When I was a teen, I had an eccentric sense of style. Of course I did; I went to an arts school.

I often described my aesthetic as a blend between “a 1950s housewife, a 1980s teen queen, and a British schoolboy.” You can see hints of these elements here and there in my old outfit photos: sequins, neckties, red lipstick. I had fun getting dressed every day and it showed.

While the intensity of my look mellowed somewhat over the years as I trudged into adulthood, the “British schoolboy” component is definitely the one I’ve lost touch with the most. See, in high school, I dated exclusively women and nonbinary people until my last year, having come out as bisexual in the 10th grade – and in those contexts, I felt more desirable (and more desired) when I dressed with an androgynous or even masculine flair. I felt strong and put-together in my blazers, bowties, jeans and boots. It sometimes felt like drag – fake and theatrical, given my overarchingly femme gender identity and expression. But sometimes it felt exactly right. And I think it had to do with who I was dating.

My inner androgyny has never really faded – I still have plenty of days where I wake up feeling butch or boyish – but my confidence in dressing that way has definitely eroded to some degree. Dating mostly men for many years put me in a patriarchally-driven “feminine = sexy” mindset, especially since so many of those men vocally loved when I dressed girly. I loved it too – most of the time. But not always.

Yesterday I stood before my dresser, pawing through my underwear drawer for something to wriggle into after a shower, and had the thought, “Should I wear these pink ones? No, they’re too nice. I should save them.”

Immediately, I had the next logical thought: “Save them for what?”

In my early twenties, the daily decision between “good underwear” and “garbage underwear” carried more weight than panties would seem to. If I was headed to a university lecture, a coffee date with a friend, a family brunch, or some other event where sex was absolutely 1,000% not going to happen, I would pick something faded and stretched out from the Hanes 2006 catalogue. (If you know, you know.)

But there would be days – maybe once a month, maybe a few times a week, depending on what was going on in my admittedly absurd sex life at the time – when I would make the conscious decision to slip into something lacy, or silky, or satiny, and most assuredly stain-free. I would do this, optimistically, if there was even a 20% chance I might be having sex in the coming hours. It felt like casting a spell, setting an intention, and the intention was confidence and self-assuredness in a moment that had yet to come.

I get a lot of DMs. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram (or, heaven forbid, both), you probably know this, because I post screenshots of them fairly often. Laughing with friends and followers at these messages is a key way I cope with receiving them.

That sounds bad out of context. Normally I would ask for consent before posting someone’s private communiqué to my public social media channels… but I make exceptions for people who choose to disrespect me by crossing stated boundaries, crudely complimenting my tits unprompted, sending me dick pics, etc. My rationale: if they didn’t want to be outed as harassers, they shouldn’t have harassed me. Or anyone. Ever.

But we are in the midst of a global crisis, and crises are like an altered state or an alternate reality. The rules are different; the parameters change. I’ve found myself signing sassy emails to lowballing advertisers with “Hope you’re well!” I’ve politely let telemarketers down instead of tersely hanging up on them. And yes, I have contemplated being nicer to the shitty men – and yes, it is always men – in my DMs.

Not all of them. That’s important to note. The dick pic senders, rape apologists, and misogynist harassers still deserve every inch of ire they get from me.

A recent Twitter poll set up by queer icon Allison Moon sought to determine how self-isolation is affecting people’s libidos, by quizzing couples who are isolated together about how their fuck-frequency has changed. It didn’t surprise me that more people reported a loss of sexual desire than an uptick – but what did surprise me is that the majority of respondents said their libido had stayed more-or-less the same. This leads me to suspect that some factors of this situation are boner-killers, while others are… boner-igniters? (Is that a thing? Please don’t light your dick on fire.)

I will now elucidate some of the factors I think might be contributing to the libidinal ambivalence of our current era…

Pro: You have more free time to kill and fewer activities to kill it with. (Some of you do, anyway, if you possess a certain level of privilege in this situation.)

Con: Many other activities can easily trounce sex in the battle for your attention. For instance – free Met opera streams, Animal Crossing, vying for a coveted grocery delivery time slot, your distant relatives’ COVID denialism on Facebook, the endless scroll of bad news on Twitter.

Content note: alcohol.

