Washington Post Solo-ish essay on baby fever and why I want to be a mom

I wrote about the subject I think about every day, and an incident recently that made me think about it in a new way: wanting to be a mom, and why being childless feels worse than being single ever did, for the wonderful Solo-ish section at The Washington Post. If you're not a regular reader, I recommend it; I learn a lot from the pieces I read there, which are always insightful (I don't mean that as a brag, humble or otherwise; I'm referring to the other writers, like Nicole Hardy on being a "female bachelor" in her forties and travel as her suitor and Laura Barcella on being a "crazy cat lady" and all the bylines you see there).

Here's a snippet of my piece:

In the minute or so that I helped her to those gulps of water, which still managed to spill down her dress despite my carefulness, I felt an overwhelming urge to pull her close and give her a hug. Her mix of delicateness and strength, her ability to communicate nonverbally, her gorgeous eyes staring back at me as if we weren’t strangers, all completely sucked me in.

If I could feel so much for a child I didn’t even know, who belonged to someone else, how much love would I have for a child I named and fed and cared for every day? That question haunts me.

Read the whole essay

Why all I want to do in my new home is get knocked up

While the title of this post is not strictly true, neither is the title of my first piece at The Mid, "I'd Trade My Dream Career for a Baby." More accurate would be the title I submitted it with: "I’m 39 and Sad That I Have Books Instead of Babies" but both are true in their way. If someone said to me, "If you stop ____, you'll get pregnant" and the blank was writing one of my columns or editing anthologies or, ahem, writing extremely oversharing personal essays that probably embarrass my boyfriend, I'd probably do it. After all, nothing else has worked so far, right?

But of course I have career goals, and this year one of mine has been to write for at least 12 new publications in 2015 (I'd love more, if you're an editor who wants to work with me!), an average of one a month. I've done my best to be both a specialist in the fields of sex and dating and erotica, but also a generalist, and am incredibly proud that my new work this year is mainly focused outside of bedroom activities because I have plenty of other interests. So I write about hoarding and Google alerts and libraries. I've got a few others in the works about my life and assorted passions, and for me, writing about an array of topics helps me not get burned out writing about sex and leads me down paths I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.

So no, I'm not only focused on having kids, because I know that certainly won't help, and some of what I've been reading about just how unhealthy stress is on the body, especially for pregnant women, has been quite sobering. That more than anything has made me think hard about how I want to live, how I want to work, what I want my days to look like. The last few weeks have been stress city between moving and money and what's felt like not enough time. The bottom line is that if freelancing isn't a good fit, I will have to find another way to make a living. I don't know yet and won't really know until the fall what the best path is. Some will depend on outside forces, but as a Serenity Prayer devotee, I'm trying to look inside and ask what I'm capable of, what feels right, and what's sustainable vs. what's pie in the sky. I don't know yet, but I do know "dream career" can't mean "work as much as possible, and think about work whenever you're not working." That hasn't been healthy and isn't worth it, and wouldn't be doable with a kid anyway. So I'm pulling back a little and trying to plan a summer that is fun and filled with love and friends and travel and searching and openness.

Not related to any of this, savor for love and enjoying the moment, because they made me smile yesterday, here are some heart shaped scones, which were very good (though I thought they were chocolate chip and they were actually blueberry, so had a little surprise bite the first time):

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

Conflict irresolution

I am trying to figure out how to do a jump cut in old Blogger (I was told it can't be done, saw it on another blog, and forgot to bookmark it...anyone?). In lieu of that, I'll just say at the top that if you don't want to read details about my sex life (you know who you are, or should be), please stop reading here.

Okay, so I too was interviewed by Susannah Breslin for Salon. Which this post isn’t really about, but she used the word “conflicted” and I think it would be safe to say that’s pretty much where I’m at these days in terms of sex, and sex writing. And it’s probably because I do care what other people think. Likely I shouldn’t say that here, because it gives someone a means to exploit that, but so be it.

woa!! you are writing books about sex, but ny times reviewed your views about cupcakes and kids...... you are trash, and shouldnt be advertising your raunchy offensive books on a web link where mothers and their daughters will 99% of the time come across this tacky ad. i am glad my 6yr old wasnt looking about cupcake reviews together, otherwise i'd love your explanation of why sexual topics are linked to cupcake website,to my 6 yr old.. you are trash and need to promote your trash somewhere else. i am very offended people as yourself exist.

