A few weeks ago I had facial surgery. Recovery wasn’t exactly as glamorous as I’d imagined and more akin to medically supervised Victorian ghost. I spent 14 hours a day asleep, woke up just long enough to eat a tiny something, take another pill, and convince myself that every stranger within a visual radius was moments away from accidentally punching me directly in the face. My boyfriend, who should probably receive an honorary nursing degree after surviving the experience, escorted me out of the hotel room between naps for some fresh air. A walk. And, of course, maybe a little shopping.

I have a theory that the brain stores certain rituals in a drawer labeled “Comfort”. For some people it’s soup or their mother’s house. For me, apparently, it’s wandering around a mall while intoxicated, a habit no doubt formed during my teenage years when getting stoned and spending hours in Hot Topic felt like the highest form of culture. Somewhere during this sedated outing, in the confidence that only prescription painkillers can provide, I announced that I wanted to go to Brandy Melville. Now, I don’t actually shop at Brandy Melville. I bought one tiny top there almost a decade ago when I was within walking distance of one after a coffee spill, but otherwise I’ve mostly stayed away. Between the criticism they’ve received over the years and the fact that walking into one feels a bit like accidentally interrupting sophomore lunch period, it has never exactly screamed natural habitat for me.

But for whatever reason, I wanted something slutty. My homeostasis. Not timeless. Not elevated. Tiny. Minimal fabric, I wanted something that looked like I was delighted to have a body and show it off (the opposite of how I was feeling). I found a pair of camouflage shorts so small that calling them that felt like a generous interpretation of the garment. Standing in the check out line, trying not to bump my freshly reconstructed face off of everything, I realized something that has been following me around ever since.

The only place I could think to buy something unapologetically sexual was a store designed for teenage girls. To be sexual meant I had to seek out youth. That realization unsettled me far more than the pain meds did my stomach.

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I’m 36. I have spent most of my adult life wearing as little clothing as weather and local ordinances will allow. Crop tops. Tiny skirts. Low-rise everything. Dresses that suggest I’m optimistic about the weather forecast. None of that has changed simply because another birthday came and went. If anything, I’ve become significantly more comfortable in my body as I’ve gotten older.

I don’t identify as a woman, but the world generally decides that I am before I’ve opened my mouth. I’m very femme, I love femininity, and that means I inherit a whole collection of expectations that society places on women whether I volunteered for them or not, and it’s my job to navigate them. One of the strangest is the expectation that visible sexuality has an expiration date. At some point, you’re expected to stop looking like you’re having fun with your body and start looking respectable instead.

No one has ever actually told me to “dress my age.” To be fair, I’m heavily tattooed and don’t exactly project the energy of someone eager to receive unsolicited life advice. But expectations don’t always arrive as comments. Sometimes they’re atmospheric. Or on the internet. They’re in the stores you stop thinking to walk into. They’re in the compliments people give. They’re in the language fashion brands use. They’re in the learnt assumption that adulthood should naturally evolve into sophistication. Sophistication is lovely. But my type of sophistication needs to encompass visible nipple.

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The older I get, the more I notice that women aren’t actually expected to become less attractive. If anything, the pressure to remain attractive only intensifies. What’s expected to disappear isn’t beauty. It’s enthusiasm. You’re allowed to be beautiful, but you’re supposed to become increasingly casual about it. Increasingly effortless. Increasingly above it all. It’s as though one day you’re expected to wake up, throw your crop tops into a donation bin, buy several tasteful linen blouses from Anne Klein, and pretend you no longer enjoy showing a little skin.

The funny thing is, I don’t fear aging when I really assess myself. The internet tells me I’m supposed to and sometimes I fall for it. Maybe I’m supposed to mourn every birthday as another step away from relevance. But my age has never been the most interesting thing about me. In fact, it’s probably the least interesting thing. To to honest, I was kind of an idiot at 19. I wasn’t more emotionally intelligent. I wasn’t more creative. I wasn’t better at relationships. I certainly wasn’t better in bed. 19-year-old me had fantastic collagen and an alarming amount of energy, but that’s about where the advantages ended. Every year since then I’ve become more curious, more capable, more compassionate, more opinionated, and far more comfortable occupying my own life.If someone offered me my 19-year-old body in exchange for my 36-year-old brain, I’d politely decline. And that’s the entire point of getting older.

It reminds me of an ex-boyfriend who, when I was in my early 20s, suggested I stop getting tattoos. I still joke about it with him because, looking at me now, the suggestion has aged spectacularly badly. At the time I couldn’t fully explain why it bothered me past the simple annoyance of a man telling me what to do. He wasn’t saying tattoos were ugly. He liked the ones I already had. He simply thought I’d reached some appropriate limit. Looking back, I think he was reacting to something much bigger than tattoos.

Tattoos make time visible. Every tattoo I have records that I’ve lived somewhere, loved someone, survived something, become obsessed with an idea, abandoned another one, changed my mind, or simply kept existing long enough to become a different person a handful of times. They announce that my body has a history.

I’ve noticed that conversations about women with tattoos appear surprisingly often online, particularly in more conservative spaces. The explanations vary. Tattoos are unfeminine. Tattoos are unattractive. Tattoos ruin natural beauty. Tattoos shouldn’t be visible on a wedding day. I don’t pretend to know why any individual person dislikes them. But I do find it interesting that tattoos interrupt the fantasy of untouchedness. They make adulthood impossible to ignore. Maybe that’s why they make some people uncomfortable.

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The more I think about all of this, the more I find myself wondering whether our culture has confused femininity with girlhood. That’s a deliberately uncomfortable sentence, but I think it’s worth sitting with. I’m not saying attraction to young adults is inherently suspicious. Human attraction is complicated, youth has always been associated with health and vitality, and cougars have to live. I’m asking something different. Why do so many of our beauty standards reward visual markers associated with youth while encouraging adult women to erase the visible signs of that adulthood? Smooth skin. Hairlessness. No wrinkles. No visible aging. No evidence that time has passed. Then we spend billions of dollars trying to preserve those qualities for as long as possible, praising anyone who appears to have successfully delayed adulthood itself.

Even our compliments reveal the assumption. “You look amazing for your age.” I’ve said it! People say it with genuine kindness, but I’ve started hearing the second half of the sentence more loudly than the first. For your age. It’s one of those phrases that sounds generous until you examine it for more than five seconds. No one tells a twenty-two-year-old they look incredible for twenty-two. Youth doesn’t need a qualifier. Apparently adulthood does. The compliment quietly assumes that looking your age is the thing you should be overcoming.

Case in point: Pamela Anderson. The Queen. I’ve loved watching the way the culture has embraced her over the last few years. Seeing her show up makeup-free, looking like herself, refusing to chase an impossible standard of perfection has been refreshing. But I’ve also been fascinated by the language surrounding her. She’s graceful now. Elegant. Serene. Grounded. The implication, intentional or not, is that this version of Pamela is somehow more respectable than the one in the red swimsuit who unapologetically embodied sexuality. As though becoming quieter about desire represents a kind of moral evolution. She always seemed elegant, serene, and grounded in her youth, she was just doing it wearing latex and a thong tying back her hair.

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We seem deeply comfortable celebrating people perceived as women once they’re no longer making us confront their sexuality in the same way. Meanwhile, clothing that communicates overt sexuality remains overwhelmingly marketed toward teenagers and very young adults. That should strike us as stranger than it does. Mentally, I keep coming back to Brandy Melville because the shorts were never really the point. The point was realizing that when I wanted to buy something playful, shameless, and a little ridiculous, my brain instinctively suggested a store for girls. Not adults. Girls. As though somewhere along the way I’d unconsciously accepted the idea that visible excitement about inhabiting your own body belongs to youth. I don’t believe that.

At 36, I know my body better than I ever have. I know what feels good. I know what I enjoy wearing. I know the difference between dressing for attention and dressing because I catch my own reflection in a window and think “Hot”. That’s not insecurity. That’s freedom. So I’m keeping the absurdly tiny camouflage shorts. Not because I’m trying to look younger. Not because I’m competing with teenagers. What a profoundly depressing competition that would be. I’m keeping them because they’re fun. Because getting older didn’t make me less interesting. It made me far more interesting. And because I refuse to accept that the joy of dressing like you’re thrilled to be alive is something you’re supposed to outgrow the moment the world stops calling you a girl.

I frequently post a pole dancing videos on my instagram stories. Lately I have been challenging myself not to comment something silly or immediately follow it with some version of, “Don’t worry, I know I‘m still bad at this.”

The thing is, I don’t actually think I’m bad at it. I’m certainly not the best person in the room. There are dancers who are stronger than me, more flexible than me, and far more technically skilled than me. There are people who make the whole thing look effortless while I occasionally look like I’m losing a fight with gravity. I only just had my one year Pleaser anniversary. But I’m not bad.

Yet every time I share a video, I feel this almost compulsive need to lower expectations before anyone else gets the chance to judge me. I’ve started to realize that the dancing isn’t really the point. The dancing just exposed something.

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For the last year and a half, I’ve been trying to figure out what comes next after selling my company. After nearly a decade of being successful at something, I knew it was time to move on, which sounds like the kind of thing that should come with clarity. Instead, it came with a strange identity crisis.

When you’ve spent years introducing yourself through a business, speaking through a business, and measuring your progress through a business, you don’t realize how much of your sense of self has become tangled up in it until it’s no longer yours. Suddenly people start asking what you’re doing next and you realize you don’t have a neat answer. The more I thought about it, the more panicked I became.

I don’t have a traditional career path. I never finished a four-year degree. I’ve worked for myself for most of my adult life. Most of my professional experience exists inside an industry that many people either don’t understand or don’t take seriously. I’ve worked in and around the sex industry for over sixteen years, sometimes flourishing, sometimes surviving. Say that out loud and people tend to imagine a very specific thing. They rarely picture product development, manufacturing, branding, logistics, public relations, education, event production, consulting, entrepreneurship, or the frankly obscene number of spreadsheets and emails required to keep a business alive.

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There were a few months after selling my company where I genuinely convinced myself I didn’t know how to do anything. Which is objectively ridiculous. I built a multimillion-dollar company starting with a credit card that had a $1,000 limit. Writing that sentence still makes me physically cringe with it’s lack of modesty. I designed a sex toy that became the first of its kind and ended up exhibited internationally. I spent years teaching people about sex, pleasure, relationships, and how to navigate industries that most people won’t even admit exist despite the fact that they consume them every day.

I’ve spent thousands of hours talking to people about desire, shame, intimacy, money, ambition, stigma, boundaries, relationships, business, and survival. Workers, clients, couples, founders, artists, performers. If you’ve spent enough time in the sex industry, you become a sort of anthropologist. Everyone tells you things.

If somebody else told me they had done all of that, I would probably think they were pretty competent. When it’s me, my instinct is still to explain it away. The company wasn’t that big. The accomplishments weren’t that impressive. The expertise doesn’t really count because it happened in the sex industry. It’s almost funny when I hear myself do it because I can tell how absurd it sounds. I’ve spent years collecting evidence that I’m capable while simultaneously arguing against it in my own head.

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I know where some of it comes from. I’ve spent most of my life receiving the message that confidence and arrogance are dangerously close cousins. You can be accomplished, but don’t talk about it too much. You can be talented, but don’t seem aware of it. You can succeed, but only if you remain appropriately surprised by your own success. Somewhere along the way I internalized that so deeply that I started treating expertise like something that only becomes real when somebody else notices it first.

Pole has forced me to confront this because progress is surprisingly difficult to negotiate with. You either get the move or you don’t. You either get stronger or you don’t. You either show up consistently or you don’t. For the first time in a long time, I’ve found myself taking pride in something before I’ve mastered it. Not because I’m exceptional at it, but because I’m improving. Because I’m committed to it. Because I care.

I’ve noticed the same pattern showing up in my art. Recently, a friend asked me how much I planned to sell a pair of ceramic Pleasers I’ve been working on. Without thinking, I blurted out $100 and immediately felt self-conscious. Even as the words left my mouth, part of me worried it was too much. My friend looked at me like I’d completely lost my mind. Not because it was expensive. Because it was cheap. I’ve done this my entire life. I undersell my work. I understate my accomplishments. I downplay my abilities before anyone else gets the chance to question them.

It’s a strange form of self-protection. If I lower the value first, nobody can accuse me of overestimating myself. The problem is that after a while you start believing your own disclaimers. Maybe that’s another reason I post my dancing online.

For years, visibility felt transactional. I was constantly selling something. A product. A service. A brand. An idea. Myself. Every photo had a purpose. Every post had a goal. Being seen started to feel like performing, and eventually I grew tired of it. But that’s not the whole story. About a year ago, I made most of my social media private. Part of it was burnout from spending years being highly visible online. When enough strangers have opinions about your body, your business, your intelligence, your relationships, your appearance, eventually you start to feel like you’re living in a comment section. Part of it was also practical. I’ve been dealing with a stalking situation for quite a while, and retreating from public visibility felt safer. Somewhere along the way, I stopped distinguishing between protecting myself and hiding. Lately, though, I’ve been wondering if those are actually the same thing at all.

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The dancing videos are one of the first cracks in that wall. Not because I think they’re particularly impressive, but because they represent a version of visibility that isn't attached to performance, sales, or expectation. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. I’m just learning something in public. And honestly, that’s harder than some of the pole moves.

Sometimes it feels like one of my boyfriends hobbies is giving me introductions that make me uncomfortable. He’s the kind of person who sings my praises every chance he gets. We’ll meet new people and I’ll give some version of my usual introduction, the heavily edited one where I shave all the interesting edges off my own life. Then he'll immediately jump in and start listing accomplishments I conveniently forgot to mention. Sometimes this happens in particularly funny contexts. We’ll be meeting somebody new, occasionally somebody we’ve invited into our bedroom, and suddenly I’m standing there listening to my boyfriend explain that I built a multimillion-dollar company, designed award-winning products, and have spent nearly two decades working in an industry most people barely understand. It’s a unique experience hearing someone enthusiastically read your résumé in the middle of flirting.

What’s funny is that I still find it embarrassing. Not because any of it is untrue. Because hearing somebody describe my life without the usual disclaimers can feel almost absurd.

