undomly.

Okay, fuck it.  Ima SQUEEEEEEE!

I’ll tell you all about it and the many places it goes later, mkay?

Ask Me A Question, I Dare Ya

Milos Milosevic via Compfight

 

Hey!  Did you know that March is Ask A Blogger A Question Month?

I didn’t either, but I’ve noticed it showing up on some blogs that I read.

So?  Got a question?  My inbox is OPEN.

Big

[Photo by Keshigomu under a Creative Commons license]

Every once in awhile, Holly lets me see her playful, youthful, little-girl self.  It’s sassy, silly fun and we both enjoy it.

Now, allow me to say something up front:  Holly is a completely functional adult woman.  She puts the Up in Grownup, no lie.  In fact, the grownup she grew up to be is serious, diligent, hyper-responsible. True torture for Holly would be making her replace her car’s inspection sticker…one day late.  [Cue scary music].

Sometimes, when we do this thing that we do, we play out our other sides, right?  The person who’s ultra-alpha hard-charging businessperson by day likes to take all that off at night, put on a collar and not be in charge for a few precious hours.  I know I do; hell, it’s Club Med on two legs and you don’t even have to go through TSA to get there.  And so maybe very, very responsible, detail-oriented Holly, who is the grownup to many people in her life (and not always consensually!) wants to put down her to-do list for a minute and play.  I have a hard time seeing that as a bad thing.  I have a hard time seeing it as anything other than what it is: Recess for Grownups.

When I meet someone who still has that effervescent, youthful part of themselves, I marvel at it.  I marvel at it in the same way I would marvel at a bright shard of pottery that is all that’s left of an ancient masterwork.

I do not have that.  I am, for better or for worse, irrevocably and completely grown up.  I’m a huge fan of roleplay, but if I ever did an ageplay scene, make no mistake: I’m not channeling a younger version of myself.  I am making something entirely new that may have nothing at all to do with the lass I once was.  It’s not a piece of me: it’s a role.

Sometimes I think Holly wonders what I get out of being the big to her little for awhile.  Maybe she thinks I’m just a good sport.

The thing is, that’s not true.

It’s not true because my “big” is every bit as real and part of me as Holly’s “little” is a real part of her.  My desire to nurture, my desire to be the one creating the fun, and above all, my limitless, passionate desire to make things go right — oh, I don’t have to playact that.  That is as real as it gets in Lily-land.

Because sometimes, you can’t make things go right for the people you love.  The giant boulder is steamrollering down on all of us and sometimes we can’t stop it no matter how much we want to or how hard we try or how crazy we’re willing to get to make it right.  You can’t stop it or safeword on it or get it to go away for love or money, so you just do the best you can, by which I mean you work it until you really and truly cannot work it one more millisecond, throw up on your shoes, and then get carried out on a gurney all the while yelling PUT ME BACK IN!  PUT ME BACK IN DAMMIT!

But see?  That’s what’s great about being big: it’s a magical, beautiful snowglobe world.  And inside it, nothing ever hurts for long and nothing is wrong that can’t be fixed.

I can make everything go right.  

Even if only for a few precious hours.

So if Holly and I ever get around to talking about it and she asks me if I’m just being a good sport when I’m being the big, I know what my answer is: “Are you kidding me?  I fucking LOVE being Big!”