Sleep Deprivation

But worth it!! Right?!

I’m sure I’ll crash this week or next but this past week was full of:

Dancing, having friends come visit, and making money honey

Naked beach time with some good friends after work for an evening picnic

Step-by-step canvas painting class with one of my lovelies (picture below!) I do believe mine came out so pretty because it was a group effort. Both my friend and the teacher for our class helped me fix a number of things, haha.

Book of Mormon! It was horribly offensive… and hysterical.

Traveling down to southern OR and CA to see family! This is the first time since I started my job that I took time off! Three whole days this week! 😀 We got to see/are seeing my parents, and J’s parents, grandparents, sisters and brothers, our new baby nephew, and his uncle and wife and two daughters. Very full of family. I’m sure we’ll be ready to come home on Wednesday, just like we were ready to get out of Portland last Friday. We are also seeing J’s good friend and his girlfriend (my CA girlfriend!) and my fantasies just won’t stop…

*my favorite word I wrote on mine (on the right) was fearless but it was cut off in the picture

Happy happy Monday 🙂

Successful Relationships

How do expectations and assumptions drive your relationships?

What do you mean when you say “relationship”? Are you referring to any kind of connection with another person? Do you specifically mean a relationship marked by a romantic and sexual connection, or if not romantic/sexual, an intimate one?

How do you know if that relationship is “successful”? Is it made successful by time? Marked by a level of intensity or commitment? Marked by shared interests or goals? Does success hinge on change?

And what do intimate relationships look like for you? Do you prefer them to be daily connections, or is it okay if they appear and reappear once a week or once a month or once a year? How do you decide when a relationship is a Relationship? Is it made by formal commitment? Does a certain level of intimacy have to exist?

Expectations and assumptions can, in my opinion, sour even the best of intentions. Having a clear understanding of what you want relationships to look and feel like, and communicating that understanding to you partners is essential. Releasing your desires and understandings will support you even further in maintaining a sense of flexibility.

Labor

The new club I am working at is proving to be well worth my time. While the shifts are an hour longer, my ability to work nights has been lucrative. There are a lot of bar regulars, but there have also been many customers willing to dole out the money. For some reason, it’s like I realize again and again once I get to the club that it’s work, and being able to take advantage of that flow of cash has been extremely helpful the past six months.

My focus on stripping as labor also has become clear when I am talking to customers who want to date outside of the club- which I have had happen much more often at this new place. Trying to gently decline while still maintaining their interest in spending money is really tricky. Customers who come in and try to pick up strippers is not unusual- strip clubs are places of fantasy and hope. But I’m still dumbfounded when it happens. Why do you think I’m here? So I can meet dates? Ha, no. The unwillingness of customers, or maybe just the naivete (although I doubt it), to see strippers as workers just boggles my mind. But again, that is part of building and maintaining fantasy: customers know that they must pay money in order to enjoy strippers’ performances, company, and more intimate/private interactions, but many also seem in denial that there is a flow of money and exchange facilitated by money and want to believe that if the money exchange stops the sexual exchange would continue.

In other sex work-y news, my first support group went well! We had a nice mix of workers (three people, who have danced, escorted, and done web-based and phone-based work) and our brainstorming for topics was fun. Safety planning, financial planning, legal rights, self care, activism, and networking/building community all came up. I’m excited to see how this group forms up.

Recent news that I wanted to share, too:

Nicolas Kristof’s Sweatshop Boner

I love love love Tits and Sass. Their Week in Links post are great and totally packed with other sex worker related news. Check it out!

Events

For those of you in Portland:

The next Mystery Box show is August 9th.

Upcoming SheBop workshops include a workshop with Sex Nerd Sandra (sadly, full already, but still cool to know that she’ll be here!) and a reading in September with Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert on their new book  More Than Two.

I still want to make it to Gallery Sesso one of these months. The next one is Thursday August 7th at 6pm.

Any sexy fun events you want to share?

From Oh Joy Sex Toy, in promoting SheBop and all its awesomeness:

Community v Individual Solutions to Jealousy

This post is inspired by a recent read, Jealous of what? Solving polyamory’s jealousy problem.

