The Pain (and Pleasure) of Expansion

She looks down at me, square jaw set, determined. Rose lips swollen from mine parting with such hunger, grabbing, pushing, pulling, biting, opening, moaning, snarling, bubblegum tongues meeting with electric spark after spark. I am in awe of her androgyny. The first time we had sex, I was so moved by how her gender shifted with positions, with the angle of the beam of full moonlight flooding the window, spotlighting us in my bed. I often joke that our first time was a threesome, because the moon, my/our wife was so present in the room with us. I still marvel at her shifting gender, knowing all the shades of her so much better now, all the nuances have become home to me. I know she feels the same way about mine. The timidity and awe of the beginning gave way to the kind of play that only comes from comfort, from trust, like I’ve always known or maybe hoped it could, but it just never seemed to work out that way. I think both people (or all people, depending on the configuration lol) have to be open to it. Speaking of open, after I’ve splashed and rocked and screamed my throat raw, and she’s watched it all play across my face–I don’t hide it like I used to– I used to have to cover my face with a pillow to cum, I’m not sure why; sometimes I do need total darkness to concentrate, like how I always close my eyes to find my keys in my purse or can only sleep with an eye mask, maybe that’s it, maybe it’s trauma, maybe it’s Maybelline, I look into those dark brown, sweet, almond eyes, corner-softening crow’s feet I once lamented to my journal about longing to kiss but not being able to and pout I want more. She smiles that half smile that gets me right in the root chakra, Oh yeah? You want more, baby? I shake my head, pull her down to me, with an emphatic, whiney Mhmm. And she parts me like Moses before the red sea. She fills me with her spirit, all the way out to the edges, every nook and cranny accounted for, like liquid through a maze. There’s always a moment of my body’s half-hearted resistance, still not sure of itself; a little pressure, a little pain maybe, but not exactly. Like a bite or a whack I can tell will leave a bruise. I don’t wince at it, I laugh, gleeful, knowing it will become a point of pride as it changes colors from black to purple to green to yellow to gone. I open up, and that’s when I start to pray, involuntary, just giving it up to the most high for this miracle going on inside me. Oh god, oh my god, oh fuck, it’s so good, oh my god it’s so good. I’ve often been worshiped, prayed to, mostly when getting fucked from behind, ass and thighs rippling like waves, body rolling and twitching and wiggling, needing to be held tight to keep from bouncing away, something to the effect of Oh my GOD this fucking ASS. I’ve always loved that part. It's always made me smile to myself. I loooove when they start to pray. But as for me? I was always too shy to talk, preferring post-verbal whimpers, moans, and screams. But I have no choice when she slides the whole of that gorgeous fist (have I mentioned the graceful beauty of her long fingers?) inside me. Gratitude just pours out of me, in great tidal waves. If ever there was anything worth praying for, shouldn’t it be pleasure?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how discomfort is a teacher. Resistance too. And how out of sync we are with curiosity. The first time I heard about fisting was in the Kevin Smith film Chasing Amy, which I bought for fifty cents from the pawn shop I worked at when I was 16. I was in charge of organizing the movie shelves after I proved myself terrible at working the register, manning the jewelry counter, and being a salesman in electronics. While I was embarrassed at my inability to do most of this job, being in charge of the movies was perfect for me. 1. Because I love organizing and 2. Because I love movies and it would allow me to set all the good ones aside for myself to buy at a large discount at the end of the week on payday. My grandmother was a big movie person, but her tastes were more limited than mine, and there were certain things that either she wasn’t interested in, was offended by, or didn’t want me to see, but, like many of her rules, her parameters and choices didn’t always make sense. For example, I wasn’t allowed to watch The Simpsons, but I watched both Saturday Night Fever and Monster’s Ball with her when I was 14. I bought A Clockwork Orange (my first Kubrick!!), Dogma, Clerks, and Chasing Amy (don’t judge my edgelord Kevin Smith phase, it was the early 2000’s after all), Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill vol 1, plus a ton of shitty horror movies– too many to list honestly! A lot of what I watched back then has stuck with me to this day! Individuation is such a wonderful thing. Those moments where I took the space I needed to understand myself, to let curiosity lead? Those are the memories that I hold most sacred and feel the most proud of myself for.

