Lily Lloyd's Blog, page 5

How Being Kinky Prepared Me To Be Poly

This week’s Polyamory Weekly podcast features a conversation with me and Minx, the Terri Gross of the non-monogamous set.  The topic of the interview, “How Being Kinky Prepared Me To Be Poly,” actually came out of a conversation with my good friend Aggie Sez, who writes the wonderful Solo Poly blog.

For those of you finding the blog because of PolyWeekly and looking for my book on making kinky relationships work or the free downloadable checklists and worksheets from the book, you can find those here.

So do you want to hear what my voice sounds like?  PolyWeekly #347 — How Being Kinky Prepared Me To Be Poly

I was kinky before I was poly, and in the interview, I talked about the three major relationship skills that kink taught me that helped me quite a bit as I transitioned from monogamy into non-monogamy:

Talk about sex before it’s a problem!
Aftercare works even if you’re not kinky!
Equal isn’t the same thing as fair.

Minx and I have a grand old time unpacking each of these.  We had a good time recording it and you’ll have a good time listening.

 

My embarrassing kink

[Hi, all -- I have been busy teaching and traveling and haven't had much time to sit down, clear my mind of administrivia, and write.  But!  Look!  Here I am, putting real live pixels on the screen!  Hurrah! -- Lily]

nolifebeforecoffee via Compfight

At this point, I feel pretty good about all my kinks.  I don’t think that they reflect badly on my character or my mental health; I can laugh about them and I’m not all that worried about people finding out about that aspect of my life.

It wasn’t always that way — I was raised in an environment of grand sexual repression — a place where it was not okay to be gay or bisexual.  Since I was discovering my own sexuality before the era of the Web, the only glimpses I got of BDSM from movies and television and books were always connected with danger and death.  So at a very young age, I simply put that aspect of myself in long-term storage.

Now?

I’m an unrepentant freak.  And I am glad, because I didn’t realize how stressful it was to repress my sexuality until I stopped doing it.

But I digress.

Because, you see, pervs — I still have kinks that even I am embarrassed by.  I imagine myself being grilled by a vanilla person (for some reason, these imaginary interrogations always take place in line at a Starbucks.  In my imagination, vanilla folk have absolutely no compunctions whatsoever about drawing others into their scene without consent and will bust out the interrogation play right in front of the pastry case).  I fare very badly in these interrogations.  I have no good answers for why I’m doing what I’m doing and…it looks pretty bad.

No double latte for me, pervs.

At this point, you’re saying, ENOUGH VAMPING PERV WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU INTO SPIT IT OUT ALREADY.

Okay.  Holly has this phone, see?

YOUR GIRLFRIEND HAS A PHONE.  UH HUH.

Stop that!  I don’t even know if there’s a word for what I’m talking about.  I have no clue about how I would go about adding this one to my fetish list.

Anyway, Holly has a new phone.  A smartphone!  With, like, apps and stuff.

Gawd, this is so embarrassing.  You know those apps that let you see where your friends are?

I put one on her phone.

Not without her knowledge and consent, you understand!  In fact, I showed her how to switch it off with one click, and told her that she’s welcome to turn it off at any time for any reason without fear of any butthurt whining on my part.  (Everybody hates a butthurt dom, anyway).  Nor do I ever comment on or try to control where she goes or when (that kind of controlling behavior is one of the classic “red flags” for an abusive relationship).

I have no desire to tell her where to go.

I just like to know where she is.

All the time.

Of course, my desire to know where Holly is (and actually be able to do it) isn’t happening in a vacuum.

We live in an age of surveillance.  The numbers of surveillance cameras in use in public places has tripled in the past three years.  Drones zap human targets from the sky.  Everyone carries around the ability to be Big Brother in their pocket — take out the phone, start recording video, have it up on YouTube in seconds.   I’m not sure I know too many people who think this is a good trend.  But me?  I turn it into a kink.  facepalm

That sounds bad, doesn’t it?  No wonder I get creamed in those imaginary interrogation-by-vanilla-at-Starbucks scenes.  I have a private panopticon in my pocket.  I am Evil Dom who knows where her s-type at every moment of the day.  I mean, it sounds like I’m about to microchip the poor girl!

