publish or perish

So, my sleep schedule is officially effed. One too many late nights and one too many long naps, I suppose. Consequently, I conceive another blog, this time born of insomnia, rather than boredom. Back when I actually used Myspace (RIP), I had posted some of my poetry and photography, but seeing as that will probably never resurface, I decided to re-post the ones I got published in college. My gut tells me this is self-promoting, but my brain tells me, It's my bloggy and I'll self-promote if I want to!

and when lushlips love and pucker...
(an experimental e.e. cummings emulation, published in Gonzaga's Reflection in 2006 and in Portland State's Pathos in 2009)

and when lushlips love and pucker

against cheeks in the dark and

only speckles of luz

sprawl (cast on the wallsfacescarpet—plush)

and then globefingers clench,tingle upon

knees under shiny tabletops in coffee

joints (with canopies and ambience that i and you like)

when tiny glittereyes and giant oceaneyes

connect curious amongst oval

asheyes and under covers wrinkled-

warmth. (i make my resolution and you are resolved)

then her spider fingers claw crinkles in

your shirt and you let her ebony hair fan

across your face and make sounds in the muggy black

(and when you sprawl your spider fingers across my thigh

            in the morning don’t ask me how i slept)

Crash

(published in Portland State's Pathos in 2008, ***edited out name for privacy purposes)

I remember.

Remember Independence Day, 1995?

Waiting for you, eating Grandma’s dumplings.

After work, you got your red fishing pole

And your nightcrawlers and took that snakey road, leading nowhere.

Then your Jeep did somersaults, dirt and sky juxtaposed like a painting.

Back at home, a hungry monster ate my nervous insides,

And the firecrackers were like bombs of war.

Your Jeep was a giant pretzel.

And you didn’t call.

I remember.

I stared.

Stared at the wall,

Shredding every fiber of every fingernail.

After hanging upside-down from the seat belt,

You scaled your Jeep and punched numbers with bleeding digits.

Then Uncle *** answered, and his voice cracked open like an egg.

He was gone for hours, looking for your hidden ditch.

Finally, you saw two spheres of rescue light

And arrived, coated in glass bits.

A walking, breathing mosaic.

I stared.

I knew.

Knew there was more

Than a negligent hit-and-run.

Your eyes met the carpet in guilty brainstorm,

And the fiery flush of your face was guilty, too.

You were fishing for a holiday trout to bring for Grandma’s dinner,

But the road was winding and the sky was dark,

And you saw firecrackers like bombs of war.

But I could smell your breath.

And while you slept,

I knew.

in the passenger seat

(published in Portland State's Pathos in 2009)

i could see the contrast of two shades of skin in

the side view mirror that reflected movement in

the backseat, and i wondered. . .

. . .where does one find a warm lap to lay on and

eyelashes to blink against

i allowed myself to lower my seat and drift off

to the rhythmic static pings of shoegazing guitars

and xylophones, and i questioned

the effect of music on the soul and how it sings

loudly to some and whispers to the rest

i awoke to the thin edge of the seatbelt bisecting

my nose, and my eyelids spread to reveal tattered

evergreens, giving me a sensation

of tranquility and eerie euphoria because the sun

still shone and its rays sparkled through these

last pillars of nature

the girl in the driver’s seat said they were ugly, unscenic

i remembered she called the swallowing buildings and

people with shapeless eyes and mouths

home.

Copper Man 
(little high school photography class emulsion lift, published in Gonzaga's Reflection in 2007)

from the depths of my hard drive...

Oh goodness. I know I just posted a blog, but this was too good not to share. Scanning the files on my computer, out of boredom, I uncovered an essay I wrote for a Women's Studies class a couple years ago, and I am utterly amazed I got away with it. Well, actually, not really, considering I went to PSU and it was the Women's Studies program, but nevertheless, it's quite salacious. I don't know that I entirely agree these days with some of the ideas I impart in it--ideas which I was translating for the author mentioned--but it is still an important issue. Behold, dear readers (hopefully those without virgin eyes), "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm" for Dummies: A Translation...

For Starters…

Anne Koedt’s essay, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” is an important work to read for women and men, feminists and non-feminists, and lesbians and non-lesbians alike.  It dispels the long-perpetuated myth that women can have vaginal orgasms, in addition to clitoral ones.  Koedt discusses the male-centered reasons for clinging to such an idea, as well as the harm it causes women.  While her piece is written in a way that is fairly accessible to all readers, a sifted translation may be particularly useful to those who are unfamiliar with the topic.

