May Ling Su

Tag: Catholic

  • My Secret Life

    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.

    May Ling Su at the Venetian in Las Vegas 2002

    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.

    May Ling Su at the window

    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,

    May Ling Su signature
  • Strange Things

    Strange Things

    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.

    Lilith book series on audiobook, kindle, paperback by May Ling Su

    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.

    Deogracias. Thank You, God.

    Love, Lust, & Liberty,

    May Ling Su signature

  • Slut Stats

    Slut Stats

    It’s three days before the new year (and the new decade). I was going through my period tracker app, which I also use to log my sexual encounters, and realized that I have been faithfully logging data in it since July of 2010.

    This is not a new concept. Since the dark ages, the nuns in my Catholic school taught us to keep a calendar in our sex ed class. They handed out blank graphs for charting our vaginal discharges and basal body temperature. I’ve been logging my cycles and sexual encounters right alongside writing in my diary since.

    My teen cycles were unpredictable. Although I was sexually active at 15, it was a good thing I wasn’t having intercourse yet at that time or I would have been a wreck constantly worrying about whether I was pregnant. I got my first p-in-v at the age of 20 and birth control soon after. I quit birth control at the age of 30 and became pregnant within a couple of months. When my cycles resumed about 8 months after birth, my body was so in tune with the moon. Let’s start with my mom-bod numbers:

    • From July 2010 to November 2013 my cycles were between 26 to 34 days long, an average of 27 days.
    • December 2013 was a blue moon with two periods. My first cycle was 19 days long, followed by a normal 26-day cycle. It coincided with my first New England winter. From then on I had off-cycles once or twice a year, usually extra long cycles during the winter.
    • 2017 I got extra long cycles in the summer months: 52 days, 47 days, 52 days… in addition to 49 days in the winter. This coincided with getting fitted with an IUD in the spring, which I did because my previous off-cycles were stressing me out. I had been sexually active with multiple partners and no birth control prior.
    • 2018 became even more irregular: ranging from 16 days in May to 51 days in June, average of 32 day cycles.
    • 2019 is the year of very long cycles: ranging from a normal 28 days in February to a whopping 80 days that spanned my entire summer. My average cycle is now 47 days. One word: perimenopause. This is the beginning of the end.

    As for sexual encounters, my app has a limitation of only one Yes/No tab per day. I usually have partnered sex more than once a day. I entered more detailed information in the Notes section, but it isn’t quantified by the app, so although I have the data, the numbers are not pre-crunched for me. Even so I hope you like numbers because I’m about to hit you with my slut stats:

    • I had sex 303 days out of 365 in 2019. I had 1 primary partner for most, if not all, of the 303 days I had sex in 2019. 4 partners I had repeated sexual encounters with throughout the year. Another 4 partners I had only one sexual encounter with in 2019, but had encounters with prior. That’s a total of 9 partners, all male. I had no female partners in 2019, no new partners.
    • I had sex 277 days out of 365 in 2018. I had a total of 10 partners, 9 male and 1 female. No new partners.
    • I had sex 316 days out of 365 in 2017. I had a total of 24 partners: 1 primary, 11 male repeats, 8 male one-time encounters, 2 female repeats, 2 female one-time encounters.
    • I had sex 245 days out of 366 in 2016. I had a total of 25 partners: 1 primary partner, 3 men I had sex with in the previous year that I had repeated sexual encounters with in 2016, 10 new partners with whom I had repeated sexual encounters with throughout the year, 8 male one-time sexual encounters, 2 female repeats, 1 female one-time encounter.
    • I had sex 220 days out of 365 in 2015. I had a total of 20 partners: 1 primary partner, 1 man I had sex with in the previous year that continued in 2015, 4 new partners that I had repeated sexual encounters with in 2015, 9 male one-time encounters, 5 of them were in a gangbang.
    • I had sex 190 days out of 365 in 2014. I had a total of 3 partners: 1 primary partner, 1 male partner I had sex with once but had sex with him before, 1 new male partner I had sex with repeatedly throughout the year.
    • I had sex 215 days out of 365 in 2013. I had a total of 2 partners: 1 primary partner and 1 male partner I’ve had sex with for years prior. This was the year we moved from California to the North East.
    • I had sex 246 days out of 366 in 2012. I had a total of 4 partners: 1 primary partner and 2 new male partners, 1 new female partner.
    • I had sex 110 days out of 365 in 2011. I had a total of 4 partners: 1 primary partner, 1 male partner I’ve had sex with for years, 1 male one-time encounter, 1 female one-time encounter.
    May Ling Su bends over in tiny ruffled bed shorts and a warm white sweater.

    Only 2 partners are non-binary. The rest are cisgender. Don’t even ask me to do the math for my lifetime tally of partners.

    I definitely grew sluttier in the years 2015 to 2017. Maybe it’s the long New England winters. Maybe it’s me hitting my forties and feeling like I’m about to run out of my fuckable years. I grew a bit more sane in the past couple of years, but it’s still way more partners than I ever had in California during my thirties and New York in my twenties.

