Note: This is a blog post I drafted and ALMOST published in 2018, but ended up deciding to keep private after a few friends read it and said, "Yikes, babe. No." They were right – I was in far too emotional a place to decide whether to publicize something like this. But now more than 4 years have passed, and that ex has fucked off to the west coast, and this newsletter is a much more private outlet than my blog, so I think it's time to put it out into the world. Please forgive the cringeyness. Also, content note: lots of daddy dom/little girl stuff in this one. And also heartbreak stuff.

1. Oh. Fuck. Well, shit. Dammit. Why. Ugh. Fucking hell. No.

2. Does she appreciate him enough? Is she a good enough girl for him? Does she give him what he needs? I worry sometimes. I worry about him. About whether he's doing okay.

Last night I went on what was technically a third date. I say “technically” because our first and second dates happened 5 years ago.

We fell out of touch after those two dates for circumstantial reasons – not reasons related to a lack of attraction or interest on either of our parts, as both of those were present in abundance. We both got into other relationships and drifted out of each other’s lives, only to drift back into each other’s lives via a random Tinder re-match 5 years later.

Unlike right-wing politicians, when I invoke the George Orwell novel 1984, it’s not to make sweeping claims about my political enemies. Usually, it’s to tell people that their sexual fantasies are normal and fine.

People have all sorts of sexual fantasies, and some of those people wonder whether their fantasies are, in some sense, “immoral.” Is it bad, for example, to jerk off to the thought of your ex? What about your sister’s ex? What about your sister?

I am aware that the title of this essay sounds like some kind of bathroom-related thing that would be cringe to discuss in polite company. THAT IS NOT WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. I am talking about Tinder. SWIPING, NOT WIPING, PEOPLE. (Although you should also be wiping. I mean. You know that. Anyway. Sorry. Let’s proceed.)

I recently had the absurdly millennial experience of re-matching with someone who I went on two (2) dates with, five (5!) years ago. There was, and is, no ill will between us – I gathered that we were both pretty into each other, but ultimately he ghosted me for a while because of a (confirmed, legit) chronic illness he has, which flared up suddenly. He later apologized retroactively for the ghosting and explained the reason for it, which was a reason I had already considered. In fact, I would have already fully assumed it was the reason, if not for being wildly insecure (lol, fun).

Content note: discussions of – but not much detail about – trauma, emotional abuse, daddy dom/little girl roleplay, spanking, kink-shaming.

People make a lot of assumptions about you when you’re into DD/lg (daddy dom/little girl roleplay). One of the commonest and darkest of these is that the kink must have been caused by the presence of underlying “daddy issues.”

The phrase “daddy issues” is, itself, a red flag. It is a phrase which literally communicates that the person using it believes a victim of father-related trauma is both somehow responsible for that trauma and profoundly and permanently affected by it. It reduces a person, almost always a woman, to a sad little plant who grew from the seedling of how her father mistreated her – as if that is the totality of her being, as if she was not also enriched by the soil she grew in, the water she drank, the sun she photosynthesized.

Friends, I won't lie to you: "This is so demisexual" is something I have yelled at my TV on more than one occasion. [Insert butterfly meme of me looking at a perfectly standard piece of media that happens to link emotional intimacy with sexual intimacy and going, "Is this... demisexuality?"]

For those who don't know, demisexuality is an identity on the asexual spectrum, meaning that it exists somewhere between allosexuality (experiencing sexual attraction) and asexuality (not experiencing sexual attraction). Demisexuality is characterized by the need for some kind of emotional connection to exist before sexual attraction can be felt. This manifests in all sorts of different ways for different people, because human psychology is complicated. For instance, I can start to get horny for celebrities I've seen in many pieces of media (um, you read my thoughts on Bo Burnham, right?), purely because our parasocial relationship has made me feel like I have an emotional connection with them.

Anyway, sometimes I see stuff on TV and in movies that reads as very demisexual to me. It might be an "enemies to lovers" storyline in some medical drama, in which the characters' sexual chemistry seems to build with each deeply illuminating argument they have on screen, or it might be a high school rom com where two best friends suddenly realize they were each other's perfect match the whole time... or it might be a Netflix dating show where people are financially incentivized not to fuck each other.

Content note: As you may have guessed from the title, this essay will discuss psychedelic drugs and their effects on the human psyche.

Housekeeping note: Hi, friends! This is a rare “free for everyone” edition of Sub Missives; I hope you enjoy it! I wanted to let you know that the juiciest, most vulnerable and intimate content in this newsletter is only available to premium subscribers (i.e. paying subscribers), for the reasons that 1) I just don’t feel comfy publishing that stuff on the public internet for all to see and 2) a girl’s gotta eat and pay her bills. If you’d like to join so you can receive an essay every week about my innermost thoughts and oddest experiences related to love, sex, kink, and more, while supporting my work so I can keep doing it, you can sign up for a premium subscription for $5/month or $50/year at katesloan.email. Thanks, loves!

