Pondering Optimism

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Book Review: My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up by Stephen Elliott

A friend of mine had read this after I had introduced her to Stephen Elliott's writing by giving her a copy of The Adderall Diaries. It was my hope that showing her that a person who has lived through hell and come out okay would perhaps help to rescue her on some level from her chronic alcoholism, bulimia, severe depression and anxiety. It turns out she has bi-polar disorder and is being treated accordingly now, but that's not the point of this. The point is, she told me she had to stop reading this book at night because she had violent, bloody dreams and her main comments when she finished were "that poor, poor man."

I don't get that. I mean, I kind of get that. But there was never a point where I just threw out all the other value of this book and his experiences with finding his way through BDSM in favor of pitying him. I don't pity Stephen Elliott. He's in an alright place, I think. I mean, we're all struggling. It's the human condition. But dramatized or no (as the foreword suggests, that he's neatly wrapped things up in a narrative and that it can't be believed to be 100% true by the reader), he found something really valuable here. He found peace with himself, even if that peace only resides on the page. And with a foreword like that, I have to take every bit of it with a grain of salt. Truthfully, I don't even care to know what's true and what's fiction. To me it's a story of a journey through finding a genuine sexual self and becoming okay with who you are.

He goes a step farther to say that he's not even kinky for wanting what he wants. That what he does is just another shade of normality. And there's something just wonderfully enlightening about that perspective. No, I can't sit here and pity the man for his torturous childhood and adolescence or his early experiences with an uncaring domme who used him as a whipping post in an unloving way. I can't because what he gained from those experiences can not be duplicated without them. Without the hardships he's endured, he couldn't have found this level of comfort with himself.

This is territory we all struggle in navigating. Exploring sexuality in any sort of genuine way is bound to be fraught with tribulations both self-inflicted and imposed on us by others. In my short foray into something people would consider kinkiness, I've found myself in positions where I was in over my head and had chased a rabbit down a hole I never really wanted to go into. And the backpedaling is sometimes very painful. But in the end you learn something about your limits and more importantly you learn something about your wants.

I told someone once that I wouldn't want to swoop in and take away someone's hurts and make everything okay for them because those hurts are just as much a part of the whole as the triumphs they've experienced. I hold a lot of hurts myself and I guard them just as closely as my happiness. I wouldn't let anyone take them away because each one has served a purpose to teach me something valuable about myself or the world at large.

I mean, he's gone on to say in interviews that this moment of clarity at the end of the book is something that was specific to that relationship and wasn't a permanent level of comfort he found or anything. But I think at this point with him, I just have to look at the book as a single entity and anything that comes after it is separate. That's the tricky thing with memoir. The book stands as you as you were when you were writing it. But once it's published and your life goes on, things are going to change and you may find the memoir is not as true as it once was. That doesn't discount it, as long as you look at it as a snapshot.

In spite of that, the fact that he even wrote this book and put it out there with his name on it is kind of a victory for him and for kinky people in general. In the introduction, he challenges kinky people to out themselves to their non-kinky friends. Currently, I find this to be an insurmountable hurdle. I'm not there yet. I'm not ready to be looked at with those uncomfortable stares by my friends and loved ones. The uneasy shifting in their seats as they try to process what they think I'm telling them. I'm not ready to endure judgement by parents who won't let their kids come play at my home because they think I'm some sort of sexual deviant just because I like to be choked in bed. I might not be ready to out myself until my son is grown, quite honestly.

There's a lot more at stake for someone like me than there is for Stephen, perhaps. And I've heard him address that. He's totally aware and fully admits that it's easy for him to be so out about his sexuality. That he doesn't have family to disapprove or wouldn't care if they did, given his relationship with his father. That he doesn't have a typical day job where a company might fire you for the image you portray in public not serving their best interests. I think of Pamela Madsen and her losing her beloved job because of outing herself as kinky. But in the end, she says it was worth it. And he's said the same thing. That you might have to sacrifice some things to be out, but that in the end, the power that the community as a whole gains from your being out is worth it. That we have to be recognized and understood and accepted as a group or else we'll be demonized instead. I understand and respect that and I'll continue to be a cheerleader for that sort of activism. But everyone has their own timing and my worlds are not yet ready to collide.

But ultimately, it was a really fabulous read and there are some very important messages right in the beginning about playing safe and how to go about this in the right way (mostly from his experiences of doing things the wrong way). And I think the way he wrapped it up in a tidy narrative presents an important image of what can be if we let it. Plus there's a really awesomely described anal scene near the end which made me shout, "OH GOD, FUCK YES!" mostly because it is exactly everything I love about anal. That point where you let go and it feels amazingly good for the first time and these astonishing things involuntarily come out of your mouth. But everyone's mileage may vary.

Idols: Amanda Fucking Palmer

Amanda. Fucking. Palmer. If you don't know who she is, well, go here and here and here. She makes herself more than available for you to know her. And that is one of her most endearing qualities.

