The Gift Of "Slut"

(WARNING: This one’s a little more explicit than most of my posts.  Also, I’m exploring gender issues as gingerly as I can, so please.  Be gentle as I question and explore.)
The comedy “Yes, Minister” introduced me to the concept of irregular verbs that shifted depending on who you were talking about: “It’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it?  I have an independent mind.  You are an eccentric.  He is round the twist.”
Talking dirty has introduced me to a set of irregular nouns: “Slut” and “Whore.”
I’ve only recently begun to introduce more verbal erotica to my bedroom activities, but it’s been enlightening in the sense that calling my lover “whore” becomes a tipping point.  It’s an insult in real life, but once unleashed in the bedroom – and I don’t say it until she’s sufficiently squirmy – it becomes this volcanic release.
“You fucking slut,” I say, shoving my hand down her panties.  “Look at how wet you are.  You want it, don’t you?  You’re so enslaved by lust you’ll do anything, any time.  Not just for me, you want to fuck everyone.  You are filled with filthy fucking thoughts.  In the office, on the street, a dripping dirty whore…”
And they writhe, and cry out, and suddenly the sex is ten times hotter because that was like the key.  It’s on.  Sometimes they moan no, they’re good girls, and I point out that good girls don’t do what they’re doing to me now, and oh God does it get good.
But I’ve been considering that, because it seems to be a fair constant across a number of women I’ve either been having sex with or eroticaing with.  I’ve always been loath to call women “whores,” because I like women who fuck.  I don’t want to shame them for indulging in urges I consider not only beneficial, but actively healthy.  I like women who aren’t repressed, and as such slut-shaming them in bed seemed like a mean thing to do.
As time has gone on, though, I’ve come to the conclusion that the reaction is societal.  It’s not mean, in that context – society is so full of contradictions for women in that they’re told they should be eternally skinny and big-titted and desirable, yet keep your virginity for as long as you can because you’re not supposed to like that and don’t sleep with men unless it’s a stop on the cattle car to Marriageville.
Whispered in the right context, “slut” is freeing.  It’s an acknowledgement that yes, you have just as many lusts as men do, not just about me here and now but all the time – and in this moment here in the bedroom, I’m telling you that’s all right.  I like that.  I want you to be depraved, it turns me on, and let’s open up this space where we admit that the only difference between you and me is that society tells you that you shouldn’t but makes excuses for me.
It’s uncomfortable, viewed from that lens – being the gateway to a temporary freedom feels like I’m surfing a power given to me that I shouldn’t necessarily have.  Is it an exercise in male privilege?  I’ve been wrestling with that for some time.  But on the other hand, they do want it, or the women who trust me enough to share their sexuality with me wouldn’t keep coming back to have me whisper it in their ear…
And I think, after a lot of thought on the topic, that it is ultimately freeing.  I think that it’s chipping at that big old concrete wall with an icepick, letting women know that yes, they not only can but actively should harbor sexual desires.  It’s picking at a knot in their psyche that needs to be untangled, and sometimes that intersection between “the dominant culture says no” and “your desires say yes” leads to fucking explosive sexual heat.
And I mean, hey, I’ll tell you that here now in a non-bedroom context, as a take from J. Random Guy: it’s good to have those feelings.  It doesn’t make you a slut.  It makes you a sexually empowered human.  And the fact that you’re looking at that cute guy (or girl) behind the movie popcorn counter and picturing all the depraved things you want to do with them?  That desire is perfectly okay, and anyone who tells you that it isn’t has an agenda designed on some level to cripple and shame you.
But saying it here doesn’t have the impact that it does in the bedroom.  Here with me, with my hands on you, you can be a slut and it is such a good thing and you are such a good girl.  I’m crossing the streams.  It’s fine.

On Writing

I’ve said before that my Clarion classmate Kat Howard is far smarter than I am.  Allow me to let her prove this to you.
Go read her essay “On Being A Writer.”  It’s about what it really takes to be a writer, at least in the sense that people traditionally mean it.  And she fucking nails it.  It’s what I would have written, had I the time.  And talent.

A Love Follow-Up

Interestingly enough, though I love a lot of people, I am “in love” with only a handful.  So maybe that’s the break-point in my mind.
Then again, I only approach that break-point for romantic love, which seems strangely limiting.