Why the hell would I want this, anyway?  Well, Holly and I live just far enough away that “dropping by” is really impractical.  And due to our respective jobs, impromptu “just to say hello” phone calls are also impractical.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think about her throughout the day — it just means that I have nothing to do with that feeling, no place for it to go.

Until now, that is.  Now I just pull out my phone and look in on her.  Oh.  There you are.  Hello.  You don’t know it but I miss you. 

 

 

BDSM, Open Relationships, and NRE: From Way Up Here

I’ve read a lot — everything I can get my hands on, really — about polyamory and open relationships.  Polyamorists love to coin new words and phrases, and have an unhealthy love of the acronym, and the big one, in open-relationship land is “NRE,” which stands for “New Relationship Energy.”  That’s the on-top-of-the-world, I must have you now, the rest of the world does not exist feeling that accompanies new love.

The other big poly word is “compersion” — that is, feeling genuinely happy for your partner when they have a new partner (or are simply enjoying their relationship with that other partner).

I have that in spades.

Hey, don’t look at me like that, I do.

That doesn’t stop me from having All The Feelingz, though.

Like:  I am Old Hat.  Worse!  I am ancient millinery!  Prehistoric headgear!

I AM NOT THE NEW SHINY!  HOW CAN I POSSIBLY COMPETE WITH THE NEW SHIIIINY?!

Waaaaaaiiiiiiiitttt a minute.  I am not competing.  BREATHE!  Breathe.  Sit with the feelings.  ZEN GODDAMNIT!

So there’s a lot to read about poly and NRE and how to deal with it — but I really haven’t found a lot about Poly/open relationships, NRE, and BDSM.

I mean, it’s tough to deal with that first difficult part, when your partner has someone new.  But there’s chocolate and red wine and the gym and Judgy Bear (more about him later, pervs) for that.  There’s also the comfort of knowing that it’s temporary.  Drag out the DVD box sets and by the time you’re done with Season 4 of The Wire it’s over, right?

But what about when NRE does a number on your BDSM dynamic with your partner?

I’m not sure I (or anyone else) can make any grand statements about what happens to a BDSM dynamic when a new partner is added; it’s just too variable from person to person and from relationship to relationship.

I can tell you that for me, my BDSM dynamic with Bryce has gotten very thin — has dried up — when he gets a new partner.

I can also say this: That is NOT his fault.

It’s me who’s pulling back.

For me, bottoming — submitting — is an intensely vulnerable, personal experience.  The sheer emotional intensity of that experience is one of the things I want out of BDSM; it’s one of the reasons I pursue a kinky dynamic with my partners.

But I find that I back way up — way, way up — from that kind of emotional intensity when Bryce has someone new.

I miss it.  I miss our dynamic.  And now that things have settled down a bit, I have been creeping (oh, who am I kidding, when have I ever in my life creeped? Stalked.  Rowwrrred in the general direction of) back to it.

It’s bumpy.

I miss bottoming.  I miss submitting.  It fills a huge emotional space in me, and without it everything feels a bit arid.

It reminds me of what my life felt like B.K.E., frankly.  What?  Oh: Before Kinky Era.  I spent over a decade married to Bryce thinking, “Hey, that’s just a FANTASY.  I don’t REALLY want to do that.”  (I’d roll my eyes but if I roll them that hard I could get a sprain.  Nobody wants to sprain their eyeballs).   I wasn’t miserable:  I was busy.  Hell, I was successful.

Same thing here: I used the extra time to write a book.

I could be as successful as hell, though, and it ain’t the same thing.

It ain’t the same thing at all.

It ain’t the same thing as everything.

///

Deep breath.

It’s temporary.

Hell, it’s almost over.  I can feel that it’s almost over.  That feeling of distance.

From way up here.

 

 

 

“I can see yo bokey house up here,” Pic Fix,  Flickr, under a Creative Commons license. 

What does your dominant want?

Ah, the battle cry of the s-type: What Does My Dominant Want?!

I don’t know about everybody else, but I know what I want:  I want my mane fluffed.

