Wanderer.

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.

Wanderer, your footsteps are
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path
that never will be trod again.
Wanderer, there is no road--
Only wakes upon the sea.
Antonio Machado

Fake It Till You Make It?

Not in this case.

(Disclaimer: for the purposes of this article, the terms "man" and "woman" will refer to heterosexual men and women, unless otherwise indicated.)

Orgasms. We all think about them, dream about them, talk about them, go to the ends of the earth to experience them, read about how to give them and yet... there is still this gap between what we want, and what we're getting. We all want to be pleased, and for the most part, we want to please- so why is it that we aren't being satisfied?

To begin with, we live in a culture that builds up this hype around sex. It's on TV, in the movies, and on the newsstands. And despite all the coverage it gets, we grow up with this elusive idea of sex as this mysterious, fantastical life-defining act that 1) will fill you with ecstasy, and 2) will fill you with ecstasy every time. We've been told at a young age that sex is a wonderful, sacred thing. We never see, hear, or read about the awkwardness, the physical pain, the weird noises, smells, or tastes- and so we go through life looking for that seductive, wordless, "natural" sex, because that's what we think it is "supposed" to be.

"For some reason sex didn't meet the expectations I had, which had all grown from so much of what I was seeing in the media, hearing from people's own stories, etc. SEX was supposed to be the most amazing thing that a human could experience, right? And it wasn't that for me at all."

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, at some point we all have to face the reality of the situation- the disappointment: the lack of orgasm. So how do we deal with the disillusionment? Apparently, we don't, really... we just pretend. Because there is this expectation to please your partner, and the pressure to climax, not meeting those expectations (i.e. not orgasming) means letting your partner know they have "failed" and/or admitting to failing yourself. And, thus, to avoid this "awkwardness," there is a strong tendency in both women and men to simply fake it.

"I figured if we both left the experience feeling unsatisfied and unaccomplished, it would put a damper on the whole night, so in my mind, faking it was a viable option."

In all my conversations with women regarding sex, and orgasms in particular, the very fundamental issue that we face is the same. Whatever is happening on the bed (or against the wall, or on the floor, kitchen table etc.) just isn't working. The general consensus is; men want to please the women they sleep with, but they aren't, and women for some reason can't seem to break it to them. Many of the women I've talked to, say something along the lines of,

"He wanted me to orgasm - a fake, real, semi-fake orgasm. He wanted an "anything" orgasm. As long as I moaned he was content. So that's what I did... I wanted to make him happy somehow and that's where the fake orgasaming started."

In general, I think our society focuses more importance on men's pleasure as opposed to women's, and this definitely has an effect on the way women view their own satisfaction, as one woman related to me,

"I allowed my pleasure to take the backseat to his... I just thought that intercourse continued until the guy climaxed."

And another woman told me,

"I definitely would expect to have an orgasm when having sex with a woman more so than with a man. My experience having sex with a man was very one-sided. I never came... I just felt like I had to suffer through the pain in order for him to feel pleasure."

Granted, each and every experience varies between every individual and set of surrounding circumstances, I think we can make a fairly broad statement that most people have had at least one unsatisfying sexual experience. When faced with those situations, we have two choices: 1) be vulnerable: honest, discuss better tactics for giving pleasure, or 2) fake it, pretend everything's fine- in fact, pretend everything is AMAZING. The problem with this ultimatum is that option 1 means vulnerability, it means facing, even embracing awkwardness, and it means facing the fear of the possibility that a partner does not actually want to give you pleasure. Option 2 on the other hand, is an easy way out, for the time being at least. However, somewhere down the road (if this is a "down-the-road" type of relationship), all hell will break loose.

"It gives a lot of guys false confidence they don't deserve, and it inhibits them learning how to actually please a woman."

After talking with a number of women and absorbing each of their individual perspectives, I can say with some confidence that there are basically three reasons:
1) It's not going to happen, but we don't want to hurt our partner.
2) It's still not going to happen, but because you faked last time, and your partner expects it...
3) boredom.
I think it all comes down to the detrimental effects of these expectations, and then not knowing how face failure to meet them. One woman plainly told me,

"It's awkward to say to a guy, "I want to stop having sex.""

There is also this guilt involved, because we know (or at least we hope) the men we sleep with want to, and try hard to bring us to orgasm and if we don't, then we feel badly for them. Especially since there is pressure on men to "perform" in that way, as one man related:

"There is an expectation, perhaps just in my mind, that I need to fulfill a woman's sexual needs that is most obviously displayed in the culmination of an orgasm."

