sexual health

It's probably in bad form to be gone so long and then come back and gripe, but fuck, you know what cut a big swath of suckitude through my life? August. Not that it was all bad, there were lots of lovely moments, but it was really definitely not my best month ever.

Early on in the month, I got an IUD put in and sweet jesus. It was painful but not that painful to get in, so I thought I'd be okay. I knew there might be spotting and extra cramping. D.Jack came with me, and walked me the half block slowly home, then cuddled me on the couch for a bit before he convinced me to go upstairs to bed. I tried to get out of bed about a half hour later to pee, and the pain was so bad it triggered a vagal response (I found out at the doctor's later), which meant that the pain spiked enough to make my body not know whether I wanted to pass out or throw up or both. In confusion, I just pulled the covers up over my eyes and cried for a little bit.

It has triggered some fierce fucking PMS. That seems to go away for only hours at a time. If I'm not super irritable, I'm on the verge of tears at the same time that I'm trying to figure out why the hell I'm sad in the first place.

It's certainly an excellent method of birth control, I'll say that, because it has nearly killed my sex drive. I get it back in fits and starts, but it's not like it was a month ago. It's like it gets shakily to its legs and lets out a thin meow, where before it slinked along with purring confident grace. When I'm having sex, it often takes me a while to ramp up, past or through the sense of disconnection. I have to work to feel uninhibited whereas before it was my baseline.

For some people, this might not be a huge deal. Sex and sexuality don't take up prime real estate in everyone's lives, I know. But they do in mine.

I've worked fucking hard to like my body and enjoy it, you know?, to be connected and present and joyful. I feel like I've lost something. I feel resentful of this foreign thing in my body. I am grieving the way my body used to be; I also grieve that entrance to that blissful place I used to take as normal seems elusive to me now. I miss my old abandon, and worry that I'll never be able to get it back again. I feel like I've betrayed myself, and now I am struggling with a body that feels once more like a stranger's. I am angry with myself for hurting my body like this. I have moments of hating my body again, purely.

Friends have very reasonably asked me if I'm going to get the IUD taken out. But done is done, it feels like. I can never not have betrayed my body like that now. So I'm going to leave it in at least for a while and hope that soon the obvious benefits outweigh the turmoil I'm feeling now, and that eventually, the grief and anger are soothed.

While I'm really happy, in this post V-Day world of ours, that it's much easier for many people to say the word vagina with ease, it still troubles me crazy that people don't know what in hell it is.

Take this:

The redux, for those of you who don't want to watch?

Bryce Gruber goes to a spa to get herself vajazzled. That is, she has someone stick crystals in pretty patterns on the skin where her pubic hair used to be. The crystals are on some kind of double-sided tape, and though the results aren't my cup of tea, it seems like just a fine thing to do. Why not, really? People do all sorts of crazy shit, myself included, and if someone wants to pay someone else scads of money to put jewels where their hair was, fill yer boots, is all I can say.

But one thing did freak me out.

As described by the esthetician, vajazzling is where they put "jewels, on the upper part, of...." Here she trails off, looking embarrassed.

Gruber picks up the trail: "The vagina?"

The esthetician nods and looks relieved and repeats in a sing-songy falsetto "The vagina!"

And I thought ouch.

Quick lesson here:

• The vagina is on the inside.
• The vulva is on the outside.

Being on the outside, the vulva comprises lots of different other parts. Our friend the clit, for example. Also, it includes the mons (pubis or veneris, take your pick), which is where, if you let it, most of the pubic hair grows. And where, if you don't, you might have delicate sparkly crystals taped to the exposed skin.

Though I suppose monsazzle doesn't have quite the same ring, now, does it.

Last fall, the wives and girlfriends of the Senators* decided to raffle off a christmas tree covered in Sens shit paraphernalia and give the money to charity. 'Sall good right? Semi-fame, money, charities, what could go wrong?

