Nicole Field's Blog, page 20
April 18, 2016
Further down the rabbit hole.
From @emerylord:
Step 1: throw everyone else’s ideas of What You’re Supposed to Be Doing in the trash
Step 2: Proceed
Having taken sex off the table, I’m noticing myself being much more comfortable in / with my body. This is not a small thing; we’re talking about a lifetime of body issues. But now I’m looking in the mirror and seeing a person who’s confident, successful, well loved and sometimes even funny. My self esteem is rising.
It’s opening up other thoughts as well. I had a conversation on Twitter this morning about my changing feels on sexuality. I’ve IDed as bisexual for most of my life. I write stories with sexualised romance between characters of of all genders. Does it mean, given my own changing sexuality, that I can’t write things like erotica anymore?
Of course not. Bisexuality is still a part of my lived experience.
But I’m starting to wonder: I’ve always considered myself kind of prudish. I’m a polyamorous person who isn’t really interested in having sexual intercourse. Anyone who knows me has heard the stories of my being in romantic relationships with guys for sometimes years before the act of intercourse has happened. Interestingly, this isn’t a problem that presents itself when I’m with women. It’s easier for me to have sex with women because my experiences with them have been more inclined towards touching and teasing and stopping to chat and a general closeness and intimacy that has little to do with achieving orgasm as the end point.
I remember fondly a time before everyone discovered sex. Where you could lie around on a couch when parents weren’t home, kissing and touching and giggling about the new feelings you’ve just discovered. I could have done that forever. What I need can be satisfied by kisses and touching and closeness.
In fact, that’s exactly what I’ve tried to emulate over the years, as many times as I’ve been able to, with almost every partner I’ve ever had and so many wonderful, intimate friends.
So in short what I’m wondering is, how long have I been having the intercourse because that’s what societally expected within a heterosexual romantic relationship?
Somehow, before the first time of having intercourse with a new person, it’s seemed permissible to put it off, to be “shy” and “not really ready” in a way that didn’t seem available afterwards. Cause if you’d done it once, why wouldn’t you be ready to go and do THAT again?
I’ve spent so many years feeling like there was something wrong with me, something that made me different to everyone else; made me wrong. I even considered I might have some kind of repressed sexual abuse in my childhood, something I would one day trigger that would make the rest of it make sense.
I always noticed in books that sex happens at a much faster rate than I would be comfortable with. Nobody in them seemed to have hang ups that held them back. Until @rainbowrowell‘s Fangirl and Carry On that I read last year, actually. And I loved them for showing that sex is talked about as something that’s not quite as important as the rest of the intimacy stuff.
Honestly I find sex really messy. Finding body fluids kinda gross is something I had to train myself out of. I’m not unhappy I did it, but I’m just starting to read things that tell me I’m not alone.
I had never so much as met an asexual person until 18 months ago.
I feel like I’m starting to go back into my natural state in a slow state of degrees.
In my last post, I complained–as I do–about not having a rule book for my life. Bisexuality, polyamory, even the more recent multi-gendered identifier; those were child’s play with regard to figuring out where I fit in comparison to this.
And then yesterday morning I woke up to find in my email the beginnings of a Google Document rule book actually written and catered to my last post by one of my partners.
April 17, 2016
This is not my final form.
This is, I guess, a sort of “Part Three” to the series of identity posts I’ve been making this year.
In January, I wrote these two posts regarding gender identity and personally identifying as multi-gendered.
Two days ago, I wrote this post on being an introvert to a relative chorus of ‘well duh’.
I wonder as I’m writing this what reaction this post is going to elicit. So far, I’ve quietly told a grand total of four important people in my life.
I’ve been thinking about making this post, what it’s going to look like and, to be honest, taking a bit of a run up at it. It is entirely due to the amazing @almostincidental‘s recent post on, well… anyway. It is a particular post by them that has given me the courage to post my own.
This is truly scary.
I’m going to begin with a quote: “It’s not so much about whether it’s ‘okay’, it’s that it’s hard to shake the expectations we’re used to.”