And another woman said,

"I think I faked it the first time to make him feel good, but then he expected to make me orgasm every time after that so I had to keep doing it. Sometimes I do it just to get it over with, but I fake it so often that now he almost expects to make me cum multiple times, so now I have to fake it multiple times just to get it over with... This is sad. I do love sex. And I love my boyfriend and he's wonderful, but he's not the god at sex he thinks he is, and that is MY fault!"

So, essentially, we (women) are sacrificing the possibility of our own pleasure to ensure that we don't hurt the feelings of our partners, and in doing so, we also ensure that they will almost never pleasure us.

"If you pretend to enter a state of ecstasy just to escape uneventful sex, the guy is going to think he is doing something right. That's classical conditioning for you. Faking it sends all the wrong signals and if you are looking for better sex, it is all about being honest and communicating."

Now, when I first decided to write something on this topic, I was focusing on the woman's perspective, and I had sent a number of emails out asking women if they might feel comfortable sending me some of their thoughts on the subject. I then got a response from a man asking, "What about men?" and it made me realize that women are not the only ones dealing with this issue. Men, it turns out, have quite an interesting take on the topic (at least the ones who spoke to me). Reasons I encountered from men who have faked an orgasm ranged from boredom, to inability to cum, to sexual encounters with partners inept at pleasing. Again, it all comes back to a lack of communication and fear of failure.

"Sometimes faking it is just easier than dealing with the problem, and sometimes dealing with the problem, depending on who you are with is nearly impossible because no one wants to deal with the idea that they can't get another person off."

"Neither of us wants to be the one to say "stop". In order to avoid that awkwardness, I have found that faking orgasms is the best exit strategy. Blue-balls are better than an awkward conversation."

This issue of "lasting too long" is an issue that I hadn't ever really considered previously, but in getting feedback from multiple men, I can say that it isn't so uncommon. One man put it this way:

"Not being able to finish sucks not only for the obvious reason, but also because it’s a problem that no one takes seriously. Everyone assumes either that I’m lying, or that it’s a good thing that I have no rite to complain about."

Another man directed responsibility for his inability to "finish" to women:

"[Women] my age are dreadfully inexperienced and, far more importantly, don't watch any porn. They are, therefore, pitifully incompetent when it comes to navigating the human body... Most of them don't even know how to pleasure themselves."

This raises an interesting point, that in order for a person to be able to please another, they must have a certain level of understanding and ability to give their selves pleasure. However, because our society focuses so much sexual attention on pleasing heterosexual men, women very rarely learn how to please themselves and are thus more likely to be dependent on others for their own sexual pleasure. Women then expect men to know how to bring us pleasure, to stimulate the clitoris when we don't know where it is, and to bring us (as if a lost child) to our own orgasms, when we don't know how to do it!

One man had a solution,

"My diagnosis? Women need to watch porn."

Except, wait- porn is probably least honest representation of sex there is out there, and creates these expectations of out-of-this world orgasmic sex as being typical. The take-home lesson, I think, is honest communication. Learn what you like, what you want and what you expect, and get comfortable communicating that.

"Faking is not honest and is more about fear of being judged or fear of hurting someone. If authentic individuals enjoy each other on all levels and are present to each other in the moment there is no faking anything."

I’d like to extend special thank-you to all who were so honest about their experiences and open to sharing them with me.

Hay Verdad en Este Cuerpo

I am fascinated by the body. I think it's the coolest thing ever. It sustains itself, and it sustains spirit, it houses information, memory, emotion, dreams and life force. It is the vehicle in which we travel, the home in which we live. And it can be fine tuned, trained, pushed to limits, and altered.

We are the only species capable of consciously altering our physical appearance. We have the ability to choose what our bodies look like, and how they interact with the world around them. And we all do it, every day.

Body modification is commonly defined as, "the deliberate altering of the human body for non-medical reasons." Anthropologist, Dianne Bell, at George Washington University appeared on National Geographic's television series Taboo, in the episode on tattoos. She said, "By putting [a tattoo] on a body, it has power, it has power for you and it has power for the viewer. Marking the body says, “I am this person, I am of this clan, or I am of this particular caste or I have a particular set of skills.” You know how you should greet that person and you know how you should behave. So in that sense it’s kind of an early warning system.” Professor Wande Abimbola, Awise Awo Agbaye (World Spokesperson for Ifa) and Special Adviser to the President of Nigeria on Cultural Affairs and Traditional Matters said, "We live in that age where things are always unstable, and people would like to ensure that you are grounded in the values and way of life of your own people,” and tattoos are one way in which people achieve that stability in values. He also commented on the process and experience of getting body modifications as an important aspect of the practice, "Art no longer becomes something you hang on your wall, it becomes something that you participate in." Body modification is a manifestation of a person’s creativity and allows for an outlet for that expressionism to be experienced and shared.