If you had told me a few months ago that soon I would spend most of my days cooped up inside, with none of my usual haunts and few of my usual habits available to me, I would’ve mourned book shops, theatres, and beloved sushi joints. I would have wept preemptively for the loss of long springtime walks through bustling streets, and eager journeys across national borders. I would not necessarily have thought to cry about bars.

But bars, I must confess, are what I miss the most about The Time Before – other than the safety, calm, trust, and optimism I had then that I (and much of the world) can no longer access.

I’m talking about bars here, you understand – not drinks. I can have drinks at home any time I like, and since my cocktail-whiz partner is staying with me and we’ve expanded my modest “home bar,” the drinks I can have at home are pretty damn good. No, what I miss is the atmosphere of a bar. The people. The process. The ritual. The vibe.

Your doctor knocks on the door of your hospital room, somehow hitting pause on all the tension and malaise in your body. His icy blue eyes have given you some of the only comfort you could find in the last few days. The rest of his face probably would, too, if you could see through his surgical mask (pale blue, of course, to bring out those beautiful eyes).

“Knock knock,” he says. “Just checking in. How are you feeling?”

You shrug. “The meds you gave me have taken the fever down a notch. Cough’s still coming and going. I’m not super great at breathing right now.” You laugh, and the laugh hitches in your lungs. The suppression of laughter, of self-expression, of communication – that’s the hardest thing.

“That’s how you’re doing, health-wise,” he notes, “but how are you doing really?” When you look mildly mystified, he continues: “Being quarantined can be very isolating. Many people have a hard time with it.”

Content note: COVID-19, global panic, alcohol, drugs, hypnosis, food, exercise, electrostimulation, rough sex.

It’s always weird when a crisis strips you not only of your routine but also of your core coping mechanisms. Normally if I was panicked about a global situation, I would grab a book and my headphones and go to a restaurant or bar to read and eat/drink alone, comforted by the solitude-among-people, the low-effort coziness, the sense of community with strangers. Or I would book an impulsive plane ride to go see my partner in New York. But obviously these measures do not hold up in the age of COVID-19, when we’re told over and over again: go nowhere, see no one. So, like many many others, I’ve been rewriting the rulebook of my own coping methods.

Here are some things I have found that help:

Content note: mentions of COVID-19/the novel coronavirus, as well as childhood sexuality.

I’m writing this from my bed, which I’ve barely left today on account of immense dizziness and nausea, side effects of a new drug I’m trying for my depression and chronic pain.

I’m also writing this from a time in history when “coronavirus” and “COVID-19” are the words on everybody’s lips. So, suffice it to say, sickness is on my mind.

When I attended the Toronto premiere of the documentary The Artist & the Pervert, which centers on the relationship between esteemed kink educator Mollena Williams-Haas and her genius dominant Georg Haas, the most striking scene to me by far (if you’ll pardon the pun) was a spanking that took place on the couple’s sofa.

It was the casualness, the everydayness, of the spanking that piqued my interest. This was not a thoroughly negotiated, carefully prepped scene; this was a moment of unrehearsed tenderness between two people who happen to be kinky. Watching a few playful swats devolve into a heavy beating felt equivalent to watching a vanilla couple melt from a chaste peck into a desperate, groping kiss. It was romantic, but not dramatic – unconventional, yet normal.

I’ve dreamed of this type of day-to-day D/s for years. Knowing it would manifest differently in reality than in fantasy, I’ve nonetheless daydreamed about cleaning a partner’s kitchen in an apron and lipstick, curling up at a dominant’s feet while they hold my leash during a Netflix marathon, getting tucked in and told a perverted bedtime story by my devious daddy. I enjoy blazing-hot kinky erotica as much as the next sub, but it’s stories of this type of habituated dynamic that really fascinate me. What does kink look like when early passions have calmed and comforting routines have set in?

Earlier this week, on a depressed and lethargic afternoon, I laid with my partner on their couch. We kissed mid-conversation, and as the kiss deepened, I turned to face them and laid my legs across their lap. Thus enabled, they raised their fist and began – gently at first, and then more insistently – to land a series of hard punches on the meaty part of my ass.

I learned something about myself by using a sex toy yesterday. It certainly wasn’t the first time that has happened, but this particular epiphany is one I hadn’t had before.

