On March 24th from 7-10pm I will be teaching my first public workshop. The title of the workshop is the title of this post, and I’m pretty damn excited about this. It’s being put on as part of the Living Love Revolution salon & workshop series run by the same woman as the Aphrodite Temple.

Here is the description:

Explorations in Gender: Busting Out of the Box
A Living Love Revolution Workshop with Scarlet Lotus
Gender isn’t limited to two categories but is a swirling galaxy of expressions and identities that is vast and individualistic, which also means it can be confusing. Join Gender Studies graduate Scarlet Lotus for a night of exploration and learning designed for people of all gender expressions and identities. It doesn’t matter if you have been transgressing gender norms for years or if you are comfortable with the gender you were assigned at birth, either way there will be something here for you as long as you are interested in what gender is all about. We will explore new concepts of gender, go over terminology from the basic to the complex, talk about pronouns and how to approach people of non-normative genders, and learn tricks and tips for playing with our own gender in a way that is comfortable for us as individuals. We all have a gender, so why not learn to explore it!

If you are in Seattle and want to come down it is at the Sharma Center. No RSVP needed, but you can contact me for further information. I would love it if you would spread the word about this! Here are the social networking event pages: Facebook Event and FetLife Event.

Life is moving along at such a pace lately that it’s difficult to keep up with writing about all the things I want to write about. Not that I’m complaining, really, but this hasn’t happened to me in a while. Nearly a month ago Onyx and I attended a Living Love Revolution Aphrodite Temple. It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind, but in a wonderful way. The temple was absolutely phenomenal and transformational in so many ways.

This was a two-day retreat, essentially, at a remote location outside of Seattle. There were somewhere between twenty and thirty of us there. We had been told about it before we went, of course, including having some of the activities described in a good amount of detail, but I don’t think either of us were really prepared for everything that occurred. In a good way.

I could feel a very noticeable energy shift in me from before the temple to after. I have felt far more open as well as more radiant, which often go hand in hand. I feel less timid about expressing myself however feels authentic for that moment, less anxious about what other people will perceive and more content with what I have to offer. I feel in touch with love, which was at least part of the point.

There was great emphasis on embodiment, autonomy, safe consensual touching, and getting what you need. It is all about getting your needs met and learning about how to ask for those things you need. It is about finding the beauty in yourself and everyone around you. It is also about Aphrodite, of course, and all these activities just aid in connecting with her more.

While we were there I felt somewhat disconnected with Onyx, or like I had to disconnect with him in order to be seen the way I wanted to. It’s something I didn’t experience at the play party we went to on March 4th ⁰¹, which says to me I may getting through that little blockage. It’s something I’ve held on to for quite some time, this notion and worry that I will be seen as less queer because I’m with him, when that’s really just silly. I have tried not to be ruled by it, but at the same time I have been.

I wasn’t opposed to the disconnection in the moment, exactly, but I saw it as a necessary part which irritated me. I think going through the experience of the temple, though, allowed me to let go of that and be able to connect with him more ever. I’ve been allowing my shy masculinity to shine through ever since I wrote about it and more and more since the temple itself. I think I experienced what it was to be seen for me in the moment which has just made me want to be seen like that more often.

I also didn’t experience any jealousy or anxiety about being disconnected and each of us being touched and caressed⁰² by other people, which was fantastic. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do with that going into it. It was remarkably easy, and though we were in the same room we rarely interacted with each other during the activities. I’m excited to see what happens in the future.

I loved it so much I’m now in the Priest/ess training program for it and Onyx and I will be going to the one being held in April. I want to go to the July and November ones as well, and would be surprised if that didn’t happen. I’m beginning to work quite closely with the high priestess, not just for the training but doing classes and workshops with her as well as working on websites for her. This is only the beginning.

1. yet another thing I should write about… that one might fall through the cracks, though. We’ll see. [↩]
2. and in his case a little more than that [↩]

On Friday I was lucky enough to get to both wield and have my ass reddened by our newest toy addition: a super short and faily thick acrylic cane that Onyx and I picked up while we were in Portland last month. Aside from the love I would regularly have for a purple acrylic cane part of the reason I suggested to Onyx that we buy it was because I had recently watched the Stingy vs. Thuddy video.

I’ve loved canes for as long as I’ve loved impact play, especially the thicker ones. The thing I hear most about canes is this misguided notion that canes are all extremely painful, but in reality they can elicit a wide range of sensations. While I knew most of the information in the Stingy vs. Thuddy video it had never been laid out for me that same way, so it was extremely useful, and it’s information I’ve relayed to friends since watching. I started rating the canes we have: thuddy, thuddy with a stingy finish, and stingy with a thuddy finish (I love making kink toys sound similar to a fine wine and it works so well!). We used to have a wicked stingy thin one too, but one day it snapped at the handle while in mid-use! Somehow I didn’t mind.