Years of being criticized online, years of being underestimated, years of having people dismiss my expertise because of the industries I’ve worked in, all of it slowly convinced me that what I’d built wasn’t particularly remarkable. That it was normal. That anyone could have done it. But that’s not true. Building a company from almost nothing wasn’t normal. Designing products that ended up exhibited internationally wasn’t normal. Spending sixteen years developing expertise inside one of the most stigmatized industries in the world isn’t normal. None of that happened by accident.

The funny thing is that this realization has arrived at exactly the same moment I’m figuring out what comes next professionally. Lately, more and more people have been coming to me for advice. Current workers. Former workers. People navigating unconventional relationships. People trying to build businesses inside stigmatized industries. People trying to untangle desire from shame. People trying to figure out who they are outside of a job, a label, or a reputation. For years, I treated those conversations like favors. Now I’m starting to realize they’re the result of sixteen years of experience. That’s not arrogance. That’s just math.

Maybe that’s why I take my very mid dancing skills so seriously. Not because I’m trying to become a dancer. Because every time I let myself be proud of something I’m still learning, I weaken the habit of pretending I’m bad at things I’m already good at. The dancing isn’t really the point. The point is that I’m tired of treating competence like an accident. The point is that I’m tired of making myself smaller so other people don’t have to decide how they feel about my success. The point is that I’m trying to get comfortable being seen again. Not as a product. Not as a performance. Just as someone who is good at some things, bad at others, still learning, and maybe a little more capable than they’ve been willing to admit. And honestly, after all these years, that feels like a skill worth practicing.

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The first time I remember feeling something like desire, I didn’t have a word for it. I was sitting on the floor of the dining room, on a tattered rug, my chinchilla named Buster hopping around relentlessly, but all my focus was on my dad’s record player. I was a feral little thing, given too much freedom and not enough supervision, but music put me in a trance, flipping through CDs like they were portals. I put one on and heard breathing. Not singing, not even music in the way I understood it, just breath. It was the intro to “Close to Me” by The Cure, and I remember freezing, then turning it down, then scrambling to plug in those huge, clunky headphones so I could replay it over and over again. It felt like I had stumbled onto something I wasn’t supposed to hear, something private and alive. I didn’t understand it as sexual at the time. I didn’t understand it at all. I just knew my body had lit up in a way that felt secret and electric and entirely mine. That, I think, is what eroticism actually is. Not performance, not perfection, not something you train for, but something you trip into.

Now we have an entire generation training for hotness like it’s an Olympic sport. Looksmaxing, optimizing, biohacking their faces into submission. Glass skin, tiny waists, thick hair, hairless everything. We’ve turned attractiveness into a project with metrics and milestones, something you can improve through discipline and sacrifice. And to be fair, it works, and I participate. People who fit these standards are rewarded. They get attention, access, opportunity. We all know this, whether we admit it or not. But somewhere along the way, we confused being attractive with being erotic, and those are not the same thing. We’ve learned how to look hot, but we’ve forgotten how to feel it. Attraction is clean, legible, easy to photograph. Eroticism is not clean. It doesn’t always make sense, and it doesn’t ask permission. Attraction functions like currency, something you accumulate and spend. Eroticism is an experience, something you feel or you don’t.

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In a world that feels increasingly unstable and permanently observed, we’ve chosen currency. Millennials were taught to be self-aware, to analyze themselves into better versions, and then watched as the world kept collapsing in increasingly creative ways. That self-awareness curdled into anxiety. Gen Z, coming up in that aftermath, has responded by becoming strangely conservative in a moral sense, even while claiming openness. Social media has turned everyone into a kind of detached judge, flattening entire people into single moments taken out of context. Everything becomes a question of good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable. There’s very little room left for nuance, and sex, unfortunately, is one of the least cooperative things in existence. It is messy, contradictory, full of impulses we don’t always agree with or understand. Instead of engaging with that mess, we’ve started to avoid it. We want to be desirable, but we don’t want to risk desire. We want to be wanted, but we don’t want to want too much, because wanting too much makes you vulnerable, irrational, a little embarrassing. It makes you someone who could make a mistake, and right now, no one wants to be seen making one.

“Hot” used to mean something slightly unhinged. Now it mostly means trending. You can be technically flawless and still completely inert. You’ve seen it, the Instagram-perfect person in real life. You can register that they’re attractive, but nothing actually happens in your body. Your brain checks the box and moves on. There’s no pull, no curiosity, no shift. That’s because eroticism doesn’t live in symmetry or perfection. It lives in specificity, in the thing that makes you look twice, the detail that doesn’t quite fit, the energy that feels like it might tip into something else. Something a little off, in a way that’s hard to explain but impossible to ignore. Perfection doesn’t leave room for that. It smooths everything out until there’s nothing left to catch on.

I’ve been thinking about all of this because I recently got a boob job, and the decision itself had a history. At 22, a client offered to pay for it, but only if I went unreasonably large, something cartoonish. I passed. At 29, I had a quiet Zoom consultation I didn’t tell anyone about, convinced it might fix a vague sense of not being enough. I didn’t go through with it then either. The first two times I considered it came from a place that felt a little hollow. My income was directly tied to how I looked, and like most people in that world, I got used to having my body critiqued to my face, casually, like feedback on a product. Later, I was living almost entirely online, permanently perceived, flattening myself into something consumable and still feeling unsexy inside it. At 35, I finally did it, and this time was different. I’ve never felt hotter in my life, and that’s exactly why I did it. It wasn’t about fixing anything, it was about indulging something. Growing up in the ’90s, the bimbo was my idol, Pamela Anderson, Dolly Parton, even Lara Croft, these hyper-feminine figures who were written off as surface-level but were actually sharp, strategic, completely in control. That’s what felt erotic to me, not just the look, but the intelligence behind it, the choice. A bimbo, in my mind, is a woman who knows exactly how the world works and decides when and how to let you underestimate her. There’s power in that, real power, the kind that doesn’t ask for permission. Enhancing my body now feels less like correction and more like play, like building out an avatar I actually enjoy inhabiting. Part of me still carries those old insecurities, of course, but I don’t punish myself for them anymore. I just choose what feels good, and for once, that choice is entirely mine.

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What I didn’t expect was how erotic I would feel. Not because of how I looked. If anything, I felt less visually appealing in those first days, stitched, sore, stained faintly orange from disinfectant, my surgical bra sticking slightly where it shouldn’t. But I had made a decision about my body that was entirely mine. I was being cared for in a way that felt both gentle and charged, my partner hovering between concern and playfulness, hyping me up, joking about my “huge” tits even though they could be only considered reasonable in my opinion. Beneath all of that was this low, constant current of desire. I wanted to touch and be touched constantly, even when it was inconvenient, even when it didn’t make sense, even when I could barely move without assistance. It wasn’t about looking hot. It was about feeling alive in my body in a way that had nothing to do with how it appeared from the outside.

That experience made something click for me. We’ve become very good at aestheticizing eroticism without actually engaging with it. Kink has an aesthetic now. Latex, harnesses, visual cues that signal deviance without requiring any real proximity to it. We know how to reference eroticism, how to style it, how to make it look good in a photo. But feeling it is a different thing entirely, because feeling it means stepping into something unstable. It means admitting that what turns you on might not be universally approved or easily explained. It means letting go of control, even briefly, in a culture that increasingly treats control as a kind of moral achievement.

Now here’s the contradiction: who the fuck am I to judge? I participate in the same system I’m critiquing. I care about being hot too. That’s what makes this uncomfortable. Looksmaxing doesn’t just look like vanity, it looks like virtue. It signals discipline, restraint, self-control. You’re not just attractive, you’re good for being attractive, because you’ve earned it. And there’s nothing wrong with discipline. But eroticism doesn’t reward discipline in the same way. It interrupts, it destabilizes, it makes you feel a little out of control. There’s something inherently inconvenient about it, something that resists optimization. You can’t schedule it into your routine or measure it against a baseline. You can’t outsource it or automate it. It asks you to be present in your body, with all the unpredictability that entails.

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We’re living in a moment where people are more beautiful than ever and somehow less willing to actually use that beauty for anything that risks them. Dating has started to feel like a series of interviews. Desire gets filtered through the language of self-awareness until it’s been made safe enough to present publicly. And I understand why. The world feels unstable, and risk feels expensive. Letting yourself want something deeply, especially something messy, can feel overwhelming when everything else already does. But I don’t think we can optimize our way into feeling alive. I think we have to let ourselves be a little strange again, a little specific, a little willing to want things that don’t make perfect sense.

Not everyone needs to be erotic in the same way, and some people aren’t particularly sexual at all. But for those of us who feel that current somewhere under the surface, I think we’ve been taught to mute it, to prioritize being desirable over actually desiring. And that feels like a loss. I keep thinking about that kid on the rug, replaying a song I don’t understand, following a feeling without needing to explain it or justify it. I wasn’t trying to be seen. I wasn’t trying to be good. I just felt something and stayed with it.

That’s what’s actually hot. Not perfection, not trend, not discipline for its own sake, but something that makes your body react before your brain can categorize it. Something that pulls you in, that feels a little off in a way that’s hard to name. So yes, get hot, but not in the way you’ve been taught. Get hot in a way that lets you feel something, even if it’s messy, even if it’s inconvenient, even if it doesn’t translate cleanly to an image. I still care about being hot. I just don’t confuse it with obedience anymore.

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I have had an almost decade year long obsession with a subreddit. Not a noble obsession. Not a productive one. I likely arrived there the way all great internet fixations begin, scrolling mindlessly and getting distracted because certain visual stimuli short-circuit my executive functioning. I cannot responsibly shop for lingerie online. If there is a mesh filter option, my logical brain quietly slides off the chair and exits the room. So when I tell you I fell into a forum dedicated to people growing their clits, believe me when I say I did not choose this path. The path chose me.

The subreddit is called GrowMyClit. It is exactly what it sounds like. People with pussies documenting clitoral growth via testosterone. Progress photos. Dosage breakdowns. Questions typed with trembling sincerity. Tiny dispatches from the frontier of bodily experimentation. Once I start scrolling, time collapses. It is my perverted version of playing The Sims. Hours pass in what feels like minutes. A little pocket universe where strangers build new anatomy together and cheer each other on with the energy of a fantasy football league.

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But the detail that keeps me locked in, year after year, is who these people are. They are overwhelmingly straight women. Not just straight, but often proudly conventional. Most accounts are private accounts made just for this purpose but sometimes you’ll see usernames like “ProudMommyx4”. American flag emojis. Bios sprinkled with bible verses and memberships to conservative mom groups. Then, right beside that, a pussy posted for communal inspection. Openly. Proudly. Lit with a ring light. Asking for advice. Asking for praise. Asking how to speed up growth as if a clock was ticking down.

There is something mesmerizing about watching bodies change in real time. There is also something quietly radical about it, even if the participants would never use that word. They are using hormones to reshape themselves. They are sharing intimate images with strangers for guidance and encouragement. They are pursuing a version of their body that feels more exciting, more functional, more themselves. If you described this process in another context, most people would recognize it instantly as something pretty fucking queer. Here, it exists in a parallel universe where normative identity remains untouched and unquestioned, even is bodies do not.

Over years of lurking, patterns begin to emerge. Archetypes. My favorite group is the muscle mommies. Women already fluent in supplements and body optimization. They want to get big in every dimension available to them. They speak in the language of routines and stacks and gains. They have the patience of someone who lifts today to see results tomorrow. They seem to relish the idea that their partners might be a little intimidated by them in a new way. A quiet rearranging of gender power, delivered through the disciplined self-experimentation they already know.

Then there are the horny wives. The ones who want to feel more, cum more, crave more. They write about leveling up their sex lives like a video game. They post progress reports describing heightened desire, increased sensitivity, a new relationship to pleasure. Their husbands appear in the comments sometimes, sounding both delighted and slightly alarmed, like men who have realized the situation had escalated beyond their own fantasy.

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And then there are the seekers. The ones trying to solve something. Shame about how their pussy looks. Difficulty reaching orgasm. A sexless marriage. A sense that their body has never quite been for them. Sometimes they write in their own voice. Sometimes a husband posts for them. Sometimes the boundaries of consent feel blurry at the edges when that happens, the way the internet often feels ambiguous. But the emotional tone is consistent. Hesitation. Hope. A willingness to try anything that might work this time.

There is a recognizable narrative arc too. Early photos are tentative. Cropped carefully. Apologetic captions. A feeling of stepping onto a stage for everyone to judge. Commenters offer reassurance, routine tips, encouragement. One month updates arrive and suddenly something is happening. Surprise. Excitement. A new affection toward their own body. It’s actually working. Then the later posts. Full commitment. Established regimens. Pumps introduced. Legs spread with a confidence that feels earned. Detailed reports of ravenous libido, of spouses struggling to keep up, of clothing chosen specifically to reveal what now presses faintly against fabric. A body quietly re-engineered through chemistry and community advice threads. And sometimes they even add toys and speculums into the mix. Completely unnecessary for documentation but highly appreciated by me.

I used to sell packers, silicone prosthetics meant to create the impression of a penis under clothing. Some wore them for affirmation. Some for safety. Some for sex. I once wore a sample for a day while packing orders and felt a small rearrangement inside my sense of self. I mention this only to say that I recognize the thrill of embodied experimentation when I see it. And I see it here, every time I dive back in, carried out by women who would likely never describe themselves as anything other than entirely ordinary.

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The bodies themselves vary wildly. Clits that once barely peeked out from under their hood now standing visibly proud. Others growing slowly, stubbornly, like plants that need a different water schedule. Sometimes their result rivals boyfriends they once had. It is anatomy as plot twist.

And then there are the comments. The comments are their own ecosystem. Sometimes it’s minimalist praise. “Good job.” “Nice growth.” “Looks good.” Barely emotive, like something an overworked teacher would scribble at the bottom of your paper. Then the chorus of women asking for product names, routines, dosing schedules, side effects, a doctor that will prescribe. A decentralized medical classroom run by amateurs who have become experts through shared desire, shared risk. Then the men. Not generic thirst. Specificity. They note shape, proportion, texture, growth patterns. They describe what they see with startling precision. They speak about these bodies in ways that drift quietly outside mainstream heterosexual scripts, even as no one names that out loud. Telling a woman her clit could penetrate a your anus is… not feeling very not not queer to me.

