Meanwhile, back at the ranch….

Despite coming home and finding a mailbox with a pile of reactionary wait-until-marriage stuff inside, our weekend away in Port Townsend was scrumdiddlyumptious. Photos forthcoming, but for the most part, our exciting locales were the big, fluffy bed, two overstuffed chairs beside a gas fireplace, and a large, jetted tub. I was able to get out early Sunday morning for a seated meditation on a cliff with a moldy bench overlooking the water and then take a brisk walk across the beach. Mark literally took five baths in less than 48 hours: I expected to feel his developing gills as we slept. Sofia clearly also needed a little vacation — all that itching and your people endlessly traveling is stressful for but a small pug! — as was apparent given that save maybe one hour of the whole weekend, she found herself a cozy spot amidst the pillows on one of those chairs and refused to leave.

Saturday was a sweet, all-day mix of various sorts of debauchery — including MST3K fore-and-after-play, which should be a suggestion for the teens I work with, really — and even just by mid-morning, I was relaxed enough to enjoy a very, very nice batch of big, wavy orgasms. Funny how it’s so easy to forget — even given my job and the fact that I remind people of this daily — that the more stressed out you are, the milder your sexual response tends to be. Even the really good ones aren’t as good as they could be if you could just freaking relax; really relax, about everything. Between the stress of all the travel and having to be on so much, the perpetual struggles to keep everything I do afloat and the stress of just doing my work, not having felt well for quite some time, the works, I knew I was tense as hell, but until a day when by where nothing felt at all stressful, I wasn’t aware of how tense.

At the cabin this weekend, I was also reminded that I’m never quite sure what sound sex toy etiquette is. In other words, if you’re in a place where they will or may show up while you’re out to tidy things up, do you have to care about toys and lube and gloves being strewn all over the place? Is putting them in one pile on the nightstand good enough, or are you really supposed to hide them, even when you’re paying to stay where you are? I get the feeling you are supposed to, but the minute I even start to do it, I so deeply resent feeling like I should that I never bother.

It’s really swell to be able to look ahead over the next few weeks — heck, the next few months — and know that I don’t have to go anywhere. That doesn’t come close to fixing all of my troubles, but it sure helps out an awful lot. I’m a homebody by nature: I ground at home. When I don’t really get to do that, and am in and out a lot, it makes everything feel even more unmanageable than it is. Seattle winters aren’t exactly fabulous (but thank christ, they are NOT Minnesota or Chicago winters), but I’m glad as hell that I can be home for the whole of winter and spring. Once I really get at least somehat caught up with my backlog of every kind of work, I’m hoping I can spend it catching up on the mountain of books I have half-read, do the last of the housepainting I still haven’t finished, and have the time to do some damn art. And sleep. Get lots and lots of sleep.

So long as we can swing it, I’m going to try and use my accumulated miles for Briana so that she and The Baby Liam can come up for a couple weeks around the holidays. Her living situation is scary right now, even to someone like me who knows from hardscrabble living, and she’s got a pretty substantial break from her culinary school, so not only being able to see them, but just being able to give them a break at no cost would be great. But even that doesn’t involve me having to go anywhere. I get to bring my family to my own front door.

The Babeland event, by the way, was crazy-packed, so I had to do more lecture than Q&A, which is very much not my preference. But it was still a good thing, despite the fact that almost half the place was full with community college students from a human sexuality class, some of whom informed me later that their prof was a pretty creepy bigot who clearly hasn’t read a single study ON sexuality that was published later than 1965, and who routinely lectures even his knowingly lesbian college students about abstaining until marriage. Apparently, this was the only decent part of the class so far according to them, and also according to them and the Babeland staff, the guy nodded off through half of it. I got to walk away with a new toy for my troubles, and I resisted the urge to be greedy, since I’ve been aching for this for an age (I know, I know, it’s leather, but it has laces and a STAR on it!), and also had more than one set of youth educators wanting to talk to me about what the right way is to kindly ask your students not to masturbate publicly. I had no good answers (besides my usual suggestion to just redirect them to something else, giving them the look that says you know what they’re doing, and it’s okay, but not okay HERE) for the couple who worked in a pool with jets: you can’t keep kids off of water jets, man.

My enthusiasm for my to-do list this week tells me all I need to know about how frazzled and overextended I’ve been. When I am earnestly excited to better insulate the house here (it’s a rental, yes, but if we get the heating bills this winter we got last winter we’re in serious trouble), clean the refrigerator (and only a little depressed at how empty it is), when I wake up in the morning elated that the day will be about cleaning my disaster of an office, when doing tax paperwork seems like a break, I’ve clearly been living in Stressville. Besides finishing a couple articles that have been taking way too long (in my defense, figuring out the best way to do an article about how not to be a rapist isn’t exactly a cakewalk), and answering some advice questions, I’m going to be mostly away from Scarleteen over the next week or two. I forget, sometimes, that I’m allowed to do that, and that when it’s not coming even close to making ends meet, it only makes sense TO do that. A cleaner, more organized office, for instance, equals a clearer mind to better figure out how to deal with all the challenges right now. More to the point, now and then, during the times when I’m really not being paid at all or barely getting paid, it’s sage to do other work that needs doing which I also don’t get paid for, and is far less stressful.

