What Does Love Need?

I’ve been having some hard conversations with my primary partner last week. The wounds are still raw, with emotion still oozing out painfully with every breath.

The last time I saw him was in February 2020 in New York. We took the subway, went to bars, partied in a huge warehouse with hundreds of strangers, and in general acted like the virus that was currently exploding across China wasn’t going to affect us. I remember us seeing a man in a full hazmat suit sitting on the subway and we laughed to ourselves, thinking man, this guy is being a bit paranoid isn’t he?

I remember the moment I got into the cab that would take me to the Penn Station. I kissed him and hugged him and told him I would see him soon. We had our wedding to look forward to in May, a honeymoon in Japan in July, and countless other plans. It was going to be a month at most until I saw him again, just how it’s always been. But February 2020 was fifteen months ago, and I haven’t seen him once, outside of zoom, the occasional selfie, and the plethora of childhood photos that his parents sent me as a funny Christmas present.

Despite running a magazine about sex and culture, and despite being someone who constantly talks and thinks about sex, I realized recently that it had been months since we had sent each other big compliments or risqué texts, months since we had tried to have a digital movie night or a fun zoom dinner. It was horrifying for me, and I was so disappointed in him and in myself. How did we get to the point where we weren’t caring for each other in such basic ways?

It’s easy, we were spending our time just trying to survive. The pandemic made it almost impossible for anyone to think of anything else besides where to get pasta or toilet paper. We became occupied with the immediate in front of our faces, in the present moment of every day as we saw death tolls rising, and in the intimate details of our apartments; the only thing that was keeping us safe from a world that felt very dangerous and very real.

Recently, we’ve started a process of conscious uncoupling, even though that’s a term that both of us loathe. It is trying to figure out how to break up with someone you still love tenderly, who didn’t cheat on you, who didn’t start snoring or stop cleaning up after themselves. It’s made me ask a lot of questions about what relationships need to survive. Because ours survived for so long without sex or even physical proximity. Hell, I would’ve given a lot just to be on the same continent as him. It’s forced me to rely on conversation as the sole means of emotional connection, and in so many ways we are realizing that we needed more than that.

It’s in the end of relationships that you often think about defeat; about failures to launch and about the embarrassment and shame and anger of feeling; everyone else is getting it right, so why didn’t you? We are going through that though, with all the tears and resentment that go with that. Why can’t we make it a little longer? Push a little harder, wait for a little bit more? But I think sometimes when we push love, love pushes back. It’s understanding that you’re not entitled to someone’s love and attention, and that learning to appreciate it daily will go a long way in supporting them when they can’t always give it to you. Love is sometimes not demanding more from someone, but being satisfied when you get less.

I’m a Sex Worker and This is How I Spent Election Night.

I’ve voted in exactly four presidential elections, and that makes me feel both older and younger than I’d like to admit. This is the only one I've participated in where I've been an actively working sex worker however, and it really changed how I felt both about politics and about my role in our greater society.

The first time I voted was for Obama, and he won my first year in college. Life felt hopeful, and inspiring. The second time I voted, I was living on the west coast pursuing my dreams of being a writer, with barely two pennies to pinch together. My friends and I celebrated with cheap beer and stale weed, in a basement apartment in LA. It was dirty and grimy and I loved it. I felt like we had really taken a positive and permanent turn as a country, that things were turning out alright. We had gotten out of the worst recession in living memory and all my friends and I had jobs, had places to live. Hey, I was living in a closet under the stairs (earning me the affectionate nickname of Harry) but it was where I wanted to be, and I felt like I was playing a part I could easily escape at any time. We were lucky, then.

The next election in 2016 found me living abroad in Berlin. I had gathered a small group of friends in my flat to celebrate in anticipation of a Hillary win. As the night wore on, we stopped cheering, and eventually, there were tears. I couldn't believe that I was so far from home, and that we not only missed our chance to elect our first female president, but that we had handed our democracy to Trump. The cheap wine tasted like vinegar in our mouths, and I stayed in bed the next day, skipping my classes and not answering my phone. For the next couple of weeks as I wandered the streets of the city, shopkeepers or random people would stop me when they heard my accent and ask 'are you American?' For a long time I lied and told them I was from Vancouver, that what happened down there in the United States hadn't happened to me. I was in denial, and I was ashamed.