Attempts to discuss identity in the forum are usually deleted. No speculation. No labels. No meaning assigned beyond the practical. The rule exists, but the behavior it tries to contain spills out anyway, because the women participating have never had to interrogate their identity. They live in the default setting. Straight. Cis. Married. Mother. They simple don’t want to be called queer or masculine in their efforts.

For years I did not tell people I followed this subreddit. It felt like fetishizing. And it is. But over time I realized that fetishization is part of the economy here. These women are posting their bodies to be seen. To be desired. To be studied. To be envied. They want witnesses. They cultivate gaze. They exchange attention like currency. And I am paying.

What fascinates me most is how this space exposes a cultural contradiction. The same ideology that panics about trans people accessing hormones is full of people happily using hormones themselves. The same culture that calls body modification dangerous or unnatural has no problem with cosmetic surgery, injectable peptides, testosterone for gains, estrogen for menopause, enhancements for pleasure. The difference is not the medication. It is who we decide is allowed to change.

Meanwhile, communities of queer strangers teach each other how to inhabit their bodies differently in extremely similar ways. They compare notes. They trade warnings. They share success stories. They build sexual knowledge through collective experimentation. Accept these are baby gays or trans kids who are terrified and searching for little hope, a little direction.

I do not have a tidy conclusion. I have an open browser tab. A long-term fascination. A thing a brought up at dinner with my friends last night and after my passionate rant, told me to write this. A sense that bodies are far stranger and flexible than the categories we use to organize them. And a quiet conviction that many people believe they are following one script, when in fact they are closer to a way of being they may criticize.

One thing I do know firmly: I never want them to stop posting.

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The ways in which I have changed this year have been immense.

I’m doing a lot of unlearning lately. Mostly around sex and romance. Mostly around the patterns I seem magnetized to that look electric from a distance and feel corrosive up close. I’m paying attention to what I’m attracted to that isn’t actually good for me and how conflict pulls old pain that feels present. I’m also getting clearer about what I’m not willing to put up with anymore, not because it’s dramatic or unforgiving, but because I’m tired of the same bullshit.

This intentionality has had a funny side effect. I’m having less sex in a purely numerical sense, but the sex I am having is better than it’s ever been. Intentional. Freaky. More connected. The kind that doesn’t leave me feeling like I’ve bartered parts of myself for approval. And probably the reason why I haven’t written in months. (Whoops). My relationships, romantic and platonic, feel sturdy and generous and alive in a way I didn’t know was possible for me before.

And still, every now and then, the sludge rises.

Something small happens. A comment. A look. A familiar tone. And suddenly I’m swimming through old shame, wondering how I ever let anyone talk to me like that, touch me like that, reduce me to that. Yesterday was one of those moments. The conflict itself was minor and resolved quickly, but it cracked something open. It sent me thinking about patterns I’ve lived inside long enough that they once felt like furniture.

I know that I’m pretty.

I hate admitting that. It makes my skin itch. It feels like I’m violating some unspoken rule about humility or likability. But this is my lived experience. I move through the world as someone who is conventionally attractive. Not in a superhuman way. I’m not a model you see walking through soho that makes everyone else look like a troll. I’m not 10/10. I’m accessible hot and not immune to bad days, bad lighting, or the psychic toll of being alive. Catch me at the wrong moment and I will be fully convinced I look like a cursed painting. But I know the attention I receive. The staring in public. The men who message me daily without knowing anything about me at all.

I’m not naive. I know why people approach me. No one is doing it because they’re curious about my interior life or my thoughts. And yes, I play with that attention. I post for it. I like it. I’ve been trained to enjoy it, and I do. That doesn’t make me dishonest. It makes me literate in the world I live in.

But that attention is safe at a distance. Strangers are easy. When it comes to relationships, things shift.

Desiring me easily. Loving me is another skill entirely.

I’m non-binary, but I am seen and treated like a woman in the world, and I’m no longer interested in pretending that distinction doesn’t matter. I’ve stopped caring much about pronouns, not because gender isn’t real to me, but because how people treat me tells the clearer story. I am read as feminine. I am interacted with as feminine. And femininity, in this culture, is considered public property.

My relationships have been shaped by how I look in ways that are impossible to ignore. When I stop putting effort into being pretty, they suffer. When I change my appearance in ways that assert autonomy instead of appeal, it becomes an issue. This is true across genders, but it is especially pronounced with men.

I have been complimented and criticized in the same breath more times than I can count. You’re pretty, but.

I’ve heard these comments on dates, in relationships, online, casually, as if they were neutral observations. Often from men sitting across from me in dirty T-shirts, unwashed hair, no apparent awareness that their own appearance might be subject to review. And that’s the part that sticks with me.

Men are encouraged to criticize femininity. Women and feminine people are trained to absorb that criticism as useful feedback. But masculinity, especially masculine appearance, remains largely unexamined and unchallenged. A man’s body is allowed to just exist. A woman’s body is always up for revision.

This dynamic turns into a cycle. I change something about my appearance. My partner reacts badly because it disrupts the version of me they felt entitled to. I respond by asserting myself more loudly, sometimes more visibly. They experience this not as growth or self-knowledge, but as a personal slight. They wanted what they signed up for. Someone pretty. Someone confident. Someone who performs desirability in a way that flatters them.

I once ended a relationship and was told, sincerely, “This makes me feel really bad about myself.” Yes. That tends to happen when you lose something you were using as proof of your own worth.

There’s this persistent idea that pretty privilege gives women an advantage in relationships, that beauty acts as protection, that it opens the door to better partners. I believed this once too, mostly because everyone told me I should. The truth is less flattering.

The only real relationship advantage to being pretty, aside from queers being too scared to talk to you, is that bad men will work harder and longer to fake being good. They will perform emotional intelligence. They will be attentive. They will sustain the mask for months, sometimes years, because the reward structure encourages it. A pretty partner is not just someone to love. She is validation. She is evidence. She is something to hold up and say, look what kind of man I am.

Good men don’t need that. They don’t require a trophy to stabilize their identity. They aren’t auditioning their personal lives for other men. Bad men dig in. The prettier the woman, the slower the water heats. The red flags are folded smaller, introduced gently, rationalized easily. From the outside, people assume you chose this. That you stayed because you’re shallow or delusional or drunk on your own reflection. What they don’t see is the labor that went into keeping the lie intact.

What hurts most is how rarely we talk about this honestly. How often beauty is framed as power without acknowledging how easily that power is commandeered. Especially for young people. Especially for anyone raised to believe that being desired is the same thing as being valued. How do you know someone likes you for you? How do you tell the difference between being seen and being displayed?

I don’t distrust men because I think they’re all villains. I distrust the system that teaches them they’re entitled to critique femininity while remaining largely immune to critique themselves. I distrust a culture that treats feminine bodies as communal projects and masculine bodies as fixed truths.

I’m better at seeing this now. I catch the patterns faster. I leave sooner. Sometimes I still get triggered. Sometimes the old feelings flare up and linger longer than I want them to. But my life is good. The sex is good. The people around me are kind and loving. I still like being wanted. I just don’t confuse it with being valued anymore.

We’re living in a war on pleasure. Everywhere I look there’s some new sermon about discipline, optimization, or “earning” joy, like feeling good is a scarce resource you have to prove yourself worthy of. You’ve got to “lock in”, “looks max”, or “glow up”. But sometimes pleasure can just be the goal. You’re allowed to do things just because they feel good. Period.

And here’s the thing: I love discipline. I go to the gym. I throw weights around. I wreck my body on the pole, trying to nail some move that leaves my thighs bruised for a week. I have done some kind of athletic practice since seeing Arnold in Terminator as a 10 year old and wondering “could that be me one day?” (Turns out not quite). But I love being strong and seeing what my body can do. But I also love seeing what my body can do in bed. Strength isn’t just measured in pull-ups. It’s also in how long I can ride someone, how hard I can tolerate a crop hit, or the way my muscles give out when I finally let myself cum. One doesn’t negate the other.

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But the culture we live in wants us to believe otherwise. My particular set of hobbies (working out and having sex) gets me served a lot of content about the two actives. The horny stuff is also fun and judgement free: think latex bodysuits, dildos the size of my arms, and lots of piss memes. But i find that gym rats and self-optimizers I see think they’re morally superior because their version of pleasure comes with visible “results.” Hey, I get results too. Mine just look different. With sex, I get mental stimulation, physical connection, social bonding, and usually a damn good story to text a friend about the next morning. Why is that less valid than running a marathon?

I get the obsession with self-optimization, though. In a world that feels like it’s constantly falling apart, controlling your macros or your mile time feels like control. But where’s the joy? Tell me, what’s the point of hitting the gym to feel your physical best but not letting someone hit it without feeling bad about yourself? What’s the point of working all day if you don’t come home and let your partner bend you over the dining table and fuck you senseless without thinking it’s a waste of time? Honestly, explain it to me.

Everything we do needs to be balanced because if you deny parts of yourself, especially the sexual parts, what does that lead to? Let’s say it together: repression! Balance means holding multiple truths about yourself at once. You can be a successful business owner and a total freak. You can be a great parent and also like to be slapped around when you cum. Going to the gym at 5 a.m. isn’t morally superior to having morning sex. Sometimes I leave a workout feeling crushed because I couldn’t lift what I lifted last week. And sometimes I have a hottie over who absolutely rocks my world, and I float for days afterward. Which of those is more nourishing for my mind, body, and soul?

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Purity culture has us by the throat. Rigidity has tricked us into thinking it will deliver joy, but really it just breeds denying ourselves of that very thing. And that never ends well. Hedonism and discipline can exist together, and in fact, they often make each other stronger. A couple of weeks ago I had a foursome, and the next morning I was at the gym doing pull-ups, exchanging knowing smirks with one of my fellow participants. Did one cancel out the other? No. If anything, it amplified both. Hedonism and discipline aren’t enemies; they’re gym partners spotting each other.

I like my discipline. I’ve worked hard to build it. But I use it to enhance my pleasure, not to deny it. A night of good food, too many cocktails, a sneaky cigarette, and a dozen orgasms doesn’t mean I need to do that every night. Instead it means I created joy for myself that was indulgent and meaningful. And that matters. Because here’s the thing: pleasure doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. Just like good sex and good vacations, you have to plan for it. You have to carve out space so that you can let go when the moment arrives.

And if you repeat those things that bring you pleasure again and again? That doesn’t automatically make you an addict or someone without control. Sometimes you just want to fuck. Sometimes you just want to want to edge yourself watching wrestling porn for an hour. Sometimes you just want to buy yourself a new vibrator even though you already have 10. That doesn’t mean you’re spiraling into sexual ruin; it means you’re human.

It shouldn’t be a struggle to love your life. Sometimes life is hard, sure. But if you treat pleasure like contraband, if you keep it locked away behind shame and control, then of course you’ll never feel it. Schedule it, prioritize it, worship it. Lift heavy, cum harder. Sweat in the gym, sweat in the sheets. Strong legs are for squats and for holding someone’s head in place. That’s the balance.

Because if you’re not letting yourself experience pleasure, real, sweaty, ridiculous, joyful pleasure, then honestly, what’s the fucking point?

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I was never supposed to have this job.

A woman in late-night is like a fish on a bicycle, or whatever the phrase is when men don’t want to fuck you but also don’t want you to succeed. I clawed my way into this studio with teeth and jokes sharp enough to bleed sponsors. Now I sit behind the desk five nights a week, tossing my hair and smirking at my own punchlines while the audience laughs like trained seals. On screen I’m America’s foul-mouthed auntie. Off screen I’m just another bitch with insomnia and a vibrator that keeps dying mid-thrust.

Casual sex isn’t casual when you’re famous anymore. Everyone’s got a phone, a cousin who works at TMZ, a Venmo account that suddenly needs topping off. I tried the “cute sad girls” phase, hiring escorts with bright smiles and tits like buoyant balloons. They made me jealous with their perky optimism I couldn’t buy, no matter how much filler and La Mer. I’d send them home before I got too bitter, before I clawed at them like a drunk prom queen.

Now? Now it’s men. Big, thick-necked men I find through Feeld, filtered like cattle through my assistant who does the paperwork and waves the NDAs with dollar bills under their noses. Beefy, dominant, all muscle and no poetry. They sit waiting in my dressing room, slouched on the sofa where the band once did coke in the eighties. Now they all micro dose.

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During commercial breaks, I run back there, still hot with studio lights, makeup caked and lashes itching. I pull up my skirt and sit on their faces like a queen on her throne. They grunt and grab at me, hungry, obedient. I ride them, tugging their hair, grinding down until I’m slick and swollen.

But I never let myself cum. That’s the rule. My private little cruelty. They don’t get my orgasm, they don’t get that power. I get off on denying them the satisfaction. Call it ego. Call it kink. Call it the only control I have when the world has eaten me alive.

Until last Monday.

He was already waiting when I slipped off stage, applause still ringing in my ears. Too beautiful for my taste: broad shoulders, the kind of jaw that belongs on a bottle of cologne, not in my dressing room. I almost turned back. Pretty men are trouble. Pretty men want to be adored. I don’t adore. I consume.

But I sat on him anyway.

The first thing that hit me was his strength. Most of the others held still, good little stools for my cunt, waiting for me to grind the life out of them. Not him. He gripped my thighs like handlebars, fingers digging into flesh, tugging me forward until I was flush against his mouth.

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He didn’t start slow. No easing, no delicate licks meant to flatter. His tongue pressed flat, wide, claiming me. His nose nudged against my clit like he’d mapped me before I even arrived. I grabbed his hair to remind myself I was in charge. But he didn’t flinch.

He pressed harder.

I tried to keep my rhythm clinical rocking, grinding, denying. This was supposed to be my game: get wet, get high on the edge, then leave them frustrated, their faces sticky and unsatisfied. But he wouldn’t let me float above it. He pulled me down into the act itself. His hands kneaded my ass, lifted me, repositioned me until I was riding him the way he wanted.