It was a Satisfyer toy, one of those ones that various different companies call “air pulse stimulators” or “oral sex simulators” or whatever the hell the current term is. Basically, they use quick pulses of air to create the sense of being touched, without much actual touching going on. The overall sensation is (to me, at least) ethereal and ghostly, which doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would get a person off, but hey. Not everything is as it seems.

I was telling a friend about the odd and thunderous orgasm I’d had with my new Satisfyer earlier in the day, and he said he’d been enjoying this type of toy lately too – moreso since he’s been receiving oral sex more regularly as of late. I replied that I’ve noticed a similar phenomenon in the past; it seems that the more my body grows accustomed to gentle, delicate sensations like oral sex, the more it can enjoy (or indeed, even perceive) such sensations. It’s an attunement, a recalibration. Traditional vibrators don’t cause permanent numbness, but there is a temporary desensitization effect many people experience from frequent vibrator usage, and oh boy have I been there.

My epiphany was this: my heart works like this, too.

Valentine’s Day invites us to paint a caricature of love. Valentine’s Day is to love as false eyelashes and high heels are to womanhood: one heightened manifestation of the thing, but by no means the thing in its fullness or normalcy.

The thing is, I would like every day to feel like Valentine’s Day, just as I would like to be the type of person who can wear false lashes and towering heels every day. In reality, I am complex and fallible, and so is love, so it isn’t possible to be “on” every minute of every day. If candlelit dinners and moonlit confessions were your daily life, they would lose all semblance of specialness. But Valentine’s Day calls on us to step into the fantasy that love could be like this all the time, that we could be like this all the time. It’s a fantasy I am very much open to – drawn to, even.

I just want the whole affair to be less pressured. The people who complain loudly about Valentine’s Day are usually decrying the burden of expectations: to spend money, to plan a perfect evening, to broadcast the perfection of your imperfect love on social media for all to see. I would love for the day’s mission to be the celebration of love, however that manifests for you.

Years when I’ve been single, I’ve often devised elaborate solo dates for myself, to bring a sense of specialness to a night that might otherwise be depressing. I’ve taken myself to musicals and plays and comedy shows. I’ve holed up in café windows with my laptop, drafting wildly romantic fanfiction stories about my favorite characters. I’ve filled a tote bag with beloved books and schlepped them to libraries or bookstores with big cushy armchairs for an afternoon of basking in other people’s ideas. I’ve gotten on trains or buses or streetcars, absurdly overdressed, for day-long sightseeing journeys while listening to podcasts. These are all, I think, courageous acts of self-love, because (cheesy as it is to say so) choosing and pursuing self-love is, itself, courageous.

I am an unfollowing evangelist.

Sometimes my friends will complain about someone in their social media spheres – this person has bad political takes, this person posts way too much salesy bullshit about the pyramid scheme they’ve been suckered into, this person constantly argues with me about reproductive rights – and my response is always, “UNFOLLOW THEM.” “UNFRIEND THEM.” “DELETE THEM FROM YOUR UNIVERSE.”

There are sometimes valid reasons to not do this – like, for example, if the person in question is your gossipy aunt who would definitely notice and would definitely relay that information to your mom ASAP – but even in those cases, there are steps you can take. Facebook allows you to “snooze” particular people, so you can shush your Bernie-bro cousin until the election hullabaloo is over. When you mute someone you’re following on Twitter, their replies still show up in your notifications, so you’ll see the stuff that’s relevant to you and none of the other bullshit. Soft-blocking – the practice of blocking and then quickly unblocking someone on Twitter, which swiftly and silently removes you from each other’s “following” lists – is a godsend, and can often be played off as a technological glitch if anyone inquires about the “accidental” unfollowing.

I really, truly feel that life is too short to spend time around people you dislike, or who dislike you – and interacting regularly with someone on social media is a modern way of “spending time with” them. True, it’s ideologically nutritious (as my friend Brent would say) to habitually absorb opinions you don’t agree with, so as to expand your mind and sharpen your convictions – but people whose opinions differ from yours don’t have to be dicks about it. If they routinely are, why keep them around? Why let them take up space, rent-free, in your head, firing up your nervous system a few times a week with their jabs and jibes?

We’d had “Matt teaches Kate how to make a Southside” on our ever-growing Things We Should Do Together list for a while, but I didn’t know it would happen the way it did.