After a hard week I want to be led to a comfortable chair

the biggest, most thronelike chair with a commanding view of the room

And I want to be served something to drink.

maybe something from Starbucks, but a decent Bordeaux never goes wrong, either. Preferably with you on your knees. 

Flit and flutter around me.  Offer little conversational bonbons for me to enjoy.  Tell me things.

Things about me.  I do love to be praised. 

Until I tell you to stop fussing and get over here.

Don’t forget to bring the leash, my dear.

Kneel down by my chair.  Let’s be quiet and enjoy the sunset out the big window, shall we?

We could stay there forever.  But you know we won’t.  We’ll just stay there for as long as I want.

Good girl.

 

 

Positive Reviews for “Discipline”

So this year I wrote a book, “Discipline,” on making kinky relationships work.  I was thrilled (!!!) to get this comment from a reader on Fetlife:

 I can’t seem to be able to put it down. You’ve already given me several insights and I love the way you write. Almost half way through already (yeah, I’m a quick reader), but I’ll be sure to re-read it. Thank you for writing it. It’s made me laugh, it’s made me think, I’ve recognized situations from my life. It truly is worth a read.  – Bamble

You know, now the book has sold a few hundred copies, but it has no reviews yet.  I have the same problem — I can’t figure out how to review some of my kinky reading without putting my legal name on it, and I’d prefer to have a little more privacy than that.  I’d have already reviewed a ton of books on Amazon if I could figure out how!

If any of you know how, let me know.

If you would like to review the book on Amazon, let me know & I’ll shoot you a review copy.  

And if you want to know what the book’s about, click here.

Fitbit for Sex: How Many Calories Does Strap-On Sex Burn?

One of my Christmas gifts from Bryce is a Fitbit One, a fancy wireless pedometer that syncs to a website.  To me, it’s the perfect combination of fitness, nerdery, and opportunities to game the system.

I’ve been wearing it clipped to my pocket for the past few days, and looking at the Fitbit app on my phone to see how many steps I took, stairs I climbed, and calories I burned.

Then I went down to Providence to see Holly.

I think it says something about my personality — not necessarily a good thing, mind you! — that when I was pulling on my  strap-on harness, I thought: “I wonder how many calories strap-on sex burns.”

So? I clipped the Fitbit onto the harness and got to work.   (Best job in the world!)

I feel like strap-on sex has given me some insight into and empathy for men.  Holy shit, is being the fucking partner ever a lot of effort!  OMG.  I end a session a sweaty, happy heap.

Well, it burns a lot of calories, too.  458, to be exact.

It’s not “just sex.”  It’s an exercise program!

Yours For The Taking

[I was looking for this entry, but realized I never ported it over from Fetlife in the way-back when.  Enjoy!  - Lily ]

Bryce: [standing in doorway] I feel all…tense.

Lily: [lying in bed fully dressed, reading a book] You wouldn’t happen to want to give me a beating, would you?

Bryce: [pause] Yes, actually.

Lily: 30 minutes?

Bryce: [nods, gets evil grin]

One hour later

Bryce: So. How was that?

Lily: [pause] Hm.

Bryce: Hm.

[Long digression into the particularities of subspace and topspace, endorphins, oxytocin, freedom, arousal, control, particle physics, objectification, wax play, electoral politics, moving to California, getting everything you ever dreamed of, coming to bed a man and rising a gleaming demigod ]

Three minutes later

We don’t use the cuffs this time. I just bend over the bed, putting my head down in my arms the way we used to when our grade school teachers told us to put our heads down on the desk to rest. Bryce moves my hair out of the way.

I remember telling him, “You know all those people who hit a punching bag to get out their emotions because they can’t hit people? Well, you can hit an actual person! Not the person you’re angry at, because then you’d go to jail, but still…you get the real thing!”

I can tell by the way he’s hitting me that he takes me seriously. The flogger lands with a massive thud on my back, again and again.

I relax into it. My eyes sink shut. I imagine taking all of it, everything that pisses him off, makes him tense, afraid, uncertain, just taking it into myself and rendering it harmless, leaving behind only glittering arousal.

The skin between my shoulderblades starts to heat up; now each blow stings. For the first time that evening, I begin to breathe deeply. He hears it; sees it, maybe, and stops.

What is he doing? Is he stopping?

I feel his hand on the back of my neck, holding me still, and then

OH!

Hot wax pools in the small of my back, shockingly hot and then indescribably wonderful.

The beating resumes, percussive, tribal. The sound of the little radio, tuned to a classical music station, gets dimmer and fainter to me, as if someone is carrying it down the hall, down the stairs and out into the street, away and out into the American night.

It goes on until I put my hand back; slowly; it feels like I’m doing it under water.

“No?”

“No. I can’t hold myself up,” I say.

Bryce helps me onto the bed, where I lie curled on the sheets.

I think he doesn’t know what to do now.

“Come here,” I say.

I say it again. “Come here. Take me to you.”

Bryce climbs onto the bed, draws me to him.

“I’m yours.”

“I know. Good girl.”

“Bryce. This is not a script; it’s not role-play. I’m trying to tell you something. Listen to me.”

You can beat me and fuck me and play with me because I’m yours. You take me to you now because I belong to you. You’re always so worried about me leaving, when all you ever have to do is take what you want from me. It’s all yours for the taking.

I feel Bryce’s face grow hot and wet on my back.

Baby, don’t you know?

I’m yours for the taking.

#SexReader: Cupid’s Arrow

 

 

#SexReader: Cupid’s Arrow

The next #SexReader is all about love and sex. Longing, passion, desire and lust. Erotic and romantic disasters? Valentine’s Day mishaps? We want ‘em. Humor, wins and losses — show us your best! #SexReader will publish a list of links to the best. Brownie points to those who tweet out a link to http://theblackleatherbelt/sexreader using the #SexReader hashtag.

Send us your best writing about sex & love!

Deadline: 2/1/2013. Post must be dated between 2/1/12 and 2/1/13.  Will be published on Valentine’s Day 2013.  Click the link below to submit!

Submit to #SexReader: Cupid’s Arrow

 Remember, you must click the link above to submit your work.  It’s simple — but it makes sure that I have your name, a full link, and an email address to let you know if your piece made it.

About your Curatrix:   I am Lily, curator of #SexReader, autho of The Black Leather Belt blog and of a new book on how to make kinky relationships work: “Discipline: Adding Rules & Discipline To Your BDSM Relationship.”  You can also find me on Twitter, where I’m @MsLilyLloyd.

 

Photo: Jim Nix, “Cupid’s Arrow,” under a Creative Commons license

#SexReader Best of 2012

 

Welcome to #SexReader Best of 2012!   I am Lily, your host, and I tweeted/blogged/Fetlifed out an invitation for folks to submit what they believed to be their best writing on sex & relationships this year.  I tell you, you have some great reading ahead of you! 

 

If you get only one thing out of #SexReader Best of 2012, take this good advice from Amie Wee:  Tell the Person You Want to Fuck Today!  Because life really is too short.

 

Thinking Kink Squad

The Pink Dress   Sinclair Sexsmith.  BDSM educator, anthologist, and all-around badass Sinclair Sexsmith sometimes has readers send in a scenario and then writes up the story.  ”Pink Dress” is amazing, read it!  (See also Sinclair’s personal best of 2012).

S&M Aftercare, or Brainwashing?  Clarisse Thorn. Clarisse’s blog has become a must-read for the thinking kink crowd, and this piece is an excellent example of why that is: Clarisse’s willingness to take on the tough issues that kink raises along with her clarity in thinking them through makes her an irreplaceable read. (That means: “Come back soon, Clarisse.”)

Kinky philosophy for vanilla sex  Cliff Pervocracy’s monthly shredding of Cosmo — “Cosmocking” — is the highlight of my feed every time it shows up. Cliff has this uncanny ability to put the blogfinger right on the point where you knew there was an issue worth talking about, but you couldn’t quite articulate it — and then nails it.

Digging Into Love: Transformation and Foundations  Lee Harrington had a big year — releasing “Playing Well With Others: Your Field Guide to Discovering, Navigating, and Exploring the Kink, Leather & BDSM Communities” along with blogstar Mollena Willliams. The two did a cross-country tour in support of the book. If you haven’t listened to Lee’s contributions to the Erotic Awakenings podcast, you’re also in for a treat in the coming year.

Kinky Vanilla by Fiona of Sir Q and Me examines the crossover between kink and vanilla. Dammit, now I’m thinking of soft-serve twist cones.

Cybermonkey in the Machine Little Monkey brings up an important question: how real are our online lives?

Fifty Shades of Me by Molly’s Daily Kiss.  It wouldn’t be a complete 2012 roundup without a substantive take on the year’s biggest publishing phenomenon.

Just A Nerd — Stabbity is the logical inheritor of the mantle of the great Bitchy Jones, and in this piece, she tells it like it is.

Why she won’t admit to enjoying femdom — even if she does  Giles English unpacks what holds some of us back from really embracing our kinks.

Sexual Honesty: Does It Feel Unsafe To Tell The Truth?  Galen Fous. This is such a BIG, BIG deal. I spent years not talking about my kinks to the person I slept next to every night. What is your partner not telling you — and how can you make it safe to talk about sex?

Not My Kink  The Queer Inside Me writes about something a lot of us have discovered: if we find a particular partner hot, and they find a particular kink hot…we’ll probably end up finding that kink hot too. Turns out sexual excitement…is sexually transmissible. Area of further study, I think.

Consent Counts

There was a huge and important conversation going on about consent in the US and among sexuality communities this year. It was the year in which candidates for national office speculated about the existence of “legitimate rape,” the year The Good Men Project jumped the shark by publishing a piece by an unrepentant rapist and then defending it, and the year that kinky Facebook clone Fetlife decided that the victims of sexual assault would be banned from the community for naming names. There were many great pieces speaking out against victim blaming, victim silencing, and rape culture, but here are three that were submitted to #SexReader:

What Rick Santorum Doesn’t Know About Sex  Christopher Ryan, author of the NYT bestseller on the the origins of monogamy and the future of relationships (including nonmonogamy) deconstructs Rick Santorum’s views on sex in a witty and authoritative way.

Fetlife: Not ‘Consent Counts,’ but ‘Convictions Count,’ Eh?” by Kitty Stryker.  Kitty Stryker breaks down the consent debacle at Fetlife.

To See Justice for the Raped, First They Must Be Seen, Trevor Patrick writes about changing the game around sexual assault.

Parent Brigade

What to do when an adolescent has BDSM Porn on the computer?  I want my own kids to grow up with a healthy, secure, and happy relationship to their own sexuality, and Airial Clark of The Sex Positive Parent is my personal guide to how I talk to my kids about sex. This piece is worth reading!

Why Parents of Young Children Hardly Ever Get It On  Christa T. Palmer puts her finger on it — and points to a few solutions for the harried and sleep-deprived.

 

The Sexy Stuff: Scene Reports

I know, I know, you’re asking: LILY WHERE IS THE SEXY STUFF. No problem, we got ya covered. Some writers sent personal reports of their best scenes (or fantasies?) to #SexReader:

Drawing Out Hurt  Ferns of Domme Chronicles draws a meticulous, even suspenseful portrait of a scene between a sadist and her subject.

Hungry  Kitty the Submissive Wife writes about the raw, driving hunger that so many of us are looking to find within ourselves.

Slick by Michellaneous. Let’s put it this way: no lube required.

Kitty Torture  by Jade Melisande. My response? !!!!!

Cathartic  by Curvaceous Dee. I love scenes that change the mind and heart as well as the body.

When Frederick Met Camille  David of D/s in Vegas draws a wonderful portrait of a seduction in “When Fredrick Met Camille.”

Last Night’s Pervy Party  by Fet Starr. Never been to a sex party, or a BDSM play party? Get a sense of what it’s like from Starr.

Bigger, Louder, & With More Explosions

If there’s one thing that people who take the time to write about sex and relationships care about, it’s having better sex and relationships. Plenty of people who submitted their best work to #SexReader this year felt that their most important piece of the year was about helping others experience more pleasure, happiness, and love.