One of the charities they chose was First Place Pregnancy Centre. FPPC offers counselling to young girls who are pregnant. It was known in the field as an anti-choice organization - i.e. one that offered pregnancy counselling that excluded abortion.

Planned Parenthood Ottawa thought that people buying raffle tickets should know this. If those people still wanted to buy a ticket, well, 'sall good, right? They would be making a fully informed choice. During the rounds of interviews that followed, FPPC was referred to as an anti-choice organization.

Planned Parenthood Ottawa is now being sued by FPPC for defamation. Two PPO staff members are named.

I won't say more than that. I was on the PPO board until quite recently, and I know quite well that the staff there are perfectly capable of handling this. The way they handle teaching youth about healthy sexuality; the way they handle providing pregnant women and their partners with non-judgemental information about the full spectrum of their options; the way they do all this on a shoestring budget.

But I will leave you with some links in case you would like to know more and/or offer your support to PPO (which, by the by, is also a registered charity). And, perhaps, express some righteous indignation on my behalf.

• Citizen: Charity Sues Planned Parenthood
• National Post: Ottawa Charity Sues Planned Parenthood
• Planned Parenthood Ottawa

*Called the Sens Better Halves, and don't even get me started on that. How cutesy! How grammatically incorrect! Mutual, I'm sure.

Last week I got an email from a friend that ended with the sentence, "See you at your workshop on Monday! I've always wanted to become a more skilled ass pirate."

And also, "I feel so much better about my cooch since we talked."

It's a pretty good life.

But seriously, if you too have also always wanted to become a more skilled ass pirate, I'm pretty sure there's lots of room left in the Up Yours! workshop tonight at venus envy.

And if you ever have any cooch-related questions, I'm always happy to talk cooch.

Up Yours!: Anal Pleasure and Health
Make friends with your butt! Join us in breaking myths and cultural taboos surrounding anal play. Also learn practical tips about lube, toys, safety and health.
1.5 hours
Nov 5, 2007 @ 6:30pm
for everyone
$20.00 (limited income $10.00)
320 Lisgar (at Bank)
call 613-789-4646 to register

The workshop for youth went pretty well, I think. The facilitator and I had a bit of a debrief after, and discussed which parts seemed to hit home and which parts seemed to leave the group cold.

They were not a tough crowd at all. Either I was just a bitch when I was sixteen (highly likely) or I have distorted memories of how tough I was (highly likely). This group was nice. Some of them paid more attention than others, but by and large? I've talked to groups of adults - who paid for the privilege to have me natter at them - that as a whole were far less engaged than this group.

I started out by asking them for words about sexuality. They were quiet at first, but then when I didn't flinch when they said things like fingering or blow jobs, they started talking faster than I could write. It was mostly action words and body parts, pretty run of the mill stuff, until, of course, someone whipped out the dirty sanchez.

At this point, I was on my haunches scribbling at the bottom of the flip chart, my hand a blur and my writing illegible. My hand stopped moving, I swivelled around.

"I am not writing that down," I said. "The dirty sanchez is ridiculous."

When I was thinking about it later, I wished I'd said "The dirty sanchez is bullshit. It's racist - 'authentic looking mexican moustache'? Come the fuck on."

I looked it up on urbandictionary.com and was horrified at what else it was. Not only is it totally racist, it is violently sexist. Almost all of the user-posted definitions mention specifically that it's done to a woman, and the example sentences are so full of vicious vitriol they made my stomach turn.

But the group persisted with the term, and I'm sure the apparent cultural fascination with this term means something, so I caved and wrote it down.

"Angel kisses!" someone yelled next.
Wha? Good lord. When did I get so out of touch? I swivelled again.
"Okay, I have never heard of that one. What gives?"
"Oh, man, it's so gross. You don't even wanna know."

Ah, but I did. So I looked it up. Apparently, the thing that is so gross that the youth couldn't talk about it, sadly, involves cunnilingus and menstruation.

Sigh.

I wish, now, I'd asked them what they thought a dirty sanchez was. Would that have been too gross for me to want to know?