I recently reached a point where having the spoons to deal with the issue of ‘sex’ was sapping the energy I had to see to the emotional needs to my relationships. ‘Sex’ became this larger than life thing, this all consuming ball of gas that was ever increasing with the number of days I wasn’t ‘doing it’, where the only way of releasing this awful tension was to actually ‘do it’. It didn’t matter how amazing I was in all other ways regarding a relationship, because ‘sex’ had become ‘SEX’ and I was a great big disappointment. Absolutely inadequate, in fact, because all I had to do to fix the problem was to do the act.
And I didn’t.
More than that, I couldn’t.
I’m gonna say right here that none of my partners was putting this out there; this was a 100% Nikki special.
I talk a good talk. I even do relatively good sex, I think, as far as anyone can know, I guess. My reputation seems to get more play than I do. And that’s all fine. I’ll engage in smack talk to do with sex just as easily as I’ll fall into bed with a six person orgy.
You know what orgys generally have? A lack of sexual intercourse. Or, perhaps I should say, I lack of requirement for everyone in the orgy to have actual sexual intercourse for it to be a success. I’m really good at that.
I’m good at touching, great at kissing, wonderful at hugging and holding a person in bed from the time we fall asleep to the time alarms go off the next morning. I’m fantastic at holding hands. I’m good at giving massages, better at receiving them. I’m delirious when it comes to sensation play in BDSM. Give me a blindfold and a person who’s willing to touch me when I have no idea whether it’ll be a hard or soft touch, or where, or when??
Hmm, an observant person might say at this point. BDSM and orgys? That sounds like a person who’s very sexually liberated. A person who obviously enjoys sex.
Hahahaha. Yeah. Well.
Here is where I bury my head in my hands. I’ve conveniently dug myself a hole where it seems inconsistent at best to offer any other argument.
I’m trying to be really honest with this post, but the more honest I am, the more anxious I’m becoming. Because I’m seeing the words on the page in front of me, and I’m winding towards a big finish that I really don’t think is going to make sense.
Because there doesn’t seem to be a word for an identity that includes all of that. Or, if there is, I can’t find it. I don’t know what it is. So I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got. And it doesn’t fit, or I feel uncomfortable in it, or other people are readying their fingers to point and say, ‘That’s not what you are!’
Asexual.
Of all of the identity related mind hacks I’ve been through this year, this one is the one that is the most jarring. My experience of it feels like looking at all the boundaries I’ve set over the years and rethink them. How many of them were put there because that’s what it takes to be a ‘normal’ person in society? No, let’s not go even that broad. How about a normal person in a relationship? How do you approach someone you’re romantically interested in, suggest you’d like a relationship with them, and then say but you’re not interested in having sex with them. *
I have honestly been shocked by how fine each and every one of my partners has been with my revelation.
But I’m still plagued with questions. At what point do my touches become a ‘tease’ for actions I’ve taken off the table? If I’m pressing against my partner, kissing him, and I feel his hard on, is it giving mixed signals if I move closer rather than away?
I know, I know, I need to define these for myself, and voice these questions on a case by case basis, but it’s fucking hard and I’m sick of My Alternative Life™ not having a clearly established rule book. I just wish sex was a thing that was used for procreation and everyone just touched and cuddled the rest of the time.
* Note: I know people who have done that, many people, and I have all the respect in the world for them. Especially the ones in their early 20s. Cause, fuck, I’m looking back at that me and I had no idea.
April 15, 2016
Daily update.Little things that make me happy: My name appearing...
Daily update.
Little things that make me happy: My name appearing on the search by author listing on the Less Than Three Press website.
April 14, 2016
Introvert
I’ve always been an extrovert, presenting not too dissimilarly from your manic pixie dream girl stereotype. I am the bouncy girl at clubs that everyone has their eye on. I am the one holding court in the living room of house parties.
I am also the incredibly insecure individual who hasn’t realised these things till they’ve been recently pointed out, ever focused on and hurt as I am by the one individual at said outings who won’t look at me.
It takes a lot of energy to keep up the excitement of the rabid social butterfly, which was never such a difficult thing to do when being around people, sensing their approval, hugging, touching, moving amidst such company was a constant source of energy.