However, because humans have this ability to consciously modify the physical appearance of the body, we also have the ability to mutilate the body. There is a thin line between the two that lies in the perspectives of every individual. Mutilation is generally defined as “an act or physical injury that degrades the appearance or function of any living body,” but this semi-permeable membrane between modification and mutilation is defined by the intention and reason with which someone goes into getting a procedure done. If the motivation is coming from a positive place within that person and the modification will not have debilitating effects on the person, then it very well could be a positive modification. If the motivation lies in others, whether to please, or anger someone else, then the alteration will not be sustainable and could be considered mutilation of the self. If the motivation for altering the body is self-destructive, or a negative pressure, even from within yourself, then it becomes self-mutilation. Allen Falkner, founder of the first suspension group, professional body piercer, and often referred to as the Father of Modern Suspension, commented on the need to judge each physical alteration on a very personal level. Model, Masuimi Max had her forehead tattooed at a young age she claims was part of a rebellious attitude. Falkner says, “tattooing her forehead was mutilation because it’s not something she really thought through, it’s not something that she really wanted. Is facial tattooing mutilation? No, it was a specific scenario.”

Erick Sprague (aka, Lizardman, who's modifications include a split tongue, stretched earlobes, sharpened teeth and full body tattoo of green scales) says that piercings and tattoos are just the middle of the spectrum of body modification.

"In my opinion, body modification includes things like clipping your nails and getting a haircut. People do unnecessary things to their bodies for reasons besides hygiene. It’s one of the few things you can say exists in every single culture and society. What I do to my body is not unlike what they do to theirs; it’s a spectrum, and we’re just on different ends. They may be styling their hair, while I’m radically altering my outward appearance."

We all lie somewhere on this spectrum of modification- from dressing a certain way, cutting or coloring your hair, painting your nails and wearing make-up, or going to great lengths to "find the best cross between a human and a tiger" like Stalking Cat, a man of Lakota and Huron heritage who has modified his body to emulate and embody his totem, the tiger, as a part of his religious and spiritual heritage. He has had extensive tattooing, including facial ink, transdermal implants to create the appearance of whiskers, dental filing and capping for more feline teeth, bifurcation of his upper lip, surgical pointing and elongation of the ears and wearing colored contact lenses with split irises. Stalking Cat has said of his modifications that they are adaptations of a very old Huron tradition, and that they allow him to be a lot more comfortable with the person he is

BMEzine blogger, Rob says, "for the most part, all any of us want is to be able to express ourselves in any way we see fit. It just so happens that it involves modifying the physical body, as opposed to making a statement in a letter, or painting a picture." Steve Haworth, founder of 3D Body Art lists these reasons for modification; 1) aesthetic value, 2) sexual enhancement, 3) shock value, and 4) spirituality. A tattoo artist friend of mine, Katiana told me her theory: tattoos are birth marks under the skin, and the process of getting them is just bringing them to the surface; they become a part of us and just as we learn about ourselves, we learn about them throughout our life as well. A friend of mine, Lars Prandelli (whose body modifications include piercings of the lip, septum, nostrils, cheeks and Monroe piercings along with two genital piercings and previously stretched earlobes approximately to 3 inches in diameter) told me,

"I see my skin as a tactile tapestry on which someone can release their art upon."

Body modification, in whatever form it may manifest for you, allows a person to take ownership over their body, to make it theirs, to adorn their temple in a way that pleases their soul. It is a process of giving yourself permission to be what feels right for you, to have peace with who you are because your house feels like home. Prandelli said,

"It symbolizes a willingness and desire to avoid a stereotype or any sense of conformity to what most people perceive as 'normal.'"

Body modification, just like any form of expression, is about the individual's own experience with it. Erik Sprague said in the movie Modify, “it’s that same human drive to decorate, explore, experiment; and it’s just that some people are going further and some people are finding a comfort zone where they are.” The importance lies in finding a personal comfort zone within oneself, and respecting the choices and processes others go through to find their own personal comfort level. Joe Aylward, most well known for his metal Mohawk, said similarly, "Now it's for you to go out and experience it on your own level because you can't experience it on mine!"

recent dream

I had a dream last night, where two daddy-long-legs were wrestling. One was black, and the other was white. I remember watching them, in my dream, thinking, "They have so many legs to kick with. I can't imagine having so many limbs. How cool!"