That was four long years ago. Now, I live in New York City and make art while also doing sex work on the side. The impact of Covid on my professional life has been unbelievable, and turned my incredibly busy intimate life into a barren desert. In some ways it was a crisis, as I found myself jobless like countless other people in the country, and yet because of the nature of my work I wasn't able to apply for unemployment relief. I did have many clients who still wanted to see me, but what had been for so long a safe haven for men to come and see me, and to escape the stress of the world became just another risk. I started setting up digital-only appointments, and answered many, many emails from clients who worried about me, and who were struggling to take care of their mental health under all the stress.

The past couple of months have seen a slow but steady return to some normalcy, with many sex workers such as myself becoming more and more familiar with ways in which we can minimize our risk, and with increasing ease of access for Covid tests making it easier for our clients to meet with us, it’s been getting gradually easier. While it was nowhere like it used to be, it felt good to be able to see my darlings.

Last week was the election and it put me in a very different sort of space. For months I'd been binging podcasts, watching the news until nearly sunrise, and feverishly scrolling through social media, consuming every poll and new article or projection about the election, and that was when my inbox started flooding. Loads of clients old and new started to contact me, with subject lines such as 'need to escape the news cycle for a bit' or 'I can't bear to watch this election alone.'

The night of the election, I met with a wonderful man whose only request was that we didn't talk about the election. We laid in bed and held hands and stared at the ceiling like we were in a French new age film. For awhile, we forgot that there was an election at all, and while it was always lingering somewhere in the back of my mind, it felt really good to get away from it for a moment, to have a valid reason to not look at my phone.

The next day, even though the election hadn't been called yet, I met with another regular of mine who wanted me to meet him in Connecticut, which I gladly did. When I saw him, he looked exhausted, and had the washed out and messy appearance of an unmade bed. I haven't slept all night, he told me sheepishly, and I just wanted you to help me feel like things were going to be okay.

I saw two other people that week, who both said things along the same lines. I don't want to worry about the election for awhile. I'm so tired, and so worried. It's too late for me to do anything about it, all we can do is wait, and I want to wait for a little bit with you. I felt the burden of their exhaustion, and I was tired from caring for them, and yet I felt like it was an essential duty in many ways.

It reminded me of something I saw being shared earlier in the pandemic on twitter, that while we have relied first and foremost on the medical experts; the doctors and public health leaders to tell us what's going on and how to protect ourselves, after that, we turned to the artists. Many of us started reading again for the first time in a long time, or we watched shows that we had never gotten around to seeing before. Loads of us bought art supplies and took online classes in painting, DJing, or playing guitar. We turned to the artists, to the writers, to the creators and the creatives to hold us up and give us hope. And in the same way, as the stress of the year wore on and the trauma and anxiety of the election outweighed the fear of the pandemic, I was reminded of the ways in which in times of emotional need, my clients can turn to me for healing and escape.

So I didn't spend my election night, or week, watching the news and chewing my fingernails. I spent election night holding hands with someone while talking about our favorite sushi restaurant that does super cute takeout boxes, and about Schitt's Creek. I spent election week going on an urban hike to get a great view of the city and talk with someone about how Max Richter's take on Vivaldi has been keeping them sane. I got to pet a client’s dog. I got to write emails to people to give them hope, and to suggest reading Normal People by Sally Rooney if they needed something to distract them. I spent the election caring for people who were exhausted, worried, hurt, and afraid, and it felt good.

The election ended for me on Saturday, when I heard my entire neighborhood erupt in cheers, clapping, and honking. The war isn't over but a big battle was won. And I am reminded by my week, even though it was exhausting, that the way we move forward isn't isolation, anger, or obsession. It's with gentle care.