Basically, the author argues that all modern polyamory resources offer solutions to jealousy based on an individual’s responsibility for taking care of themselves. In my public health program, we often talked about “portrait” versus “landscape” stories: in a portrait, you see one person. In a landscape, though, you see not only the person but their environment. This framing of stories and the problems within them pushes the reader to understand a specific set of solutions. This is my long-winded way of saying: if you see jealousy as an individual problem, you are likely to see the solution as individually specific.

The author offers an alternative: viewing jealousy as a structural and community challenge means we have the opportunity to see structural solutions to managing jealousy.

This article was a complete breath of fresh air to me. And not because I dislike the typical advice offered by poly advice folks, but because it offers a broader lens from which to view jealousy. It reminds me, too, of my brief counseling program experience and learning about the importance of how both people in the dyad shape relationship function. One person can never be 100% responsible for what happens in a relationship; the division of responsibility is inherently divvied up as there are multiple people shaping expectations, communication, “rewards,” and “punishments.” To say that jealousy management is 100% my responsibility has definitely left me feeling overwhelmed, disheartened, and lonely at times. I agree that I am responsible for how I respond to my thoughts and emotions and how I behave, but I appreciate the space this view allows for looking at how and why jealousy manifests in poly relationships.

The author’s thesis that intimate social networks build trust which alleviates jealousy makes a lot of sense to me. The more distance and unknown there is with regards to my partner’s partners breeds doubt, uncertainty, fear (for me, anyway). The more closeness, the more I am able to understand.

Quote of note:

“My hypothesis is that the more shifts that occur within a polyamory network, the more jealousy that occurs, which then requires higher degrees of individualistic emotion management.  In other words, individual freedom in relationships has an evil twin of individual constraint of emotion.

For those for whom individual freedom in relationships is the highest value, it may be worth the individual jealousy management that results from putting love on the free market.   But for those who don’t want to be faced head-on with the green-eyed monster, the advice literature is in denial about which approaches to polyamory lead to a higher or lower probability of jealousy.  There are no tools provided beyond individual emotion work for how to manage jealousy for those who want a communal, less individualistic approach to polyamory. ”

What do you think?

We’ll Do It In My Car

I’m dancing. Twirling, spinning, bending over, dropping down, crawling around. Shaking, bouncing, touching, spanking. Eyes, eyes, eyes. Smiles and smirks. Words when they count, silence when it’s better.

The heat is building. You give me more and more of yourself. I slowly draw you out; I can feel your shell breaking slowly, one small piece at a time. This is addicting, this process- this process of seeing your more real self. Finding the gooey center that I can connect to. And today, we’re both red hot, too hot to touch, too hot not to.

You ask for a private dance. I don’t expect anything different. I take your hand and lead you back. I begin, and all I want is to be close. I grab onto your shoulders, your hair, your legs. I breathe softly on your neck and ears. You shiver and squirm ever so slightly and sigh. You want more and so do I.

Wait for me. We’ll do it in my car.

We lock eyes and the intensity is palpable. You nod and I feel the adrenaline in the pit of my stomach and my pussy uncontrollably clench and release.

We leave the private dance room. You sit at the bar, breathing deeply, ask for a drink. I go to the dressing room, breathing deeply, put on more perfume.

And a little later, my shift is done, I’ve locked eyes with other people and danced and made my money. But my focus is undeniably on you and my promise. Wait for me. We’ll do it in my car.

And again, I take your hand, but this time I lead you out to my car. We get in, I drive around the block. It’s dark out, the stars peeping out, the moon large. It’s a quiet night, no one else out. We sit in silence for a minute, before letting the drive take over.

I am in ecstasy and completely succumb to your hands. I lay back as you kiss my neck, my ears, and everything else. Your skin is on fire, your cock is throbbing. And when we can take it no longer, I slide myself on top of you and ride you harder and harder, the waves of coming are overwhelming. I want you on top of me or behind me, but being in a car has its limitations. We plan, in whispers, for our next time. In a minute, you come too, and we are sweaty and exhausted.

Until next time.

