First Hump Day of 2021. How is your work week so far? I am starting the year with a daily yoga practice. So far so good, 6 out of 6 days in.
I’ve done yoga off and on for years but haven’t connected to it until now. During the latter part of the past year I rediscovered it, paying special attention to the first chakra.
All summer I ran around barefoot in the backyard imagining roots growing out of my feet and digging deep into the ground, absorbing the nutrients of the soil, nourishing me from toes to the crown of my head. I repeated a mantra, “I belong here.”
As an immigrant, someone who has moved around a bit, I can be rootless, sometimes escapist. At best my escapism fuels creativity. At worst I may be avoidant and non-confrontational of problems or difficulties in life. Whenever Jay and I fought, and we did fiercely, my instincts were to fight or flight.
I started doing yoga when it got too cold. My appreciation, adoration, and reverence for the first chakra deepened. I am learning to ground myself in the strength of my butt hole before reaching to the heavens.
Give your ass some love and everything else will align, stacked neatly on top of it.
Happy New Year! As of this moment I am bundled up in this wool blanket Jay gave me for Christmas. It zips open in the middle to allow me to wear it as a serape. It is my favorite thing to wear.
Last year I posted my Slut Stats, which spanned an entire decade from 2010 to 2019. This past year 2020 I only had a total of 5 periods, with an average of 63 days in a cycle, the longest being 140 days, and the shortest 20 days. The last time I had my period was in November.
I had a total of 6 partners, all male, all people I’d previously been with. By March when we were made aware of the pandemic, Jay and I became monogamous. I had sex 333 out of 366 days.
As difficult as 2020 was, it was also transformational for me on a personal level. I realized that I had been too preoccupied attempting to be the woman of other people’s dreams, that I had not asked myself the most important question: Am I the woman of my dreams?
As 2020 fades into a memory, I release myself from the pressure to be your or anyone else’s fantasy woman. I release myself from my fear that I’m too old, irrelevant, not keeping up with the amazing young sexy talent slaying the social media scene.
I am looking forward to becoming the woman of my dreams. I am stepping up to shine as an even more authentic version of my self, even though at this point, I’m not completely sure who that is. I am going into 2021 with curiosity, confidence in my pleasure, and clear communication. I trust that the Me that I am becoming is loved and desirable.
As we go deeper into this winter, I invite you to stay in. Give me tonight. Regalame Esta Noche šµš¶
Pillow talk: How did 2020 transform you? What do you look forward to becoming in 2021?
Thank you for appearing to me in my dream. You look beautiful! The whole dream was lit in the romance I have come to see in places and people I miss. I am in an old Spanish style house in an unknown Philippine province. I am putting clothes away in a cabinet. The capiz shell windows glow in the sun. It is high noon but cool indoors. I hear a tricycle pull up outside, bags being loaded. I go out and there you are, about to get on that tricycle.
āIām going back to Manila,ā you say. āCome with me.ā
I shake my head. āNot right now.ā
I really want to, but I decide not to. I still have things to do. I donāt think too hard about it.
So I watch you go off on that tricycle kicking up sepia dust on that bright sunny day. Iām filled with joy having caught a glimpse of your otherworldly beauty. I feel the loss of having chosen to stay behind.
I woke up crying and realizing the impact of another dream I had, about a month before you died. I didnāt give much importance to it at the time. I blogged about it, but didnāt name you, or let you know it was you. I was embarrassed. It revealed more than I was willing to share.
In the dream I was walking along a beach with you. There are two guys with us. I donāt recognize any of them in my lexicon of real life guys, but in this dream world we are hanging out with them. You throw off your clothes and jump in the water. The guys follow quickly. I fumble with the buttons on my white shirt. It is taking me so long to undress. I woke before I am able to join you skinny dipping.
I didnāt understand it then. I didn’t see that dream as a premonition. I felt remorse for being too late, regret for moments I let pass because of some stupid reason or another, a crippling awkwardness about things. A little over a month after my dream, you slipped into a coma and died.
One of these days I will be able to join you in the ocean or ride away on a tricycle. Maybe I’ll catch you the next time you come around. As the sky goes dark tonight, I am reminded that pain is not the enemy. It merely points the way to the wound. Before we tend to it, we have to understand what the injury is. We have to allow ourselves to experience it. Then we can take steps toward healing and transformation.
I suppose a lot of fallen beings now miss The Gardenās heavenly Fruits. And Iāll tell you why:
In that place exists Complete Bliss. A Fruitāany Fruitāplucked from its enchanted trees, and savored garden-fresh is guaranteed to bring you to the Ultimate of your Beingāno matter what level of Be-ing you might be at the moment. This is an experience many seek, for both enlightenment and pleasure, and it is because of this service that many bitter beingsāthose denied access and who sulk salivating hungrily at the Gatesācall it The Cosmic Brothel.
Yes, dear friends. In The Garden one could find the Supreme Fuck, and reach the mind-shaking, soul-stirring Orgasm that could fire up your neurons swifter than Hermes on speed and expand your consciousness faster and greater than Zephyrus could ever impress with his smoke-rings.
In The Garden, Orgasms are made into Legends. That rumor about Osiris and Isis making out in The Nile and a crocodile biting off Osirisā Venerable Dick? It occurred Right Here, when he won Isis (then a plump, ripe, rare Fruit-Woman specimen, in bloom only for every dozen millennia) in a game of dice, and chose to hump his prize in the Stream of Motherās Milk where a gameful lizard nipped at his member. Strengthened by the milk, Isis was blessed with the awareness to search for the still-throbbing penis while Osiris howled in unholy pain. You all know that the search proved futile, but since then every being was aware of who wore the proverbial pants in the family.
Isis was one of the few fruits to achieve Deity-status, which she probably earned by impressing upon everyone that the heat that possessed her loins equaled only the determination to find her mateās penis. Thereās nothing like a single-minded, driven woman, and she got her due reward! They never found the real organ, but being the cosmic beings they were, they discovered alternative ways to get it on, and always, in the warm creaminess of the Stream, which, in their more affectionate moments, they called their āmotherā. It is because of this, perhaps, that some have thought Isis and Osiris sister and brother.
There were clouds and rain on the forecast but it was sunny on the morning of my birthday. Maybe a little windy, but the sun felt warm on my bare skin. https://t.co/2CZnCaACNNpic.twitter.com/fa595Z0C33
I put on the antlers Jay bought me a few days ago. It made me happy to run around naked in the woods behind our house where many a herd of deer have passed through. I keep a pile of fruit and vegetable scraps at the edge of the wood year round, but winter is when the wild life need it most.
I hiked to the top of this cliff. Jay took my photos from the bottom of the rocky hill.
It was a perfect autumn morning. The wind prickled my skin and the sun soothed it. Pine needles on the bald rocks felt slippery under my bare feet. https://t.co/2CZnCaACNNpic.twitter.com/L69UUNw9Ly
I went down on all fours like a beast, waving my invisible tail side to side. When I descended he covered me with his arms and told me I was beautiful.
It’s gorgeous out! Gonna get some sun time. Have a beautiful Saturday! Here’s some more from the full set of birthday nudes barefoot outdoors pics at https://t.co/urjztDkZYD š
We made love tenderly at first, then dirty, like animals. He filled me and filled me and filled me until I oozed delirious and he was spent.
Every year since 1999 I take a nude photo on my birthday. Itās now a 21-year tradition that will not end in 2020. Life goes on and so will I. This yearās birthday nude is coming soon to https://t.co/2CZnCaACNNpic.twitter.com/phlSkfdPwS
I washed up, got dressed, and picked up our kid from school. I slid to the passenger seat to let her drive us home.
“How was your day?” I asked. She paused before she told me she had a weird day of not much happening in her classes, then at study hall her friend messaged to say that his dad died. He wasn’t ill. He just died. My daughter seemed deeply affected by that. It hit her hard to think that any day, without warning or indication, she could lose either one of her parents, too.
I took a proactive role and said that we should go get food for her friendās family. We got a whole rotisserie chicken, a vegetable side dish, and yellow chrysanthemums. I told my daughter to text her friend to ask if we could come over with some food. He said yes.
By the time we got out of the grocery store, it was pouring really hard. My daughter drove in the rain to her friendās house. It was a long way to Hope, which is the next town over from ours. She turned into a dirt road and up a hill. At the top of the hill is her friend’s house. His family had moved here from Illinois just a year ago. The car parked outside still has Illinois plates. Who knows what situation they are in now without the father?
My daughter wanted me to come along with her. She is so shy, my kid. We put on our masks and walked up to the house.
Her friend answered the door. He looked tired. His eyes were red and puffy.
āIām so sorry,” I said, as I handed him the paper bag full of food.
He said, āNone of us feel like cooking.ā
āWe figured,ā I said. I wanted to hug him, but I didn’t know what was right anymore. We ran back to the car to get out of the rain.
When we got home, my daughter baked me a birthday cake while Jay and I made dinner. We talked about life and love. We told stories and laughed. Underneath it all was the thought that death comes for us all, sooner or later. The question isn’t when, it’s how.
We all get to pick our poison. Some people choose alcohol, drugs, sugar. Others have an obsession with thinness and beauty. Then there are those whose passion becomes a poison, revolutionaries, workaholics, lovers of all kinds.
Jay always said he wanted a beautiful woman to kill him. She could be me, killing him slowly, one headache, one heartache, at a time. If my life was a painting, I’ve already messed up the canvas, made many mistakes and accumulated regrets for inaction. It’s time to pull together all the loose ends, the painful lessons, the dark memories of my life and transform it into a beautiful work of art.
That night, as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake, I wished for more time to love him the way he wants to be loved as a unique and extraordinary human. I’ve only just begun to learn how.
Shortly after Lilith: Queen of the Demons was published Jay and I became friends with a young woman named Lillian. She had straight black hair down to her waist, an hourglass figure, and a pretty smile. She used to visit weekly, always dressed impeccably from head to toe. She and Jay spent a lot of time together, cooking and baking all kinds of goodies. They were friends and sometimes they were lovers.
When Lillian was a baby in Vietnam, she suffered a fire injury that required her to undergo surgery. The operation left her without a belly button for the rest of her life. Just like Lilith, who was not born of a human mother, fashioned out of clay by God.
It was uncanny and I thought it auspicious to have her in our lives. There was a point when she began looking for a house to buy in which we could all live together, but it all changed when she met someone else. They got married in a whirl. We never saw her again.
I will always consider her arrival as an otherworldly presence. The divine moves in mysterious ways. I cannot begin to fathom it. I can only be thankful when it happens.
Another strange visitation occurred when I was recording the audiobook for Lilith: Generations of Cain. I didn’t notice it while I recorded, but during playback the angel and demon names were obscured by static.
The first time it happened I got a shiver down my spine. I took a pause, then went back in front of the microphone like a soldier. Every time it happened I got more stubborn and determined to get through the text. Lilith: Generations of Cain is all about the power of names. It seemed to me that a presence, divine or not, was making me work hard to pronounce these holy and unholy names.
This past summer as I worked on Lilith: Beyond the Deluge, I was on a business call with someone who went off tangent about strange situations he had found himself in, seeing supernatural creatures among people in New York City, hearing people’s thoughts from across the room. He said he felt like he could tell me these things he never told anyone. I listened to him for an hour before I wrapped up the conversation and brought it back to business. I asked for his name.
“Michael.”
“You have an ‘el’ name,” I mused. Many of the angels (and some demons) have names that end with ‘el.’ Azazel, Samael, Rafael, Gabriel, Baraqiel, Daniel, Michael…
“Ah, so you know…” He sounded pleased. “It comes from God’s name ‘El Shaddai’ and ‘Elohim.’”
I thanked him again and said goodbye.
Before he hung up he said, “You will hear from me again.”
I thought nothing of it. Even when I pulled out of the garage and saw a crow sitting in a tree across from me I didn’t think to tie anything together.