Loving Thy Neighbor

“The glory of living in the city is that even when you are alone, there is comfort to know that there are thousands, if not millions of people living around you. It’s also a comfort to know that it’s perfectly socially acceptable to not talk to any of them, and that it’s okay to live in the same building for years and not know who lives across the hall from you. The pandemic has given us a strange inverse of what our previous realities were.”

One of the perks of living in a city is that you absolutely do not need to get to know your neighbors. In fact, even bad neighbors bring with them a sort of street cred, a social glee when you can show up at parties and crow triumphantly "my neighbor went through my recycling again." In the countryside, seeing your neighbors' houses is considered a bit of a downside, and in the burbs, neighbors are generally good for picking up mail or coordinating carpools for the kids, and definitely for spying on. In the city though, there is almost no boundary between your neighbors and yourself. You can hear exactly how much sexual stamina the guy who lives across from you has, and the lifestyles of his different partners, depending on what time they leave the next morning, as well as whether or not they order an uber or walk home, tottering, in their heels. I know that my neighbors above me have at least two cats (one fat and one skinny), even though pets aren't technically allowed in the building. They've also lived in their rent-controlled apartment since the 90s and once told me that someone was murdered in our building. Was it my unit? I asked, but thank god, it was not.

The girl below me texted a couple of times at the start of the pandemic to check in on me and to complain about the construction going on down the street, which unbelievably started right at the beginning of quarantine and has continued non-stop every day since then, starting at 6 or 7 in the morning. Cheers, guys. The apartment that is down the hall from me has a kitchen that looks into mine, and I’ve lost count of the number of mornings I've been naked in my kitchen and had to do a quick army crawl out of there when I noticed one of them getting their breakfast ready. The only time I met them was when they were moving out to go to Nashville, and they let me raid their fridge and steal their condiments and frozen corn tortillas. They were good neighbors.

My apartment is on the third floor and both bay windows look directly into the building across the street from me. At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a flurry of notes posted in the windows of our buildings, a sort of two-cans-and-a-string system of communication with people we had never cared about previously. I got to find out the name of the cat living directly across from me; it was Earl. I also got to spy on The Incredibly Hot German, whose abs were so pronounced I could count them from across the street. How did I know his nationality? He caught me spying and put up a sign in the window asking for my phone number. I couldn't write my phone number down fast enough. Hell, I knew he was living alone, so why not?

He would text me asking if he could come over, and incredibly, I could now watch in real time as a man I’m seeing would get dressed, check himself in the mirror, and then turn off his lights, shut his door, exit his building, cross the street, and ring my doorbell. How delicious to see the process, how amazing to see from start to finish how your takeout order arrives at your door! Alas, it was short-lived because he got back together with his ex and moved to Hawaii, but at least now a really adorable asian couple live in that apartment now, and their dog hangs out the window and smiles at me.

Last weekend, my newest lover D came over for takeout and to watch both Mulan movies together, back to back. We made cocktails and danced around to emo music as well, and halfway through the night he told me that he actually knew the girl who lived below me. They'd been on one date before, but because of the pandemic things sort of sizzled out between them. He had seen her name on a package downstairs when he came up, and now they were texting. Does she want to come upstairs and watch with us? I asked. A couple minutes later she had said yes. What followed was a frenzy of running up and down the stairs like freshmen in a dorm as she explored how I decorated my apartment, and how she decorated hers. We also broke into some of the other empty apartments and talked about the neighbors that we had barely known. We went back to my apartment and I made her a drink, and then we watched the end of the original Mulan movie with her on my right, and my lover on my right. When she left, I promised to pick up her mail and store her packages for her while she was away.

The glory of living in the city is that even when you are alone, there is comfort to know that there are thousands, if not millions of people living around you. It's also a comfort to know that it's perfectly socially acceptable to not talk to any of them, and that it's okay to live in the same building for years and not know who lives across the hall from you. The pandemic has given us a strange inverse of what our previous realities were. We aren't allowed to see most of our loved ones, and so our neighbors, the people we actually live with, have become our new family, and you know what? I'm kinda okay with it.

In This Moment, Communion is a Radical Act

“There can be no love without justice.”