++

Thanks everyone, for all your comments about what you wished you'd known. Though I faithfully took them along, I didn't end up using them after all. They just felt out of place. Maybe I'll figure out a better way to weave them in next year.

In a few days I'm giving a workshop about healthy sexuality to a group of youth. I've never done a workshop just for youth before, and truth be told, I'm a little nervous about it.

Partially, I remember what a tough crowd I was when I was 16 or 17.

Partially, it feels really important, like here's my chance to make it up to myself as a teenager.

What do I wish I'd known when I was 16?

• That some women's bodies are hard-wired.
• That it's okay if it takes you years to understand your body well enough to come.
• That you can stop worrying and enjoy yourself along the way.
• That if you know you are in love with someone at 15, you should do whatever you want with them.
• That you don't have to be in love with someone to fuck. You can love them for the fuck and think of them fondly but distantly afterwards and it does not make you a bad person.
• You shouldn't feel guilty.
• That when people, anyone, tries to make you ashamed of what or who you want, you need to think "fuck all y'all."
• That making out is one of the best parts.

Anything to add? Straight, queer, trans, cis? You know you do. C'mon.

All that orgasm talk to say that I hate most forms of birth control. This is a problem if you're going to go around being eggy and put yourself in direct contact with semen on a fairly regular basis.

Read my disclaimers first.*

Every once in a while I have considered options besides condoms. But they're all so so so fucking awful. I do not care how safe doctors say the pill is, I have talked to too many women who just lost interest in having sex at all once they'd been on it for a while. While not having sex is a very effective way to avoid pregnancy, it's not my preferred way. So that cuts out the pill, the patch, the nuvaring, and shots.

Then you've got the poisons. This has always been difficult for me to wrap my head around. So you want me to take this film/jelly/jam/sponge/froth full of a noxious substance and put it in continuous contact with a semi-permeable membrane and highly sensitive part of my body? The one time I used a sponge, my partner’s mouth went numb after he went down on me. Sexy.

As a class, the poisons are more horrifying to me than jabbing my ass muscle full of hormones. Moo. Horrifying like the thought of eating a chili dog from the 7-11 is horrifying. Sure people do it, and have every right to do it, but jesus god, do you know what you’re putting inside yourself?

I got excited about the cervical cap and diaphragm for about 10 seconds until I realized I would have to use a poison to make them decently effective.

I also occasionally have the same blip of excitement for the IUD/IUS (the Intrauterine System). Not many side-effects any more. Not poisonous. The IUD doesn’t involve hormones and is supposed to keep you on your usual/unusual cycle. But something always kind of horrified me about it too. Maybe the idea of uterine perforation? And heavier crampier periods? Eesh. Not to mention that we’re a little fuzzy on how the copper ones work. They create an environment inhospitable for implantation. I don’t really want any part of my body to be inhospitable.

All of these options require me to treat my body like it is the enemy. Yeah, sure, there are times where I feel like that, but taking that as a business rule for my day-to-day operations? It is diametrically opposed to the way I have managed to develop myself as a sexual being. It is detrimental to my further growth as a happy, creative, satisfied sexual being.

All those forms of birth control would lead to behaviour patterns that would make me a bad lay.

So. That leaves condoms. And sure, I like condoms, you know, they're fine. Mostly. As I've gotten older, my skin has gotten more sensitive and lube that was fine is now not fine, and condoms have always dried me out, necessitating the fairly generous application of lube.

I've tried the female condom and it's a decent option, but it's a $4 fuck and I'm always worried that it's slipped in. You cannot worry and come at the same time. Probably if I used them more, I’d get over that. I dunno. And I’m not sure why I think that great sex isn’t worth $4, but there you go. There is something about the price-point that deters me.

If I’m going to be honest, sometimes I just want to feel some skin up in there.

You might think I’d exhausted the options. However.