I really like thud. That’s not to say I don’t like sting, because I do, but I generally can take a lot more thuddy than I can stingy. Really, though, I like it all. In fact, if that is not my motto I don’t know what is. When presented with multiple options I generally have a difficult time choosing because I want all of them. Go ahead and call me greedy, I don’t mind. [...]

Read the rest on the Kink Academy Student Blog!

Read all of my Student Blog Posts here

It wasn’t sexy or elaborate. Really it was downright mechanistic⁰¹. It had been a while since I had rubbed one out alone and the fast-paced lives Onyx and I have been living lately haven’t lent themselves to as much sex as either of us would like. It was time to remedy this situation.

I didn’t even move the pile of freshly washed clothes from on top of the bed, just nudged them aside so I could lay down⁰². I grabbed my Eroscillator, pushed aside my underwear, added a little lube, and arranged it to just the right spot. It had actually been a while since I’d gotten off with it, my Wahl has had preferential treatment as of late with its amazingly deep and strong rumbly vibrations. I had almost forgotten how much I love my Eroscillator, but tonight I was reminded.

While the Eroscillator has nothing on the Wahl as far as the bang you get for your buck⁰³ I forgot just how deep and different the oscillations are from normal vibrators. It still produces a different kind of orgasm than any other toy, one I can’t put into words even though I’ve been trying to finish this sentence for ten minutes.

Though I had contemplated my Eleven or Pure Wand, my go-to dildos, I decided to forgo the internal stimulation. It wasn’t needed when the goal was release but not effort or sexy intricate fantasy. It still wasn’t many orgasms until I felt the need to squirt all over the bed.

Yes, many orgasms. When I come I can’t just stop at one, I’ve never really been able to. Onyx has tried to stop me after one and discovered just how irritating I can be when not fully sated. Although I suppose that implies that I am ever fully satiated and I’m not sure that can be said. There are times when I am exhausted, finished, and needing a break, but sated? Those are usually the same times that my clit burns⁰⁴ as if to say “I NEED MORE.” There is often a point where I am unable to deliver or even come anymore but I wouldn’t call this sated.

I contemplated squirting for only a few seconds before dismissing it. I didn’t have my Throe under me and I wasn’t about to ejaculate all over the clothes I had just washed. Plus, this was mechanistic so the effort to get it and position it just right before coming again so I could ejaculate just seemed like too much work. Although even now as I write this I can feel that delightful pressure inside of me telling me to release it, a sensation I used to compare to needing to pee but now I know the difference.

So I came and held myself back from squirting, which in and of itself made the experience slightly less satisfying. How many times I came I don’t know. I always used to lose count after three so now I don’t even attempt anymore. There’s probably an app for that⁰⁵. I stopped, even though my clit was screaming at me to keep going, and stumbled out of the bedroom in a post-orgasmic daze.

1. a fabulous old post from Ellie Lumpesse, read it if you have not before! [↩]
2. I have more in the washer and dryer, I will put them all up at the same time. What? Don’t judge me. [↩]
3. $12.49 on Amazon! Seriously! Go get one now! I thought this was such a good deal I even bought one for my best friend for no reason other than it is wicked cheap and she needs one. [↩]
4. not from the chemicals in the lube, just from wonderful overstimulation! [↩]
5. Orgasm Counter for the iPhone?–or not, since Apple is all anti-sex apps, but it sounded good anyway [↩]

Two weekends ago Onyx and I attended a Delving Into Power Intensive with Lee Harrington, an intimate⁰¹ three-day workshop focusing on power exchange within relationships to “create the non-egalitarian relationship of your dreams!” Going into it I felt rather content with our relationship as it was with the knowledge that there was, of course, room for improvement and was startled at what was brought up in me. I introduced our relationship to the group as an Owner/Brat dynamic, which is close to the truth. I’ve been thinking of replacing Cunt with Brat in the normal way I describe my role with Onyx, but that’s another post.

A lot of the information presented included things I had thought about before that Onyx had not or things that Onyx had thought about that I had not or things that we had talked about in our previous relationship with each other⁰² that we hadn’t explicitly talked about in this one⁰³. It was especially refreshing to be around other kinky people, something that has been missing in our lives for the most part as we’ve been focusing more on the occult community here rather than the kinky one⁰⁴. We were both able to get some perspective on our own desires and feelings by being in such a group.

