My age play "Baby Talk" essay up at Salon

My essay "Baby Talk" is up now at Salon (my working title: "Talk Mommy to Me"). It's about age play, "mommy play," dirty talk, fantasy, roleplay, baby fever, TLC, surprising yourself and more. I'd appreciate you checking it out, and if you like it/find it interesting, liking it on Facebook, passing it on on G+, Twitter, wherever. I finished it while I was in Hawaii and am glad I wrote it. It's always tricky writing about someone else's sexuality as it intersects with your own, so I tried my best to keep the focus on my feelings and reactions. As for the caption, I don't think being a sex writer is the issue, but being a fairly experienced sexual person, who managed to encounter a new situation and direction, that somewhat tied in to my previous encounters, but largely didn't, is what I'm addressing.

Speaking of sex writing, I would love to see the widest variety possible in the submissions for Best Sex Writing 2013, my annual nonfiction collection, and that certainly includes first person pieces on fetishes, roleplaying, etc. I want to be entertained, surprised, educated, intrigued. Deadline is May 1st, but earlier submissions are strongly preferred.

(crib in the background - good job, whoever did that!)

Excerpt:

But the real surprise — which may be the most disturbing part, or the most honest, depending on your perspective — is what the age play stirred up in me. At 36, I don’t have any children, but I want them badly. “Baby fever” hardly begins to describe it. If I could pick up a baby at the supermarket along with my groceries, I would. And this unlikely sexual dynamic, the big baby literally calling me “mommy,” called forth powerful caretaking feelings. It was nice, for a short period of time, to be a mother, even a mock one.

Let me be clear: My maternal yearnings in and of themselves are not sexual. But my desire to comfort others does play a role in my sex life. Nurturing has been one of the ways I pride myself on providing to lovers. That might mean surprising them with dessert, sending them a list of the broken links on their website, giving an intense massage, mailing a package for them, or washing their dishes. Even when I’m in a dominant sexual role, there’s an element of caretaking involved. If I’m slapping or spanking or biting or pinching someone who gets off on me delivering pain, I am fulfilling a sexual need. It may not be the same as feeding them chicken soup, but it is still a form of taking care of them.

So while overt mommy play was new to me, combining kink and nurturing wasn’t. But this scenario brought my previous experience to a whole new level of intensity. We spun a fantasy in which I was sitting in a hotel bathtub, warm and full of bubbles, while he waited to towel me off, then gave me a foot massage. The stories we shared were far from depraved; they were gentle, tender, loving. I could see myself soaking in that tub, him washing my hair, stroking my feet, fetching food for me, sleeping at the foot of the bed. The sweetness offset the weirdness for me.

Read the whole thing