Years ago now, I heard of this other thing called the Fertility Awareness Method. I read a few books, went to a seminar, read a bunch of websites. I read that it involves checking your temperature every morning, checking the position of your cervix once a day, and noting what kind of cervical fluid you’ve got going on about 3 x a day. I read that you need to chart for 3 to 6 months before you can trust it as a form of birth control.

In other words, I read that it was too damn complicated for me to manage. And too time consuming, and not enough immediate gratification. Six months? I’m all for planning ahead, but really. Not to mention the potential for human error. What if I interpreted the results wrong? What if I said my cervical fluid was sticky when really it was creamy?

As with any form of contraception, its only as effective as the people using it, and there are a lot more details to fuck up with this system than rolling on a condom. But hell, I've been using condoms on their own for years, and their effectiveness rate with typical use is only 88%. Obviously, I can live with a pretty high margin of error.

The other thing that kind of put me off about FAM are the people who advocate its use. They're a little evangelical. Like yoga people. They rave about FAM like it’s the best thing that ever happened to anyone. That puts me off. Like it put me off yoga until I became one of those yoga evangelicals.

My decision to join the wave has probably been happening gradually, but this fall, the tide of “No because. No because, no because…” seemed to recede suddenly and definitively. While I was with the Great Dater last fall, I thought, I’m going to start charting.

But never did. There were two things that had to change before I went from "yes, I will do this" to actually getting my shit together.

I decided that FAM would likely never be an all or nothing form of contraception for me. I would likely use it to limit the number of days I used condoms, and would be very conservative about which days I would consider infertile.

I decided, most importantly, that I would only start FAM if I were doing it for myself. If my primary motivation was to better understand the inner workings of my body, the 6 month goal was not relevant, because every day would either tell me something new or confirm what I already knew. This would likely make me want to treat my body better in general, and would certainly add to the store of information that makes me have orgasms. Thus, the main motivating factor would not just be codomless fucking, and thus would not be dependent on whether I had a male partner or not.

These things clicked. Though weirdly, the third part is that after all the "I’m doing it for myself!" I started dating Eric, who is a kind and thoughtful person. He was genuinely interested when I told him I was starting. He asked questions about it. He read up on it. He asks for the temperature report. We look at my chart together and he asks me questions about how my body works. It’s endearing beyond belief. He blows off my wonderment at his interest by saying he’s got a vested interest, but I’ve had other partners who had a vested interest and wouldn’t have really cared to know the ins and outs of my beautiful cycle of renewal (thanks to Steve for that phrase).

The stars thus aligned, I printed off a chart and bought myself a basal thermometer 6 weeks ago.

It’s pink because it’s for the ladies.

Every morning, my alarm goes off at 6 am. I almost wake up, paw around for my thermometer, stick it in my mouth and hit the on button. It beeps once. I clamp my jaw shut and fall back asleep until it beeps belligerently. I take the thermometer out, turn on the light, check the numbers and scribble them down on the back of the chart, which is tri-folded and placed under the pen, just so, on my night table. I turn the light off and fall back asleep for an hour or so.

Through the day, I wash my hands before I go into the stall, put my fingers up my cunt and see what the fluid around my cervix is like. I decide how the fluid should be classified and make a mental note. At the same time, I check how high my cervix is and how soft it is. I’m still trying to figure out what feeling is equal to SHOW (soft high open wet) which means DANGER! FERTILITY!

FAM also involves charts, which I like.

But in the end, this is what has converted me: even after only a month, I’m starting to get a better handle on how my body works. I look forward to learning what my temperature pattern is. Checking my fluids 3x per day keeps me in touch with my vag instead of ignoring it unless it's feeling really good or really bad.

I think I may take to FAM the way I took to the Wahl. I may be an FAM convert the way that I’m a yoga convert.

Resources:
Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood Ottawa (call them for info, they're lovely)
Canadian Federation of Sexual Health
Fertility UK
Justisse
sexualityandu.ca**

*One, this is only an issue when I find someone longer term. Condoms and dams go without saying for people with whom I'm only spending a few hours. Two, what follows below is only what’s right for me. Women have the right to choose the birth control that works best for them. And they have the right to base that decision on having access to complete information about every type of contraception before they make that decision.