I almost made a terrible mistake while I was in a touring improv troupe. (And no, the mistake I’m referring to is not simply being in a touring improv troupe to begin with.)

My high school was an arts school that attracted students from all around the city. One of the ways we did this was a marketing strategy of sorts, known as “school tours.” This was where teachers would choose a select few students who enthusiastically excelled at music, dance, or improv, and would then take those students on a “tour” of several local middle schools so we could perform for their students in an assembly and entice them to apply to our school. We would do this for two weeks each October, during which time our teachers knew not to expect us to come to class or hand in assignments – because we were on TOUR, baybee!

I have always had intrusive thoughts about crushes, have always gotten people stuck in my head the way I get songs stuck in my head: they loop for days on end, maddening, all-consuming.

I’ve often wondered if there is a neurological basis for this, possibly having to do with dopamine. I’ve wondered this even more since reading neurologist Oliver Sacks’ book Musicophilia, which details (among other nerdy musical brain-science anecdotes) a number of cases in which certain brain injuries resulted in far more persistent and annoying musical “earworms.” I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a brain injury, but perhaps it’s a wiring problem. Who knows.

What I can tell you is that it gets very annoying at times. In the throes of it, I often find it difficult to think, let alone get any work done. I’ll become more interested in obsessively googling my crush, or posting hot selfies I hope they’ll enjoy, than doing anything of real value or purpose. I concoct absurd fantasies and replay them incessantly, automatically, in my mind. I’ll lose sleep staring at my phone or listening to podcasts the person has guested on or scrawling in my journal about how sad it is that I’ll never get to kiss them. I've been doing versions of this, on-and-off, for about 20 years.

But I am a big believer in working WITH one’s natural tendencies, not against them, whenever possible. There are a few ways I channel this obsessive energy into actual productivity and other positive outcomes.

Hi friends! Brief programming note: As you may have noticed, I've switched over from Substack to Buttondown. Substack has given enormous financial payouts to numerous people of questionable ethics (to say the least), most noticeably the genuinely dangerous and deeply bigoted blowhard Graham Linehan.

I've wanted to make this switch for quite some time but haven't had the spoons/energy, but fortunately, my extremely generous and smart spouse Matthew Bischoff helped me transfer things over, with the help of Buttondown founder Justin Duke. You will continue to be billed the same way at the same rate, so you don't need to do anything; everything has been transferred seamlessly so far as I can tell. Please let me know if you experience any interruptions or issues, but all should be fine as long as submissives@katesloan.email is in your email client's whitelist. Thanks for joining me on this journey!

I have a problem with change. It's a very Taurus-y quality. When a big life change is on the horizon, like moving house or ending a relationship, I am filled with trepidation and stubborn resistance.

I have been on Twitter since 2007 so I have tweeted some embarrassing and baffling things over the years. Here are some of those tweets, with commentary from modern-day me. We can all grow and change!

Oct. 19, 2007: "Danny the song & dance cat" from Cats Don't Dance is pretty much the sexiest dancing cat ever. He was also my first crush as a child.

In retrospect, I am surprised I announced, on Twitter, at age 15, that I had a crush on a cartoon cat. I would be embarrassed to tweet this today, though it is still true. Incidentally, I just looked into it and Danny was voiced by Scott Bakula, who is, y’know, cute but not really my type. I guess I just love gregarious weirdos who are way too into musical theatre, and are, maybe, cats.

Feb. 9, 2008: I really want Ryan Seacrest & Simon Cowell to have sex, if they haven't already. Shhh.

My inbox is habitually full of PR reps pitching their latest “libido-boosting” product. Supplements. Gels. Exercise regimens. CBD-infused soft drinks. Whatever.

The thing about “boosting one’s libido” is that the reasons for having a low sex drive in the first place are often not directly addressable with a product. I think this is especially true for anyone subject to systemic stress and oppression – women, trans people, people of color, etc. – and I also think it is especially true during a globally traumatic event like a pandemic. In many cases, it’s not a physical issue causing your libido to dwindle (although you could certainly check with your doctor just incase). No, I think most libido issues arise from our psychology. Stress. Trauma. Relationship tensions. Culturally-instilled body insecurities. Gender anxiety. You get the picture.