“I’m going to make a Southside while talking you through every step as I do it, and then you’re going to make one for me,” Matt said.

“Oh, and you’re going to do it naked.”

Being completely naked in a kitchen is a very particular mood. (I was not even permitted, as I sometimes am, to keep my socks on.) It’s all cold tile and granite and chrome. Each step feels pronounced, each touch of your unprotected skin against any surface that isn’t someone else’s body. I’d barely finished tossing my last garment on the floor when Matt pushed me up against the screaming-cold refrigerator, making me gasp like I’d just been dunked in icewater, and kissed me, hard. I love learning all the various unexpected and random ways their sadism can manifest.

Thus satisfied – and definitely smirking – they began to make my drink. Muddled mint leaves, sweet simple syrup, good dry gin, fresh-squeezed limes. I observed each step, taking mental notes. I willed myself not to let Matt shake the thoughts out of my head like an Etch-a-Sketch when they agitated the drink in their metal shaker, home-bartender biceps tensed and working hard. I watched them double-strain the green drink into a chilled coupe and float a mint leaf delicately atop it. We each took a sip: perfect.

My process was slower; I spent more time scanning the counter for the components of each next step. I muddled messily, poured precariously. I needed help with the juicer because my hands are weak and full of pain zaps. But I built the drink successfully, eventually, and then we got to the shaking.

“Would you mind not looking at me for this part?” I asked. “I know that’s weird, but… it’s an anxiety thing.”

It’s an anxiety thing is always shorthand for something much more complex, and in this case it was: I’m nervous that I will do a bad job at this thing I know you value (having heard you comment admiringly or questioningly on many, many bartenders’ shakes), and that you will see it and think me less attractive for it, and I’m also worried that my many jiggly bits will jiggle when I jounce the drink around, in a way that would be imperceptible if I had clothes on, and that that, too, will make you love me less, even though you’ve seen me jiggle –  in some cases made me jiggle – in all manner of situations both silly and sexy.

So I don’t want you to watch me shake this drink because I think it will shake your resolve to love me, somehow.

I’m sure Matt didn’t know all the parts of this internal apprehension, but they knew some of them. They knew me well enough to agree to close their eyes while I walked around the corner into the living room and shook the hell out of that drink where no one could see.

It was delicious – not as pretty as the one Matt had made, but I would’ve gotten a good grade, had I been graded. We retired to the sofa with our Southsides. “Can I put my clothes back on?” I asked, and Matt laughed and said yes.

Now I sometimes make drinks for my roommate in our tiny kitchen, and when I get to the shaking part, she always dances. The ice thrashing against metal makes a rhythm that inspires in her a bodily need to move. I don’t hide anymore when I shake our drinks; I just watch her and we laugh together as the cold metal begins to frost over in my strong, practiced hands.

I love movies. Always have. My mom was an entertainment reporter the whole time I was growing up, so I watched “adult” movies (not porn… although, that too) even when I was too young to reasonably be doing so. I was 8 when I saw Cast Away, for example. Who takes an 8-year-old to see Cast Away?! My mom, that’s who. Because she intuited, correctly, that I would love it.

Anyway, one of the best and weirdest things about movies is the sex scenes they sometimes contain. Here is an incomplete list of movies I think should’ve had some fuckin’ in them. (Caution: there are spoilers in here for every movie mentioned!)

Cast Away (2000)

Okay, so, while we’re talking about it… I want to know everything about Tom Hanks’ character’s masturbation habits when he’s stuck on the island. Early in the film, we see him sharing passionate intimacy with his girlfriend Kelly in kisses, slow-dances, and gift exchanges, and I have to imagine their sexual connection is A+ too. So surely he jerked off thinking of her a lot when he was alone and stranded? He’s even got a photograph of her to use as wank fodder. Frankly I don’t expect that this would be a happy or sexy scene – probably more like “morosely masturbating while weeping in a cave” – but it would certainly help deepen his character and further illustrate his plight.

1. The amount of time it takes to get from your apartment to the airport – including in rush hour, including when public transit in your city is a mess, including when your suitcase is so heavy you think you’re going to fall down the subway stairs as you haul it.

2. Which airports – and terminals therein – you like and which you hate, a distinction that will likely hinge on the demeanor of the employees and the variety of food available.