When I popped Chasing Amy into my TV with the built-in DVD player (blast from the mf past!), which was bolted into the corner of the room near the ceiling with a black metal version of those hospital TV mounts, I was frozen in place; fascinated and terrified. I had that gut-churn feeling that stories about queer people always inspired in me. Discomfort. When Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams) appears in the film for the first time, I immediately saw myself in her. Or someone I wished I could be, thought I might be able to be, hoped I would never be, but secretly knew I was? All of the above? She and Holden (Ben Affleck) have an instant spark– you’re rooting for them right away. He’s insecure, intimidated when he figures out he’s in a queer bar, and he’s clearly embodying the Sad But “Nice” White Boy trope which in the 90’s, wasn’t quite so tired as it is n, plus, he’s even more obnoxiously foiled by his best friend Banky (Jason Smith), a raging incel who really REALLY hates lesbians. Apparently Smith, who was dating Adams at the time, based much of the script on their real relationship. That says a lot. By the end of the night, just when you feel like Alyssa and Holden are going to start falling in love, it’s revealed that Alyssa *GASP* is a “lesbian,” with a cool, hot, punk girlfriend that she passionately makes out with as soon as she gets off stage (she’s a front woman for a band playing that night–see? Everything I hoped I would be and was so so scared of). I was frozen solid. I don’t think I breathed once for the whole 113 minutes as Holden and Alyssa fall in love and (spoiler alert) he ruins it by being judgmental and uptight about her sexuality and past. When he finds out he’s not the first man she’s been with, he flips out (gross). Anyway, there’s a scene where they’re swinging on a swing set and he’s asking about how lesbian sex is even sex (gross) and she explains it.

Honestly, I just watched this scene again and it still brings tears to my eyes. I still can’t believe she falls in love with someone with such a closed mind and SUCH a shitty goatee. But God, this made me think about things I’d never considered, and while it would still be 9 years until I came out, I still credit this film with helping me get there. It also prepared me for a life of the men I loved being obsessed with and made utterly paranoid by my bisexuality (some of the women for that matter, too); that society will tell you again and again to pick a lane and cast you as a hypersexual villain and sometimes tbh I did play that role. Maybe I wasn’t always a sex slut, but I was ALWAYS a love slut. Like Alyssa, being penned in by someone else’s fears was often the straw that broke the illusion that love by itself could ever be enough; like respect, honesty, vulnerability, and compatibility weren’t inherent parts of the VERB of loving someone. But most impactful, years before the days of easy-to-access free porn, when Sex Ed in Virginia was (probably still is…) decidedly abstinence-forward, I had never heard that you could fit a fist inside a vagina.

I think about that speech, that conversation between them and the revelation that a person couldn't be “ruined” by losing their virginity or having something inside of them. I was still doing “everything but…” with my high school boyfriend, mostly out of fear of getting pregnant and ruining my life (I come from a long line of young and resentful mothers), but there was also something there about “losing” my virginity too; as if it would dramatically change who I was as a person. I remember when we finally did have “P in V” lol I was laying there, after, thinking Dang, that was fun but it wasn’t even that big a deal. Although, it was powerful enough to make me quit going to church for making me feel like I should stop doing it. I was also still terrified that my grandmother would be able to tell I’d “done it” just by looking at me. This is unrelated, but how is it that a nuanced (and seemingly informed) conversation about queer sex in the fucking 90’s felt both more realistic and revolutionary than much of the Queer 101 dialogue we get in media today? I can’t figure out why these conversations always feel so stilted and forced. I find myself wondering if it’s possible to write the way we speak without sounding like that, but re-watching this scene reminded me we can. Also, wild that I’ve had nearly this exact same conversation with men more than once, many times, 30 plus years later. Damn, gotta give it to ya, Kev.

My main gripe with Chasing Amy is that I can’t tell what the take away is supposed to be. What’s the intent in telling this story? I feel that Banky is the villain, Holden is the piss baby who fumbled potentially the love of his life, and Alyssa is the hero who does find love in the end and, probably, officially, and justifiably, swore off men forever. But there is so much malicious queerphobia in the film, and Holden is presented as so sympathetic, and Alyssa as dishonest and unwieldy– I’ve seen the film countless times and I still can’t decide. I have been learning to embrace the ambiguity of not being able to tell what the filmmaker intends the audience to feel through studying David Lynch’s work and philosophy on art in general. It’s OK to not be able to tell– in fact, maybe that speaks to a kind of mastery on the filmmaker’s part. Restraint is usually a sign of someone who really knows what they’re doing. So maybe it doesn’t matter, Alyssa spoke to me, I fell in love with her, and I carry her story with me to this day. Plus, she planted that seed about fisting.