But it isn’t anymore. Hasn’t been for a long time. I’ve been trying to put a time on it, but me and time are infrequent buddies, so it’s difficult. It was still on when I lived in my house near the city. There was a time when it paused for grief before a friend pointed out I was no longer that bouncy!Nikki. There was certainly a birthday party where I basked in the love and attention of all those who’d been invited. My 26th.
But 2009 was also a year of a lot of drama. And I have it on good authority from a lot of new friends I became close to that year that they’d never known me to be anything other than someone who enjoyed good party, but then needed downtime. So maybe that was when the change began.
I’ve had it in my head that an introvert is someone that actually needs to be away from all people in order to ‘recharge’, and I’ve held onto my extrovert mantle for many years because that particular state isn’t one I require. In fact, if you give me a book and a person who is willing to sit in the same space as me for hours without necessarily talking a great deal, I am going to come out of those hours feeling like the best time and marked connection has been made. That’s my downtime.
That’s also the majority of my social catch ups these days. I have four partners who are happy to chat with me over the meal we share, and then just as happy to look at our phones, computers or books, if not silently crafting in the same space. Ditto for at least half a dozen close friends.
Most of the parties in my current house have seen me take a smaller party upstairs to watch episodes of Buffy, have quiet time out, ignore each other, read, nap, or simply play with cats. I’ve lived here since 2010, but it didn’t start that year. That was the year of SO many parties, and none of them did I ‘hide’ from. 2011 then. Maybe. Or 2012?
Another change has been coming since September last year. I know this because of a current series of journals I’m keeping that started then. :D
It’s just weird, I guess, that I’m realising this as an actual thing now, this year, when there are so many other identity shifts that I’m becoming aware of and starting to wonder whether I’ve known myself at all these past four years.
April 13, 2016
Prima Facie
So, here I was, just minding my own business, taking a break from edits, playing around on Goodreads…
AND THEN!!
I have an expected release date of June 29th 2016. This information was only released to me on Tuesday, so I’m stoked to see this book already listed up on Goodreads.
I had an absolute ball writing this novella for Less Than Three’s Peacock collection call. Con is a strong, young lawyer who also just happens to be trans and on occasion battles with moments of dysmorphia and loneliness.
At first, it had much more of a modern noir feel to it, but it became clear pretty quick that Con’s character wanted to shine through more loud and clearly.
It was also pretty fun to feature Melbourne’s changeable weather into a kind of background character.
Further details and preorder information will be on lessthanthreepress.com coming soon.
April 8, 2016
picolo-kun:
Icarus and the Sun
Inspired by Icarus, who...
Icarus and the Sun
Inspired by Icarus, who dared to fly too near the sun on wings of feathers and wax. If he was in love with the sun, then this might as well be a story of forbidden love.
April 7, 2016
beastpup:
Rediscovering Fun, Day 6: Writing
(This post is Day...
Rediscovering Fun, Day 6: Writing(This post is Day 6 of my “Rediscovering Fun Week”).
So here we are - writing. How thrilling! I know this goes against the grain of what most people are going to think of as “fun” in the more energetic sense, but hear me out.
Writing is and can be incredibly fun. With nothing more than this language and your imagination you can travel anywhere, see anything, accompanied by the most wild or strange companions. You can save galaxies, or destroy them, grow bigger than the Empire State or explore a world on a microscopic level. Its entirely up to you. And if you’re a good writer, you get to take other people there too.
I graduated from a British university in 2005 with a Creative Writing degree, with honors. I love the art form and thought that I was going to be a novelist when I was teenager. Perhaps I still will be one day.
Today’s photo shows where I currently write. On display is my perfect writing environment and ingredients to let me slip into that experience:
Tea, herbal or otherwise
The plant, to connect me to the natural world. I have to be with something living to put life in my writing. My ideal place to write would be a conservatory.
Music through headphones lets me truly escape into the worlds I make. Ambient sounds better than lyrical pieces.
My writing journal / notebook where I jot ideas down as they come to me. Very important.I haven’t done much writing these last few years. I really must do more.