3. How many podcast episodes you need to have pre-downloaded on your phone to get you through your typical journey.

4. How long it takes you to stop feeling bereft and out of whack once you’re back home, alone.

5. How long you can be apart before your heart starts to literally, sincerely ache.

6. The sex toys that, if you don’t pack them, you’ll later curse yourself and wish you did. (Plus their chargers, if applicable.)

7. How many condoms or other safer sex supplies you tend to need for the duration of a weekend.

8. What to say to a customs agent in order to spur the fewest follow-up questions. (I am always “visiting friends.” Always.)

9. The areas of an airport in which you can and cannot use your phone, and how to use yours sneakily where you’re not supposed to.

10. How to conjure intimacy via text, with selfies, sexts, and inside jokes.

11. What your brain and body tend to need after the ordeal that is travel (weed, cocktails, and a hot bath are common choices for me) and how to procure those things quickly in any city you regularly visit.

12. Time zone conversions. Like the back of your hand.

13. What sex feels like when you haven’t had it in a while.

14. What sex feels like when you’ve had it 10 times in the past 2 days.

15. How to answer when your mom asks “What did you do with [your partner] during your trip?” and the actual answer is “had sex all weekend.”

16. How to quiet the visceral sense in your stomach and bones that you are in the wrong place – that you belong with your person and your person isn’t where you are so you must therefore be in the wrong place, even if you’re in your own home.

17. How to make a packing list that more-or-less ensures you’ll never forget anything crucial.

18. How to deal if you realize you forgot something crucial. (Most such things, I have found, can be purchased at CVS.)

19. How to talk about your beloved to people who have never met them and adequately communicate just how charming and gorgeous they are.

20. What you want the future of your relationship to look like, and how hard it will realistically be to make it so. (If there are visas involved, I send my condolences and solidarity.)

21. How many pairs of underwear you need to pack for a weekend trip, keeping in mind not only the number of days you’ll be away but also the number of times you might soak through your current pair and need to change them midway through the day.

22. The best websites for finding good deals on flights. (I like SkyScanner.)

23. A quiet prayer or affirmation you can say to yourself when there’s turbulence on your flight and you feel like you’re going to die and you don’t want to die before you get to kiss your sweetheart again.

24. The particular emotional hell that ensues when jet lag and travel stress intersect with the guts-deep sadness of goodbye.

25. How to get through each day on wishes, texts, and hopeful promises.

I used to cap off every year by making grand, ambitious lists of sexual goals for the year to come. Try a new kink, date a new person, acquire a new sex toy, that sort of thing. If I was like a kid in a candy shop back then, now I’m more like a gourmet candy connoisseur, each consumption decision careful and considered – which isn’t necessarily an upgrade, given that the kid is probably having more fun (albeit accompanied by more stomachaches). Ah, such is life.

My one major sex goal for 2020, by comparison, sounds simple but is deceptively complex. It’s to learn to orgasm in a way that is new to me.

This exact desire is a frequent subject of discussion on sex-related forums and threads. Mostly it’s brought up by people with vulvas who want to learn to have vaginal orgasms – a statistical rarity and, some people say, maybe even a myth. These folks want to bend their bodies’ capabilities through sheer willpower, usually in order to please their partners and perhaps smooth over some sex-fuelled relationship tensions. I understand their reasoning, but I am no longer interested in chasing impossible goals solely so I can be “normal” by standards I don’t even believe in. Fuck that patriarchal cissexist heterocentric noise.

No, when I say I want to teach my body a new kind of orgasm, that’s a goal borne of my own pursuit of pleasure. As I’ve careened further down the asexuality spectrum, I’ve started to find that sometimes my genitals just don’t want to be touched – which would have been pretty unthinkable to me even a few years ago. Often I still want intimacy in those moments, and maybe even pleasure, but my junk is just… checked out. Not interested. Incapable of giving a fuck (so to speak). Hence my increased interest in alternative avenues of pleasure.

Happy holidays and impending new year, friends! I have some suggestions today for rituals you could do to cap off your year and ring in the new one. Some of these are woo-woo, because I’m one of those insufferable “spiritual but not religious” types, and some are not. Take what you love, make it your own, and let me know how it goes!