I should mention that it was a special day, my Dad’s birthday and my (great grand aunt) Lola Ilyang’s death day. I facetimed with my Dad that evening, but the only way I connected with Lola Ilyang was from mysterious events that happened all day: a swarm of bees robbing my hive, the phone call from an angel, the crow in the tree. Everything brought me memories of her.
Laurelia (Lola Ilyang) was a spinster who lived with her little dachshund, Cupsi, in a hut in the middle of a tobacco field in Pangasinan. She was the first witchy woman in my life. She had long salt and pepper hair. She told stories of the kapre smoking her tobacco. She entertained our maids by reading common playing cards for divination.
Ten days after the odd phone call, my mother tagged me in a Facebook post. My college friend died. Deogracias Cruz. Is there a name more God-like than his? The Facebook post contained a video of Deo singing the Prayer to St. Michael.
“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.”
The man on the phone said I would hear from him again. I did not know it would be this way.
That afternoon Jay invited me out to the temple he had built in our backyard, overgrown with yarrow and lupines in the spring; tansy, mint, and goldenrod in the late summer. Jay spent the summer clearing around an arrangement of rocks and made paths to it. He decorated the place with Hindu gods and goddesses, Balinese wooden animals, and a statue of Quan Yin. There is a bed of marbles of various sizes, a solar system at the foot of a wooden frog. A Nag Champa cone burned and dripped smoke down a path in the rocks. As soon as the incense burned out, it started to rain. Thunder. We went inside.
I made chicken soup from scratch. It’s a long process that begins with boiling a chicken carcass into broth. My daughter named it “Mama’s famous chicken soup” way back when a butcher in California used to gift me with chicken carcasses whenever I came around his shop. I set aside a wishbone for my collection. I keep several wishbones in a little teapot. I realize it’s kind of witchy but it makes me feel lucky.
It doesnāt hurt anymore, though. Good to know I’m not allergic, just feeling stupid and sorry that my fierce little honeybee had to die to teach me a lesson. There is nothing I can do to bring her back, no offering or apology. All I can do is learn from experience. I should not have gone into the middle frames at all. Delicate stuff, making babies. Itās life or death in there. I should have respected their inner chamber. Thatās where the magic happens.
One month since my bees moved in and they are a thriving busy hive. I’ve seen a drone, a male whose only job is to fuck the Queen with his endophallus, pop off into her Queen V, then die shortly after. A queen typically gets gangbanged and creampied by up to 20 drones in an afternoon. It’s enough cum for her to lay eggs the rest of her life.
Queen Puabee is productive and beautiful! Her all-female worker bees are attentive and protective. When I went into the two middle frames a small army attacked me. I was wearing a beekeeping veil and jacket, but one of the worker bees stung my thigh right through my skinny Leviās. I suck at making a smoker so I had no smoke and I don’t want to smoke my bees out anyway, so I walked about twenty feet off and lit my smoker again and surprisingly it worked and I smoked myself out until the bees left me. Then I went back, closed their hive back up, and filled their feeder with simple syrup.
Just two weeks earlier on the 14th day beehive inspection, they weren’t as fiercely protective yet. Get a glimpse of Queen Puabee in this video — she is marked with blue paint on her thorax — and listen to me get all excited about larvae.
I’ve wanted this for so long and now I finally did it. I set up a beehive.
There were about 15,000 bees and Queen jammed in this traveling box for 1,500 miles. Tired and hungry for days, they were in no mood to be shaken and pounded out, even if it was into a more spacious hive where I had over half a gallon of sugar syrup waiting for them.
I couldn’t have done this without you and your support of my projects, so congratulations to you, too. WE STARTED A BEEHIVE!
I will be checking in on the queen in a few days to make sure she is feeling sexy in her new home. I’ve named her Queen Puabee, after the Sumerian Queen Puabi of the First Dynasty of Ur.
I’ve been keeping our two acres lush and inviting to pollinators and other wild creatures for years. I’m confident that there will be plenty of nectar for everybody.
It might still be a long time before I see some honey. This early stage is all about my girls building the combs for Queen Puabee to lay eggs. Once they make honey I’ll have to make sure they have enough to survive over the winter. So much to learn but Iām really excited to do it.