He pinned me harder than I expected, his mouth not sweet but punishing. Every flick of his tongue, every scrape of his teeth, carved the air out of my lungs.

I thought of the cameras still warm on stage. The audience waiting. The lights, the applause. I should have pulled back. But he shoved his tongue deeper, then sealed his mouth over me, sucking hard, obscene.

I told myself not this time, don’t give it to him, don’t break your rule. But my body didn’t listen.

The orgasm ripped out of me like betrayal. I bucked, I cursed, I slapped at him and called him a stupid fucking idiot over and over while I came, soaking his face. My makeup smeared, my thighs trembled, my heart galloped against my ribs.

I came hard, wet, soaking him, shaking with rage and relief. My mascara smeared into the corners of my eyes. I couldn’t stop the shudder that ran through me, wave after wave, long after I meant to be finished.

I hated him for it. I hated myself more.

The stage manager knocked: 30 seconds.

I shoved off him, tugged my skirt down, smeared my lipstick back into place with the heel of my hand. He lay there, smiling faintly, his face slick, satisfied. He knew what he’d done.

I didn’t give him the satisfaction of words.

I walked back on stage. The crowd cheered like nothing had happened.

And maybe nothing did.

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The restaurant doesn’t have a name.

It doesn’t need one.

Walking past its black, unmarked door, locals tell the same story to tourists: Impossible to get in. The tourist will stare like it’s a locked secret. The local keeps moving.

Fridays and Mondays only, 7 p.m. sharp. Twelve seats. Black envelopes, no return address. No one knows who chooses. The chef is only the face associated to the establishment. Some would consider him disgraced.

Every diner receives an individualized menu: no two alike. At the top, a single truth about their life, stripped bare. Sometimes it’s petty. Sometimes it’s a wound they’ve never spoken aloud. Below, the meal that will supposedly “resolve” it. Tonight’s guests hold their cards like confessions, some smirking, some pale.

I am not a guest. I am dessert.

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The kitchen is colder than I expect, the tiles damp under my bare feet. No one meets my eyes.

“Set her here,” a man says, not unkindly but without interest.

They guide me onto a low padded platform. A cloth wipes me down: efficient, perfunctory. I’d imagined reverence. Instead, I feel like a cutting board.

“Glaze,” another voice says.

The chef approaches with a wide, shallow bowl. The smell is decadent and intimate: ripe mango collapsing into syrup, the sting of lime zest, and the warm, nutty scent of browned butter.

He dips a brush and begins at my collarbone. The glaze is warmer than his hands, pooling in the hollow of my throat before sliding between my breasts.

“She’s holding her breath,” a young assistant remarks.

“Helps the surface set,” the chef says, without looking at me.

I flush. They don’t know it’s not for the glaze.

The brush moves lower. My stomach tightens as he paints my belly, then the insides of my thighs, where the bristles feel unbearably soft against the tender skin. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from making a sound.

“She’s sticky already,” someone mutters. There’s a brief laugh.

My hair is arranged so it spills like garnish. Sea salt scatters over me, melting into the glaze, leaving tiny pinpricks I want licked away.

The glaze cools, tightening into a candy shell over my ribs and hips. I imagine the dining room gasping when I’m revealed.

When they wheel me out, I’m not first.

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Desserts are already arriving, each one announced by a soft murmur from the chef.

A porcelain bowl of sugared rose petals for the woman whose card read “You lie so often you can’t remember the truth.”

A towering croquembouche dripping with spun sugar for the man whose card said “Your son doesn’t love you, but this will.”

A single scoop of vanilla bean ice cream with a gold spoon for the woman whose card read “You fear dying alone.” She holds the spoon like a lover’s hand.

A heart-shaped chocolate, split open to reveal a raw, quivering egg yolk, for the banker whose card read, “You enjoy cruelty more than success.” He grins as the yolk bursts across his plate.

A child-sized birthday cake covered in cartoon characters for the old man whose card read, “You think about her every day.” He doesn’t eat it.

A slice of liver pâté, pink and trembling, served on a bed of whipped cream for the silent woman at the end of the table. Her card isn’t visible.

The smells layer over one another, floral sugar, cream fat, the faint metallic tang of liver building in the air until it’s almost oppressive. I watch forks lift, lips part, eyes close in pleasure. My heart pounds, my body tightens, imagining how mine will be received.

And then.

“Final course,” the chef announces.

They wheel me forward to the man at the head of the table. Beautiful once, dulled now. His card: “You haven’t touched your wife in six years.” Her card: “Tonight, you will.” His wife, pale and diamond-lit, looks at me with the slow, deliberate appraisal of a buyer examining a rare piece. There’s satisfaction there. Something sharper than approval.

He picks up his fork. The tines pierce my hip, cracking the glaze with a delicate snap. His breath brushes the exposed spot as he lifts the bite away.

Salt first, sharp, mineral, then mango, lush and syrup-slick, coating his tongue before the buttered flesh beneath gives way. I can feel him chewing, impossibly, as though the sensation runs both ways.

Another bite, from the inside of my thigh. The sugar shell shatters, the soft pull of skin, the bloom of salt. It’s almost too much. Heat coils low in my belly. My breathing shifts, shallow and quick.

Soon he has given up on this fork, instead choosing the lap up the sugary crust from me like a child licking its plate clean. The taste has now changed to my sweetness, with its sticky tang, now discovered at the core of it all.

His enthusiasm increases. I can feel the saliva running from the sides of his mouth down my inner thighs. Or, is that just me creating this waterfall of pleasure? I am close, so close, my muscles tightening against the lacquer.

The wife leans in. “That’s enough,” she says, voice low and certain.

He backs away sharply and sits up right. He sets down his fork.

The heat collapses into frustration, pulsing with nowhere to go. I strain against it, desperate, trembling on the edge, and then the moment is gone.

Tears well instantly. I clamp my mouth shut, but a sob escapes as they wheel me away. Around me, the other diners keep eating, plates scraping, laughter soft and private. My thighs stick with sugar and wetness, tacky with what I’ve made myself.

The wife watches me go. Her mouth curves into something like a smile, but it’s hungrier than that. Her hands slips onto her husband’s thigh.

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Dear Pussy,

Two weeks ago, I read someone a poem I had written for them. In person. Hand trembling.

I’ve never felt more like a love sick 14 year old boy (and I wear Vans and a Sublime shirt while listening to Morrissey most of the time, so that tracks). But it worked. It landed. I expressed love, and it was received as such. It was cringe, sure, but the good kind. The kind that makes you feel alive. So I thought: why not do it again? This time, for my greatest love and most complex adversary.

You.

No, I’m not going to write a poem to you. That veers into self-marriage and naming-my-genitals territory, and even though I’ve been to Burning Man, there are some levels of cringe my millennial wiring can’t override. But a letter? A love letter / therapy session / soft fuck you note? That feels right. Even as I’m currently mad at you. Even as I’m lying in bed with a boric acid suppository inside of you, waiting for something, anything, to happen.

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This is a first, by the way. Despite dozens of recommendations from friends and forums alike, I’ve never actually done this before. And I’ll admit, I’m slightly unnerved by how much the pill I shoved up you resembles my biotin supplement. The bottle says not FDA approved for anything, which is both honest and terrifying. But we’ve put weirder, riskier things inside you, haven’t we?

We got here, weirdly, because of that poem. Romance (even corny, fumbling, teenage-boy-in-an-adult-body romance) is powerful. It set the mood. Days of being absolutely railed followed. Peeing afterward, like a goddamn professional. Even peeing three separate times before bed, as my anxiety insists because what if I wet the bed at 35?

But you, dear pussy, you are sensitive. You gave me a UTI anyway.

So: antibiotics. Then, a yeast infection. Then, my period. And now? Rage. Frustration. Acceptance. Suppository.

You are a wild thing, an ecosystem unto yourself. You’re a source of profound pain, unbearable pleasure, crushing shame, and constant maintenance. You’re basically a high-maintenance roommate I can’t evict.

Even the language we use to talk about you feels off. Penetration. As if the action is happening to you, instead of with you. Why not say envelop? Swathe? Engulf? You’re not passive. You’re not just being entered. You’re participating. And while I’ll never know what it feels like to have a dick attached to my body (just the kind you strap on), I imagine that putting your most sensitive appendage into a mystery cave must be terrifying. Have they not seen the movie Teeth?

I don’t even know what’s going on inside you half the time.

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I go to a free clinic to get my meds. While health insurance would be a dream, I’ve grown oddly fond of the free clinic experience. There’s a weird liberation in answering questions from a doctor with rainbow hair and a Mamdani pin. Yes, here is exactly how many people I’ve fucked. No, I haven’t tried ketamine recreationally (recently). Honestly, some of the drug names she reads off are so wild I jot them down in my head to Google later.

At my most recent pelvic exam (which I always say yes to because I’m trying to be responsible), there was a mix-up with the speculum. The doctor came in prepped with the large one. She laughed when I asked, “How large?” Reader, she showed me. It was a zero-to-100 situation with minimal lube, and we downgraded accordingly. I wouldn’t do that to you.

Pelvic exams are such a trip. Do you remember, pussy, when we were a teenager and boys insisted that tampons must feel good? That anything going in you must automatically be pleasurable? Wild logic. Because here we are: same act, entirely different context. The body doesn’t lie.

Once, I tried to get an IUD. My then-partner suggested it, citing how well it worked for his ex (and of course, I was in secret competition with them so had to match their efforts). I went to Planned Parenthood. I passed out repeatedly. The nurse practitioner got so flustered she finally shoved it in while I was unconscious. The pain was so vivid my body kept turning off. I made it to the stoop of the building next door before I had to call for help. A kind man stopped, concerned, and waited with me. He wasn’t reassured when I mumbled, “It’s okay, I just got an IUD.”

I had a girlfriend once with the strongest pelvic floor muscles I’ve ever encountered. It was her party trick. She could pull off condoms mid-fuck, grip my strap with such force she’d move my hips. She’d take Adderall (presumably not prescribed), run five miles, and kegel the whole time. When she came, I thought she might snap my fingers in half.

I dated a much older guy too: a walking East Village archetype. Smoky voice, taxidermy everywhere, one of John Wayne Gacy’s clown paintings on the wall. A human skull in his bathroom. My dreamboat. He smoked a pack a day, drank wine before sunset, and ran a bar. So wrong. But I was obsessed.

You, however, were not.

Every time he touched you, fingers, mouth, whatever, you flared up. Yeast infection, every single time. I blamed the cigarettes. I didn’t want to admit that you, wise and intuitive, were trying to wave a red flag I refused to see.

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But sometimes, you do things I so deeply admire.

You can cum so many times I lose count. I’ve rattled you with vibrators for over twenty years, and somehow, you’re still game. I used to avoid looking at you, ashamed or disconnected, but now I see you clearly: your folds, your pinkness, your unmistakable beauty.

I guzzle pineapple juice in your honor. I know it’s perfectly fine for you to taste like, well, you, but when I taste the remnants of my wetness on a lover’s lips, I’m honestly obsessed. Obsessed that I can make something that sweet.

And remember that time you got fisted? Very impressive. Truly. You’re nothing if not ambitious.

So, this is a letter to you, my sometimes enemy, sometimes muse. I don’t always understand you. I sometimes resent you. But I love you. Or at least, I’m trying to. Like any long relationship, it’s complicated.

Love,
Me (and my nervous system)

I’ve been pole dancing for a couple of months now. I signed up for a free intro class after seeing an old colleague post about teaching at their studio. We worked together over a decade ago, but I’ve been quietly obsessed with the videos they post: effortlessly fluid, strong, confident. It made me feel... curious. Envious. Maybe even hopeful.

I’m not entirely sure what pushed me to sign up. I mean, I do love a freebie. But more than that, I think I wanted to feel in control of my body again. Last year nearly wrecked me. So I’d been throwing myself into strength training,not out of punishment, but as a gift. A way to reclaim power, to rebuild something solid in the wreckage.

But here’s the catch: I’m not a dancer. Not even close.

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I’ve worked in a strip club before, briefly, awkwardly. I relied on the novelty alt-girl aesthetic to coast through my shifts at the Hustler Club on Manhattan’s west side, hoping my general weirdness would read as mysterious instead of stiff and uncomfortable. It worked for a little while, at least until the businessmen caught on that I was basically a sexy robot. I bailed quickly and leaned into dominatrix work instead, where stiffness was a feature, not a flaw.

Growing up, I idolized my dad: this giant of a man with a borderline obsessive gym routine and a deep love for Arnold Schwarzenegger. I started lifting weights as soon as a gym would let me in, mean-mugging men from under the squat rack like I had something to prove. And I did. I’ve always loved being strong. For the past two decades, I’ve built my routines around strength and form. But never around how it looked. Don’t get me wrong; I deeply cared about being attractive (and, sadly, still do). What I didn’t care about is what I looked like during the process of achieving it.

Which is why pole dancing feels, honestly, kind of counterintuitive.

Here I am, someone trying to detach my sense of worth from being attractive to others, now spending my gym time hurling myself around a pole (badly) and trying to do it gracefully, in a way that is mean to be attractive and desirable. It’s an ongoing identity crisis with bruises.

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After that first class, I took the hottest shower my old plumbing could muster. I felt humiliated. Frustrated. The furthest thing from sexy. But also? Challenged. Turns out I don’t know how to roll my neck. Or my hips. I couldn’t make a circle if you paid me. What did I think I was doing all those nights I went out dancing with friends? Even worse! What did I look like when I was dancing alone in my apartment, fully convinced I was killing it?

I’ve spent years coasting on the things I already know, the things that come easily. Dancing is not one of them. I’m bruised. I’m constantly sore. I’m deeply annoyed with myself half the time. But for the first time in a while, I feel transformed. I’ve been a little lost lately, directionless after upending so much of my life. Pole isn’t fixing that, but it’s giving me a foothold.

It’s scary sometimes trying to get to know myself again. I don’t know what I’m building this skill for. I’m not doing it for a job, or to perform, or even to post about it (okay maybe a little). I’m doing it because I need to remember how to try. How to fail. How to keep going.

