Amidst the funk of all this talk of lube and tongues and fingers and fucks without boundaries, is there room for love and cuddling and evenings without orgasms?
Amidst the funk of all this talk of lube and tongues and fingers and fucks without boundaries, is there room for love and cuddling and evenings without orgasms?
But just so we don’t collapse sex bloggers into the one-dimensional, one-track-minded, bitter sex fiends that we are assumed to be, let me tell you what love looks like for me, without the details of our genitalia. Let’s begin with the woman I might fall for. She’s fierce, and funny and smart and so easy in her skin that she makes me forget that I am sometimes awkward and insecure and needy and prone to shutting down when I am scared.
She has her own life, but she cares about what happens in mine. She is able to say no to me, without making me feel bad for having asked. She thinks I am amazing, even when I am in my jammies. She reads all my blogs and tells me when she thinks I am bullshitting. In the wake of this Amazon Goddess of practicality and compassion, I am reduced to creating cliché nicknames that make us a pair. She’s is the Thelma to my Louise, the Mutt to my Jeff, the Tom to my Jerry, etc.
There are walks in the park, road trips to the Grand Canyon and risky visits to my home in Jamaica. She holds me when I am missing my dead grandmother, or Montego Bay, so much I cannot sleep. She picks me up from the bathroom floor when I am reeling from my mother’s unkind comments, or from the racism that renders me invisible in America.
She is present, and supportive, even when I cannot see anything in myself to admire. In turn, she allows me to gather her old wounds and dress them when they flare up. She is not afraid to fall apart in my arms. If she needs me, she is able to articulate it, and if for some reason she cannot, her eyes will tell me that I need to drop whatever the fuck I am doing and go get my girl. She likes sushi. And fresh-squeezed orange juice. She likes showering with me. She loves babies. And old women. And books. She adores a well-told story. And she loves a good tumble in the proverbial hay as much as me.
She is not afraid of dirty words and risqué misadventures in the boudoir. She fucks like a Mack truck when it is called for and she can whisper words in a language only she and I understand. We can do it anywhere. She’s game. On a plane, in the backseat of my car, in the elevator, in our parents’ bed — laughter is the staple of our romance.
And a close second is good sex. We both know that nothing is promised, but we promise each other the world anyway. We are willing to risk being wrong on forever. These are the things that I do not say when I choose to write about the details of my exploratory humping. But just like every dyke in the book, what you see is only a small sliver of the tale. And I have to admit that, yes, all the escapades are true — a few specifics are tweaked to protect the innocent, but don’t mistake what you see here as the whole of all our truths. Don’t be fooled by the pen. We are much, much more than these racy accounts designed to help you survive the mind-numbingly corporate afternoons.
(Staceyann Chin is the author of The Other side of Paradies: A Memoir)