           

The first idea to understand is that for a long time, women who cannot achieve orgasm through male-female intercourse have been socially and medically classified as defective.  There is a word for this inability to orgasm through sex: frigidity, and it has primarily been used by men in a dismissive, sometimes derogatory way to describe women.  However, the traditional sexual positions used by men and women mainly involve stimulation of the penis and the vagina, and as Koedt describes, the vagina is an organ that does not contain many nerve endings and is therefore not designed for women’s sexual pleasure.  Instead, it is the clitoris—for dummies, this is the small bud-like organ located at the top of the labia—that is designed to be the female equivalent of the penis. 

           

The trouble with claiming that women have a problem when they cannot orgasm through traditional sexual positions (you know, boring old missionary), is that it disregards the anatomy of all women and instead attacks the mental health of individual women.  You see, women who have been described as “frigid” have also been referred to psychiatrists, under the assumption that their failure to orgasm vaginally is a psychological failure.  Yet, there is just no getting around this fact: the clitoris is the only female organ that can deliver an orgasm, and if a woman orgasms without direct stimulation of the clitoris, it is because the nerve endings extend to areas in direct proximity to it.  The vagina, unfortunately, is a bit too far away.

           

There is one exception to this rule, and it is the fact that some women can initiate an orgasm psychologically.  For example, a powerful fantasy or a special dream (wink wink) can cause an orgasm.  However, this is still a physical manifestation of pleasure, so blood flows to the clitoris, not the vagina, to create it.  Even if a woman has a stellar enough imagination to summon an orgasm, she cannot send the sensation to her vagina. 

           

Koedt proposes that we all just erase and start over again on women’s sexuality.  She says we need to stop assuming that being able to orgasm vaginally in standard sexual positions is normal and that everything else is not.  In other words, “kinky” may need to be the new “normal.”  More than one person participates in sex, so more than one person should enjoy it.

Freud—Top Dummy of the Vaginal Orgasm

           

The well-known psychologist, Sigmund Freud, was one of the first to introduce the myth of the vaginal orgasm.  He taught that women could aspire to it in adulthood, even if their younger years were riddled with petty little clitoral orgasms.  For non-feminist readers, it is important to note that Freud is not very popular among most feminists because his life’s work revolves around the idea that women are inferior to men and that they are, in fact, jealous of men (we have all heard of penis envy…).  Freud’s advice to female patients who “suffered from frigidity” was that they needed to turn off their brains, which were supposedly interfering with their sexualities.  This advice, which is still frequently given to women, shames the intelligent and creative activity in the female mind and implies that it has no place in sex.  The insidiousness of this idea is amplified by the fact that Freud’s male patients were never given such advice, nor are males usually held responsible in any way for “frigidity.”  Unsurprisingly, Freud’s work on this matter made women more depressed and insecure than they already were.  Thanks, Sigmund.

Another One for the Dudes

           

So if there is no such thing as a vaginal orgasm, why do we, as a society, continue to perpetuate it as an attainable reality?  Well, since we live in a patriarchal, or male-dominated, society, there are various reasons why this myth thrives, and they all have to do with maintaining male superiority.

1. Even though traditional intercourse is not the best way for women to orgasm, it is usually the best way for men to orgasm.  Therefore, it is in men’s best interest to convince women to keep on truckin’ with vaginal intercourse, rather than try other methods that may give the penis less limelight.

2. Since the differential treatment of women and men relies primarily on physical differences (you either have a penis or you…don’t), it makes sense that physical appearances are important in defining what is masculine and what is feminine.  The manliest of men are hairy, muscular, and have large penises, while the womanliest of women are hairless, petite, and have no penises.  The clitoris is both functionally and physically on par with the penis, so male-dominated societies seek to downplay the clitoris in order to keep women from being too masculine.

3. Men have fears, too, you know, and one of them is that if women discover they do not need male-female intercourse to get their engines going, they do not need men for anything!  Anatomically speaking, this is a legitimate fear because the clitoris is easily stimulated without vaginal sex.  Yes, this means women can masturbate like men can and it also means that lesbians are viable contenders in the female orgasm challenge.  Of course, men could still please women sexually, but a threat to heterosexual dominance is a vicarious threat to male dominance.

