by Linda Rodriguez

The problem with words of emotion
is how easily meaning drains
from their fiddle-sweet sounds
and they become empty instruments.
I can say love
and mean desire to give—
open-handed, open-hearted—
or I am drawn to the light
shining from your soul—
or my life is empty without you—
or I want to run my hands
and mouth down the length of you—
or all of these at once.

Need, now, is a plain word.
I need a nail to hang this picture.
I need money to pay my bills.
I need air and light,
water and food,
shelter from storm and sun and cold.
To be healthy,
to be sane,
to survive,
I need you.

One of my favorite classes to teach at E-Sensual Woman is on the importance of touch and how our earliest experiences of touch profoundly affect our sex lives as adults. As Aline Zoldbrod PhD writes in Sex Smart: How Your Childhood Shaped Your Sexual Life and What To Do About It:

When you are examining your feelings about being a sexual person, you should first notice how you feel about giving and receiving touch. Touching isn’t sexual per se, but touch is the foundation upon which your ability to enjoy sexuality is built; it is vital to loving and to sexual expression. To have skin contact with a partner and to feel the warmth of his (or her) body remains an essential component of many kinds of love relationships.” (p. 15).

One of the exercises we do in class is to reflect on the ways that our parents or other caregivers touched us. Were those touches:

• loving (ie. having your hair stroked or back rubbed)
• playful (ie. wrestling, tickling, etc)
• comforting (ie. being hugged after an injury, snuggling on the couch)

Some women cannot remember their mothers or fathers simply touching them in a way that said “I care about you.” If a woman has not experienced that kind of loving touch during her formative years, it is not surprising that she’d find the touch of her partner to be a neutral or negative experience.

For a lot of women, class is the first time they make the connection between the touch they received as children and the touch they give and receive as adults. Once the connection is made, then we can move toward creating new meanings for touch — meanings that make touch a pleasurable and desirable experience.

If you have difficulty touching your partner, or enjoying his/her touch, then I invite you to reflect on the ways in which you were (or were not) touched as a child.

• Were you able to show your love for others through touch?
• Did others demonstrate their love for you through touch?
• What did those early experiences teach you about touch?
• How have those experiences affected your enjoyment of touch as an adult?

If you find that the ability to give and receive touch is an issue in your relationships, I encourage you to address it. Just as studies have shown that infants need touch in order to thrive, adults also need touch to thrive. Some experts say that regular touching is as important to our well-being as good diet and exercise.

So reach out and touch someone tonight! It’s good for you, and for your relationship.

Is there a color that soothes your soul? That you want to wrap around yourself like a blanket?

I do:  Weimaraner.

It all began with my love for William Wegman. Then I discovered that Martha Stewart paints had a color called “Weimaraner.” I was hooked.

I’ve had at least one room in all of our homes painted this hue. I love the way it changes from silver to brown depending on the light. Our white trim looks so crisp against it, and the leather furniture brings out its richness.

Mmmm, I totally adore this color. I want to surround myself with it and be swallowed up by it. I can’t get enough of it.

I feel a weekend’s worth of painting coming on…

This week’s *8 Things assignment from Magpie Girl is to list 8 songs that speak to my Soul, that connect me to the Divine.

Show the Way - David Wilcox (sung at our wedding in 1995)

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify
What’s stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late, he’s almost in defeat
It’s looking like the Evil side will win, so on the Edge
Of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins
It is…

Love who makes the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote the play…
For in this darkness love can show the way

Duck and Cover - Glen Phillips

Everybody here’s got a story to tell
Everybody’s been through their own hell
There’s nothing too special about getting hurt
Getting over it, that takes the work

Cowboy Take Me Away - Dixie Chicks

I said I wanna touch the earth
I wanna break it in my hands
I wanna grow something wild and unruly

Farthest Shore - David Wilcox

So…Let me dive into the water,
Leave behind all that I’ve worked for
Except what I remember and believe
and when I stand on the farthest shore
I will have all I need

The Queen and the Soldier - Suzanne Vega

Such a beautiful song about such a tragic figure.

Diamond in the Rough - Shawn Colvin (tho I like Jennifer Knapp’s version better)

This song makes me think of my childhood summers at the cottage with my sister, scouring the lakeshore for shiny pebbles and shells. It also always makes me think of my daughter…

You’re shining I can see you
You’re smiling that’s enough
I’m holding on to you
Like a diamond in the rough

Ophelia - Romantica

You tell yourself in hiding, the aesthete is your role
But in all my years I’ve never met a girl who had more soul
You’re looking for your lover and your lover is looking for you

and everything by Over the Rhine

Okay, this is a clever ad to promote noodles that “won’t swell.” And just because I’d be lumped into the first bowl of noodles, doesn’t mean I can’t take a joke.

