Category: Diary
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It’s my birthday.
Outside the rain beat a percussive song upon the roof, windows, and gutters of our farmhouse. It filled my head with melodies and I hummed along. I am in love with life and nature. How can I fall deeper in love with life?
I ran out naked and bathed in the rain. Ligo sa ulan.
This is my birthday nude this year. Completely nude. No make-up, no filter, no hair dye. Just flowers and leaves surrounding my head, grass and mud squished underneath my feet, and rain rain rain on my skin and hair.
Rain is kisses from the heavens.
Celebrate 24 years of birthday nudes with me. 😘🎂
Love, Lust, and Liberty,
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Rainy Birthday Nudes
I had a rainy birthday, so Jay suggested that we recreate our very first photo shoot, Rainy Day Girl. He let me borrow his 100+ year old coat tails, handed me a frog umbrella, and followed me around our backyard with a camera. Tracing our steps back to the first time we played with a camera together was as refreshing as the misty autumn air. It reminded us both of that electric excitement we felt when we first started dating and collaborating.
It’s been over 25 years since Rainy Day Girl. We’ve accumulated deeply scarring emotional baggage as well as amazing memories of profound connection. I am grateful for all of it. I open myself up for more. At some point during our rainy day frolic in the backyard I got down on a bed of wet autumn leaves on the ground. Sometimes the only way to create beauty is to get dirty.
Celebrate my birthday nudes with me.
Love, Lust, and Liberty,
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Batgirl
When I was five I was Batgirl. Not just on Halloween. I was Batgirl everyday, everywhere. Eventually my Mom convinced me that I didn’t need to wear the costume to be Batgirl. After all, superheroes are still superheroes even when they are in their civilian clothes. I adored Barbara Gordon just as much as I did Batgirl. She is a Librarian, a real hero in my book.
I went into first grade at a Catholic school run by nuns. (I wore a tan uniform on regular days and an all-white one they called our gala uniform for when there was Mass on a special day. But this is irrelevant. Anyway…) One afternoon after school I was snooping around the nuns’ cloister and found a giant fruit bat, the famous flying fox, hanging upside down from the rafters. I don’t know how big it actually was, but six-year-old me remembers it as humungous. I may as well have seen God. I trembled in awe and fear, backed away with my wide eyes glued, hoping the creature does not fix its powerful gaze upon me.
For the rest of my life the Bat owns me. I invoke her powers when I need resonance and echolocation, courage in darkness, rest in uncomfortable circumstances.
Like that time in New York City when I met the Man I would marry. It was the middle of a blizzard. He invited me to his place on Staten Island, a Victorian Mansion haunted with giant ceramic demons hanging from trees, feathered Indians made of stone, and life size Nativity figures looking out from inside the street-level fence. Indoors there were grand pianos, antique furniture piled on top of each other, a billiards table in the basement, and taxidermy birds, fox and a giant elk head mounted on the other side of the wall his third floor bedroom loft was against. By the time I got in his bed, we had already been out three times and I was wondering why he wouldn’t make a move on me. So I kissed him. That was all it took. It unleashed in him the giant wild horned beast just a wall away from our heads. We fell in love.
There was one afternoon when he and I walked from the Mansion to the Staten Island Ferry bound for Manhattan. He stopped me, and bent to pick up a black plastic Batman ring on the snow-white ground. Then he took my left hand and slipped the toy on my ring finger. Realizing what he’d just done, we both became nervous. A strong gust of cold river wind hit us. I pondered it all while the winding winter wind whipped at us. At that time I hadn’t yet told him I was Batgirl. What was going on? Who gave him a clue? And most importantly, did it mean I could hang upside down with him for the rest of my life? The Lenape natives called the large island south of Manhattan Aquehonga Manacknong, “Sandy Shores and Haunted Forests.” Those island ghosts knew.
Decades later, my Elk-Man and I live together in a big old 19th century farmhouse with a barn attic full of antique furniture, art, and toys of our own. I’m still Batgirl and this is where I hang.
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My Secret Life
Today is my parents’ wedding anniversary. Almost nine months later I was born, which informs me that I was either a honeymoon baby or the shotgun that made the wedding happen. I never asked. I know that whether it was through forbidden lust or wedding night excitement, I was born of passion between two young and beautiful people. I like leaving it at that.
Throughout my life I found that at my best I exude sexual power, passion, desire. I am a natural flirt. I make love to everyone I encounter in one way or another. At my worst I am ashamed to draw attention to myself. My very existence is a disgrace, a hushed up secret people whisper about while they shake their heads and click their tongues knowingly.
I was born with jaundice, so I remained at the hospital for two weeks after my birth. My parents visited me daily, but I learned that I could cry my head off and still not be held if it wasn’t on schedule. By the time I came home from the hospital my mother said that I was such a “good” baby. I never fussed. At less than a month old, I already knew how to take care of myself, not be demanding, just take what I get and don’t get upset.
I spent my childhood being the “good girl.” I truly was. I took everything I learned about Jesus and life to heart. I read voraciously. I was thoughtful, diligent, quiet. But I had a lot of questions that no one around me could answer and pretty soon I learned to silence those questions because they bothered people.
Upon reflection I realize that I’ve always had a well-developed secret life. It’s where I put all the unanswered questions, the provocative ones that most people don’t dare utter. It’s where I stored my ugly feelings, jealousy, anger, ambition. It’s where I learned about sex and desire. It’s where it was okay to be “bad.”
On the outside I continued going to church, getting good marks at Catholic school, singing at choir. I got so good at being “good,” so good at seeming good to make other people feel good. In college I got involved in theatre and it freed me. For the first time I could be “bad” and be applauded for it. I didn’t know it then but in time I noticed that I almost always got cast in sexy roles: the femme fatale mermaid, the hyper-sexual old maid, the tragic drug addicted porn star, the powerful whore… the list goes on. I inhabited these characters like my life depended on it, because for a brief moment my secret life could breathe, speak, move.
When Jay and I first started dating he saw me in one of my shows, really saw me, and helped release that secret me into the real world. It was so exciting! The badder I got, the more he liked me.
Then the internet saved many an introvert’s life, mine included. Jay and I dove head first into the web, full send. My secret life thrived online, right here on this blog that I’ve been writing since 2002. I found people I connect with: critical thinkers, sexuality explorers, creatives and geeks of all kinds. We all brought our secret lives together to create this world, one blog, one post, one tweet at a time.
This photo is from January 2002 in Las Vegas when I attended the AVN convention. I’m looking out to the Venetian hotel courtyard, naked as a newborn baby, arms outstretched taking up space. Not a care for anyone else in the world. Not a fuck given to anyone else’s opinion. Open to any and all experience. Young, bold, and stupid.
So much has happened since. Life has had its way with me, blown me up, knocked me down. It takes a little more bravery to get back up and keep going after my confidence is shaken but here I am again, standing naked looking out my window in January 2021, a little wiser for the wear, taking up space. I am still here. I am worthy.
I know where my power comes from. I trust it. I step into it. I belong here. This is my rightful place. I am worthy of this space.
Love, Lust, & Liberty,
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Booty Love
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.
My backyard barefoot meditations helped ground me. The earth said to me, “Stop fleeing. You are home.”
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.
Love, Lust, & Liberty,
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Meet the Woman of My Dreams
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 🎵🎶
Pillow talk: How did 2020 transform you? What do you look forward to becoming in 2021?
Love, Lust, & Liberty,