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And somehow, despite all of it, I’m really fucking happy. Possibly the happiest I’ve ever been. I have beautiful relationships, unexpected opportunities, and a curiosity about my own life that I haven’t felt in years. Sure, I have regrets about the people I didn’t hold onto, the things I said no to, the desires I tried to suppress. But those regrets are fading.

What’s taken their place is this: something new, something hard, something I’m not good at and something I’m doing anyway.

Turns out, that’s exactly what I needed.

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I had a very hot threesome a few days ago and, accordingly, I’m feeling very inspired. I do have this annoying tendency to declare something “the best I’ve ever had” when I really just mean “the thing I’m currently experiencing,” but a few days out, I can (w)holeheartedly say this one was the best, at least logistically.

It got me thinking about all the threesomes I’ve had that weren’t so great, felt like a chore, or left me wondering, “Wouldn’t I rather just be jerking off right now?” So now, with a confident (and frankly, blessed) number of data points, I feel experienced enough to tell you what makes a good threesome and how you (and two others) can do it too.

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We’re not starting with how to meet your playmates. First, we start with you. I used to end my yoga classes by ringing a sound bowl and saying this corny phrase: “When the will is strong, the feet are light.” I’m sure it’s a bastardized version of a deeper quote (and the yoga I taught was a bastardized version of a deeper practice), but it still gets to the heart of something important: Do I actually want to do this?

So ask yourself without excuses, without overthinking “Do I actually want to fuck two people at the same time?”. Ask from your gut, your soul, your crotch, wherever your truth lives.

If the answer is “No” or even “I don’t know,” take some time to explore why. Are you just not interested? Do you feel pressured by a partner? Is it intimidating? Are you bumping up against jealousy or shame? All are valid and worthy of exploration, and the conclusion might be: Not for me! That’s great. But this essay is for the yeses, so let’s get into it.

Biggest annoyance first: If you’re arranging a threesome as a “present” for your partner, the third person should either be a sex worker or someone who explicitly knows what they’re walking into and is enthusiastic about the dynamic. Gifting your partner an experience is great. Gifting them a person is…fucking weird.

Avoiding the “human-as-gift” problem starts with how you seek out people. Whether online or IRL, you’ve got to put out the right vibe and see who shows up. Don’t chase people on a deadline. That kind of expectation? For professionals only. Speaking of: Why not go pro? If you’re looking for a good time with no strings, have little experience, and have the budget, hire a pro. They’re good at what they do. Pay them.

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Another peeve: Your hot partner is not the sales pitch. I’ve seen too many profiles where a man leads the hunt with his baddie girlfriend as bait while she’s nowhere to be found. Everyone should be game and engaged. A lot of apps still suck at multi-partner logistics, so I suggest hopping into a group chat as soon as it feels right, unless you’ve found yourself a lovely service bottom who wants to be objectified and doesn’t care about chatting. (Those angels exist.)

If you’re part of a couple, your third should feel like the guest of honor. Walking into a pre-existing dynamic can be intimidating. Together your vibe should be solid. No whisper-fighting. No cold shoulders. No “you know what you did” eye daggers mid-makeout.

Unless you’re planning something very specific or kinky, meet in public first. It’s a date! Wine them, dine them, and, if all goes well, 696 them.

Don’t bring a checklist. You can think of some ideas in advance, but flexibility and spontaneity are key. That said, someone might need to take the lead, especially if you’re all inexperienced, but speaking as someone who’s had to lead too many times: It’s exhausting. Pro tip? Bring toys. They break the ice, spark ideas, and can help steer the energy if things get awkward.

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Now hear me out: Everyone should try the cuck chair. You don’t have to be involved in every act. Sometimes it’s logistically impossible. So take a break. Watch. Let it be hot. It’s like real-life porn, except you get to join in when you feel like it. Plus, if you’re watching your partner with someone else or watching a hot couple do their thing, it can be incredibly sexy.

And one last playtime rule: The guest of honor cums first and last. Period. No notes.

Finally, don’t be a weirdo after. Linger. Bask. Reminisce. Order takeout ( Fact: cheeseburgers always taste better after sex). If someone traveled to you, get them an Uber home. Be a slut, but be a considerate slut.

In summary: A good threesome is less about gymnastic excellence and more about vibe curation. It starts with knowing if you even want to be there, continues with treating people like people (not party favors), and thrives when everyone involved is equally game, equally horny, and equally not-weird. Don’t hunt unicorns with your emotionally unavailable boyfriend as bait, don’t show up with a checklist like you’re doing horny Girl Scouts, and for the love of group sex bring snacks, toys, and your full enthusiastic self. Be gracious. Be generous. Be down to sit in the corner for a bit and just watch the show. Then reminisce over cheeseburgers like the emotionally intelligent slut you are.

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I like someone. Which is fun. But there is also that maddening, borderline-psychosis feeling of being vulnerable with someone new that makes me want to take a boiling hot shower and scrub all my skin off. One of the ways I deal with this dread is obsessively talking to my friends about it and it was during of these multi-hour conversations where we coined the term “monogamous thoughts.”

A monogamous thought is like muscle memory. It kicks in before I even realize what I’m doing, like instinctively reaching for someone else's food and then remembering I ordered my own. (But seriously, if you don’t let me eat off your plate, are we even friends?)

These thoughts sneak in sometimes, uninvited but familiar. For me, the loudest one says: *I want to be the special one.” And it’s true! I do want to feel special to someone. But that craving doesn’t actually require exclusivity. In fact, I think it might be better fulfilled in polyamory. Being special in a poly relationship isn’t a default status earned just by being the one that’s there: it’s something intentional. It’s remembering what they love, learning their rhythms, seeing them clearly as a whole person, not just a partner-shaped filler.

But then I get in my own way.

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I live and date polyamorously. I value it. I chose it. And still, my brain sometimes serves up old programming. Scripts written by society, sitcoms, pop music, rom-coms, family conditioning. From childhood, we’re taught that love is possession, that jealousy means you care, that exclusivity equals value. No wonder these thoughts still echo.

Like the idea that a relationship only counts if it’s “serious” or “progressing.” So lately, I’ve been really into this person. It’s a light but charged connection. We don’t see each other often and that’s part of the magic. There’s focus, electricity, and a strange sense of freedom in the time limitation. If we had more time together, maybe we’d just…dilute. But this? This version of us feels alive.

I’ve always joked that I live by *absence makes the heart completely forget who you are*. But apparently that’s not true. Yearning isn’t inherently painful as I once thought. Instead it’s the instability around it that gets me. I’ve learned that I actually enjoy distance, when it comes with mutual care. A sexy little FaceTime ritual, the right heart emoji at the right time, the feeling of someone busy doing things they love and still making space for me. That’s more erotic than someone giving up their life to orbit mine.

Still, monogamous thoughts creep in. Like when I recently turned down a casual hookup because someone else I’m seeing was coming into town. I had this gross, hard-to-name urge to “save” myself. Like I needed to be pure, or loyal, or something performative to prove the relationship meant something. It was a moment that didn’t align with what I believe, but it did tell me something about the ideas I’ve internalized.

Because of my monogamous thoughts, I then slip into a cycle of feeling like a bad poly practitioner. Like I’m failing at my own ideals.

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It turns out, I’m not alone in having these sudden, intrusive whispers of exclusivity. Researchers and therapists who work with polyamorous clients have long noted how deeply entrenched mononormativity (a word I didn’t know existed until I googled this) in poly clients which is the assumption that monogamy is the default, ideal, and morally superior form of relationship. It can still affect even those of us who consciously reject it.

In a 2021 study published in SAGE Open, researchers found that individuals in consensually non-monogamous (I’ve grown to hate that term so much) relationships frequently reported internalized monogamy-based values, even after years of practicing alternative relationship models. This internal conflict, cognitive dissonance between values and conditioning, can cause distress, shame, or self-doubt, especially when feelings like jealousy or possessiveness arise. Not because we’ve failed, but because we’re still deprogramming.

Therapist and author Jessica Fern, who specializes in non-monogamous relationships, writes in her book (aka the non-monog bible) Polysecure that many polyamorous people struggle not with the structure itself, but with inherited beliefs about what love is supposed to look like: "It's not that we're incapable of multiple loves, but that we've never been taught how to hold them. We're taught love equals ownership, exclusivity, and sacrifice. Polyamory asks us to rewrite that story."

Even Esther Perel (Mother), who doesn’t specialize in polyamory per se but is widely known for her work on relationships and desire, notes that monogamy has shifted over time from being a social institution to a deeply emotional, personal ideal. And that ideal, often linked with safety, legitimacy, and realness, doesn’t fade overnight just because we’ve opted out of it.

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So when I have those monogamous thoughts, it’s not a failure of my identity or belief system. It’s the residue of cultural training. Training that tells us being someone’s “one and only” is the most validating thing a person can offer. But real validation, the kind I actually crave, comes from mutual presence, attention, and effort, not from someone cutting off parts of their life to perform devotion.

Sometimes I want things I know wouldn’t actually make me happy. That doesn’t make the desire wrong: it just makes it worth examining. When that happens, I take a little meta moment. I imagine stepping outside myself, not to judge, but to look at what’s underneath. What part of me is scared? What story is being triggered? (Shoutout to my therapist friends for giving me the tools to even ask those questions.)

Jealousy, possessiveness, longing: they usually show up when I don’t feel okay with myself. If I’m anxious (which is often, unfortunately), it’s so much easier to search for external validation than to sit with the chaos inside. I’ve also done this very sneaky thing with jealously: I’ve reshaped it. I do not care at all if a partner sleeps with, has a full-blown relationship, whatever with someone else. In fact, I enjoy the idea of them being desired by another person. What I do get insecure about it is feeling like I’m easily replaceable so I act like I’m allergic to all relationship commitments. Cool.

Non-monogamy isn’t a finished product. It’s not a checklist of beliefs I nailed down one afternoon while reading Polysecure. It’s an ongoing process. And it’s hard. We’re not given a script. When you’re building something custom with someone, it’s easy to feel like you’re failing because you don’t know exactly what you're doing. You’re just two weird humans trying to build a little island of honesty and desire between you and that doesn’t always look neat.

But I choose connection. Again and again, I choose it over scripts, over safety, over the lie of simplicity. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes I float in the discomfort of not knowing where something’s going and have to trust that I’ll be okay either way.

Monogamous thoughts still show up. I let them. I listen. Then I remind myself: I don’t want to own love. I can show up for someone. I can be steady, even if it’s casual. I can stick around because I care, not because of some implicit promise of escalating commitment. And there are others that have the capacity to do the same for me.

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CW: sexual coercion, gaslighting, toxic masculinity, general annoyance.

Recently, after a hookup, I texted a man to say that his attempt to penetrate with me without a condom, despite my clear boundaries, was not okay. I told him I’d been scared. In the moment, I acted calm and kind because I didn’t know what else to do. Because that’s what fear can look like. Because staying safe sometimes means staying agreeable.

What I received in response was a message so dense with emotional manipulation, patriarchal logic, and image defense that it could be taught in a seminar on how our culture teaches men to protect their egos instead of owning harm.

And here’s the thing: this wasn’t the worst experience I’ve had. Not by a long shot. It wasn’t violent. I’m not traumatized. I’m not even that mad about it now, which, honestly, might be the saddest part. Because this kind of thing happens all the time. Especially to people who present femme, like me.

This is what I’d call the light version of sexual assault, which is a disgusting term to use but it’s the kind that’s so common it doesn’t even register as a crime to most people. But it’s still coercive. It still violates boundaries. And the aftermath: the gaslight cleanup crew that follows is where the real psychological damage happens.

So let’s break down the message I got. Line by line as I try to flex my uncompleted psychology degree and most likely make worse the issue of people over-using psychology terminology incorrectly. Let’s talk about what each sentence is really saying, and how it plays into the broader system of toxic masculinity, rape culture, and power-protective psychology.

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1. “So, when somebody fucks up, makes a mistake, and then apologizes sincerely for it, perseverating on it, implying that it defines who they are and impugning their character doesn't generally lead for any opportunity for connection.”

🚩 Tactic: Reframing the harm as “a mistake” to avoid accountability.  

Instead of naming what happened (a boundary violation) he calls it a generic “fuck up.” This vague language is meant to minimize the event. It suggests this was a clumsy misstep, not a conscious decision that placed someone else’s body at risk. I get it; we all do things that hurt others. But owning up to the impact of your harm is vital to actual repair. 

Psychologically, this is a classic tactic of minimization defined by shrinking the harm to protect the self-image of the person who caused it. It also introduces emotional inversion: "If you talk about your experience, you’re harming me." His hurt feelings become the center of the story. Not my fear. Not my body. Not my consent.

2. “I made a mistake, and when you pointed it out I admitted it and apologized for. I tried to contextualize it as me getting carried away in the moment and assure you that once the boundary was firmly pointed out I wouldn't cross it again which is all I can really do.”

🚩 Tactic: Justification and shifting responsibility.

“Getting carried away” is one of those euphemisms that sounds innocent but functions as a get-out-of-jail-free card. It treats desire as an unstoppable force like something that happens to him rather than a choice he made. Also: “once the boundary was firmly pointed out”? This implies that my boundary wasn’t clear enough when I said it before sex began. That it’s on me to set the rules more assertively (aka me yelling “no” during the violation), instead of on him to stop pushing.

This is victim-blaming disguised as reflection. It suggests that if only I'd been clearer, he wouldn't have accidentally tried to have unprotected sex with me. This isn't self-awareness. It's deflection.

3. “Perhaps you didn't realize it, but it seemed as though you were more interested in shaming me.”

🚩 Tactic: Accusation of malice to discredit your reaction.

This sentence recasts my boundary as an attack on him. The implication? I wasn’t expressing hurt, Instead I was trying to punish. This is a psychological strategy called preemptive reversal: by accusing me of cruelty, he positions himself as the victim. It forces me to defend my tone instead of my boundaries.

It also plants the idea that my response is irrational or disproportionate, which is a tactic often used to silence marginalized people, especially femme-presenting folks, when we advocate for ourselves.

4. “Not to mention that I recall that when you left you seemed very enthusiastic about seeing me again. Which tells me that you weren't so much put off in the moment.”

