What sex education?

(a paper I wrote for a contemporary sexuality class possibility TMI)

I did get a sex education – it just didn’t come from where it should have.  Aren’t parents and teachers supposed to teach you about relationships, contraception, and sex?  Mostly, I learned about sex the hard way, by trial and error.  And there was a lot of error but after about fifteen years of playing with sex and sexuality, I think I have it figured out.  I learned about contraception from parents and teachers, and random chance led me to figure out orgasm, but it was my partners along with television and the internet who taught me the mechanics of sex, along with polyamory and BDSM.

Happy Pride!

Last weekend was the 39th annual celebration and parade for San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride.  The celebration is enormous and overwhelming; despite my best efforts I only managed to participate in a small fraction of activities.  My week started out with a night out for drinks with several other queer grrls, followed a couple of days later by watching Bi Request at the Frameline Film Festival with a lover.  This year’s Bi Request, a collection of shorts either by or about bisexuals, was especially good.  Friday night I spent at the Queer Playground play party at the Citadel, where Grin sutured a lovely decoration on to me that he had created himself, shown in the picture above.

Saturday I spent picnicing and marching with friends and lovers at the annual Dyke March, went to dinner, and then made it to another play party.

Sunday I somehow managed to get up and march in the Pride parade as a Contingent Monitor with both the Bay Area Bisexual Network and the Polyamory contingents; again, I was with friends, lovers, and community.  Although I did not march with the leather contingent, I supported them in spirit, by wearing Grin’s decoration from Friday night to Sunday night.  Afterwards, I wandered around around the Pride celebrations with a friend visiting from out of town, met up with more of my community at the Faerie Village, dropped by the Citadel for their post-pride social party and then made it to one more wind down party where a lover of mine and I pretty much collapsed in exhaustion.

In what city other than San Francisco is all this possible?  I count my blessings daily.

Learning to Love the Singletail

For those who do not know, the singletail is a particular type of whip, but at the same time the one we think of most often when people use the word “whip”. A singletail is the kind of whip Catwoman and Indiana Jones carry. In the BDSM world, anything with flexible tails is classified as a whip, including floggers, cat-o-nines, and so on. This leads to a lot of confusion: if someone says “I brought my bag full of whips”, you have no idea if they are referring to a bag full of floggers or singletails or both. So for the rest of this essay, I will just call it the singletail, and those of you unfamiliar with the term should substitute “whip” in your heads. (For those of you who want to know the precise instrument I am discussing, it is the signal whip from this Wikipedia page.)

The singletail has a oddly mythical status in the kink community, probably borrowed from its exotic depiction in movies and popular culture. Singletails are considered edge play at some dungeons and can make it onto the list of banned activities. Tops approach the singletail as an art to be learned, more so than other toys, which they tend to be willing to just pick up and hit people with. Some singetail instructors recommend six months or more of practice before attempting to use a singletail on a person, and want you to be able to perform delicate aiming tasks.

Blood: It’s what’s for dinner

Pressure Point Orgasm?

I attended Lady Thorn’s Fetish Flea Market last weekend, where numerous vendors had products old and new up for sale. One of the vendors was there, as he often is, with a selection of necklaces, arm bands, and claws, all of which he makes by working metal in interesting patterns; I will call him Thomas. This time, however, Thomas had an assistant helping him work the booth, who I will call Julia. With her assistance, he was demoing a pressure point on the back of the neck that apparently causes orgasms in some women. His claim was that many women achieve much pleasure from the pressure point, some orgasm from it, and it has no effect whatsoever on 15% of women. Furthermore, allegedly the more often you have it done to you, the easier it is to orgasm from it.

Say What?

Ever had one of those “did I just hear that?” situations?  One afternoon, a vanilla friend of mine and I were discussing our respective plans for the following evening.  He said, “I’m headed up to the city for a suspension clinic.”   My mind immediately started racing in all different directions (“Did I mishear him?”  “Did he just come out to me?”  “That’s totally not a beginner class, and besides I don’t know of any suspension clinics this weekend.”).  I’m out to him, but not in his face about it, so I really wasn’t sure what to do.  In a fit of brilliance, I said something non-committal like “that’s nice”, and promptly changed the subject.  Later in the conversation, after I felt up to it, I asked him to clarify what his clinic was about… and discovered it was about motorcycle suspension.

I told him (and the two others who were there) what I had thought, and it has been a mutual source of amusement ever since.

Welcome to Poundcake

poundcake (‘pound-kāk)

-noun
1. A rich cake made with a relatively large amount of butter.
2. Bodies bruised or damaged as a result of rough sex or BDSM play. See also: cheesecake, beefcake.

Poundcake is a blog put together by a network of polyamorous kinky lovers based in San Francisco. With Poundcake, we hope to share some of the wackiness of the underground sex life and thoughts on relationships and BDSM.