 Fake It or Fight It

           

There are reasons for men to uphold the myth of the vaginal orgasm, and our culture is currently designed to favor them in the endeavor.  Yet, we must acknowledge that women are full human beings who have desires and needs just as men do.  We must make women’s sexual pleasure a goal, not a bonus.  When it is disregarded, women lose interest in sex because it is simply not doing much for them.  They may refuse sex or just resort to faking orgasms; the perfect way of getting it over with, while pleasing their man.  Frigidity no more!  Let us embrace the clitoris for everything it is and can be…

stories from an over-caffeinated, unproductive, zombie receptionist...

Good morn', folks! This post comes to you from my receptionist desk at work, where for the past couple weeks, I have generally been so bored that I'm surprised I haven't already caved and wrote a blog post! For some reason, there's just not been a lot for me to do lately (probably because it's summer), and I have, honest to goodness, exhausted all the piddly busy work I can conceive of. A short list of things I have managed to get away with at work recently: checking personal email; checking Facebook; checking online bank statements; reading daily horoscopes; glancing at the 10-day forecast; and staring blankly at the computer screen, sipping coffee like a junkie. I don't anticipate that any of my church co-workers have access to this blog, which is why I'm not sweating such public confessions. Let's just hope a future employer doesn't somehow stumble across this by Googling my name...

Anyway, there is actually a story I have to tell, as my post title indicates, and I find it to be quite amusing myself, so hopefully ya'll faithful readers agree. So, last night after work, I hooked up with some friends in Portland for drinks, and we went to a fairly low-key bar in the Hollywood District that we're familiar with and has dirt-cheap drinks ($2.50 microbrews, anyone?). There were quite a few folks in the group, so conversation was lively, and due to one of them celebrating a birthday, liquor was a-flowin' (shout-out to the dude who bought me two shots in honor of said birthday--I made it out of there with a whopping $5.00 tab!). Everything was fine and dandy, until I decided to interrupt the conversation a couple friends were having with a random guy sitting at the bar. Turns out this was a very serious convo, as he was a veteran, recently back home from Afghanistan, who had lost a number of fellow soldiers in the war. Of course, I didn't know this, so I introduced myself in bubbly form, which seemed to really irritate this guy. It did not take long, however, for him to point out every man in the group and ask if I was dating them. It also did not take long for him to slip his skeezy arm around my waist while I was standing there talking to him, and then make deliberate gravitations toward my gluteal area. I was just buzzed enough to tolerate this temporarily, until he proceeded to ask for my number, to which I replied that I wasn't interested in dating anyone. His response, predictably enough, was, "Neither am I." Dot dot dot...

Ultimately, he did not obtain my digits, despite a couple tries, and my friends and I left the bar at closing time, talking outside for a bit. One of the friends that had been initially conversing with this man told me that the bartender--easily 20 years older than him--was his girlfriend. Yes, his girlfriend, and had apparently closed the bar a bit early out of visible anger at his bold flirtation. I had specifically asked him, in an attempt to carry the conversation and not have him stare creepily at me, if he had a girlfriend and also if he came to the bar often. He said no to both. Well, at this point I was mildly amused, but felt pretty bad for his bartender girlfriend. Aaaaand, then she came storming out of the bar, confronted me on the sidewalk, and said, "Ok, I just want to hear the truth. Did he ask you out? I saw him touching your butt and all that, did he ask you out?" Blindsided, I dopily asked, "Is he your boyfriend?" When the response was affirmative, I rushed to the defensive, saying, "I didn't know that until right now, just so you know, so I'm sorry for not backing away sooner." She impatiently interrogated once again whether he had asked me out. Not knowing whether to betray skeezy boyfriend or lie to betrayed (but irate) bartender, I forfeited: "Yes, he asked for my number." I'm pretty sure I probably winced, in mild anticipation of a slap to the face or pull to the hair, but fortunately she just said, "Thanks, that's all I needed to know!" I hope when she stormed back in to the bar she promptly dumped her player of a cougar cub!

Anyway, that was my nightlife drama of the year so far. And now it's about quittin' time, as I've managed to waste away about an hour of productivity time on this here blog. Yay me! Peace...