They were wrestling in a manner in which their bodies were on top of each other, with their legs coming around to push the other off itself. They were moving around quite a bit, and although my initial interpretation was that they were fighting, the movement could have also been some fit of passion.

I'm wondering if the black and white colors might correspond to the light and dark associations of yin and yang respectively; the male and female aspects of life. Maybe the yin and yang are fighting... or making love... in my life.

Or maybe I live in a house with ants and spiders everywhere, and that's what caused the dream, and my biology homework is what is prompting the interpretation..

Body Story

The body is an amazing thing.
It grows, it heals, it repairs, replaces, it feels, responds, reacts. And it absorbs.

Every situation, circumstance and environment we put our bodies in, the body absorbs it. The electrical charges, ionic composition of the air we breathe, the frequencies of voices around us, the vibrations of the words we hear, the music we listen to, the images we see, the food we eat, and the way we speak are all internalized in each and every cell of the body, which then adjust in response. We are composed very literally of the story of our past. Everything we've experienced from a conversation with a stranger to the action of climbing a mountain helps to create us on a very physical level. Each and every one of us is the physical manifestation of our lives; stories walking around written on flesh.

Here's my story, piece by piece.

I began in a small wet place, warm, and throbbing with the sound of life. I was carried in the belly of a woman, an artist, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a wife. She claims to this day that she's never felt better than she did while she carried me and my sister, three and a half years prior. She recounts feeling energetic, busy working in an art gallery in a town in Massachusetts outside of Boston. She was active in play with her daughter, my sister, Erin. She, my father and Erin kept a routine of nightly walks in the neighborhood after dinner. We lived in a house neighboring a Greek woman who warned my mother of all the right and wrong things to eat when pregnant with me (even prior to my birth, emphasis was placed on my nutrition).
I was born early on a Sunday morning after 14 hours of my mother's labor and a caesarean. My mother tells me she was not as physically exhausted as she had been with her previous caesarean, and her body healed much faster than it had before.
--
I know of a story from when I was very little, still in a crib. I was sick and my parents were going to give me some drug from the doctor, but Erin knew that drugs were bad and so she stood in front of my crib, her arms spread wide in protection of me. My father explained to her that only some drugs are bad, and others- like from the doctor- are good. She accepts this with hesitation and cautiously moved aside. From an early age I was exposed to the notion that western medicine was not necessarily trustworthy.
--
Being held in my mother's arms one summer afternoon. She holds me to her chest, above the water level of the pool. I wiggle and fight for freedom. She gives me that freedom, and I sink, slowly, down to the bottom of the pool until I am sitting, eyes gazing back up through the water to mother, who expects me to swim back up to her. I don't. She quickly becomes frantic and her arms dive down to lift me back above water. Inhale.
--
This summer in Mexico, a curandera whom I had never previously met (at least in this life) named Angelina felt my pulse, looked into my eyes and told me that my pulse was cold because I was afraid of water. She said there was something that had happened to me as a very little girl that had created a shock in my body. (!!!!)
--
I am the youngest grandchild, the little sister, I have been "the skinny one," when I was younger and my friends and I played Spice Girls, I was Baby Spice- my identity has almost always been tied to size, and more specifically, small size. When I got older and felt insecure about my growing body and growing responsibilities, my response was to pull back into myself, to shrink away from the world, to feel small, and to hide in smallness, to disappear.
--
The summer between 6th and 7th grade- age 11. My older sister was focusing on being healthy, on exercising, eating well, and taking care of her body. I think she was feeling some balance between fear of genetic disposition of obesity and true health consciousness. She wanted for me to be health conscious as well, urged me to exercise with her, to do crunches, to go rollerblading and bike riding, to run around the block or swim laps. I just wanted to play.
--
Freshman year in high school, I found myself lost in a sea of unknown identity. I felt the pressure to create a definition of myself and the only tangible thing that felt authentic was my smallness. And I went to town (as previously discussed in this blog). My body became a receptacle of hate- it was very much my identity, and at the same time, very disconnected from my Self. I was so full of hate, my heart physically shrank. (yes, like the Grinch.)
--
Sophomore year in high school, after being discharged from the hospital, I started practicing yoga. A year later, I created an apprenticeship program for the teacher training school at the yoga studio near me. I started learning about my body, human anatomy, the chakra system and just how interconnected the physical is with the emotional and spiritual. I began to find integration. The summer after my junior year in high school, I journeyed my yoga teacher training. One component of the process was taking 36 yoga classes outside of the 200 hour teacher training. One class I took, a restorative/meditative movement class ended up being a very profound experience. We were moving through a meditation with postures, and at the moment of the profundity, we were in pigeon pose, a deep hip opener. The instructor guided us through the meditation and encouraged us to "let go of any tension we've been holding, release any mental or emotional blocks that may still exist, any negative patterns that we may be holding onto, let go of that which does not serve you." and with that, I was bawling. Somewhere between the physical stretch and the mental focus, I had experienced a shift in consciousness, I reached a level of awareness of what I needed to do for myself, and an understanding that my body has indeed been absorbing all the negativity I've thrown at it.
--
I often say that one of the best examples of unconditional love I have experienced is the love from my body. No matter how hard I've tried in my past to destroy it, it has always rebounded, repaired, and continued to love me.
--
Just as all my experiences create who I am becoming as a person (which is always changing), I am also always creating my experiences. My body is a physical representation of my Self, and all of those experiences are a part of me, now they are a part of my body, too. So even if I change as a person, the moments that inspire my body modifications are necessarily a part of whatever changes I go through in the future. As an living organism engaged in the process of evolution, I am constantly adapting and evolving to my environment and responding to stimuli in every moment (responding by getting tattooed). I inevitably will change in the next moment as well. So if in this new moment, the new me has a new tattoo, I am continuing to alter my environment which is altering me (and back and forth and back and forth etc.) I only continue to engage in this interaction with my universe and it with me in a different way- expressing to the world around me what I've learned and gained from these interactions and illustrating my perpetual growth in a physical way.
--
In high school, I got very accustomed to pretending. I got very good at creating illusions, (being that for a large part of that time, I was living a lie) I spent almost all of my high school career involved in acting, and it became a large part of my identity and talents, in a way that was almost below my own radar- I didn't know I was acting... So when it came to my relationship with my boyfriend in high school, I was also actively involved in this illusion-unbeknown to me. I faked orgasms. A lot. More times than I actually HAD them. It made him feel good, and that was all that mattered. Except not. Because then, when it finally came time for me to stop faking it, I didn't know what to do. It lead to a few fairly awkward encounters with men asking me, "Why aren't you doing anything?" and me not knowing exactly how to respond. My body had internalized the act of pretending, of masking the truth, of faking, of lying, and it was hard to break it. But when I finally did, and could finally be honest, it felt so empowering, so real, so true. I could actually be myself. And it felt good. REALLY good.
--
My body is sacred, the house of my spirit, the vehicle of my dreams. Sometimes I forget this. Sometimes i try to de-story my body, I try to dismantle the essence of my Self from my self. I try to separate the life from the thing that's lived it. And when I think of the way my body and my life are inseparable, I think also of the ways in history people have tried to destroy peoples. It always comes down to de-storying the people- stripping them of their language, their tales, traditions and all the aspects of a person's and of a culture's story. Then their bodies change- the traditions of body modification, the food cultures, the views these people have of their own bodies etc.
--
I am highly susceptible to pink eye, I hold an extra two pounds of water weight the week before my period, I have a tendency to roll in on the arches of my feet and I'm slightly bow-legged. My right hip is more flexible than my left, my left breast is larger than my right, my right ear is higher than my left and I have a fairly sensitive digestive system. I've learned to become as acutely aware of my body as I can, to plug into the wisdom my body has that I had discredited for so long.
--
I am what I am, and there's nothing else I could be.