Plus, there was that one time where I decided to ditch everything else to clean out my closet and found $300, effectively getting paid more for cleaning than for working. I don’t exactly expect that to happen again, but I’m not going to rule it out, either. Really, given what a slob I am, I’d not be surprised if Mark started secretly stuffing bills into hidden places just so I’d clean up my crap. I DID find a mix tape yesterday from 1988, and nearly wept with the sweetness. Labeled “Obnoxiousness Found Us in Gillson Park, Illinois,” jointly by both myself and my best friend at the time, who always went nuts with the mix tapes for the long trips we’d take — in both senses of the word — I am greatly looking forward to popping it into the tape deck in Mr. Price’s office to see what’s on it. I predict plenty of Beatles, Jazz Butcher (and I also just organized a huge pile of JB CDs a friend and rare fellow fan of them made for me a couple years back, which are a major coup since most of their stuff wasn’t even on CD), Elvis Costello, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, ska and 60’s surf rock.

I’m electing not to talk about the moment a hidden camera would have found me in this morning, belting out “Angel of the Morning” at the top of my lungs while organizing my studio shelves. because, you know, we really shouldn’t document these sorts of things if we want to be taken at all seriously.

(Though as an aside, a reader here gave a very generous donation this week, and I thank you soundly. That not only helps me to be able to toss some change at my developer so we can get some more of the upgrade finished, it also means I can finally go get new glasses, and thus end the nonstop tension headache I’ve had for two months because my prescription changed. You’re a goddess!)

P.S. In trying to finish that article on how not to rape and enable rape, I’m troubled that while we have one word, a very powerful word, at that, for a rapist, we don’t seen to have an equally powerful — and ideally MORE powerful word — for someone who is not just not a rapist, but the antithesis of a rapist. So, what’s the word for a caring, reciprocal sexual person or partner? It’s pretty darn tough to sell a concept when we don’t even have a word for it. “Lover,” alas, is terribly outdated and not something young people are even remotely likely to use. “Partner” isn’t just about sex, and as I was informed a couple years back when I accidentally outed myself to some of Mark’s film crew at 5 AM, it still primarily belongs to us queers. We could make “mutual” an honorific, but it doesn’t feel right. Might be some mileage in “accord” or “harmony,” but I can’t seem to land on it.

P.P.S. The mailbag still is out of control this week. My favorite this morning?

I was so sad when I was told about your website. Teenagers go to your site and find permission to have sex in any way they want. I am a chastity speaker and talk to teens a lot about the risks of STD’s. I know how faulty condoms are and even though people are using them STD’s are still out of control. I was so sad to read a lot of wrong information on your site. Condoms will not protect again many STD’s including HPV the most common STD today and one that can cause cervical cancer and possibly lead to death. You suggest that waiting until marriage to have sex is just not possible. It most certainly is and I hope that you will start giving teens more credit for having self control. We need to encourage then to aim for the healthiest life possible. Many people are dying because of sex but no one has died because they abstained until marriage. Please carefully consider the info you share and make sure it is accurate because so far a lot of what I have read on your site is horribly wrong especially as related to STD’s and condoms.

I really love it when people tell me what I do. (As well as the idea that it’s up to me or any other adult to give teens “permission” to have sex, while at the same time telling me I don’t give teens enough credit for making their own sound choices, while they’re asking them to sign a very binding legal contract to another person in order to even CONSIDER that choice.) It’s so helpful: how would I know otherwise? I’m the idiot savant of sex ed, see. I have no idea what I do or say: all these words and statistics and sources just come pouring out of me when I consult my Ouija board every time I answer a question. A few days later, I go look at what I have written and it’s an absolute mystery to me.

I figured the best I could do with that one was to very calmly just primarily direct her to actual, international sources of sexual health information. Probably she won’t use them, or even look, or will find some way to discredit them — even though the CDC is almost entirely in the administration’s pocket these days, so you’d think these kinds of folks wouldn’t write them off anymore. But she is an educator, and I suppose you do never know when you’ve gotten one who earnestly has their heart in the right place, but just has never been informed.

And to think, some folks call me a pessimist.

filed under Heather Corinna | Scarleteen | Mr. Price | home | apropos of nothing
posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 10:40 am

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