The next time I heard about fisting was in college. A friend of mine, who had a much later sexual debut than the rest of us, had just started seeing the man that she would eventually marry, when she told us they were really into fisting. We were still getting used to the sexual version of her. She had only started having sex when she did a semester abroad and came home a different woman! She and I even made out once! She swore I pestered her into making out with me that night, but I promise you, I had never had any issue with a lack of straight girls wanting to make out with me. It was she who drunkenly followed me around, begging me to make out with her at a party and, after a few hours of that, I gave in. When her tongue slipped into my mouth, the whole room erupted in cheers, and this one guy (a guy I dubbed “Will Smith Guy” because at every. single. party. he would insist on being the DJ and would proceed to play Will Smith, EXCLUSIVELY. All night. Why??!! WHY?) stood up, clapped his hands together like his team had just scored a touchdown, and proclaimed “That’s why I WENT to college!!” For months after that, I would think about how that was the best kiss I’d ever had… I would start saying “Women are just better kissers,” for years, while still identifying as straight. LMAO! She had a real, solid slut phase, and I felt so proud of her. However, we were all shocked at this revelation. Fisting? Really?! My curiosity peaked, and then was immediately shut down by the judgment oozing off of everyone else in the room. Even the sluttier women were horrified. There were questions about getting “stretched out” and I don’t know, just the vibe of like, Ew, what’s wrong with them? It was around this time that I started comprehending that, to most people, there was a line between “good” or “desirable” freaky and “you’re a freak” (derogatory) freaky. I didn’t know this term yet, but I would come to understand that that line had a lot to do with the male gaze. I remember her leaning over and whispering “When we’re done, we always have to change the sheets” in a way that implied that that’s how good it was. Despite having been sexually active for a handful of years at that point, I still wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. I wasn’t fully aligned with my own pleasure yet, and she was. I wish the room had been more outwardly curious and less judgmental, so I felt like I could be. But, the seed had been planted, and now it was taking root.

Expansion, curiosity, and healing require a lot of courage. You have to really be willing to face yourself. Of course, the courage is just for the beginning; once you start facing yourself, you see that the fear was way worse than the actual doing. That’s a truth for life in general. Getting to know yourself is actually really beautiful and fun! It reminds of this thing I read the other day, where a lot of people have become politically disengaged because they have compassion fatigue. Yes, the grief of holding space (hate the Wicked PR tour for ruining this phrase btw) for all the totally unnecessary pain and suffering going on in the world, at the hands of a few of the absolute worst of us is difficult, but completely checking out doesn’t feel like the solution any of us need. I love the phrase “let this radicalize you.” Because that’s what it is. You can have essentially one of two reactions to trauma (though it’s obviously a lot more nuanced than that): to open up or to shut down. Andrea Gibson made this post recently about how you can choose whether or not to see the hard things you go through as teachers, and that, despite going through one of the hardest things a person can, they choose to. I choose to, too, and you know what? I’m more resilient, more honest, and more loving for it. Facing yourself, facing anything, isn’t going to be as bad as you think, especially if you can bring radical self-compassion along for the ride. Understand where you’re coming from. Apply that gorgeous empathy you possess to the versions of you who didn’t know better yet. Carry forgiveness with you as you fumble your way through becoming. We’re all fumbling. It’s as it should be. You’ll see that the unfolding is exhilarating! Every day becomes an adventure of noticing. “I wonder how will I handle this?” And then witnessing. And then questioning. And then understanding. And then expanding.

I find it amazing that the second I decide to surrender to What Is, things have a way of shifting. Surrender is an active process, not a passive one. It’s about accepting where you are and maybe even trying to find the seed it’s planting within you. “Let this radicalize you.” Healing is radical, loving is radical, hell, fucking empathy is becoming more radical every day, earnestness is radical, expansion is radical, pleasure is radical. Part of what it takes to endure life with flexibility and grace instead of rigidity and resistance is committing to living holistically. You can be having the worst day of your life and still have something beautifully, transformative and awe-inspiring happen to you. You can be in the middle of sobbing from heartbreak and burst into laughter. You can be scared and overwhelmed and angry and soft and loving and frustrated and forgiving and kind and firm and abundant and broke as a joke and generous and anxious and slutty and discerning and loyal and fighting and yielding too. Expansion doesn’t always feel good. In fact, a certain willingness to be uncomfortable is really the only way to experience expansion in the first place. Just like that moment, right before the fist goes in.

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