not alone.

it's so easy to feel isolated. to tell yourself that no one understands. to be convinced that you are alone and unsupported.

but it is so far from the truth.

I am so grateful to have the people in my life. And it's amazing how, when something happens and I need support, I automatically feel alone, which makes it that much harder and scarier to deal with whatever I need to deal with. But then, someone calls, or someone skateboards by, or smiles, or whatever. And I remember all the wonderful people who make up my support system. And I realize that I am constantly surrounded by human beings, human beings who all feel, and hurt and cry like I do. And maybe they don't relate to the exact situation in my life, but we all know what it's like to feel alone, to feel overwhelmed, stressed, or angry- whatever it has looked like for us. And when we need a shoulder to cry on, or an ear to listen, someone to scream with or a body to lie next to- people pull through.

So here's to people. 'Cause we're not alone.

Multiverse Theory

Sometimes it just feels like there is too little time.
There are so many things I want to do, so many ways in which I wish I could spend my time, and so many obligations that I must attend to at the same time. Add to the equation that I have a tendency to want to take my time with each and every thing I do, and I'm left at the end of the day with a longer list of "To-Do's" than I began with in the morning.

So I'm employing multiverse theory. (family guy anyone?)
In this sense, I have done everything I could have ever possibly hoped to have done today, I've just done them in different universes. All of a sudden, I'm much more productive than I had previously thought.

How efficient!