**This site is good for straight up STI and contraceptive info, but DO NOT read it for info on FAM. They only talk about “Natural Family Planning,” which is close but not the same, and while the pill is presented as 99% effective, NFP is presented as 2% ineffective. Seems to be the only one where the smaller number is the number given. How many people are going to gloss that and think, Wow, only two percent? What are those hippies thinking? As well, the only link the website provides is to a group called Serena that has “teacher-couples” (hyphenated, I kid you not) and seems geared oppressively towards straight people and states that “The respect for individuals and for human life from conception is central to our philosophy.” Read: anti-choice. I’m not sure I would get along so well with them.

As far as orgasms go, I was a pretty late bloomer. When my first one hit, I'd been having sex of various sorts for years, thinking I was having orgasms. I mean, I was having fun, right? My body felt good, right? During sex, I'd go pretty deep into myself, getting lost in the sensations, kind of trancing out. So when my high-school friends asked "Does he make you come, like, every time?" I said, "Well, not *every* time."

I had no idea what I was talking about.

See, I am a hard-wired girl. So it's not that I hadn't had an orgasm with a partner. It's that I hadn't had an orgasm. Not for lack of exploration, either. My earliest masturbation memory is from about 3 years old. There's a bit of a gap in terms of memory, but then I remember it being a pretty regular part of my life from about 10 on. It felt really good. Having sex as a teenager felt that good too. Different good, but good good.

When I realized I hadn't had an orgasm, I was 20. My ex-nasty had a waterbed, which for sleeping was far more comfortable than I'd expected and for sex was pretty interesting. Changing positions is much more fluid on a wobbly mattress. Took me a while to get used to regular ones again.

But anyway. We were on the waterbed and doing stuff we normally did. It was feeling good and fun, like normal good and fun. And then I got this other feeling, like a pretty far-away sound and maybe that's the 6 o'clock train. But maybe not, because it's never sounded quite like that before, but oh, who knows, maybe with the fog and the wind. You won't be surprised to find out that it got louder and closer and louder and certainly, without doubt or hesitation, I can tell you it was the 6 o'clock train rushing through my clit and up my spine.

Holy fuck, I thought, and probably yelled. Right, this is what people have been talking about. A boy managed what I hadn't been able to in all those hours with my hands down my pants.

I would love to be able to say that everything was easy from there, and that I started coming all the time and developed a whole new and loving relationship with my body.

I did not. And I did not.

Over the next few years I had a few random orgasms. They always snuck up on me. And the x-n grew resentful of me trying. So I gave up.

It is probably not a coincidence that I got the fucker out of my life not long after I bought myself a vibrator.

My first vibrator was an expensive, battery-operated piece of crap. But I managed to figure out how to get myself off with it a few times in the month before it broke. When it gave up the ghost, I was living in Toronto where a feminist sex-store called Good For Her had just openend up. I went there instead of the swooshy Yorkville place I'd gotten the other model. GFH had posted a sign, one I can still picture, about the differences between battery operated and electric vibrators. I spent about $10 more than I had on the shitty battery operated one and came home with an electric one: the Wahl Warm'n'Gentle. I still have it today, 9 years later.

To say that it changed my life is an understatement. From the first time I used it, I was able to consistently give myself strong orgasms. That is a kind of power I do not take lightly and I do not take for granted. Being able to have an orgasm whenever you want? Not having to depend on a fuckwit for your own pleasure?

I was 23 years old, and it felt like someone had just taken me to the best grown-up candy store ever.

Again, I'd love to say that it was all orgasms all the time after that. That every time I had sex, I came with the same kind of force provided by the Wahl. But that wasn't the case. It has been an uphill battle. My body has been a confusing and fraught territory for me, with a lot of emotional wreckage piling up on various shores. Its needs have seemed tempestuous and strange, even to me. I was too afraid to let myself go in front of people, for fear of another evisceration.

