Aunt Flo Doesn't Do Porn

A friend remarked to me recently how there seems to be a lack of menstrual fetish porn. There's plenty of pissing porn out there, so why not that main female event that happens but once a month?

My friend guessed that:

A. Men are afraid of it.

B. Lesbians don't create demand for it because they "don't watch as much porn as some of them claim."

I think he's right on A, I'm not sure about B, but I'd add a C: It's still seen as too private of a bodily function to venture into the sexy realm. Men, and even women, haven't gotten comfy enough with it.

Other bodily functions have become relatively open and public. Take urine for example. Your besodden neighbor pees, unabashed, on your fence while serenading his cat at 5 in the morning, men do it openly on reality TV, 8-year-olds tell jokes about it, and porn sites present it as a sexual shower.

I haven't seen any cases of public menstruation, unless you count the occasional sneak-attack on a woman who left home without a tampon.

My post pornographic experience with my own menstrual blood was when my art-school boyfriend at the time decided it was perfect for making a finger painting on my stomach.

How did I feel about this? Like letting a toddler complete a somewhat messy art project because it will help with his creative development. More like craft time than a sex act.

Maybe what we have here is a solution for the hipster who wants to project how totally down with that time of the month he is ... and who also can't afford art supplies.

Au Contraire

As my first blog commenter, Kevin Allen (full disclosure: ex boyfriend) did a great job. Though I do disagree with what he, nonetheless eloquently, says.

Though he can be an insufferable intellectual snob, I grudgingly agree with my boss on his critique of language, even if it's directed at my own (which it often is).

One of the first things he taught me one of those crisp New York mornings while briskly ripping my writing apart, was the origin of the word "cliche":

Back when newspapers were printed by fitting blocks with individual letters into a grid to make a line of type, it was time-consuming to start phrases from scratch, so sets of words, or well-known phrases that could be used over and over, were set aside to be easily inserted when needed. Thus, says my boss, the cliche was born.

A cliche, he went further, is a cardinal sin of writing. It connotes laziness and lack of chutzpha. When you could conjure up a new, more original or interesting way of saying something, and instead you dredge up a tired expression, your readers are unlikely to thank you for it -- even if it's cute.

So to Kevin: as a writer and editor, I'm well aware of where the cliche stands in the journalism world.

While calling someone a tigress in bed certainly won't destroy the entire sex experience -- just as one instance of "Joe the plumber" won't ruin an otherwise compelling article -- to me, it takes some of the chutzpah out of an act that, like good writing, gets better with zest, imagination, and innovation.

Sweet Little Pussycat

I make animal noises sometimes when I’m getting my thing on. Not like a parrot or an elephant -- more catlike. Sounds like a purr, maybe, or a growl.

I don’t mean to sound like an animal; it’s just my body’s way of communicating it approves of what it’s getting and it wants more.

But if my partner said “Baby, you’re so animalistic,” I think I’d be annoyed. Cliches are the sort of thing that limits, at least in my mind, how I openly and creatively I feel I can express my lust, libido, sexual tension, etc.

In this Salon article on the term “Cougar,” the author -- despite getting a little over-fem-y -- describes why she hates the term used to describe older women dating younger men:

How sad and backward that we have to give it a nickname, animalize it as if it's outside the boundaries of civilized human behavior, make it a trend, pretend that Demi Moore invented it. That's not progress, and it's not a step forward for women.

I used to yell at ex’s for using cheesy terminology to describe sex acts or moods -- tigress, fuck like a pornstar, make love to you, etc. And until recently I thought it was just because, in my younger days, I was a rebellious punk-rawk chick to whom those words were wayyy too establishment.

But thanks to a lovely noise-evoking encounter last night and this lil Salon article, I realize my dislike stems from the same thing that makes me not want to be pigeon-holed into any category, cliche, or clique. I want sex where I can claw, screech, play dead, or kiss softly at whim, whenever I want, with no expectations to fulfill or role to stick to -- unless you’re into that.

Hello World

I was backstage at a show the other night, completely naked, glittering up my body in the midst of a crowd of jazz musicians and Mardi Gras Indians waiting to go onstage.

This is my favorite part of a show where I’m the only burlesque performer: traipsing about naked in front of strangers, giving them a nudity sneak-attack.

The first few minutes are always the hardest. Everyone is freakishly cordial, asking me nothing but the necessary questions about lighting and prop placement while looking at the floor or the space between my eyes.

But I see the dropped-jaw exchange in my mirror when I turn my back to powder my nose.

Then I ask one of them about the bead work on his costume and make a joke about my pasty tape and slowly the formality breaks into giddy interaction, like a giant “Phew! She knows we know she’s naked!”

By the time I start taping a package of tissues to my crotch, my new friend Honey, a Mardi Gras Indian, feels it's appropriate and acceptable to offer up some saucy jokes about what people do with Kleenex.

And to me it feels like a victory, undoing, even if in a small way, every time someone hides sex away in porno mags stuffed under his mattress, has strictly lights-off intercourse, or slouches incognito into a boarded-up fortresses of a strip club.

Because how can sex ever be good when we don’t sit down and get to know it, shoot the shit, look it full in the tit.

That’s what this blog is about.