🚩 Tactic: Using your survival response as evidence against you.

This is gaslighting. Plain and simple. It says: “Your emotional state didn’t match how trauma is supposed to look, so I don’t believe you.”

But trauma, fear, and violation don’t have a single script. People laugh when they’re scared. People smile when they feel cornered. People say “I had a great time” because they don’t know how to say “I felt violated” without risking more harm. I refuse to believe that someone can be so ignorant as to not understand the power within gender dynamics. 

This is how coercion is often erased: because it doesn't leave bruises (no in the good way), it leaves doubt. And perpetrators love to use that doubt to their advantage.

5. “Which makes me wonder about the dynamics at work in doing a full 180… it feels like you turn me into some sort of a caricature in your mind…”

🚩 Tactic: Character assassination disguised as confusion.

Now we’re deep into DARVO territory: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. He’s no longer just confused: he’s wounded. Not by what he did, but by how I saw him.

Accusing me of turning him into a caricature is an appeal to his fragile ego. It suggests the real harm wasn’t his actions but my perception of him. His reputation is now the real victim. Not my body. Not my boundary.

6. “The bottom line is that I'm a good guy who got carried away for about a millisecond.”

🚩 Tactic: Rebranding behavior by emphasizing self-image.

This is the crown jewel of rape culture: "Good guys can’t do bad things." The entire argument hinges on this false binary: that you're either a monster or innocent. There's no room for nuance. No space for impact. Just image.

But here’s the truth: many “good guys” cause harm. Not because they’re evil. But because they were taught not to listen. Taught that desire justifies pressure. Taught that if no one screams, it’s probably fine. Being a “good guy” is irrelevant when you’ve crossed a boundary. The only thing that matters is how you respond to that fact.

7. “Your characterization of me as somebody who ignored your boundaries or blew through a stop sign is inaccurate and unfair.”

🚩 Tactic: Denial of your reality.

This is classic gaslighting. He’s telling me what I experienced didn’t happen. He’s not just questioning my emotions here. He’s rewriting the story.

Also, “stop sign”? This isn’t traffic law. It’s my bodily autonomy. But reducing it to a metaphor about driving makes it seem harmless, even accidental. As if he just missed a yield sign in foggy weather. Whoops! But doesn’t everyone do it from time to time?

8. “The minute you said no I pulled back and that was the end of it. That's a fuck up, not some kind of a sexual assault or something.”

🚩 Tactic: Downplaying harm and gatekeeping language.

This is a final, desperate attempt to control the narrative. To decide what counts as sexual assault. And it’s one of the most damaging parts of this whole message. Because in that sentence, he’s saying: “Your boundary wasn’t really crossed, because I stopped eventually.” 

But coercion before someone says “no” is still coercion. Pressuring someone until they have to say “no” is not consent. It’s manipulation. And it’s frighteningly common.

What I find ironic is the fact that I never used the terminology sexual assault in my communication about the incident. Feels telling and possibly not the first time he’s had to send a message of this nature. 

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So why share this?

Because this wasn’t some uniquely awful encounter. It was a very normal (still awful) one. So normal that I barely flinched. So normal that I only started thinking about it afterward, when I read his message and realized how perfectly it illustrated everything I’ve spent years trying to unlearn and avoid in others.

I’ll preemptively say this to avoid any annoying comments: I am not a man hater. I love men, am attracted to many of them, and enjoy their company. What I do hate is this bullshit behavior which, to some, has incorrectly become synonymous with masculinity. If you have to tell someone you’re a “good guy”, you probably aren’t. 

This article isn’t about revenge of any kind. I’m not going to call this man out by name. Cancelling a person (which I am inherently against) rarely provides justice and often makes the experience even more traumatizing for everyone involved. This is not about one man. It’s about a system: a belief system that teaches people to dodge accountability, minimize harm, and protect their self-image at all costs.

And it’s about education. About learning to see these tactics for what they are, so the next time you get a message like this, disguised as sensitivity, cloaked in half-apologies and guilt trips, I hope this may help you to recognize it.

And selfishly, this has been me trying to process my feelings about the situation. In fact, I kind of wish I was a little more angry, a little less defeated. But writing this made me feel better, put some language to the swirling thoughts I had about being wronged. By validating my feelings this way, I hope I helped validate some of yours too. 

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This past weekend, I fell in love with a stripper. Kidding. But not kidding.

I went to the club with my bestie to see one specific person: a non-binary hottie whose Instagram had already short-circuited my brain. Some pictures they posted wearing leather pants were practically sentient. I tried to play it cool, but my friend, ever the best communicator, went full earnest and told the truth: we were there to see them. Only them. 

What followed was 3 stage performances of wide-eyed worship full of mesmerized stares and whooping sounds I rarely make in public. Mutually inflicted lust as we chatted to them at the bar, me slipping $20s into their bag every few minutes. And then, a joint lap dance. Something I’d never experienced in tandem with my closest friend. But here’s the thing: it was more sexually satisfying than most of the sex I’ve had lately but it wasn’t creepy or invasive to our friendship. I wasn’t attracted to my friend at that moment, but I did find pleasure in their pleasure.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why. 

There’s something about the dynamic of the lap dance: I’m the one with cash in hand, but they’re the one holding all the chips. The chips being my awooga-style horniness, my helpless admiration, my complete and utter submission to their beauty. It wasn’t about getting off, it was about being undone. And doing it side-by-side with someone who knows me in and out? That added a whole other layer of intensity.

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At one point, in the middle of the dance, I said, out loud, “I’ve never been so turned on and happy for a friend at the same time.” And it was true. It wasn’t that I was attracted to my friend (I firmly keep my friendships in the don’t-fuck zone) but I was thrilled by how hot they were feeling. And how hot I was feeling. At the same time. For the same person. In the same space.

That was when I realized I was experiencing something that felt a lot like compersion, but not the way I’d been taught to think of it, as a polyamorous coping mechanism to keep jealousy in check, but as something even more radical: the feeling of being genuinely happy that someone I love is experiencing pleasure, even (especially?) when that pleasure is shared.

I used to think compersion was exclusively about romantic partners,  the “I’m so happy you’re getting railed by your other partner” kind of thing. But what if it’s also just about having the capacity to be moved by someone else’s desire? What if it’s about being in tune with someone else’s turn-on without having to insert yourself into it?

It brought up this wave of memories. Like being a kid, watching stolen VHS tapes with friends or the kind of porn that took two hours to download on LimeWire. One of them was called “Bonking Balls on Blackpool Beach,” which still feels like the most aggressively British thing I’ve ever seen. Or the nights my high school bestie and I would watch porn on his parents’ computer, then split off into separate rooms to jerk off. He offered me his mom’s vibrator once, which was very kind, very cursed, and politely declined.

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I think we’ve always been trying to be horny near each other. Teen sleepovers, daisy chains, circle jerks: maybe they weren’t as frequent as the rumors made them sound, but they weren’t myths either. I’ve heard too many men admit to jerking off with a buddy, too many women say they fooled around with a friend. Was it experimentation? Sure. But maybe it was also a primitive version of this same thing: a desire to feel safe, mirrored, supported in our sexuality even before we had the words.

Most of the sex parties I’ve attended have been with friends, not lovers. I tend to be the first to fuck, part exhibitionist, part icebreaker,  and I always get this little thrill thinking, “Aww, my friends are probably watching and feeling proud.” I’ve been told this is accurate. And while that might sound narcissistic, it’s more communal than it is self-serving. We’re not just getting off at each other. We’re getting off with each other. It’s a kind of sexual solidarity. A shared rite.

This is what made that lap dance feel almost holy. Because it wasn’t a performance for someone else’s gaze. It wasn’t for social media. It wasn’t about control or outcome. It was about two people, close friends, falling apart a little bit together. Getting swept up in something we couldn’t control, and not trying to. It was raw, and joyful, and deeply hot.

And here’s what I’ve learned, digging into the research after the fact: compersion isn’t just a vibe, it’s a real, studied, nameable psychological phenomenon. Originally coined by the Kerista commune in the ‘70s at a polyamorous utopia in San Francisco (of course) compersion was meant to describe the joy you feel when someone you love is experiencing pleasure with someone else. It’s not the absence of jealousy: it’s its inverse. It doesn’t erase insecurity, it just reorients your reaction. And more and more psychologists agree: it’s a skill, not a trait. It’s something you can grow into.

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Studies show that compersion emerges most naturally when you have a solid sense of self, emotional safety, and trust, not just in your relationships, but in your community. It activates similar circuits to empathy, specifically what researchers call “empathic joy”: the ability to feel happiness because someone else is happy. The same neural mechanisms that light up when you watch someone you love open a gift, also light up when we witness their sexual pleasure. That is if we’re open to it. Compersion is easier when you don’t feel like you’re in competition. TLDR: You’re more likely to get turned on for your friend when you don’t feel like you’re competing with them for love, sex, or belonging.

This may be why it was so easy to facilitate in a strip club. While I was crushing hard on this dancer, I know that it is their job to make my brain and body melt (and they were damn good at it). Nothing is going to happen outside of the club, no other contact would be happening. So I was fully in the moment of compersion with my friend without unclear expectations and boundaries.

It’s also good for you to be hyped about your friends horniness! In a 2017 study from Bjarne Holmes and colleagues, polyamorous individuals who practiced compersion reported less anxiety, higher emotional resilience, and greater relationship satisfaction. The more they leaned into the feeling, the more their emotional brains adapted to support it.

And here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be romantic. Platonic compersion is real. It’s happening in sex-positive, queer, kinky, and polyamorous spaces all the time. It just hasn’t gone mainstream yet, because it sounds kind of wild to say, “I got so turned on for my friend.” But if we can cheer for them at a wedding, or a graduation, or when they post a thirst trap, why not this?

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I ended up giving the dancer all the money in my wallet. Three times the amount I told myself I’d spend. Bless my best friend for pulling me out of there just as I started to flirt with the idea of the ATM.

But the deeper truth is this: that night reinforced something in me. It made me question why we’ve been taught to isolate our sexuality, to hoard our turn-ons, to protect them from the very people who love us most. It made me wonder if the most radical thing we can do is let our desire be witnessed, and witness others in return, with joy, not judgment. With curiosity, not comparison. With love. 

So yeah. I got horny with my friend. And it wasn’t weird. It was actually very sweet. 

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Turns out, I’m in my life-lessons era. Every few years, I hit one of those internal checkpoints, the kind that shows up after the end of something. A relationship, a job, a cycle, a version of myself. It becomes necessary to sit down, take inventory, and try to figure out what the hell just happened and what I’m supposed to carry forward. Lately, that’s meant peeling back the layers of how I live with pain and, more importantly, how I wear it.

Throw in a few devastating therapy TikToks (thank you to my friend who sends them like little grenades), and I’ve come to a pretty uncomfortable realization:  I’ve gotten really good at being unhappy. Not performatively. Not in a dramatic, “I’m broken and therefore beautiful” kind of way. Just practiced. Efficient. I know how to manage it. I know how to anticipate disappointment before it arrives. I’ve rehearsed it so often it feels like home. And maybe that’s the problem.

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There are two things I’ve always understood about happiness: It’s a state, not a destination and it’s not something you can (or should) sustain all the time.

Life happens. Deaths, breakups, bills, news cycles. There are seasons where happiness feels not just out of reach, but inappropriate. But here’s the twist no one told me: sometimes unhappiness is also a choice. And sometimes, without realizing it, you choose it over and over again, not because you like it, but because it’s what you know.

Psychologists refer to this as emotional habituation: our brains naturally adapt to emotional states that are familiar, even if those states are negative. If you’ve been sad, anxious, or unsafe for long enough, those feelings become your baseline. Anything outside of that, even peace or joy, can feel foreign. Suspicious. Unsafe.

So maybe the real question is: Have I become too comfortable in the discomfort?

I’m very invested in my self-mythology. We all are, to some extent. We build personal narratives to make sense of it all. I’m the main character in a story where the plot points are trauma markers: the absent parent, the messy breakup, the self-sabotage, the survival.

There’s a tension between self-awareness and self-indulgence, though.  Where does “this shaped me” turn into “this defines me”? Where does reflection turn into rumination?

The uncomfortable truth is, I’ve clung to my suffering like a badge. Not always out loud, but in subtle, compulsive ways: how I talk about myself, how I anticipate rejection, how I hold back from joy like it’s something I haven’t earned yet.

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Pain became a kind of moral compass. If I’m hurting, I must be honest. If I’m struggling, I must be real. And real is good, right? But that’s the dangerous math: Pain = authenticity = virtue. I’ve wrongfully learnt that it is disingenuous to feel joy while also acknowledging pain. 

I hate to admit this part, but here we go. There have been times online, professionally, and socially where I’ve leveraged my trauma. Used it to make something more “relatable,” more poignant, more marketable. I may not have consciously done it, imitating what I saw around me, but I did do it. That sounds harsh, but in a world where people are brands, suffering becomes part of the packaging. It’s like we’ve all been given the same marketing advice: “Lead with your pain. That’s where the story is.” And yeah, sometimes it works. Until you realize you’re selling a version of yourself that never gets to evolve.

I was venting to a friend recently (also a writer) about how I worried my past (and present) would limit me. Would people take me seriously if I didn’t go to film school? If I’ve worked in sex work? If I have no “clean” narrative arc? His answer floored me: “If the script’s bad, that’s why it won’t sell. If the script’s good, it becomes part of the lore.” While it felt comforting at the time, upon reflecting, it worried me that I was going to have to go back into the cycle of mythologizing myself. It made me wonder how often I’ve disqualified myself from happiness or success just because I couldn’t picture it fitting into the story I’d written about myself.

I worry sometimes that I’m too easy to control, too open, too shaped by the idea that I must prove I’ve suffered enough to earn anything good. I worry that I’m easy prey for people who know how to weaponize guilt or manipulate empathy. But mostly, I worry that I’ve trained myself into unhappiness because it’s familiar.