1. Wear red underwear on New Year’s Eve, perhaps purchased specifically for the occasion. This is supposedly an old tradition, meant to bring you good luck in the sex and romance sector of your life for the year to come.

2. Make a list of commitments you’re going to make in the new year that will lead you further down the ethical path you want to take. These could be as involved as “start volunteering for my local queer youth hotline” or as simple as “stop using the word ‘crazy’ because it’s ableist.” Consider sharing your list with a friend (or the internet) so you’ll feel more accountable to it.

3. Think hard about your 2020 goals while having your first orgasm of the year. (For bonus points, time it so you orgasm right at midnight!)

4. Make a playlist that you intend to be your soundtrack for the year to come. Put songs on it that make you feel the way you want your next year to feel.

5. If you don’t have anyone to kiss at midnight and you want to, try looking for a midnight date on Tinder or somesuch. There are other people out there who want to be kissed!

6. Take a leaf out of Alcoholics Anonymous’s book and make amends for the ways you fucked up this year. (It’s okay. We all fucked up in one way or another, every single one of us.) Send some heartfelt apology texts or emails. You’ll feel better and someone else might too.

7. Make a list of new kinks/sexual activities you want to try in the new year. Start researching how to do them, if you like.

8. Dance hard enough that you start sweating and glowing. (There are always lots of places to go dancing on New Year’s Eve.) Think of it like a cleansing ritual for your body and vibes. ✨

9. Think about one significant change you’d like to make to your appearance in the coming year. Haircut? New tattoo? Start wearing lipstick? These may seem small but they can make a huge difference in your self-perception and the way your life feels to you.

10. Email a few of the people you follow online, but don’t know IRL, to let them know how their work enriched your life this year.

11. Delete a bunch of apps from your phone, especially ones you never use or ones that needlessly stress you out.

12. Start planning any travel you want to do or events you want to attend in the new year. Having a roadmap of the year to come will keep you on track and excited about your future.

13. Unfollow people you dislike, or who make you feel bad, on social media. You don’t need ‘em.

14. If you’re into sadomasochism of any variety, do a heavy scene the intention of which is to cathartically clear out last year’s bullshit and make room for the new year’s delights. For example, last year my partner made me list my 2019 goals between hits during a spanking scene; they’ve also made me list my achievements in the same way, since I’m not always good at recognizing how far I’ve come.

15. Work your way through these Reverb journal prompts to help you reflect on your year and look ahead to the new one. (I like to do my heavy-duty journaling at cafés or cocktail bars.)

16. Take to heart the old maxim that the way you spend the first day of your year sets the tone for the other 364 days to come, and make your January 1st incredible in every way you can. If something goes awry and your New Year’s Day disappoints you for some reason, just try again the next day until you have a day you’re happy with, and make that day your ideal to strive for, going forward.

17. Start a sex spreadsheet!

18. Take stock of the new people you met this year, in both personal and professional contexts, and what you learned from each of them.

19. Go through your condom stash and throw out any that have expired. While you’re at it, get rid of any bottles of lube that have gotten old and gross, and toss any sex toys that aren’t body-safe.

20. Take a hot bath and ritualistically exfoliate your whole body with a scrub or a body brush. Don’t forget to moisturize afterward!

21. Text one person who you think is cute and tell them you think they’re cute. (To paraphrase Natalie from Love Actually, “If you can’t say it on New Year’s, when can you, hey?”)

22. Make a list of things you want to let go of – insecurity, impostor syndrome, that one ex you keep thinking about – and then burn the list (safely!). This is best done at a bonfire with a crew of friends all doing the same, especially if you each dramatically read your lists aloud before tossing them into the flames. Catharsis ahoy!

23. Go for brunch with friends on New Year’s Day. Quell your hangovers with diner food and coffee.

24. Clean out your inbox, downloads folder, purse(s), fridge, desk drawers, and so on. New years are fresh starts!

25. Have a loved one shoot some photos of you – perhaps sexy ones, nude or in cute underwear. Create a record of who you were – and how gorgeous you were – at the start of the year.

Do you have any treasured New Year’s rituals? Feel free to hit “reply” and tell me all about ‘em!