I will be working on a post soon so that people can have access to petitions to sign, as well as books to read, shows/movies to watch etc, and which places still need donations. I am going to try and amplify what I've already seen written so that people can have access to it and do some self-education. Right now, it's more important to listen to what black people are asking us to do, and do our own work on how to dismantle the systematic racism in our own lives, and then do the work on what our role as allies is going to be in dismantling the system itself.

One book that I read not too long ago keeps jumping out to me as something that hits particularly close to home in the context of everything that is happening right now. Communion, by Bell Hooks, is an incredible book for learning the importance of love and feminine connection in times such as these.

With all the marches I've been on, I've been struck by how the majority of the activism and grassroots work is being led by women, and some still high school students. I'm amazed at the energy, bravery, and tenacity they have to stand up for their community, and take on the mantle of responsibility. I have seen how their organizing efforts have centered on love and community, and of creating cadres of accountability and sisterhood. Under the mantle of patriarchy, love has always been seen as women's work, as the responsibility of the feminine to safeguard and nurture emotions and connections. That love was always seen as secondary in terms of value to the more emphasized 'logic' and 'reasoning' abilities of men, and thus have been ignored or belittled. And yet in this time of crisis we see that love pouring out. We see it through the mothers who are mourning for their sons over and over again, taken too soon, or in George Floyd’s final words calling out for his own mother, or in the words of his daughter, when she exclaimed that her daddy changed the world. We see it in the way that communities have gathered around female leaders who've been able to clearly articulate how care and compassion are the foundations to the fight to abolish racism and end police brutality. We see it in the women who've stepped up to bring medical supplies, water, and snacks to protests, to the nurses who are going to protests to take care of the injured and wash tear gas out of people's eyes.

If women are the ones who are taught to be experts on love, it is no wonder they are leading the revolution. It is no wonder that many are writing the literature we are consuming on a day to day basis on twitter or instagram, whether it is Layla F Saad, or even Block Thread Queen, a digital sex worker who is fighting racism within the adult industry by calling out the perpetrators and bringing them up on bad behavior while also uplifting and encouraging people to financially donate to black female sex workers who are struggling. I'm seeing black women on twitter and instagram holding live checking-in sessions, in which they hold safe spaces for people to find respite if their struggling, or to find communion if they're feeling alone in the spaces. While Hooks wrote in her book "there can be no love without justice," I think the exact opposite is true as well. Without love, how do we know what is fair and what is not? It is only with a deep and profound caring that we can center goodness and kindness and love as the central pillars in our fight against fascism and systematic violence.

This fight we are fighting, it is bearable because when we fight, we see the love, the strength, and the joy it creates. Everything becomes bearable with love. The fight becomes sustainable with love. And it is the black women who are bringing it. They are healing their communities with love while they are fighting for Black Lives Matter. It is important that we respect that community. That as white people, we do not try to infiltrate the intimate spaces that were not created for us, while sharing and amplifying the spaces that were. To respect the love that has been carefully tended and fostered, and to amplify and echo it.

I keep coming back to this book, to the idea that women are given this idea that we are inherently better at love while simultaneously told that love and feelings are 'silly' and we ran with it. We created powerful systems and communities to sustain our families, and more broadly, our societies. While many of us are at a loss as to how we can contribute, take a step back and see that these systems we are trying to tear down are built on the assumption that love trumps power. But in uncertain times such as these, we see the opposite is true. While people expected mobs and rioting as the coronavirus sank its fangs in, what we saw was a lot of cooperation, generosity, and kindness. We saw people mobilizing to help the needy in their community, and to take extra precautions to try and protect the most vulnerable. So too during the BLM protests. When unemployment is at a record-breaking high in this country, countless numbers people have found ways to donate millions to support grieving families, grassroots organizations, bail funds, and mutual aid funds. People have risked getting coronavirus because it was more important to protect and protest for black lives to matter. There is love here, and the love is strong.

Many of us are new to activism, and many of us are unsure of how to go about it. However we've been trained our whole lives for this moment. We've been taught to love and to cherish and foster that communion. As this movement stretches from it's beginning decades ago into a new era of redoubled energy and passion, we can create sustainability by fostering community around it, and by giving it love.