It’s why emails like this one above, as easy as they are to laugh at, are less easy to shrug off. I’m horrified that someone would think I’m unfit to give comment about kids and cupcakes (and before we even get there, have and love kids of my own) because I write about sex. Yet maybe I play into that as well.

I’ve been trying to separate myself from It, from that whole messy dirty x-rated bare-all body of work, not because it doesn’t represent me, but because on some level it does irk me that people equate “sex writer” with “whore,” or whatever their epithet du jour is. It makes me want to protest that way of thinking, to give more insight. To say, “oh yes, I may have casual sex, but…” There’s always a but, a p.s., a way of trying to prove that really I’m a “nice girl.”

And yet I know that the people who want to get that will get it, and those who don’t, won’t. I know that and yet I still make the mistake of trying to explain to the haters (okay, not to the hate mailers though). For me, no, it’s not enough to know who I am and be all proud and strong…by myself.

I have written about and will write about being kinky. I’m not ashamed of that. At the same time, in my free time, I’d infinitely rather go to a barbecue than a BDSM conference over July 4th weekend. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but for me, I realized after Dark Odyssey that it’s not really my scene. I’ll always be an observer looking in and I hate the idea that because of It, people will assume…anything, really.

I’m thinking about all this in part because there are a lot of people from my past who are, well, still around. It confuses me sometimes because I don’t know where they fit in, or rather, I know perfectly well but there’s no word for it. There’s no word for someone who’s not an ex but was always way more than just a hot fuck in a hotel room. I don't know if I want there to be a word, other than friend, I guess, and maybe it's my job as a writer to figure out how to explain what I feel for this one person I'm gonna see tomorrow. It's a funny friendship because it was built on sex but was always about more than sex. I had forgotten we went to BEA together. That was like another lifetime ago even though it wasn't really all that long ago

In a way, the cold hard facts of sex are easier to write about. They happened, and I'm not shy about the details. Or, I wasn't. But the emotions are messier, trickier, less easy to explain. There's jealousy threaded in with awe and respect and self-doubt. It's easier to stick to the dirty parts but I don't want to stay with the easy all the time. I am finding myself writing these dark stories lately, these cocky men who want something more than sexual gratification. They want to fuck the women in my stories until they change something fundamental about them. They want the mindfuck even more than the physical one. And I wonder where I, stepping away from the story, fit in. Do I want to be changed or do I want to stay in my own world where it's safe but...lonely. I'm not sure, because once someone comes in and steals/borrows/tampers with my heart, they have part of it and I can't get it back. They will have that part of it I want to call a corner, though I don't think hearts have corners. I don't know yet how to write or talk or think about that, about the maybe stupid things I do for love, where I don't know if I'm making the right decisions but don't always want to know. I'd rather leap and not look because I know I'll probably make that same choice again. That kind of love can be selfish, I'm realizing, can be greedy. See? Way more complex than someone coming all over my tits in some hotel room.

I’m conflicted not because I don’t love being a writer, and I wouldn’t do the kinds of work I do if I didn’t want to on some level, but because I do know that it makes it harder to be in the “dating marketplace,” shall we say. It kindof sucks to have it all out there and googleable, where you can’t just tack on a “Oh, p.s., that guy I gave a handjob to at the airport that time? Is actually this very sweet dad who calls me from Costa Rica.” It’s hard to explain how there are these romantic threads woven into even my sluttiest actions. And I hate the part of me that even has to go there, to try to defend it. Because I’d love to be like Lena and say “who cares?” but I always come back to me. I care.

I am slowly, stubbornly, reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that not only can’t I disown my writing past, but I shouldn’t have to. I’m the one making my view of myself into this either/or sex writer vs. baby mama dichotomy. Of course I know they can coexist. It’s not like I read that hate mail and think, “Wow, she’s right, I should never even glance at any children.” But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

I want to go back to a place where I can write more openly about my feelings, about what’s going on, but there are other considerations. I think the charges of narcissism against Emily Gould in part stem from the conundrum that if we’re going to tell a story, we can’t tell someone else’s side of it. We can only tell ours. And by doing so, of course we’re going to come across as “narcissistic.” I’m working on something I want to send to Modern Love and I’m wary because part of it is not my story to tell, but part of it is, and the Venn diagram of those parts gets murky. But I will try, if only to puzzle it out for myself, to make it make some kind of sense I can’t see unless I write it down.

In the meantime I’ll be daydreaming about the baby in sunglasses I saw today who just looked like such a rock star and I don’t know whether these baby sightings are good or bad because they make it just that much worse. Maybe I can get a fake baby in the interim.