What Is Love? Tell Me, Tell Me, If You Think You Know

I fall in love easily.  But I do not think that word means what you think it means.
For me, “love” is an inefficient word, like “Democrat” or “Polyamory” – sure, it contains a loose definition, but when you scratch the surface you’ll find the only people who definitively know what it means are the people who know the least about it at all.
By which I mean that the only people who know for sure what polyamory is are the people who want nothing to do with it because they saw a poly guy once and he was scum and ugh I know all about it.  Whereas those who are polyamorous know there are so many ways to be poly that the only thing it really means is “You can date more than one person.”  And sometimes, like bisexuality, the accent’s on the “can,” not the “you actually are.”
So love.  What’s that mean?
I dunno.  I love a lot of people I’ve never even met.  To me, love is a form of concern – if they were in trouble and I’d be distressed about that and want to help, to me that’s a sign that I love them on some level.  Their happiness has become integral to my own.
Now, it’s not like if an email pal of mine loses his job, I won’t be able to function until he’s re-employed.  I’ll just fret about him at times until he manages to get picked back up.  But to me, that’s a love.
Which means that friendship is love to me, even weak friendships.  I love a lot more of my friends’ list than I think they’d ever suspect.
Sex is love, to me.  I mean, it doesn’t have to be, but at one point I was talking to a friend of mine who was having problems connecting with some of her sexual partners, and what I told her is that the way I do things, I have to like the person I’m with before we can have sex.  And in that moment of intimacy, when we’re trusting each other enough to do all of the foolish things that sex consists of, all the goofy faces and fear of being bad and exploring pleasure honestly, I have to fall a little in love.
We’re sharing something that’s an act of trust, and the fact that they are trusting me in this moment of literal nakedness means something, and so I let the love flow for this hour that we’re together, feel that flow through me, and accept it.  And when it’s done, it’s not necessarily a deep romantic love (though it can be), but is usually the sort of friendship-bonding that we’ve had a moment together that can’t be shared effectively with anyone else.
I can do sex without love.  I just find it unsatisfying.  Always have.
Yet that love is not the love that swells in my heart when I think of my girlfriends or my wife.  It’s a tiny love, but that makes it no less real, any more than large sunflowers are better than a small cluster of baby’s breath.  The love I feel for Gini means more, but that doesn’t mean I can entirely discount what happened.
I dunno.  Gini says that my love is so wide as to be meaningless at times – what I call “love,” others would call “friendship.”  And I can’t debate that.  But to me friendship is love, just a different flavor of it, and love permeates so much of what we do that it’s hard for me to distinguish it on any meaningful level.
If I were to measure love it’d be distinguished by not how I feel, but by what I would do, and that’s a tricky thing.  Obviously, I’d do anything to ensure Gini’s happiness, whereas maybe I’ll see if I know anyone in the area for my out-of-work friend.  But even then, it doesn’t mean I don’t love them both, it just means that my love has practical limits thanks to time.  Or maybe that difference is how it’s measured for everyone.
It’s simpler for other people, I guess.  Some people dole out love like it’s an award you’ve unlocked on the X-Box, giving it to three or four people in their lifetime after a certain emotional catharsis has been reached – and that’s not bad, but it just strikes me as being limiting in some way, because I think they feel the same emotions as I do, they just don’t want to admit it until they’re absolutely convinced the other person won’t hurt them.  Or maybe they do feel it differently, and I’m a free-loving freak.
I dunno.  Love is a universal, for me; I’m lucky enough to be swimming in a wash of love from friends and lovers and families, and I find when I hand it out it tends to come back.  But there are times when Gini’s words nag at me and I wonder whether I’m misusing the word “love,” and whether it means anything real.
I feel it does.  But there’s no way of knowing.  Because everyone measures it so damn differently.

G'wan, G'wan, G'wan

I do have an essay quasi-written for today, but it’s a tricky one and I’m gonna sit on it for a day while I consider.  It’s a tetchy subject, to be sure.
So while I consider, let’s do an exercise: is there anything you want me to answer?  I’m happy to respond to any questions on anything – writing techniques, the shows I’m watching, my kink, poly advice, or just plain shit you’ve been wondering about me but never asked.  I’m open today.  Hit me in the comments.
Oh, and asking me a clever question that you don’t actually want the answer to, such as “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck?”  Not clever at all.  Annoying, in fact.  Eschew it.

George R.R. Martin's First Publication

…is a letter in Fantastic Four #20, published when he was fifteen.

Dear Stan and Jack,
I was really excited to pick up Fantastic Four #17, “In The Clutches of Doctor Doom!”  This epic story, as exciting and spectacular as it was, could have been even better. After the Fantastic Four defeat Doctor Doom’s robots by destroying the control discs and then jet off to Doom’s flying laboratory to rescue poor, blind Alicia Masters, I think you could have put in a lot more emotion if they had gotten there to find Alicia dead in a pool of blood.  Then Doom could have surprised them by ripping the head off of the Thing, extinguishing Johnny, and forcing poor Reed to watch as Doom gets his triumph by repeatedly violating Sue Storm with his hideously scarred Doom-penis.
Seriously.  I think there’s a market for this kind of fiction.  Can I get a No-Prize?
George R. Martin
35 E. First St.
Bayonne, N.J.