Sex Tips for the Repressed  N. Likes of My Dissolute Life talks about the fact that a lot of standard sex advice — like “Communicate!” won’t work if you’re mired in shame and self-loathing about your sexuality. He has tips for the sufferers.

Big Cock, Little Cock, All Cocks Are Sexy  by Jean-Luc Gothos.  SO SAY WE ALL!

A Deli Approach to Polyamory  by Amy Shiner. Amy blogs on sexuality on HuffPo, and her lovely, down-to-earth pieces on non-monogamy are ones I always look forward to.

Non-primary partners tell: How to treat us well  Aggie Sez’s blog Solo Poly has been a breakout success in non-monogamy communities. This piece shows what can happen to writing about relationships when someone does crowdsourcing and actual JOURNALISM to it: a well-thought out piece with dozens of sources on how to make open relationships work.

Overcoming The Fear of Love Mr. Absinthe Passion.  Isn’t that the big one?  Really?

Stages of Inorgasmic Grief  Dumb Domme takes what might be a glum topic and makes us all laugh, with her hilarious and insightful piece on her struggles to “let go” and have an orgasm with her partner.

What are parabens?  Lube is great stuff — but some lubes still have scary stuff in them. Nymphomaniac Ness takes you through the science and helps you find the good slippery stuff.

Womens’ Secret Erotic Fantasies  Domina Doll lets you in on a secret: all those fantasies you’re a little embarrassed about? Everybody else has them too!

Bloody Fantastic!  by Eric Sprankle. “Quote: Are you engaged to someone who lusts after you 21 days a month, but for one week treats you like a leper covered in bleeding skin lesions?” HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I love a piece about sex that makes me laugh, don’t you?

Sex & Spirituality

After my breakup with my Boyfriend in the Sky, I had a lot of free-floating reverence that settled on sex. For me, as for a lot of us, sex can be a way to connect with something bigger than ourselves. Nellodee’s mantra is a wonderfully moving example of this kind of erotic insight.

The Belonging Mantra – A Prayer to Myself

A Word From Your Curatrix

Man.  You guys wrote such great stuff!  Thank you so much for submitting these pieces.  And for writing them.  And for giving us so many great things to read.  Keep up the good work!

I think the best piece I wrote this year was one entitled “The Bitch Is Back,” which describes a BDSM scene that changed my mind about what people could love about me.  It also appears in my book, “Discipline: Adding Rules and Discipline to Your BDSM Relationship,” a book about how to make kinky relationships work (with plenty of hot scene reports illustrating the, um…major themes ;->).

HEY MY PIECE WASN’T IN HERE! Well…That’s because you didn’t submit Want another whack at it? #SexReader: Cupid’s Arrow is now open for submissions! Submit your best work about love and sex.

If you *did* submit, and I missed you, please do let me know by leaving a comment below.

Next #SexReader: Cupid’s Arrow

The next #SexReader is all about love and sex. Longing, desire and lust. Erotic and romantic disasters, including Valentine’s Day mishaps welcome. Humor, wins and losses — show us your best! #SexReader will publish a list of links to the best. Brownie points to those who tweet out a link to http://theblackleatherbelt/sexreader using the #SexReader hashtag.

Deadline: 2/1/2013. Will be published on Valentine’s Day 2013.  You must click the link below to submit — it’s how I keep track of ALL submissions for #SexReader.

Submit to #SexReader: Cupid’s Arrow

 

 

Easy Kinky Christmas Gifts At The Absolute Last Minute

Too late to ship something?  Refuse to go to the mall?  Think gift cards are kinda lame?  NO PROBLEM!  I’m going to show you how to give some kinky gifts at the absolute last minute!

Did you know you can email your pals and playpartners e-books — often for the cost of a digital stocking stuffer?  And you don’t need a Nook, a Kindle, or an iPad — if your friend has a smartphone or a web browser, they can enjoy the book you send them.  Here’s how:

 

Featuring books by Mollena Williams, Tristan Taormino, Clarisse Thorn, Tomio Hall-Black, Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, Laura Antoniou, Sinclair Sexsmith, and scoring a last-minute gift membership to the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.