There was so much wonderful information I won’t even go into it, mostly I want to talk about some of my reactions and the changes in our relationship since then. I love to be a brat and part of that love is to elicit a firm hand in dealing with me, basically forcing Onyx to reign me in (consensually!⁰⁵), but something that came up over the weekend was my equally strong desire to submit and be of service. The latter is not something we have been exploring in our new relationship as much as the playful force that bratting brings in at least in part because of our failure to implement it in the old one. We had such difficulty with trying to view service in a particular way and trying to include that in our M/s relationship but now that we’ve in an O/b relationship⁰⁶ for nearly a year and we’ve gotten comfortable with that the service and submission aspects need some focus.

We had a long talk on Saturday during a break between class and dinner/play party time that was most wonderful. We both expressed some things that had been building up within us and were able to come to some conclusions as to what we each wanted to include in our relationship. I was having trouble that day because I was feeling like I didn’t fit in for various reasons⁰⁷ and because I felt like I was failing Onyx⁰⁸ partially due to lack of explicit instructions. Onyx doesn’t like giving out explicit instructions but I need them, something we have had lots of trouble with before.

There was a lot more we talked about, including the spiritual path we are currently on and our own issues that we have each been dealing with. We expressly communicated about the things we each need and want and ways for us to begin getting that. It was refreshing and amazing, exactly what had needed to happen, and took us one step further in our relationship. Realizing my service desires that I had been squelching with him for so long was freeing. I had doubts then about our ability to actually implement some things that we were wanting due to our past experiences, but those doubts are nearly gone now.

We haven’t had the time to talk too in-depth about our power dynamic since the weekend long workshop because of work and then going to another workshop this past weekend that was not kink-focused⁰⁹, but we have been able to begin some practices that have not only worked to shape the new dynamic that is forming between us.

The primary practice we’ve been putting into action is a daily checklist so I am accountable for the work I do. I’ve previously complained about feeling like I never get anything done or I don’t get enough done even when I do get things done. I’m still working on figuring out this self-employment stuff. I’ve also been a little lax at my cleaning duties. This daily checklist allows me to feel accomplished when I do get things done and for me to be sure I am doing something for Onyx every night as well, plus I have a fetish for lists¹⁰.

I’m excited to feel like we’re moving forward into uncharted (by us) territory. We have new ideas and a great many things we want to include in our relationship as it goes forward. There will be plenty of road blocks ahead but I feel like we will be able to encounter and move through them all. Along with the workshop this past weekend, which helped me release some things I have been needing to for quite some time¹¹ and I believe the same thing happened for Onyx as well. It has been a transformational couple of weeks.

There has been a general shift in our dynamic because of the communication, interaction, and introspection we were able to do both individually and with each other. I feel so much more connected and in tune than we were before, and this last year we’ve been so much more connected and in tune than we were before that! It seems like we’re just getting better and better, which is truly amazing.

1. there were 16 of us total I believe [↩]
2. the years before the triad [↩]
3. since I returned from Alaska last March-yes I consider the post-triad relationship to be a separate one [↩]
4. eventually my hope is to be part of a kinky queer occultist tribe, which is starting to happen [↩]
5. or, lately it has been consensual [↩]
6. I am not defining the differences here at the moment, but I am sure I will be talking about them soon in another post! [↩]
7. all in my head [↩]
8. or I was being set up to fail [↩]
9. which I will also be writing about [↩]
10. both making and crossing things off of [↩]
11. you will just have to wait for the other post for more on that [↩]

This is the twelfth of my 30 Days of Kink I will be answering each of the thirty questions in different posts. I thought these would be interesting to answer and (hopefully) interesting for you to read. These will be posted in order, but not back-to-back.

Day 12: Tell us about a humorous BDSM/kink experience you’ve had. If you haven’t had one, talk about aspects of kink/BDSM you find funny.

Oh, man. I hate these type of “tell us a story about a specific incident” questions. I suck at them during interviews and I suck at them here. Have there been many humorous kinky experiences in my life? Definitely! Can I think of one when being asked to directly relate one? Never! My brain just doesn’t work like that, I guess. This is why I also suck at interviews and am self-employed.

I love to have fun kink and playful kink and think that humor is essential in all sorts of sexuality, kink included. Part of the reason why I enjoy the term “play” for kinky or sexy activity is because I really do play during sex. Onyx and I both love to do funny things, crack puns, and make jokes in the middle of otherwise serious play sessions. I love doing impact play to some music that is going on in my head, often random hilarious things like the Mario Bros. Theme.