Like I said above, I'll be posting more links about ways to help, but I also invite you to post your own, or ways that you are supporting your communities through this. I'll leave this off then with one of my favorite quotes from Bell Hooks (really should be reading her if you haven't already).

“Women who choose love must be wise, daring, and courageous. All around us the culture of lovelessness mocks our quest for love. Wisdom is needed if we would restore love to its rightful place as a heroic journey, arduous, difficult-more vital to human survival and development on planet earth than going off to slay mythical dragons, to ravage and conquer others with war or all other forms of violence that are like war. Wisdom is needed if we are to demand that our culture acknowledge the journey to love as a grand, magical, life-transforming, thrilling risky adventure.”

Erotic and Sensual Artists I Am Loving Right Now

If sheltering-in-place has made you realize that your walls/tables are looking a little blah, now is a great time to give your home a little bit of a spruce up with some delicious art that will perk up your spirit and your blood pressure to your special lady friend below the belt. Especially when everyone is reeling as a result of the coronavirus, having some bright inspiration in your life is the mood boost we all need, and you can give yourself a pat on the back for supporting some wonderful artists.

1. Pansy Ass Ceramics

   I love Pansy Ass. With a bubbly-pop aesthetic, their ceramics are simultaneously lush, with baroque gold detailing and floral motifs that Marie Antoinette would’ve swooned over. I am in love with their mugs and their vases, but they sell everything from key chains and christmas tree decorations to enormous serving platters of men rimming each other, perfect for your first post-COVID brunch.

2. SIND Studio

I absolutely love these simple and yet elegant multi-use basins from Sind Studio, based in Tel Aviv. Taken from Michealangelo’s David, these planters are sure to be not only incredibly useful for storing your fruit, planting some succulents, or tossing your keys into, but make a huge visual statement that is both classical and erotic.

3. Petites Luxures

Petite Luxures is currently on exhibit in San Francisco and while the gallery is closed due to the shelter-in-place, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I spent a lot of time hanging out in front of the windows salivating. I love the clean style and implied tenderness of each illustration, truly a work of effortless and modern eroticism.

4. Noemiah

This darling creator from Montreal is kicking ass in the world of ceramics and textiles. I absolutely love her clean and bright aesthetic, and her tiny bud vases are sure to bring you a smile every time you see it.

5. Verameat

I first ran into Verameat at a little store in Williamsburg and her work was so captivating that I had to jaywalk to see it…. almost getting hit by a cab in the process. If it had happened, it would’ve been worth it. Her jewelry and clothing is sarcastic and powerful, and bonus points if you follow her instagram for lots of photos of her grouchy cat.

6. Julia Ballenger

I had the pleasure of meeting Julia at the West Coast Craft fair in San Francisco last year, and her ceramics are only outshone by her incredibly friendly and warm personality. I especially love her salt wells, which look like little women taking baths. The salt crystals are such good facsimiles for bubbles that it makes me smile every time I cook.

Beginning in a Time of Corona

Photo credit to @cottonbro

The weekend before shelter-in-place, I went on four different dates with four different men. If sexual interactions could be saved up like water in a camel's hump, I wanted to make sure I was full up. I dated like I was going to be shot into space the next day. I kissed like I was getting shipped to war, and I had the feeling that, as I said goodbye to each man, I was obliged to light a candle in the window.

Living in San Francisco is like being a third grader at a school designed by drag queens. The city is obsessed with its own culture of work hard play harder. There are putt-putt golf courses featuring holeside bottle service, bowling alleys hidden underneath concert venues, and underground raves that take place in hastily rearranged WeWork spaces. At 29, the city made me feel ancient and out of touch. I was already falling behind in every aspect of my life, and my weekends had begun to revolve around avoiding missing out on the “Next Big Thing.” This desperation extended to the men in my life, who, while on dates with me, would always look over my right ear as if a slightly better, more successful or better-networked woman would appear out of nowhere that would be more worthwhile of their time. Dating was less about personal connection and romance as it was an algorithm that needed to be optimized. And I had fully bought into the system with a devil-may-care, volume-focused approach to tindering that would've put Mae West to shame.

