year of the snake

'honor your hunger and feed yourself' and tell adam he can watch

I bought myself a gold-plated dick pendant for Christmas. It was from one of my favorite stores where I always do my holiday shopping and while browsing jewelry for the women in my life I thought okay yeah but this one’s for me.

I was not born the year of the snake but I was born the year of the cock and in high school I got a necklace that had a rooster on one side and the word ‘cock’ on the other and I wore it backwards. A minor rebellion that felt like a middle finger to all the girls who called me a slut and all the boys who treated me like one — the boys who called me ‘peach nectar’ because I jerked them off in my car with bath and body works lotion and was good at it. I was even better at blowjobs and instead of feeling degraded by my reputation I found ways to use it to my advantage. Used it to get free drugs at parties when I went through my phase of wanting free drugs at parties. Trading sex for drugs, while frowned upon in pretty much all social circles, was an exchange the way sex so often is. I always felt like I got a better deal anyway. If I needed to, I could make someone come in 30 seconds while simultaneously taking a piss in the bathroom.

The amount of women who think they’re above sex work without recognizing that they’ve been whoring since they started having sex — exchanging their bodies for financial security, emotional security, the ‘American Dream'… have healed whatever shame I ever felt for using sex to my advantage in my youth.

ED: One of the reasons I have interviewed so many sex workers on my podcast is that I respect and admire women who charge for their labor and acknowledge the power their sexuality affords them in doing so. Our reluctance to acknowledge our power is a major factor in our inability to wield it and that goes beyond sex but to pretend we do not live in a world where our sexuality is not a part of our currency, is not feminist it’s naive. And I will throw down for any woman with the guts to speak from her own experience in response to those who intellectualize, criticize and judge her methods of survival as a woman in a man’s world.

A couple years back I bought a cock pendant made of crystal in Joshua Tree on NYE because I had to have it obviously. I am a big fan of dick but was taking a break from the humans who are typically attached to them. I was also realizing a new kind of power in myself.

I bought it during a time in my life when I was giving men way too much energy — a thing I haven’t done since — but it does make sense why I lost my BDE in a matter of days and didn’t think to replace it.

I forgot — like I have in the past — who I was.

ED: I understand gender queerness in a way I would never claim as my own because I feel very much like a woman — but I also feel — especially since the death of my husband — that my daddy energy is as existent as my motherness. The binaries I used to subscribe to are toast. This has changed how I operate sexually, professionally and also as a parent. I became the father when my husband died in a way that has felt as primal as my awakening to motherhood when my first child was born.

I used to be weird about walking by myself at night and I’m not anymore. I used to feel like certain tasks weren’t for me because I was a woman. I used to think that I needed a man to come fix my broken air-conditioner or make me feel wanted and then I learned how to fix that shit myself and prioritize my own desire. And in becoming the kind of woman who walks her friends to the car knowing I will walk back to mine alone, I have realized that I no longer relate to the fear so many women feel towards men — fear I absolutely used to have but don’t anymore.

***

The penis being on the outside of the body is something that used to fascinate me as a child. The outwardness of sex. I have often wondered if men’s unabashed sexuality comes from having a body that showcases it. That women often know more about a man’s body we slept with once than our own.

The inner lives of cis women mirrors our bodies. Life happens inside of us. And our bodies hide our sex in the same way we do. Our sexual inwardness mirroring so much of our lives.

I lived two different lives until I became untethered to a man and now I live one life and I will never go back. And my reliance on men has turned into a kind of self-reliance for the man I feel I am now. The husband. The partner. The father.

For me it has been nearly impossible to be in an intimate relationship with a man without betraying someone — mostly myself. And while we hold it against each other to ‘betray’ partners we excuse self-betrayal with impunity. Self-betrayal is the worst kind of infidelity in my opinion. And our refusal as a culture to collectively acknowledge all of the ways women are unfaithful to ourselves is a travesty.

Behind every secret life is a woman’s truth.

I recently spoke on a podcast about how I believe all women lead secret lives and at the time wondered if I was wrong to be so certain about something that assumes that every woman is a liar but that was the part that resonated with everyone who listened and the amount of women who have reached out to me since has been staggering.

All women are liars — if not to the men in their lives — to themselves. Maybe men are, too, but I don’t think so. Men have been allowed to be human. Women have had to hide their humanity in the pockets with their handkerchieves, punished when caught thus becoming better and better at deceit with every generation. Our secret lives often splitting us in two — killing us slowly or quickly. Turning us sick, ‘insane’ or unable to get out of bed.

Raise your hand if no one knows who you actually are? And I know you’re out there because every morning I wake up to your messages. Every day I meet a new woman who trusts me — a stranger — with her secrets more than she trusts her husband, her family, her friends…

The irony is that, when you hold very few secrets of your own, everyone in your life including strangers fills your pockets with them, no room for handkerchiefs.

If you cut me open, a thousand secret lives would fly out like butterflies and holding these stories through the years has radicalized me more than almost anything but maybe not in the way you would think.