It's only in the past year that I've dealt with enough of the wreckage, learned enough about my body and gotten up enough confidence to vocalize what I need in order to come. This has happened partially through masturbation, and partially through talking a lot about sex to a lot of people. And partially through finding people who genuinely want me to feel good while we’re fooling around.

Another turning point was a conversation with a lover I had for a couple years in between my x-n and Mike. Nile and I hooked up in Toronto about a month before I left for Halifax. It was a stellar end to My Year of No Action. After I left, we talked a lot on the phone and through email. I’d see him when I went back to TO, and he came to visit me once in Halifax. With the passion of lovers who had been separated for 5 months, he walked into my apartment, pushed me onto the couch and we were off. Later, he mentioned one part in particular being hot.

"Really?" I said. "I was actually feeling a little embarrassed about that. I kind of lost it."

"Uh, yeah," he replied. "You did. That was the part that was hot."

"Funny. B always felt like I was using him when I got like that."

"Yeah. You were. That was the part that was hot."

"Really?"

"Yeah. What kind of a jackass doesn't like it when the girl he's fucking loses her mind fucking him? That's just bullshit."

"Really."

For years, when I was with someone and started to feel weird about starting to lose myself, I would remember that. Bullshit, I'd think, and go under. It took a while, but it became habit, and now, oh wow. I don’t have to think it, it just comes natural. Like it’s my right to get lost and like I am strong enough to haul myself back.

*

Okay, that’s it for now. I have a Special Project to work on and it’s getting late. There’s a whole other part to this that I’ll post tomorrow or Monday.

I went to the Sexual Health Clinic yesterday to get my bits tested, as one does when one starts fooling around with somebody new.

The interview was a little bit bumpy.

"How many people have you had genital sex with in the past three months?" she asked me.

This question always stumps me. You can do a lot of really safe stuff with genitals that a lot of people would classify as sex. "By genital sex you mean...?"

"Intercourse. Or oral."

Now, I'm looking at the sheet. I can see that what she is not saying is "Or rectal." Maybe rectal is separate from genital?* Maybe she thought that I looked like a nice girl and assumed that nice girls don't like to put things in their dirty dirty bums? I do not know. I did not ask. I let her skip it.

She seemed surprised that I was a font of information. I knew how many male partners I'd had in the last three months and the last year, how many female partners in the last three months and last year, the day I last had intercourse, the day my last period started, the length of my last 4 cycles.

"Thank you for being so forthcoming," she said. "I always worry a little that people will think I'm prying when I get to these questions." I should have given her tthe link here.

The pap part was actually pretty great. Not that I wouldn't rather have been doing something else, you know. But. It's possible that the Goob's recent attacks on my nether regions made yesterday's stress-free stay in the stirrups seem better than it was. My nurse practioner was kind, made small talk with me LIKE I WAS A PERSON, warmed up the speculum, tested the temperature of the speculum on my inner thigh before putting it in, and TOLD ME WHAT SHE WAS GOING TO DO before she did it. Like the stuff she was messing around with was actually attached TO A PERSON. So I didn't get all tensed up waiting for lord knows what scraping was going to come next.

She got the speculum in pretty easily and opened it up. Then she started kind of digging around. Now, this is not the most comfortable feeling. But since she was treating me not only LIKE A PERSON, but like a person with an uncomfortable plastic tube shoved up inside herself, she was TALKING TO ME, and not pretending that I was some kind of practice dummy.

"Your cervix must be turned down a little. It's being a little shy," she murmured.

I felt like a boy for a moment.

"Unhh, weird. This has, uh, never happened to me before."

Swear to god.

*Okay, I can understand not wanting to ask someone if they've had rectal sex, since that phrase has just about the worst mouthfeel of any phrase I've ever uttered and does not sound like something anyone would want to do anyway. Technically, I know that if you're putting something more than an inch or so inside your ass, it's rectal, and not anal, sex. But really, isn't the word anal bad enough? Why can't such a fun activity have a better name?