As for aspects of kink/BDSM I find funny, mostly it’s taking things too damn seriously, or any of that “one twue way” thinking that so many people seem to subscribe to, particularly online. Both of those things aren’t “funny” in the sense of they always make me laugh, though sometimes they do, but closer to being absurd. That’s not to say there isn’t room for seriousness in WIITWD, because there are times for being serious, but there’s a line there that becomes humorous once crossed. Of course, these things can also be just plain upsetting when confronted with them as well, but I try to keep them humorous.

I was truly excited when I got the news I was accepted as a student blogger here at the Kink Academy, so much so that practically the second after my login information was mailed to me I began watching videos. So eager and excited I watched a great deal of them, making a list of topics that I will be exploring with my partner Onyx and already trying out a few. Before I go delving too deeply into the whats and hows, however, I should first explain the whos.

I’m Scarlet Lotus, a genderqueer polyamorous switch currently in a long-term relationship with my Owner Onyx. We have been together for nearly six years and have been living together for nearly five of those with a few other partners along the way, but currently neither of us has another relationship. We both identify as switches and although our primary roles together are Owner and Pet he occasionally lets me Top him, which is always great fun, and I’m rather a Brat (consensually!) so I can sometimes get away with some Top-type energy from my Bottom-space.

Although we had both been kinky and into kink for a long while before we got together in many ways this is the first healthy kinky relationship either of us has been in, so we had a good amount of personal baggage to work through when we first got together (and oh how I wish I had been able to watch the Managing S&M 24/7 Relationships Series when we first got together!). The last year or so has been the best year of our relationship, and I’m hoping that will continue as the years go on.

We’re somewhere in the intermediate-to-advanced range of experience. Some of our common play time activities include: impact play, punching, face slapping, needle play, erotic wrestling, and rough body play, among others. There are plenty of other things we want to learn more about and incorporate into our play as well.

As I already mentioned, I began watching videos as soon as I was able and have already had the chance to bring a few to Onyx for us to play with together. [...]

Read the rest on the Kink Academy Student Blog!

Read all of my Student Blog Posts here

You may or may not know that my sleep schedule is pretty much the opposite of what is considered “usual.” Onyx works nights now Sunday through Wednesday⁰¹ and doesn’t get home until any time between 6:30am and 9am depending on if he stays late for meetings or whatnot. Usually he gets home around seven. This means that I am usually up until around seven or eight. Even on his days off, unless we have a reason not to, we’re usually up until at least six.

I mention this because today we awoke around 1pm to the sound of our apartment buzzer and now that you know our wacky sleep schedule you’ll understand why waking at 1pm was early for us. I do not jive on five hours of sleep. Usually our buzzer going off in the middle of the day means only one thing: a package has arrived for us. I immediately thought I knew what it was. Or at least I hoped. I used to get new items to review far more frequently than I do now because I’m working on clearing out my backlog of items, but the only thing that I was still waiting to come to me was a Liberator Heart Wedge.

You may or may not remember the Heart Wedge from the contest I held last month⁰² but I’ve been lusting after it since it first came out and now I have one of my very own! I’ll be reviewing it soon on Wanton Lotus.

Doesn’t it look great with the throw pillows on our couch?

As I was waiting for Onyx to return with the box my phone buzzed. In my still half-asleep state I looked at a text for a direct message on twitter. It was from KinkAcademy asking if I had received the email about me being accepted as a student blogger⁰³ as they were waiting to know if I accepted before announcing the new semester of students. I quickly responded an enthusiastic affirmative and bounced up and down with glee.

In case you didn’t read my application post for the KA student blogger position I will reiterate the awesomeness of Kink Academy and what I’ll be doing for them. KA provides instructional videos on all sorts of kinky topics from basic to advanced. As a student blogger I get three months to poke around the KA videos and will be writing at least one post a week from February 1st to May 1st about my reaction to a video or series of videos and my experiences implementing the techniques I learned. Awesome, no? So keep a look out for those frequent posts! You can also learn more about Kink Academy on KinkAcademyInfo.com and watch some of their free videos.

After opening the box to find the wonderful present⁰⁴ inside and regaling Onyx with the exciting news and my over-the-top excitement we attempted to go back to sleep and successfully woke up a few hours later much better rested.

I was still excited when I woke up and I can say that with the day starting on such an awesome note it has yet to go down. I have not had the Heart Wedge out of my immediate vicinity yet today, as is my tendency with new items I get, and I’ve already begun watching videos on Kink Academy while working on Pleasurists so I can begin to figure out which topics I’ll want to write about and explore offline with Onyx. I’m positively bursting with excitement.

1. The most awesome schedule ever. He chose it himself. [↩]
2. I probably should have posted about it on here [↩]
3. Yay! Yay! A thousand times yay! [↩]
4. Not really a present as I have to earn it, but you know what I mean [↩]

I didn’t intend to be vacant for the holidays, it just sort of happened that way.