With that in mind, here’s a list of products that actually boost my libido…

A sleep mask and earplugs. Not necessarily for sensory deprivation play, although that too – but mainly I just use these to sleep better. When you sleep longer and more deeply, you have more energy, you’re less irritable with partners or potential partners, and you’re operating at a higher level in terms of mental and emotional processing. For me, this all means that when I’m sleeping well, I have better sex, and am able to enjoy it more. I think that makes sleep a worthy thing to invest in. (For the record, my favorite sleep mask is the Nidra Deep Rest, and I use Mack’s slim-fit soft foam earplugs.)

I often think about the correlations between my professional life and my personal life, the ways in which they mirror each other and teach me the same lessons.

I thought about that connection today, when – in a stern email to someone who had repeatedly asked if I would publish their spammy guest post, a service I do not offer – I typed, in bold, “No exceptions will be made under any circumstances.”

I stared at the sentence, and thought – first with amusement, and then with a tinge of sadness – what would have happened if I had held my boundaries just as firmly as this, in social and sexual situations, from the very beginning? What difficulties would I have been spared? Who would I have become?

I am a big fan of “personal policies,” loose little rules I create for myself that help guide me in the direction of my ideal life. I know that these do not work for everyone; many people have told me either that they slip into old unwanted behaviors too much if their own willpower is their only steward, or that setting rules for themselves feels too restrictive and doesn’t leave enough room for spontaneity. For me personally though, because I know that they aren’t hard-and-fast rules but merely strong suggestions that Past Me has made to Future Me based on intimate firsthand knowledge of myself, I find that having personal policies helps me a lot.

Yet again, a man on Reddit is insisting that “women are shallow” and that “women only want to date Chads with six-packs,” and yet again, I am laughing my ass off.

Let me be clear: it’s not that I take issue with this man feeling insecure about his physique; appearance-based strictures affect us all in this culture, and an unfortunate one for men is the proliferation of muscly bodies and the widespread sense that those bodies are what (straight and bi) women want.

But I can’t help laughing at this particular sentiment on this particular day, because 1) women are not a hive mind, and 2) I’ve just spent a solid hour getting horny over a gangly Twitch streamer because of his encyclopedic knowledge of Pokémon games.

This has been a hardcore quarantine hobby of mine – playing these games, which I’ve loved since childhood but hadn’t touched in several years, and watching other people play these games. Horniness is not habitually part of my gaming experience (I don’t play the porn games that people like Ana Valens write about), but intelligence and nerdiness are habitually part of my attractions, so it makes sense that I develop smouldering crushes on everyone from home improvement YouTubers to Jeopardy champions to, yes, Twitch streamers.

Succession is such a weird show. It centers on Waystar Royco, a fictional media conglomerate that’s sort of like a mix between Fox and Disney, and the people at the top of the corporate food chain therein: company CEO Logan Roy, his four adult children who all want to take over the CEO job someday, and the advisors and lackeys they employ. It’s a show about business, and capitalism, and trauma, and abuse. It’s a show about the ways that our earliest childhood experiences can shape who we are for the rest of our lives. It’s also, at times, a show about sex, attraction, eroticism, and power.

Because it amuses me to do so, in today’s newsletter I will be selecting sex toys that capture the essence of characters on this very popular show. Feel free to hit “reply” and let me know whether you agree with my picks!

I got home from New York two weeks ago and I have been luxuriating in my solitude.

I love my spouse, my friends, and my family very very much, so do not take that last sentence as a slight toward any of them. I just also love spending time alone. Not only do I love it – I need it. My brain seems to run at an optimal level when I’ve been afforded big chunks of 100% solo time recently. I think I’ve always been that way.

But since this is a newsletter ostensibly about sex, it bears mentioning that my sexuality also seems to benefit from me getting adequate alone time.

I remember that when I ended a 3.5-year-long relationship at age 22, I had this huge, expansive sense of sexual freedom – not just because I was able to date and fuck people who had been off-limits to me in my monogamous partnership, but because I felt like I was rediscovering my own body as my own body, rather than being a body that another person partially “owned” or at least had a vested interest in. My partner hadn’t demanded that I shave or stay clean for him; he hadn’t expected me to be sexually available to him at all hours of the day; he certainly hadn’t seen himself as the primary arbiter of my body – and yet somehow I had felt obligated in these ways nonetheless. I had felt it was my duty to look and feel and smell and taste a certain way for him. And now that I was single again, those responsibilities were just… gone.

Content note: daddy dom / little girl language

I love daddy doms. I have for years. But it’s not just a sexual thing.

When I say the phrase “daddy dom,” what I really mean is a kinky person who is dominant or dominant-leaning, and whose dominance manifests in a way that’s explicitly about caring for their submissive-leaning partner(s). Granted, even some of the more discipline-oriented dominants out there are doing what they do out of deep care and love, but I think what sets daddy doms apart from the others is that the caretaking is part of the “fiction” of the kink, part of its narrative for both/all participants, rather than being implicit subtext – and the caretaking is part of what both/all participants find hot.