    I’ve contracted an STI only once in my lifetime: chlamydia in 2016, after my gangbang in December of 2015. Fucking Christmas present, huh? It cleared up with a round of antibiotics.

    I gave every single one of my partners orgasms each time, but in the past decade only 4 of my partners had ever made me cum. Most of my orgasms I gave myself.

    My primary partner accounts for almost all of the days I had sex because he was present whenever I’ve had sex with others, even though he may not always be in the same room. It’s very rare that I don’t touch base with him after an encounter with someone else, and then you can guess what happens when I get back together with him. More sex. So really, multiply the number of days with at least 2 and you’ll get an estimate number of times I had sex each year.

    Your turn. Don’t worry, I’m the last person who will judge. And honestly, anyone who reads my blog shouldn’t have any business judging either. So tell me, how often do you have sex? How many partners?

    Love, Lust, and Liberty,

    May Ling Su signature
  • My Friend For Life, Gina

    My Friend For Life, Gina

    I went to an all-girls nun-run Catholic high school in the Philippines, very strict and narrow-minded. I was a good student but something as trivial as my asymmetric hairstyle got their nunnery panties in a bunch. What made high school life worth living was Gina. She and I connected on an artistic and literary level. She was a huge The Cure fan, so I drew her a portrait of Robert Smith. She wrote me a fantasy article for Town & Country magazine, in which I am a fabulous art curator and married to Johnny Depp. We talked endlessly about ideas for stories we wanted to write someday and we talked about sex. Sure, we had no experience whatsoever, but we were teenagers. Sex was an obsession.

    In college she went to UP and I went to Ateneo. She partied hard with her sorority sisters. I got sucked into music and theatre. She invited me to an Upsilon event once. I felt out of place. Our paths divided for the time being.

    She tracked me down in the mid-90s when I was in New York. I was performing Off and Off-Off-Broadway. She was a young single mom, making it as a writer and editor in Manila. She found out I made my own body products so she asked me to write an article for her fledgling magazine, Earthian. It was granola and green long before it was a thing. I accepted. It was my first published piece.

    In the mid-2000s she discovered an obscure anonymous blog I was writing about my pregnancy and home birth. She asked if she could publish it on Working Mom magazine. How could I say no to celebrating my infant’s birth on the pages of a glossy magazine? Gina made me feel like a celebrity.

    When she found out about my porn, she stayed on my side all the way. She defended me against attacks behind my back from people we went to high school with and if you knew her, you’d know she unleashed a fury on anyone who crossed her or her loved ones. I flew to San Diego to catch up with her when she visited in 2010. We were regulars at her pub, Fred’s Revolucion in Cubao X in 2012. A few years later, she and her family were guests in our old farmhouse in Maine. We shared stories, beer, and laughter indoors while our kids ages 11 and 12 built a bonfire in the backyard because that’s the kind of parents we were and that’s the kind of kickass kids we raised.

    She roped me in to write for Agam, the book of photos by her husband, photojournalist Jose Enrique Soriano. As executive editor, she included me among 24 contributing writers – accomplished poets, journalists, anthropologists, scientists, and artists from the Philippines. I felt like the black sheep among those luminaries, but Gina was my champion. She believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. She autographed my copy of the book: Will always be your friend, fan, and supporter – living vicariously through your groundbreaking work. Love you.

    Tuesday night I got a message from her husband. Gina was in a coma in St. Luke’s ER. No one saw it coming. He asked for prayers. When an atheist asks an agnostic to pray for a Catholic, you know it’s serious. I prayed. I used all my mental energy to summon her back. “Come back, Gina,” I commented on a recent Facebook post in which she had tagged me. Come back, Gina, I thought constantly day and night. Come back to us. Thursday around 5 in the morning I woke up with a cramp in my chest. It pinched everytime I breathed. My heart literally hurt. I messaged her husband, “Tell me something, anything.”

    She’s gone.

    “She loved you and we were looking forward to visiting again.”

    I had a difficult loud ugly cry by myself until Jay came out of his studio and held me and we cried together. I am so glad he got to know her. I’m glad I have somebody to grieve with and celebrate her life with.

    Gina recently posted a fabulous profile picture across all her social media channels and even more fabulous photos of her and her kids at a kiki ball. Just last weekend her kids thanked her for giving them “a rich uncommon childhood.” She said she won the “lotto of life.” Her latest piece, my favorite yet, the crass and soulful Patricio, was published online on Esquire posthumously. I joked to Jay that it was a memorial-worthy social media presence, one to aspire to. He asked me not to die until my profile pictures got really old and ugly.

    I got out a bottle of beer from the fridge, spilled some in her honor, and drank to my friend. Gina had a sharp wit and a fiery nature. She was a fierce mother and a fierce friend. She burned brilliantly, my friend for life. Gina burned fast, but she burned exceptionally bright.

    Love, Lust, & Liberty,
    May Ling Su