There’s a strange kind of control in being unhappy. It’s a known quantity. I can work with it. I can build a life around it. But hope? Joy? That feels like a risk. If you’ve ever grown up chronically sad or anxious, you’ll know: happiness isn’t always a relief. Sometimes it feels like a setup. Like something that will get taken away the second you relax.

This is where the psychology of learned helplessness comes in: where repeated exposure to adversity makes you believe you have no power to change your circumstances, even when opportunities for change are present. You stop trying. You internalize struggle as identity.

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Sometimes I wonder if I’ve built an altar to my pain. Not intentionally. But over time, piece by piece. A sacred place I return to, light a candle, remind myself who I’ve been, how I’ve been broken. What I’ve endured. And maybe that’s fine for a while. But at a certain point, it stops being reverent and starts being a self-imprisonment. If you live there too long, you forget how to live anywhere else.

Here’s the hard truth I’m sitting with now: If you commit to being defined by your suffering, it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t redeem you. It doesn’t make you noble. It doesn’t rewrite the past. It just keeps you from participating in the present.

I’m not saying don’t be sad. I’m not saying to ignore your pain or minimize your history. Integration is necessary. But I’m starting to believe that idolizing all the bad things that have ever happened to you is just another form of resistance. A way to avoid change. A way to stay safe.

The truth is, pursuing unhappiness is sometimes easier than hoping for better. But it will never get you the apology you want. It won’t get you the opportunity you deserve. And it definitely won’t get you the do-over you crave.

So here’s where I’m at: I want to stop managing my unhappiness like a job. I want to stop mythologizing my suffering like it’s sacred. I want to live a story where the plot twist isn’t pain but joy. Even if that scares me more than sadness ever did.

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It’s weird if your friends haven’t seen you naked. There, I said it. And now, let me make my case.

Yesterday, I got pierced with one of my closest friends. She got a nipple piercing (hot). She has the best tits ever (also hot). She knows it, our entire friend group knows it, and we’ve talked about it in the group chat. And you know what? It’s completely platonic. There is something so pure and genuinely loving about being called hot by someone who has no intention of trying to fuck you. Getting a compliment on my physical appearance from a friend always feels like the most sincere, hype-you-up, no-hidden-agenda kind of compliment I could ever get.

Now, before anyone potentially gets weird about it, let me clarify: this is not about attraction in a "I want to date my friends" way. Attraction isn’t just physical; it's personality, humor, the way they treat you, the way they make you laugh until you pee a little bit. But today, we’re talking about nudity. Specifically, why I think we should all be more naked around our friends. Let’s go.

When I first started making content for my OnlyFans, I found it nearly impossible to gauge if my content was actually hot. The second I took a photo, my brain instantly went into overdrive: “Is this good? Do I look weird? Is this sexy or am I looking like a sentient garden gnome?” It felt vulnerable in a way I hadn’t experienced before, even though I’d been posting images and videos of myself for years in a professional capacity. But I had never taken a close-up picture of my own pussy before! That was a whole new level of exposure and one I was completely unequipped to navigate alone.

So, naturally, I sent my nudes to my friends.

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And it helped. A lot. Not in a “my friends now want to sleep with me” way, but in a “my friends support me and think I look amazing” way. It’s like when you’re picking an outfit with help from a friend (something I call “The Fashion Show”) and they hype you up when you get the right fit. I’ve had many facetimes with my friends as we pick outfits for dates, judging what makes us look the most fuckable. Now imagine that, but for your nudes. There’s no ulterior motive. Just love, support, and maybe a few “Damn, you’re killing it” texts in all caps.

Here’s the thing: my friends are hot. Objectively. I’ve spent enough time with them, staring at them (not in a creepy way, I swear) to appreciate all the little things that make them beautiful. The tiny mole on their ribs. Their annoyingly perfect hair. Their toned arms. Their incredibly cute feet. Their absurdly perky tits. But instead of wanting to consume their hotness, I just feel proud to know them. Like, wow, what a privilege it is to exist in the same space as these stunning, radiant people. I have found joy in objectively admiring my friends. 

A lot of people, especially men, are taught that displays of sexuality or attractiveness are for consumption. But why can’t we just… be happy for people that they’re hot? Like, good for you! You’re stunning! You’re thriving! That doesn’t mean I want to sleep with you: it just means I recognize and celebrate your beauty.

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Nudity hasn’t always been as taboo as it is today, and in many places, it still isn’t. We all know about Ancient Greece, where public bathing and even athletic competitions were done naked. The human body was celebrated as an art form, not something inherently sexualized. Similarly, Indigenous cultures around the world have long embraced nudity in different capacities, whether for practicality, ceremony, or communal bathing.

Fast forward to today, and attitudes toward nudity vary widely by culture. Scandinavian countries are famously relaxed about it: saunas, nude beaches, and topless sunbathing are completely normal. Some pockets of Europe are the same, though a conservative shift, piggybacking of the United States, has dampened a lot of the tits-out beach moments. Meanwhile, in more conservative societies (looking at you USA), nudity is still highly stigmatized, seen as something that should remain strictly private.

So, the fear of nudity? It’s largely a social construct. Somewhere along the way, we decided that bodies just existing were something to be hidden. But historically, that wasn’t always the case.

And of course, there is a gender factor at play. Because nudity, especially casual nudity, is experienced differently depending on how the world perceives you.

For cisgender women, nudity in friendships is often more normalized. Think about locker rooms, sleepovers, changing outfits in front of each other before a night out. There’s an unspoken understanding that seeing each other naked isn’t weird.

For cisgender men, it’s different. While old-school locker room culture involved a lot of casual nudity, modern masculinity often discourages it. Many men grow up with the idea that being naked around friends is uncomfortable or even suspect. It’s one of those weird social rules that reinforces body insecurity (and sometimes sexual insecurity) rather than challenging it.

And then, of course, there’s the experience of trans and nonbinary folks, which can be far more complicated. A lot of people don’t grow up feeling safe in their own bodies, let alone being naked around others. Dysphoria, societal expectations, and safety concerns all play a role. But that doesn’t mean nudity in friendships can’t be healing; it just means it looks different for everyone. One of my favourite parts of Summer is going to the gay beach and getting naked with all the queer cuties.

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Let’s get into the science. Research suggests that exposure to diverse bodies helps reduce body shame and increase self-acceptance. In societies where nudity is normalized, people tend to have healthier relationships with their bodies and experience lower levels of body dissatisfaction. That seems logical.

There’s also a strong psychological link between non-sexual touch and emotional well-being. Casual nudity between friends can function in a similar way: it reinforces closeness, reduces shame, and creates a stronger sense of connection. When you see your friends naked, you realize that everyone has “flaws” (or what we’ve been taught to see as flaws), and it humanizes the whole experience of existing in a body.

Of course, not everyone is comfortable with nudity, and that’s totally fine. The goal isn’t to force anyone into situations that make them uncomfortable. Instead it’s to question why we’ve been conditioned to see our bodies as inherently inappropriate. And if we can unlearn some of that conditioning with the help of trusted friends, why not?

Let’s address one of my main motivations: curiosity. I want to see my friends naked!  Just like I want to see everyone naked! It’s not even sexual. I’m just deeply intrigued by human bodies. And I know I’m not alone in this.

Exhibit A: Naked Attraction. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a British game show that is *chef’s kiss* perfection. Hosted by an incredibly open and unbothered bisexual woman, the show has contestants choose a date based purely on physical attraction. But the reveal process is done in stages: first, the lower half of the body, then the torso, then the face, and finally, the voice. The best part? Once the contestant picks their match, they also have to get naked before making their final selection. It’s chaotic, awkward, and weirdly wholesome. There are trans, bisexual, and even non-monogamous people on this show (someone picked a couple once which I loved). And it satisfies the human curiosity of seeing different bodies in a way that feels surprisingly unsexualized and accepting.

Of course, I get that not everyone sees casual nudity as, well, casual. Some people have deep-seated anxieties about being seen naked. Others have partners who don’t quite get the whole friend-nudity thing. I’ve had partners try to set "boundaries" around me being naked in front of my friends (which, by the way, is not how boundaries work. Those are rules, babe). And while I understand that their discomfort likely stems from personal insecurities, it’s a reminder that many people are still threatened by nudity.

But to me, nakedness is normal. It’s just a body! And when shared with love and friendship, it’s something that can bring people closer together rather than making things weird. It’s also allowed me to find more comfort in my own body. Being perceived and acknowledged by someone you trust and love, who has no sexual investment in pursuing you, feels really damn good to me.

So, if you haven’t already, consider adding a little more casual nudity to your friendships. Maybe it starts with going to a bathhouse. Maybe it’s changing in front of each other without making it a big deal. Maybe it’s just hyping each other up when you take a particularly  fire nude. Whatever it looks like for you, I promise; it’s a good time.

Let’s get naked, besties.

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Sometimes I feel like a permanent angsty teenager. If someone tells me to do something with even a hint of authority, my instinct is to do the exact opposite. And, more often than not, I actually do. Maybe it’s the Taurus in me, stubborn to a fault. Maybe it’s just who I am. Either way, advice tends to slide off me or be positioned like a challenge in my mind. You don’t think I should do that? Well, watch me.

This resistance to guidance has been a defining trait of mine for as long as I can remember. My dad, though we don’t have a particularly traditional father/child dynamic, loves dispensing life lessons through well-worn stories of his own past. Each tale is told and retold with varying emphasis, depending on the particular teaching moment he’s trying to carve out. Over the years, his fables have settled into a greatest hits list of advice: “Always be a chameleon”: this one delivered with a heavy sigh as he took in my first tattoo. “Never be dependent on anyone”: a warning shot fired when I announced my engagement. “Don’t let people know how smart you are”: said right after he charmed a Home Depot cashier into giving him a discount with an expertly placed smile.

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The thing is, he wasn’t wrong. None of them were: the elders, the wiser-than-me’s, the well-intentioned warners, even my friends that are just plain smarter than me. They were mostly right about love, about money, about career choices, about heartbreak and stability and the long, exhausting game of being a person in this world. I just wasn’t capable of listening. I still might not be.

Now, thanks to the algorithm, I’m being fed a steady diet of “Things I Wish I’d Known in My 30s” videos. And while some of them catch my attention (yes, drink more water, yes, be gentle with your failures), most of them drift past me like static. Retirement planning? Can’t hear you over the sound of me barely remembering to transfer money for rent.

The truth is, I’ve been tumbling my way through life, making decisions that seemed right at the time, or, at the very least, interesting. And honestly? I wouldn’t change it. First, I’m going to have a fabulous memoir (even if I’ll have to creatively sidestep a few NDAs). But more importantly, I’m not left wondering. I don’t have to sit around thinking “what if?” because I already know. I learned through doing, through the messiness of experience, through getting my hands dirty in my own mistakes.

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There have been times when I’ve been given bad advice, not out of wisdom, but out of someone else’s fear or desire to control me. These tidbits aren’t framed as “You should do this” but rather “You shouldn’t do that.” When I first started getting tattoos over 15 years ago, visible ink meant you couldn’t get a service job, and plenty of people warned me against it. While that was technically true, having them pushed me further into being myself. A decade ago, when I was open about doing sex work, people around me panicked: how would I ever get a “normal” job again? And, well, they were probably right. A quick Google search might disqualify me from working at a bank. But aside from not wanting a normal job (whatever that is), I’ve proven to myself that I can not only change industries if I want, but I can also build companies from scratch.

Now, I’m trying to become a writer (surprise!), specifically writing features. The people I know who have been in the film industry 10, 20 years longer than me tell me it’s the worst possible time, have another plan, do something else. Why the fuck would I do that? I’m not going to get what I want if I don’t try, and I’d rather fail than give up. Maybe I’ve finally learnt enough life lessons to be right this time.

Would I love to share what I know with someone younger, to pass on my hard-won wisdom and spare them some unnecessary heartache? Sure. But do I expect them to listen? Not really. And truthfully, I don’t want them to. Some things are meant to be lived, not learned secondhand. I wouldn’t trade any failure, any heartbreak, any poor decision for not having the experience of doing it.

So to everyone older than me who was right: I admit it! But I had to find out for myself.

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Every so often, someone will say it. Maybe in passing, maybe as a joke, maybe even seriously:

“I should just do what you do.”

Usually, it comes from someone who has just been venting about how much they hate their job, or about their current state of financial stress. And every time, it lands with the same weight: as if sex work is some simple alternative, an effortless hustle, a fantasy job with no downsides.

But here’s the truth: Sex work is labor. Hard, intense, draining labor. It’s work that demands you constantly hustle for the next job, balancing financial uncertainty with emotional and physical exhaustion. It’s work that comes with harassment from strangers, from clients, sometimes even from people you know. People will want to waste your time, essentially trying to get your services for free. And it’s work that carries risks, both legal and social, that most other professions don’t even have to consider.

I won’t lie. I tend to stray away from talking about the difficulties of this job even in my day to day banter with friends. This is because very quickly people will start being concerned for your safety, your mental health, your sense of self.  Like many other jobs, you can get harassed, hurt, demeaned, belittled, overlooked, stalked, stressed, and lost. But I’ve come to realize that when I only stick to the good stuff, when I only glamorize what I do, I’m not often taken seriously. 

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Yes, part of the job is creating an illusion. Projecting confidence, allure, and ease is a necessary part of drawing in clients. It’s marketing. But the existence of that illusion doesn’t make the work any less real. Just like models, actors, and influencers cultivate an image that sells, sex workers carefully craft their presentation but behind that is a person working, strategizing, and expending real energy to make a living. It can feel phony and weird, but if your job requires an online presence, you’re doing it too. 

This misconception that sex work is easy only adds to the stigma sex workers face. It reduces an entire profession to a mere fantasy, reinforcing the idea that sex workers aren’t really working, that they’re just playing, scamming, or looking for a shortcut. Or my personal most-hated suggestion: that we’re doing the work to feel empowered. Making money can be empowering but working sure is not. Making yourself into a fantasy for others and therefore having to adjust your appearance, body, demeanor, and personality to tailor to people who aren’t interested in the authentic you (most of the time) is not empowering. That belief makes it easier to dismiss the labor, the struggles, and the challenges of the job. It feeds into policies and attitudes that deny sex workers rights, safety, and dignity.