Content note: There is a part in this essay where I take some drugs and it seems like I might be sexually assaulted or something, but don’t worry, I didn’t get assaulted and there is no assault or other sexual misconduct in this piece.

Something really weird just happened as I was brainstorming ideas for this week’s newsletter.

I was scrolling through old screenshots, hoping to happen upon a text conversation or sext-y interlude that would trigger a thought that would trigger a newsletter.

The fuckboy/fuckgirl/fuckperson who bangs you well but who you will never see again

The princes in Into the Woods are the closest characters to our modern understanding of the term “fuckboy” in any pre-1990 musical that I’m aware of. And in no song is this more apparent than “Any Moment,” the flirty and feather-light song Cinderella’s prince sings to the baker’s wife after they share a mutually extramarital tryst amongst the trees. It has the rhythm of a text exchange you’d have with someone who fucks incredibly well but who, you eventually discover, has no intention of ever seeing you again once the bloom is off the rose.

You: Idk if I can do drinks tonight, I have to get up early for work tomorrow…

Them: Aww cmon! I’ll make it worth your while ;)

Recently I went through the notes I’ve taken during my last several therapy sessions, and for each session, I distilled the main thing I learned into one sentence. Here are those one-sentence summaries of my last 25 sessions. I hope they give you some peace, or at least some food for thought – especially if you’re having a hard time right now due to being with family for the holidays. (These are written in all caps because they remind me of Jenny Holzer’s “Truisms,” which were always in all caps as well.)

1. CHANGE IS SCARY BUT ALSO EXCITING.

2. SINCERITY IS TERRIFYING BUT IT GETS YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO GO.

3. YOU DON’T NEED EVERYONE TO LIKE YOU AND IN FACT NO ONE IS UNIVERSALLY LIKED.

4. WORKING THROUGH CONFLICTS WITH HONESTY AND INTEGRITY IS ALLOWED TO BE A SLOW PROCESS.

5. YOU ARE ONLY HUMAN AND PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU SHOULD ACCEPT THAT (WITHIN REASON).

6. THERE IS NOTHING INHERENTLY WRONG WITH HAVING COPING MECHANISMS BUT THEY CAN BE LIMITING AT TIMES.

7. OTHER PEOPLE’S NEGATIVE EMOTIONS ARE NOT AUTOMATICALLY YOUR RESPONSIBILITY OR YOUR FAULT.

8. YOU WILL INEVITABLY HURT PEOPLE; THE TRICK IS TO AVOID HURTING PEOPLE INTENTIONALLY.

9. THERE IS NO POINT IN ENGAGING WITH SOMEONE WHO REFUSES TO VIEW YOU AS A HUMAN BEING.

10. YOU ARE ALLOWED TO FEEL PROUD OF YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND IN FACT YOU SHOULD.

11. REST AND LEISURE ARE YOUR BIRTHRIGHT AND “WORK ETHIC” IS A CAPITALIST CONSPIRACY.

12. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PARTNER YOU “DESERVE,” ONLY A PARTNER YOU WANT WHO WANTS YOU BACK.

13. STRUGGLE AND PAIN ARE NOT THE ONLY MEASURES OF ACHIEVEMENT.

14. THE “9-TO-5” LIFESTYLE DOESN’T WORK FOR EVERYONE AND THAT’S OKAY.

15. MAKING MISTAKES IS PART AND PARCEL OF BEING HUMAN.

16. MAKING MISTAKES DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE A FAILURE WHO DESERVES TO DIE.

17. THERE ARE NO “GOOD PEOPLE” OR “BAD PEOPLE,” JUST PEOPLE WHO MAKE VARIOUS CHOICES.

18. AVOIDANCE IS SOMETIMES A GOOD COPING MECHANISM BUT ONLY IN THE SHORT-TERM.

19. HYPERVIGILANCE AND HYPER-SCRUTINY KILL CREATIVITY.

20. HETEROPATRIARCHAL AND ABLEIST NARRATIVES ARE NOT MANDATES.

21. IT IS RARELY IN YOUR BEST INTEREST TO REPLY TO SOMEONE WHILE ACTIVELY ANGRY OR UPSET.

22. IT IS OFTEN MORE IMPACTFUL AND LESS HARMFUL TO CRITICIZE SYSTEMS THAN INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE.

23. SELF-COMPASSION IS NECESSARY AND TRANSFORMATIVE.

24. ABUSE IS NEVER THE FAULT OF THE VICTIM.

25. YOUR HEALING IS NOT CONTINGENT UPON THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OR REPENTANCE OF YOUR ABUSER.