Kindness, Beauty, Poly

The importance of kindness and “turning toward” in maintaining healthy and positive long-term relationships: Masters of Love

Conversation-starter and thought-provoking ad campaign to address the messages we send about what “beautiful” is: the review on HuffPost and the website itself- Stop the Beauty Madness Ad Campaign

Fearless self-love: My “Naked” Truth

Older article, but well written and articulated; on how polyamory is bigger than coupledom: Polyamorous Relationships Are About More Than Just Couples

 

Flexibility

Life stuff:

That job I was offered? Well can you believe they took the offer back? So bizarre- it was because they want someone with more experience since there will be very little supervision and training. Granted the supervisors really want me to apply for another, similar job that they are hiring for. And I will, especially since my supervisor is leaving in a couple of months and I’m not sure what will happen to my component. I was disappointed, but the biggest emotion I noticed was a sense of expectation. I had had a feeling all day on Friday that it wasn’t going to work for some reason. So I sighed a little and smiled and said I understood. And my next emotion? Feeling proud of myself for being flexible and not getting wrapped up into the stupidity or unfairness of that process.

I am still working on getting all of my blog posts re-categorized and newly tagged. So if you are clicking on categories and tags, you will not find all of the posts related to those categories/tags just yet. I have almost 600 to get through and I am almost halfway done!

Have a question for me? Want advice? Have a topic that you’d like to see me write about? Click on the Contact tab and send me a message!

 

Nature & Relationships

J and I are going for a short camping adventure this weekend, and I am scheduling this post to publish while we’re out in the woods…

Going out into the wilderness, where I can be among trees and see mountains and water and wide open sky and stars, is an amazing source of rejuvenation for my soul. It tends to rejuvenate not just my inner sense of stability and calm, but how I interact with others, including J. I notice that after some solid time without technology and work and to-do lists and other people around, I feel grounded and clear.

I also tend to have these thoughts: those trees are so tall and so old, that water continuously flows even when I’m not here. The animals out here- they are totally making it. I am comforted deeply by both the stability and change that wildness offers. That comfort extends into my ability to cope with change in my life. I often meditate on relationship change when I am outside surrounded by trees. If they’ve made it this far in the world amidst all this change, maybe I can too. I can still go out to the trees, no matter what is going on in my life, and they’ll be here.

Do you have any practices that help you cultivate your security, from the outside-in? How do you see that later manifesting from the inside-out?

Dancing Anew

I danced at a new place on Thursday night!

I don’t know if it was the extra charm and luck that one experiences at a first night somewhere new, but it was a really fun night. I had several visitors, including J and several sexy and close friends, it was busy much of the night, customers tipped really well, my phone worked all night for playing music, and I did several private dances. I came home with excellent money. I had fun being super awkward on the new stage- well, in honesty, I was really nervous, but by the end of the night I could say I was having more fun than nerves. 🙂 (The stage is super small and the pole spins- I’m used to more space and a stationary pole. So I was twirling a ton and just smiling. Haha. At least my body isn’t super crazy sore today.)

Two interesting things:

One, this place is a no-contact club. I can’t touch any customers. During private dances, I don’t sit, touch, brush up against the customer at all. It’s so strange! It’s weird and cool at the same time that people still want to pay $20 a song for a complete and total tease (especially when they could easily go elsewhere and at least have a dancer sit on their lap). But, cool, whatever! I do wish that dancers could operate under more latitude and decide completely for themselves how much contact to have with a customer. At my regular club, there is some discretion- you can give a no-contact dance or get a little grind-y. Even still, I wish there was somewhere where I could decide between no contact and two-way contact and have the full range be permissible and negotiable.

Two, one of the women I worked with happened to be the bartender that was working when I auditioned… I also happened to run into her during my straight job earlier in the week, while she was working her straight job. It was surreal. I walked into her work, and we both just looked at each other. Hi, we both smiled. I love the secret club. It was great to talk to her more last night and find out that her boss and coworkers all know about her part time job as a dancer and respect that it’s a separate space and life of hers. It’s really encouraging to me to know that other social service agencies, or at least individuals in those agencies, are flexible and open minded.

I’m working there again this next week, and I’m excited to see how it goes. It felt really refreshing to try a new space out and remind myself that I can control where I choose to dance.