There was a desperation and strange nostalgia that tinged my last four dates. Meeting up at bars felt tender and fragile. My boys and I would spend long silent minutes observing the chaos and camaraderie of people crowding in for their drink orders like we were watching black and white films of our grandparents dancing. Things used to be so good, we thought to ourselves, while still living it. We clutched at each other and squeezed hands like we'd just struck the iceberg, and later on in the night when we were in bed, we would face each other and cuddle, pretending we could feel the icy black water lap around our ankles.

The following Monday I opened the windows at midnight to listen to the city shut down. The streets had already been empty for hours, and for the first time since moving to the city, I could hear the birds. I went to bed alone, thinking that it would be a good time to masturbate, but not having the emotional energy to give myself that small reprieve.

The next weeks were strange ones. I started having incredibly vivid sex dreams about people I went to highschool with, but was too dorky to talk to. I started sexting with a guy I had hooked up with three years previously. I brutishly and forcefully sent unsolicited nudes to the guys I had been seeing, with varying levels of joy at one end of the scale to one guy on the other end telling me, 'I know you meant to cheer me up, but this is just more depressing.' I started to fantasize about elaborate rituals for washing hands in which men I couldn't see would come over and shower immediately, changing into sterilized robes that I had someho prepared. We would rub soap over our hands for hours on end and squirt purell into each others palms, gazing iris to iris while we rubbed it in and waited for it to dry. We would then carefully, delicately intertwine our fingers.

I started going for walks late at night so I could avoid as many people as possible, but walking past all the shuttered and boarded up restaurants and bars made me cry. I pictured the neighbors starting to refer to me as the weird sobbing girl. The highlight of the second week was starting to communicate with my neighbors across the street with post-it note missives and incredibly detailed drawings. I started to chat with the woman on the third floor, and found out her cat was named Oliver. One night at the end of one of my walks I stood under her window to feel a little closer to her and looked at my own dark apartment. I saw that my neighbors above and below me had all also been communicating with Oliver's owner, and I felt a deep sense of betrayal that could only be equaled by my childhood trauma of watching the Sonics move to Oklahoma City. A different neighbor across the street with a penchant for wandering around his apartment shirtless also caught my attention. He asked for my number via paper towel and permanent marker taped to his window, and we've been flirting ever since. I rearranged my desk for a better view, my apartment being higher than his I suddenly feel protective over him. I start doing my hair and posting more on instagram. I started walking around my apartment naked.

It's week three and I find myself unspooling gently. I feel constantly high, although it's been four days since my last edible. I've started to get to know my neighbors so intimately that now I feel like I can trust them with their own privacy again. They will be safe without my care, without my vigilent watching. I'm texting the boys less, and masturbating more. I've taken up painting more, and reading the books I always said I would read later. I started to write without irony about setting boundaries with men. And I started to gather little dust bunnies of courage from under all the responsibilities I had been ignoring and started planning this magazine.

This magazine was something I had wanted to do for a long time, and I had even had the name treasured since childhood, when my dad would let me read chain letters outloud to him while I spun around in his office chair. "You can lead a whorticulture," one read, "but you can't make her think." In another email, my dad chuckles as I say aloud, "a good cowgirl always keeps her calves together." It took me a long time to understand these jokes, to read these as ideals or cautionary tales, and I carefully grafted them onto my personality as a form of performative chasteness. It took me longer to shed that mantle in exchange for a short skirt and a pair of Docs. I think about feminist labor, and consider the pros and cons of charging my boyfriend for every time he has to ask when our anniversary is. I think about how much I spend on shampoo and then look up projected earnings for girls on onlyfans.com. I think about how I used to write but I've been too scared, and too traumatized, to write for years now. I think maybe this is the time to take the plunge. When the world is falling apart, the space is created for radical change. In this space, perhaps it is the time in which we can tend to and cultivate the cultural institutions we live under, and perhaps grow something a little more beautiful.