Today I'm observing the 6th anniversary of this blog. Yep, I've been writing here steadily for six years. That's practically forever, in blogger time.

When I started doing it, I had no idea how popular this blog would get, and how much it would change my life. In my cranky moods, I often compare this blog to the alien, blood-sucking plant in Little Shop Of Horrors: constantly demanding my precious time and energy.

And blogging is not the shiny cool new thing it was when I started writing here. The constant work of it, combined with the general decline of blogger-chic, has thinned the blogging ranks. I have observed other sex bloggers fall by the wayside over time - including several who were once loud in their disdain for me. Naturally I would never lower myself to publicly sniping with such people. I simply recalled to myself a line from the novel Gone With The Wind, where Rhett Butler remarks to Scarlet O'Hara, "Nothing annoys the godly so much as seeing the ungodly flourish like the green bay tree."

But as much trouble as it is, my little blood-sucking pet here has me brought me many amazing people and fabulous experiences that I would not have had otherwise. And equally valuable, it’s given me a place to examine and organize my thoughts on those things, which is good for my personal growth.

Starting the Stranger column, nine years ago, was also a hugely pivotal point for me. I love being part of The Stranger, and I believe being published in a print publication granted me much local popularity, as well as some real-writer credibility in certain circles.

However, I would have to say, while I don't get anywhere near as many hits as the Stranger site does, this blog seems to have disseminated more widely than the column. I base that only on the number of people I've spoken to who know about the blog, but are surprised to learn of the column. It may be that I just don't talk to as many folks for whom the reverse is true.

But it gets around, this blog. People from all over the world send me the sweetest, kindest, most touching letters imaginable, telling me how much they like reading it, and what they’ve learned from it and especially enjoyed about it. Those little notes mean a lot to me. I can’t always respond personally to each one, but I read them all, and they make me smile. So thank you all for that.

Another year. I’m still here, and I’m still flourishing.

Art Imitates Life



Or is the other way around? I can never remember. But I was thinking about it last night, when Monk and I did our second appearance at the Peg-Ass-Us show. That photo? I brought that very harness and dildo with me to the show and displayed it to the audience. Everyone seemed to enjoy seeing it, although no one volunteered to let me actually demo anything on them. Too bad.

The show is fun and sexy and educational and simply delightful in so many ways. And John and Sophie are the cutest, sweetest, most winsome pair of sexual outlaws in the world, you just want to pet them and cuddle them and take them home and... do evil things to them.

But I digress. We went out for drinks after the Sunday show with John and Sophie, and I got to talk to them about how they handled putting their very real, intimate lives out on a stage for everyone to see. Because as I was watching the show, I was thinking that in some ways, Monk and I do a written version of this on our blogs and podcasts.

Obviously for us the topics are different. We do reveal a lot, though, and sometimes that gets uncomfortable. Particularly because we are not anonymous bloggers. We put our faces are on our blogs. Our professional names and reputations on riding on this. The stakes are high for us.

But we don't want to be too safe, because that's boring. So it's a continuous dance on the edge between regrettable TMI and the same-old, tame-old stuff. And I for one think Monk has nothing to apologize for, because when it comes to busting out of the stereotypes about straight male tops, he will go there. Even when there is right up onto a stage to talk to an audience full of people about pegging.

The reason people like to read us, and like to see shows like Peg-Ass-Us, is because it is real. We're just talking about things lots of people either really do, or really want to do. That blurry, low-rez camera-phone snapshot of mine? Almost seventeen thousand views since I put it up less than a year ago. (And that's just on Flickr, God only knows how many people have it posted on a website somewhere.) I'm quite clear that many of even the straightest of straight male tops are not utterly uninterested in having a woman touch their ass. You've still got two nights to catch the show, guys. Go there.

Primary/Secondary, BDSM Scene Interruptions, and Kink Celebrities

A fresh new podcast! By popular request, we’ve gone to a slightly longer format for this one, it’s about eighteen minutes.

In this episode, TwistedMonk and I answer a variety of your questions. The first one is about primary/secondary partners in polyamory – can one person in a relationship be a primary partner and the other person be a secondary?

The second question is about dealing with unexpected interruptions during a BDSM scene.

The last question: how do you introduce yourself to a kink celebrity (perhaps like me or Monk, but definitely not limited to us), and other general social tips for BDSM culture.

Not at all safe for work!