There are so many strange and beautiful things on Etsy. Today I glanced at these mermaid leggings and thought about their kink implications. Could one roleplay, I wondered, as a mermaid who has just awoken to find she’s in a human woman’s bedroom, her human-woman legs attired in iridescent leggings instead of iridescent scales? After the terror and panic passed, would she want to explore her new life, her new body?

I imagine dipping my fingers beneath the waistband, having never possessed a waistband before, and feeling the smooth flesh beneath. Wet and salty, but not like the sea. Hungry and hungrier with each touch. How long would I last before seeking out another human to show me the tidal rhythms of my own body? Would I wear my shiny leggings on a date to the beach, a month or two into a nascent human romance, and keep my tender truth inside as my beau looked at my long, salt-strewn hair and declared, “You look just like a mermaid”?

I can’t imagine a more perfect wedding dress than this strapless cotton and tulle gown by Cleo & Clementine. Wedding-night sex has long interested me, moreso as a kink concept than as a real-life desire. (It’s not that I don’t want to get married – if you’ll forgive the unintentional pun, “I do” – I just know myself well enough to know that a full day of socializing, eating, drinking, dancing, and high anxiety is far likelier to make me sleepy or weepy than horny.) I enjoy the thought of bundling into bed with my beloved once our formal attire has been shed, and having the ritualized, emotionally weighty sex known to follow nuptials. The historical associations of this type of sex with virginity, pain, and blood are horrible in reality and hot in fantasy, as are so many of the trappings of patriarchy.

I had most of my hair cut off today and, predictably, it is making me Feel Things.

It would be neither original nor particularly interesting for me to observe that hair can become tangled up with identity – mostly because people who don’t know you very well will assess you based on your hair (among other factors), but also because it is a daily part of how we shape our presentation for outside eyes. When we look in the mirror to discern whether we look okay, oftentimes we’re looking at our hair.

Mine had become heavy and useless, like a knit blanket in summer. I wore it up every day, fashioned it into fluffy shapes to keep it out of my face. Where once it had felt regal and feminine, it now merely got in my way. When I explained this to my hairdresser, he nodded gravely and said, “It’s time.” And then he took out his scissors and snipped off hair that had taken years upon years to grow.

The other important reason for this change is that I want to look queerer – which is a strange idea, when you think of it. I am queer at all times, queer in every outfit and every iteration. A rose is a rose is a rose; a bi girl is a bi girl is a bi girl. But flagging has always been an important part of queer culture, and it is important to me, too. Single bisexuals are more-or-less floating in space, sexual identity-wise, in that people are less likely during those unpartnered interludes to incorrectly infer that you are straight or gay; partnered bisexuals, on the other hand, tend to get hammered down into ill-fitting descriptors, like a star-shaped block that a toddler tries to wedge into a square-shaped hole. I’ve dated people all across the gender spectrum, and every time, I felt it: the narrowing of perceptions around me, the “Aha, we’ve finally got her figured out,” the winnowing away of my multisexual truth.

It is snowing today in Toronto and it feels like nothing counts.

It’s that December feeling, that hazy-holiday feeling, that end-of-semester feeling, that “fuck it, whatever” feeling. The snow cushions our intentions, muffles the din of the world. As we count down to New Year’s Eve, we throw caution out the snow-caked window, because there is only so much time left to create memories and be brave.

This was the mood that permeated my first date with my now-partner, and I’m half-convinced the date, let alone the entire relationship, would not have happened if not precipitated by December. December is a month when, if someone DMs me out of the blue to ask me out for coffee in a different city, I might just say yes.

In high school, December was exam time, when classes abruptly ended and we students were left to manage our own schedules for a while, almost like adults. We made 11 a.m. Starbucks runs with our friends before retiring to someone’s house for “study parties,” luxuriating in the novelty of not being in class during class hours. When an exam loomed, we would wander through the deep snow on our school’s campus and through the big glass doors, eyes darting around for people we knew. Some of my headiest high school memories are of those days, when crossing paths with your crush was less assured and thus more special when it did happen, in hallways, on snowy lawns, in the Pizza Pizza across the bridge where we all fortified ourselves between long essay-writing sessions trapped in the gym. The eerie quiet soundtracked our pubescent excitement. I could more easily say “You’re cute!” or “You know I’ve had a crush on you all year, right?” under the guise of yuletide truthfulness. It all felt justified and it all felt desperately important.