So many artists withdraw from their community when they gain a little bit of popularity. But Amanda digs in and engages with her fans in a way that builds a community around her instead of lifting her up on a pedestal. She's in the trenches, so to speak, pulling more and more people into her world wide party. And it's tons of fun to watch her do what she does, maybe even more so than it is to listen to her music.

But really, what I admire about this woman the most is the balls she has. I mean huge, whopping cojones. Just to be who she is and put herself out there, raw and honest and without a hint of timidity for people to either accept her, love her, criticize her, or cast her aside. And I'm sure all of those things happen to her every single day, just like they do to each of us. But most of us walk around with our eyes half skipping over the people we encounter hoping not to be noticed. Amanda Fucking Palmer struts down the street hoping you're watching. Hoping you'll love her. But not giving a flying fuck if you don't. Because there are plenty of people who do.

It's all there in her music. In the lyrics she writes. It's in the absolutely perfect commencement speech which every person ever needs to listen to (it's on her YouTube channel linked above, but here, I'll make it easy for you) about the Fraud Police we all contend with inside us, telling us we don't deserve what we have because we're just faking our way through life. I would have called them Doubt Monkeys, but that's just me. But her point was that even the most confident peacocks amongst us have these moments of self-doubt and questioning and wondering when people are going to figure out that we have no clue what we're doing. That it's all a part of being a human adult. When we're kids, we think we've got this mythical time to look forward to when we'll have the whole world figured out. I'll wait until he's twenty or so to tell my son that's bullshit. Until then, I'd rather him think I've got a handle on things.

In My Mind is probably one of my favorite songs. In fact, I can't sit here and talk about it without directly embedding it here for you to watch, mostly so I can listen to it as I type.



And despite the Fraud Police who don't seem to skip her house when they're knocking on doors, she still puts herself out there and she still reaches out and beyond her boundaries every single fucking day to find new and better ways to be awesome.

"Fuck yes. I am exactly the person that I want to be."

We should all be just an ounce of that fearless.

Book Review: Shameless by Pamela Madsen

I was instantly pulled in by the title. I mean, what woman wouldn't be? But what I found was that this story could just as easily be my story. And if it could be my story, it could just as easily be the story of any number of women. In fact, I'm going to buy copies for my two closest girlfriends because I feel like every woman could get something good out of this book. Really, she didn't tell me anything I hadn't figured out on my own. Mostly I found validation through her experiences as I shouted "me too!" at the pages.

Pamela finds her sexual reawakening by visiting Sacred Intimates, which was something she found while looking into sensual massage as a way to keep her marriage vows intact, but at the same time fulfill her desire to feel another man's hands on her body. That little pebble was what began the avalanche for her and opened so many exciting doors into her sexuality and ultimately her finding her self-worth. She honestly had no reasons not to feel fabulous about herself, as a successful career-woman and a devoted wife and mother. But these are things that plague all women at some time or another, I think. We all have times when we become down on ourselves. We need that occasional reminder that we're goddesses. And sometimes, we need to initiate it because it just won't come on its own.

My means were different than hers, but have produced similar ends. I began taking nude photos of myself in the spring of this year and already, I've felt such a transition in how I feel about myself and it shows to the people who are closest to me. They've noticed this inexplicable glow that comes from feeling good about yourself. By stepping in front of the camera and bearing all, I've been able to stop and really look at myself and find beauty and even sexiness where I never saw it before. Before long, I found that voice inside me that would pick apart everything I thought was wrong was being drowned out by all the voices that were saying, "you know what, I'm pretty freaking hot!" So many women are hyperfocused on what is wrong with our bodies. If you can turn that on its head and look at all the things that are so right, it's amazing the transformation you can't help but go through.

Once I began posting my photos online, the comments I got (and am still getting) only served to reinforce what I was already starting to believe. It's a frightening thing to put yourself out there. But I was met with love and compliments and even adoration. Men and women have seen my body in its most vulnerable state and have nothing but good things to say and that's a huge ego boost. One I sorely needed at the time. All the things I believed to be flaws have become things that people desire and they openly express that desire in comments and messages and my confidence grows with each one. All it does is make me want to take more photos and even look for professional photographers to work with. I want to see how far I can take it, just like Pamela did.

Her epilogue carries just as much value as the rest of the book, I think. She talks about how she lost her career as a result of her openly sexual lifestyle and I think that's an important aspect to a narrative such as hers, and potentially mine. It shows what's at stake for those of us who are sex-positive. It also shows how desperately we should work to become crusaders in our culture to change minds about how we should talk about sex in our society. She makes sure to point out that she has no regrets about living her life transparently, even though it cost her the career she was so passionate about. Through her sexual explorations, she was able to become a whole person, rather than just a fraction of who she was meant to be. That's an important message to anyone who's living an inhibited life because they're afraid of what people would think of what they want to do in the bedroom. I'm a big fan of the mentality that if it's between consenting adults, no one has any right to say that what you're doing is wrong.

So, between the body image issues that I know so many women struggle with and the sex-positive attitude she conveys, I highly recommend this book to anyone on any stage of their sexual journey.