However, this ad is more than just another take on “fat=undesirable” and “skinny=desirable.” It also shows the overweight women as lifeless and just, well … blobs. The skinny women are coy and cooing and looking ever eager to please.

So here is another example of how we perpetuate the message that overweight women have nothing to offer and are unappealing, and that thin women are always sexy and interested in being consumed.

That mode of thinking is not helpful to anyone. Not to the women who want to believe they can be desirable no matter what their size, and not to the men who wonder why their girlfriends/wives won’t open up sexually.

An orange on the table  

Your dress on the rug

And you in my bed

Sweet present of the present

Cool of night

Warmth of my life.

~jacques prevert

–transalted from the French by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I love the idea behind My Little Red Book – a collection of 92 stories of first periods.

Menarche is a rite of passage for women, yet it is often shrouded in such secrecy that young girls assume it is something they need to fear, or at least be ashamed of. Some of the stories in this collection do recount sad tales of adults who did little to prepare girls for this transition into womanhood. Yet, there are stories of tenderness and celebration.

I hope that this book will begin a new way of thinking about and talking about first periods (and all periods, for that matter). I wonder how euphemisms like “The Curse” impact how women feel about menstruation, their bodies, and sexuality.

Menstruation is a sign that another life is possible. It is an opportunity to celebrate womanhood, creation, life, motherhood, and Self. When did these become shameful things?

This is not an area of expertise for me at all, but with the recent news of David Carradine’s death, it seems it may be appropriate to put some information out about Breath Play.

I’ve included a passage from Paul Joannides’ book Guide to Getting It On.

* If you are a parent, please view this as another reason why it is crucial that you talk to your kids (in an open, honest, and ongoing manner) about making wise sexual choices.

A reader recently reported that he puts his hands around his partner’s neck and squeezes tightly when they are having sex—at her request. She says it makes the experience feel more intense. He is now concerned because she wants him to use a leather belt from one of her coats to get a better grip.

This kind of sex is called breath play or erotic asphyxiation. It’s also referred to as scarfing or terminal sex. The side effects include death and brain damage. There are two groups of people who enjoy their sex this way. One groups is made up of boys and young men who put plastic bags over their heads or tight ropes around their necks while they masturbate. They are known as baggers or gaspers. Baggers are often white, straight and middle-class. They fit in well socially. They keep their sexual secrets well hidden. Up to a quarter of them wear women’s underwear while they masturbate on death’s doorstep.

It is thought that several boy baggers die each year in this country. Their deaths are often reported as suicides, but people who are trying to kill themselves don’t hang from door knobs and they don’t design safety releases into their death devices. Boy baggers fully intend to free themselves after squeezing out their blurry-eyed orgasms.

Horrified parents will often spruce up the death scene before the ambulance arrives. Instead of being reported as masturbation gone awry, the coroner thinks it’s a suicide and none of Johnny’s friends can understand why a kid who seemed so well-adjusted would want to off himself.

The other group of people who are into breath play are normal-appearing couples. They have no fear of the boy-bagger’s fate. They assume that the person who is applying the pressure is like a designated driver who can put the brakes on before it’s too late. “Not so!” says Jay Wiseman, the Tiger Woods of BDSM and author of S/M 101:
“As a person with years of medical education and experience, I know of no way whatsoever that either suffocation or strangulation can be done in a way that does not intrinsically put the recipient at
risk of cardiac arrest…. If the recipient does arrest, the probability of resuscitating them, even with optimal CPR, is distinctly small.”

You could be hooked up to state-of-the-art heart monitors and have a partner who is a board-certified cardiologist, breath play would still be Russian roulette in your birthday suit. Another thing that has healtcare providers concerned is the risk of brain damage. Those like Charles Moser, a physician who is highly respected in the world of kink, worry about the long-term consequences of breath play. There’s also the matter of those pesky murder charges. “Honest, your Honor, she asked me to choke her when we were having sex.”

From the Guide To Getting It On —Sixth Edition (2009)
author: Paul Joannides, Psy.D.

This week’s *8 Things assignment from Magpie Girl is to list our 8 Guiding Values. This is the kind of task I could wrestle with for hours, but I don’t have that kind of time. So I am going to list the first 8 Things that come to mind. And they are…

1. integrity
2. truth
3. beauty
4. compassion
5. empathy
6. pursuit of wisdom
7. belief in the goodness inherant in each person
8. joy in the journey

Ah, I did it. And I’m pretty happy with my list. If I can live a life consistent with these values, I imagine it will be a life well-lived.

So, what about you, what are your Guiding Values?

Unsolicited advice from my 8-year-old daughter: