I always say thank you

A friend of mine is doing this amazing thing- she's celebrating National Masturbation Month by doing a blog-a-thon. She is engaging in a daily masturbation practice and then writing about it and folks can donate, or pledge per orgasm or post and some of that money goes to The Center for Sex and Culture. The blog is called Coming Home and I highly encourage you to check it out.

When I heard her talking about the project, about orgasm being about healing and coming home into ourselves (and this is paraphrasing) my mind lit up. I started thinking dreamily about what that could mean, that sort of intention and attention to masturbation and to orgasm. About how it connects us up to healing and then I thought about making this a practice myself for this month and what that might be like. I thought how dangerous, how terrifying- I could never do that and then of course I knew I had to because if I'm scared of it- that's where I'm headed next. It's where the juice is, the heart of things; what I'm afraid of added to the equation of shame equals the sum of all things- equals- what must be written.

Now I am wrestling with how will I write about it. Where and how will I share it. Will I be anonymous like I was this morning in my little section of house without a door, hurrying before it got later, before someone came to the door or walked through the door, worrying were my blinds turned the right way, would anyone see me- and that's how I came- anonymously, hurrying in a don't think too much, jack off quickly way, sitting on the edge of an ottoman because I don't have a bed and holding a dog eared copy of Macho Sluts in one hand and my too big and too awkward Hitachi shoved in hard against my clit on low, reading until I could just close my eyes and zip to the finish line.

The finish line for me always involves a shift to fantasy and today's fantasy was a fraction, a mere slip of a thing- a matter of seconds but they were ugly seconds. They almost always are. I'm not at a place of being able to move to fantasies that feel good to my heart and belly, just at a place of settling in with what rises in my head, what gets me there, what gets me off. I'm just at the place where I forgive myself for having these ugly places I go to with some bitter willingness like a dog on a leash that hates the leash but knows that it's the only way to get to food, to arrive someplace with full waiting at the end of it. I walk into places dark and scary and  long ago and imagine things that I can't bear to write because it feels so mired in shame and thick muck.Writing these things feels like I give them more power, like I'm egging on the deep darkness of the world, celebrating all of our shadow selves in their worst costumes and behavior. I am finally at a place of getting why I'm wired this way and just grateful for the orgasm, for that release I've made myself with my own intention.

And no matter how I get there, even if it's dark slippery roads, these orgasms- whether with a partner or alone are cherished. I don't like how I get to them but the way that they hold me, the way that I grab onto them, tight-fisted until the last clamp of spasm and rush of sweetness sounds- feels like home to me, or like church or like magic. I am always surprised and grateful.

I always whisper thank you when I'm coming. Always. I am not sure who I am thanking as that whisper rises  and little tears of gratitude sit in the corners of my eyes but it is as integral to my rituals as breathing. I will never take orgasm for granted. I think I will forever be surprised that pleasure is extracted from a place that held so much jagged rage and distorted need in my childhood. That a part of me that was merely another way in for them, another cage another source of pain that belonged only to them could be so soft and sweet and open and wet amazes me, every time. That these orgasms shake me free of everything and leave me breathing more fully, my body full of a sense of  soft ease will never be an ordinary thing. I will never not feel it's some sort of strange magical alchemy. So with or without the luxury of doors, or bedrooms or space and time, with or without anonymity,  I always say thank you.