Thursday the 16th was Onyx’s birthday. It feels like we’ve been going going going ever since. The party we threw for Onyx’s bday was a great success, then the lunar eclipse on Monday night, then we went to a solstice party on Tuesday, performed a solstice ritual on Thursday, and met my sister and her boyfriend at the airport on Saturday during their five-hour layover, then had people over on Sunday for the Sacred Sexuality Book Club we are hosting. There were plenty of other things in between, but those were the big ones.

All this activity and socializing has been making me a little crazy, honestly. I’m a hardcore introvert, by which I mean I recharge by being alone and get zapped of energy while socializing with others. I have been so much of a hermit the last few years, as well, that I’m still adjusting to being so social. It’s nice, though, we finally have a good group of friends that we know and like and have activities that we engage in. Our hermit-like behavior is becoming more chosen than default.

Luckily since Sunday and for the rest of this week we have absolutely no plans outside of work and New Years Eve, our usual Thursday night and Sunday afternoon activities have been cancelled so we’ll have lots of time for ourselves, which we have desperately needed after the last couple of weeks.

Technically we don’t celebrate “Christmas,” though my family has an important tradition of gift giving. We sent out quite a few presents and received many as well, the biggest of which was a KitchenAid Stand Mixer that was a group effort from a handful of my relatives. I’ve already used it a couple times and it is amazing! Seriously worth the money. I kind of want to start a food blog now but there’s no way I have time for another blog, I hardly have the time to update what I already have.

There were plenty of other awesome presents as well, including lots of Cthulhu items, some geeky shirts, lots of socks (I seriously have an obsession), some books, and a pair of amazing kick-ass and comfy knee-high boots (my tied-for-favorite gift with the Stand Mixer. They will be featured in a Wanton Wednesday soon)! Overall it’s been a great last few weeks and I’m very much looking forward to this week of relaxation.

Even though Christmas itself has passed I am still going to leave you with my newest favorite sorta-Christmas song by Lon Milo DuQuette “If We Believed.”

Not too long ago near the beginning of this month I answered a post in the Seattle Area Personal Ads group on FetLife (login required) for a project titled Process of Pain for Raise Your Fist Productions. It explores masochism, giving a taste of what pain is, what masochists and sadists love about pain, how we play, and other various things. I was very interested in doing this and Onyx agreed to be part of it as well, as a part of being in the documentary was agreeing to do a scene on camera.

Last Monday Amanda came over and we shot a breast play scene. Onyx pulled and twisted my nipples, slapped my breasts, pulled my hair, slapped my face, and made me come on camera. He also used crops, a cane, and nipple clamps on me. It wasn’t a super heavy scene, though there was a good amount of pain, and we didn’t fuck on camera but I did come multiple times. Amanda said she got some very nice shots. She’s filming other couples for this as well and I’m sure I will post about it again when it is done. I’m very excited to see the finished result.

It’s brought up a lot of interesting things for me, as I’ve always loved porn and for a long time I’ve had a fantasy about doing it, though I’ve not always had the body-confidence that I have gained over the last few years. I’ve been seriously considering exploring phone sex work again in the last couple months, I made a couple NiteFlirt accounts but have not yet utilized them to their full potential, and now after this experience I’m seriously considering getting into ethical queer pornography as well.

I say ethical queer pornography because that’s the only type I would be willing to do. This documentary was a great first step, I think, it proved to me that it was something I could do on camera, and I enjoyed doing so. I have a lot of theatre background and have been on stage and in front of the camera many times so I always kind of new I would be able to do it, but there was always some doubt. Now that doubt is gone.

I’ve also recently been reconnecting with my Goddess Babalon after a slight deviation from her path and I believe that getting in to sex work and pornography would be a great act of devotion to her. She was part of the reason I started exploring phone sex work two years ago as well.

Since filming I came across this quote while reading Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left-Hand Path Sex Magic for the Sacred Sexuality Book Club Onyx and I are hosting at our place which first met today.

“The moral pornographer would be an artist who uses pornographic material as a part of the acceptance of the logic of a world of absolute sexual license for all the genders, and projects a model of the way such a world might work. His business would be the total demystification of the flesh and the subsequent revelation, through the infinite modulations of the sexual act… the pornographer has it in his power to become a terrorist of the imagination, a sexual guerilla whose purpose is to overturn our most basic notions of these relations, to reinstate sexuality as a primary mode of being rather than a specialized area of vacation from being and to show that the everyday meetings in the marriage bed are parodies of their own pretensions. -Angela Carter