Another reality is that sex workers always have to be on. Whether in person or online, we are constantly performing. Some of the most intimate interactions happen with people we don’t know, and it doesn’t matter if we’re in the mood to do them or not. Even on our off days, we have to embody someone’s ideal of sexy. Do you know how many conversations I have every day with men who have no respect for me yet have to act like it’s what I want to do? On good days, the work can feel good, but on bad days, it can feel like hell. 

And then there’s the way some clients treat us. The flippancy, the objectification, the way we are sometimes viewed as mere entertainment rather than full human beings. In a coffee shop, it’s normal to ask the barista, How are you? before placing an order. As a sex worker, it’s common for someone to open a conversation with explicit comments about your body, reducing you to a plaything before you’ve even had a chance to set a boundary. Can you imagine someone feeling entitled to point out your biggest physical insecurity right away and even feel entitled to do so? This dehumanization is part of the job’s daily reality, and it takes a toll.

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Porn is a perfect example of how outsiders assume sex work is easy when, in reality, it demands an extreme level of endurance and professionalism. Many men assume performing in adult films would be effortless, but could they keep a hard on for hours, under bright lights, in a room full of people staring at and critiquing their bodies? For all want-to-be performers, can you push yourself to a physical limit when, even if your co-star is attractive, you’re not motivated by fun or getting off? What if you don’t find your scene partner attractive at all? The work requires a level of discipline and stamina that is anything but simple.

Now I have to admit that I am writing this at a time where I’ve had a particularly bad day at work. There are so many things I love about what I do: the people in the industry, the life changing connections you make with clients, the flexibility, the politics, the cute outfits. To add, I think I’m pretty damn good at it. It’s one of the only occupations I’ve had where I can get into that flow-like state and walk away feeling fulfilled. But today, I’m dealing with a difficult situation I’ve never navigated before and the last thing I need is someone telling me how easy it all actually is.  

Sex work is not an escape from the struggles of traditional employment. It’s not an easy ticket to financial freedom. It’s a job. One that requires skill, resilience, and a level of commitment that too many people fail to recognize. So please stop telling sex workers that their job is easy and undervalued with passive comments. I’ve heard it twice this week and that’s twice too many. And question to anyone who still thinks that sex work is easy: why aren’t you doing it then?

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I tried to wax my pussy at home the other day. I know I should have gone to a professional for hair removal (Sorry Uncle Nat! I’ll make an appointment soon). But if something is possible DIY style, I’m going to try it. I knew it would hurt but holy shit. That was the ultimate form of masochism that I was not prepared for. As I fanned my now swollen labia, it got me thinking about hair removal in general. Why the fuck was I here, pantless in my bathroom, my cunt on fire?

I let my bush flourish for years until recently entering the realm of online sex work. There are a few reasons for this. Positives: I think I have a particularly pretty pussy and wanted it to be more visible in pictures in videos. Not so positive: I feel like it’s what’s expected from me. Based on my own anecdotal research, being groomed is the preference of my target customer. Most frustratingly: I dyed my hair black late last year. Let me explain that a little further: I’m a redhead so therefore also red down there. I cannot mentally get past the lack of cohesion of the hair on  my head and the hair on my pussy. So I dye it. Using Just For Men beard dye on my entire bush, inner labia included, felt fucking wild and messy and potential dangerous (?) so I opted for a bald vulva with a little triangle pubis. 

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Pubic hair has been groomed, removed, or left to flourish for centuries, shaped by cultural norms, aesthetics, and sometimes practicality. Ancient Egyptians and Greeks viewed body hair as uncivilized, with upper-class individuals meticulously plucking (ouch) or shaving their pubic hair. In medieval Europe, pubic hair removal was less common but sometimes practiced to prevent lice. The 20th century saw intimate grooming change dramatically: first with the rise of pin-up models in the 1940s, then the full Brazilian waxing trend made infamous by the 1990s. Today, we’re seeing yet another shift in the conversation, this time fueled by TikTok and online discourse about body autonomy, hygiene myths, and the politics of personal grooming.

One of the most persistent arguments in favor of pubic hair removal is hygiene, but let’s get this straight: Pubic hair is not dirty. In fact, it plays a protective role. It reduces friction, helps prevent infections, and even traps pheromones. The idea that a shaved vulva or scrotum is inherently “cleaner” is rooted in misinformation rather than science. 

If anything, removing pubic hair, especially through shaving or waxing, creates tiny cuts and irritations that can make the skin more vulnerable to bacteria. There’s also the medical issue of ingrown hairs, folliculitis, and even increased risk of STIs due to microtears in the skin. While many people love the feeling of smooth skin, it’s important to separate preference from misinformation about what is and isn’t “clean.”

It’s one thing to have a personal preference for your own grooming, but how much does it matter when it comes to a partner? Some people argue that everyone has the right to their own tastes. After all, attraction is subjective. Others believe that pressuring or expecting a partner to remove or maintain their pubic hair in a certain way is where it becomes controlling.

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There is this British game show called “Naked Attraction” that simply could not exist in the US for fear of conservative eyeballs exploding upon viewing. During this show, a contestant picks someone based on their looks alone (well, accent too. This is the UK after all) to go on a date with. The wildest part: all the possible dates are naked behind a screen that slowly lifts higher per round. Meaning round one, you get to inspect their genitals. I find most of the contestants want someone trimmed, or as they say “neat”. It’s almost disappointing how many stunning people get passed over because they didn’t whip out the razor that morning. 

Much like these contestants, there are those who prefer the look and feel of a hairless partner, sometimes because it’s what they grew up seeing in media or porn. On the other hand, there are people who find pubic hair sexy and natural, appreciating the way it adds to body diversity and intimacy (or they’re older and the porn they grew up with was 70’s full-bush era). And then there are those who truly don’t care either way. But the key question is whether a preference is just that, a passive feeling, or if it crosses into entitlement over someone else’s body.

I’ve only had one partner past my fumbling teenage years (anything or anyone I did then does not count imo) that had a firm take on if I should be hairy or not. Their reasoning seemed noble: hairlessness creeped him out because of the association it has with being pre-pubescent. I can 100% get behind that! However, did it become an issue when it started to feel like a requirement. While I most likely pressured myself to try to be the most appealing to him, the seed of that pressure came from somewhere. Either way it can be read, the preference was made clear to me.

TikTok has become a surprising battleground for pubic hair discourse. Many users, particularly Gen Z, are rejecting the notion that hair removal should be the default. Videos celebrating “bush pride” rack up millions of views, while others expose partners who react negatively to body hair, often labeling them as immature or unprepared for real adult intimacy.

On the flip side, hair removal is still heavily marketed in mainstream media, from laser clinics advertising “permanent smoothness” to influencers promoting new razors. Am I the only one that gets tons of ads suggesting a “stripper-approved” electric shaver on Tik Tok? But what’s different now is that these messages are met with more pushback. There’s a growing awareness that body hair removal should be a choice, not an obligation.

The discourse around pubic hair differs significantly between straight and queer communities. In straight dating culture, particularly for women, the pressure to be hairless remains strong. Many straight men, often raised on porn that normalized the “bare” look, have deeply ingrained expectations around pubic hair. Women in straight relationships sometimes report feeling embarrassed or self-conscious if they grow out their hair, fearing judgment from partners. Since my income is coming from mostly the straight world (please more queer people sign up for my Onlyfans!), I have also succumbed to this pressure. 

In queer spaces, however, body hair is often embraced as a rejection of mainstream beauty standards. Many queer women, nonbinary people, and trans individuals view their pubic hair as an extension of body autonomy. There’s also a playful, experimental element. Some people dye their pubic hair (not in my obligatory way), sculpt it into shapes, or let it grow freely as an act of defiance against traditional gender norms. That’s not to say queer people don’t groom. It’s just that the social pressures differ. There’s more room to explore personal preferences without the same rigid expectations.

Having a personal preference for your partner’s pubic hair isn’t inherently shitty. The problem arises when that preference is tied to unrealistic beauty standards, shame, or entitlement over someone else’s body. If you genuinely prefer a certain look or feel, that’s ok, but expecting or demanding that from a partner is where it becomes problematic. If a person’s pubic hair is a deal breaker for you (though that seems wild to me) do you and communicate that preference up front instead of expecting someone to bend to your will later. At the end of the day, pubic hair (or the lack of it) is nobody’s business but the person who has it. The best approach? Respect your partner’s choice, and remember that attraction is about much more than just a little crotch hair.

But do I personally think voicing a preference over your partner’s body hair is shitty? When it comes to me and my hair, yes. It makes me feel bad, like someone was attracted to me at first, then once they get a closer experience of me, they want to change what they see. A request about body hair feels like a slippery slope. I once had a partner be furious with me for cutting the hair on my head and that level of preference over my body makes me feel like an object, not a valued individual. Has one of my partners had an aspect of their appearance that I would find attractive a different way? Probably, but I would have to ignore them as a whole being to value my take over their happiness. I’d rather have a happy, free, and empowered partner over one that fits some imaginary ideal I’ve thought up for them. I also don’t like what even considering preferences does to my brain. Why would I be asking myself questions about what I’d like to change about my partner? If I truly love them, they’re already perfect, bush or bald. 

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This time last year was an incredibly hard period for me. Things beyond my control were causing levels of anxiety I had never experienced before, so much so that I spent a week in a ward receiving intensive mental health care for my near breakdown. Okay, let’s be real: my total, actual breakdown. While there, I was diagnosed with C-PTSD from my recent experiences, compounded by past ones. This knowledge felt helpful, but at the time, also like a burden. So I’m going to be constantly full of anxiety due to the things that have happened in the past and the people who have hurt me? Cool.

I was given a small cocktail of medications to help with the anxiety, loss of sleep, and general feelings of panic. And yes, they certainly helped. But nothing helped more than learning how to find joy in the day-to-day. I admit, I was fortunate to have healthcare (RIP) and support that allowed me to stay in the facility for 10 days. By the end, though, I felt a little like a caged animal trying to pull its cutest face to be let out. But being “trapped” on a ward, where the world seemed to slow into a beige swirl of nothingness, allowed me to slow down with it.

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Every day, I would wake up and do yoga in my room while my delusional but delightful roommate fitfully slept. I would shower in our “bathroom,” which was really just an extension of our sleeping quarters, separated only by a saloon-style door. The showers required me to press a button every 30 seconds to restart the stream of mildly warm water, forcing me to stay engaged with what I was doing. Since there were no shelves, hooks, or protruding surfaces (just in case one of us tried to hang or impale ourselves) we always had to mindfully take our toiletries into the shower and back out to our cubby. Even door handles required intention. Because they didn’t protrude (again, for morbid reasons), opening any door took two hands, limiting what you could carry to only the necessary.

Becoming acutely aware of our surroundings impacted all of us (us being the unique set of friends I made during my time there). Not only did we have many conversations about how we could, theoretically, still kill ourselves with what was available (highly discouraged by the nurses, it turns out), but we all turned this mindfulness inward.

Now, let’s talk about activities! Oh boy, what a treat. We had a gardening class, where I actually learned how not to kill a plant while repotting cuttings. We had an art class, where I made paintings, postcards, and bracelets for my friends out of supplies meant for preschoolers. We had a music class, which mostly consisted of a man (who I think was a doctor, but I’m not sure) playing acoustic covers of Green Day songs. I did three puzzles with other people! All of these activities would have been my personal hell in the outside world, but there, forced into a new, unhurried way of being, I was grateful for them.

The activities also slowed us down. Instead of being on our phones which we were surprisingly allowed to have on the ward (camera covered by a sticker), most of us left them at the nurses’ station. What was more important then right now? Then trying to feel better? Then getting back to ourselves?

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This experience even allowed me to reframe time spent with others. Being constantly around multiple people (not my norm), I had to develop boundaries around alone time. While I still haven’t perfected the practice, it made me aware of the kind of space I need to feel restored and, therefore, able to be fully present in the company of others. Almost every day, someone would stop in the middle of an activity and say they needed space or alone time. It was always respected, even encouraged, by everyone. We were constantly aware of ourselves and our needs, even while fighting off the urge to scream over the unsettling hum of the fluorescent lights.

Side story: Of course, I started a little psych ward romance. I’m predictable, and I love romantic attention, okay? If there’s one thing I urge you to take from this essay, it’s this: what happens in the psych ward should stay there. There is no healthy way to engage with a person who has only seen you at rock bottom and thought, “That’s cute.” They did draw me a portrait in crayons which, on the one hand, was cute, yet also detailed my grown-out roots. Brutal but honest.

When it came time to leave, despite it being just 10 days, the reintroduction to the world outside the enclosed ward instantly felt hostile. Everything was loud and glaring. I felt the anxiety start to swell within minutes. But once I got home with my repotted succulents, there wasn’t anything to do but water them. Then I picked the best spot for them based on what I had learned. Then I drank a glass of water. Then I folded my clothes. Then I drank another glass of water. Then I washed those two glasses. You get the picture.

I often feel ditzy because my brain runs a mile a minute. Trying to tackle one task often means being 20% done with nine tasks simultaneously. But then I started slowing down, doing one task at a time, and really focusing on what I enjoyed about it. Washing the dishes: I relish finding the perfect water temperature. Doing laundry: it’s like having a whole new wardrobe to pick from. Watering the plants: I love watching the water seep into the soil at different speeds for different species.

Of course, I haven’t reinvented the wheel here. There are probably a million books on meditation with writing far more cohesive than what I’m trying to explain. But having read many of those books, I absorbed the ideas but never fully retained them enough to implement them. And I was a yoga teacher at one point! Yet, somehow, being locked in a ward with a bunch of strangers, each of us at our own lowest point, made it all make sense. While the staff was wonderful and the experience immensely helpful, I never want to be back in that place, physically or emotionally.

So I’m making a conscious effort to slow down in a world that wants me to move faster and faster. I’m finding joy in the tiny activities my daily life requires of me because, when it comes down to it, that’s life. Yes, we have these grand and devastating moments that dot our memories and shape our self-narratives, but most of the time, we’re doing the boring day-to-day stuff. If you can’t be happy in the monotonous moments—like washing the dishes—then you can’t be happy at all.

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