Capacity for Pleasure

My morning thoughts today: Sooo tired, bone achingly so, but happy and calm. My skin feels less and less like my own as I grow older, even as my body’s shape and weight fluctuations, firmness, and space-taking strength becomes more comfortable. It’s taken me decades to look in a mirror and not see an enemy staring back…

I love the struggle of my day: a head that wants, and a spirit who sits still to listen for what the self is actually saying. My brain is too tired to write for the lack of sleep I am currently enduring, and my body wants all of the things, experiences and connections, too quickly for digestion. I volley back and forth in my head about fantasies I am too afraid to ask for in person, yet I turn around and enact these very things in a room full of strangers who come by at the agreed upon time, sit and wait to see and hear what I’ve been keeping so quiet and protected…

I am my own safety, infrequently lent to singles except in moments of inspiration or the random rare chemical desire… Oh, to fall into a of cozy and careful touch, as I do those painful and challenging tests of my endurance. I might fall pieces to pieces for a sweet kindness on my skin, a spirit bigger than my own carving out time for my release. It is easier, my feral self says, to fight, bite, trust in pressure against my body than succumb to the potential trap of a caress.

My ex would throw their back out every time they got a massage. I feel that instability in my heart. To love the everything which I am made of, embodied in you and you and you is righteous and divine! To spend an elongated moment focused specifically on my pleasure for pleasure’s sake is galling, insipid, a fear with teeth and walls, a shadow I cannot find the end of. I know these things are one and the same, a microcosm and a macrocosm spiraling in and out, the never-changing parts of what makes life for the living… Still though, I find pleasure terrifying. I find it insurmountable, untrustable, a thing I want to rage at, an end. Losing myself in something I won’t need to heal from? I think implosion might be self love. I’m not so afraid of death being pain, I am afeared that unfolding into pleasure might take me first.

Play On My Friends,
~ Karin

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and support me. For one time donations click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

National Abortion Coming Out Day

I finally figured out what lipstick is for. Photo by Karin Webb

One of the things that contributes to healthy BDSM and Kink is the clear understanding that we own ourselves regardless of what is going on. This primary acknowledgement is what allows us to give control over to others and to take responsibility for our actions. We can consent to being used and to use, to find limits, experiment, and celebrate our flesh and our fantasies together. Without first owning ourselves, we can not give or take back freely and safely; we end up looking to another for permission or to know what is right. It is important and radical to know yourself, to own yourself, to fight for that one thing you were born with: your body. Today I write about a topic I feel deeply about:

HAPPY 44th ANNIVERSARY OF ROE V WADE!!!!! It has been 44 years since the half of the population who can get pregnant has had protected legal access to abortion and to the choice of how to govern their own bodies in the United States of America. Safe and accessible abortion is not, though, easy for much of our population to get to, afford, or feel safe accessing, and every day groups work to take this medical privilege away. In honor of choice and bodily autonomy being preserved, respected, and improved, I move to name today January 22: “National Abortion Coming Out Day”. The idea has been on my mind for a very long time, and I think this is the year that I can no longer put my thoughts off until tomorrow. Today is the day.

National Abortion Coming Out Day is about creating space for people who have had abortions, who have had partners who have had abortions, people who’ve supported someone getting an abortion, or who love and care for people who have had abortions to openly speak their truths. Open discourse about this topic has been suppressed and controlled through fear, violence, abuse, and an ensuing silent void. Take a moment and think about your history with abortion. How has it impacted your life? How has it impacted the lives of people you care for? How does the issue of abortion impact the lives of people less privileged than yourself? What questions do you have about abortion?

Share something about what you find with your community. Be willing and open to have conversations about what it means to own your body and your life. If you want to connect to a community with resources and support, check out the 3 in 1 Campaign, they’re great!

People have been having abortions, inducing miscarriages, and controlling their fertility since the beginning of knowing how to do it. You are not alone or unloved for choosing what to do with your body or your life. If you choose to carry a pregnancy to term, good for you! If you choose to terminate your pregnancy for any reason, congratulations on taking care of yourself, and good for you too! Our options stand on the shoulders of the fertile people and those helping them who have come before us, for thousands of years in study, wisdom, and developing practice. Medical people, Midwives, Doulas, Shamans, Witches, Doctors, Nurses, Veterinarians, Herbalists, Massage Therapists, Acupuncturists, even neighbors, lay people, and activists have had a hand in making abortion accessible and safe.

I had an abortion when I was 17, and I’m really glad I had access to it. I was supported emotionally, materially, familially; and I had the help of a partner with a car, and time to schedule it and heal before getting back to my high school classes. My life would be very different if I had a 21 year old right now, and that’s not the life I chose for myself. I don’t regret having that abortion one tiny little bit, I am grateful for it. It was safely performed in a hospital in Bangor, ME, and I was lucky that there were no complications. Since that time I’ve taken Plan B a couple times when condoms broke and the timing was bad, and I educate myself about aborcienifant herbs, tinctures, my fertility cycle, and natural methods of inducing miscarriage or starting a sluggish menstrual flow. There have been times I’ve taken herbs to jumpstart a late period when I was worried pregnancy was a possibility. I don’t have sex with people who are anti-abortion and anti-bodily-sovereignty. I have a right to my body and my bodily functions. So do we all.

Handsome devil with a uterus at your service… Photo by Karin Webb

So why are you sporting a mustache and binding in the photographs?

  • Shapeshifting to understand myself more deeply is a part of who I am as an individual and as an artist. I perform drag (across many gender constructs); I have since I wrote my first monologue at age 11. I enjoy binding in my daily life and wearing facial hair sometimes. Those are two ways I express myself.
  • I am gender fluid identified and use a few gender labels to explain my identity.
  • I think assumptions about gender in conversations about healthcare further alienate and put in danger people who aren’t men or women. Transmen, Intersex individuals, and people who don’t identify as women get to make choices about their fertility too.
  • I can’t post a photo of my breasts on most social media sites, so binding fits — there are only so many times you can grab yourself on camera to avoid areola exposure and not get bored with the results. It’s also an opportune moment to point out sex-based discrimination.
  • Culturally when we think of “ownership”, we most often associate the concept with masculinity. How has that affected the historical and present conversations about bodily autonomy when we consider fertility and offspring?
  • I think this photo says something about the entire concept of owning one’s body in our society. I had to break a lot of rules to even conceive of it.

Who gets to own bodies? Historically? Religiously? In relationships? In families? In hospitals? In bed? Over time? In prison? In poverty? Out dancing? In different cultures? In resistance? In public? In art? At school? In dangerous situations? At any moment someone else feels uncomfortable? Under the influence of various substances? At work? Within the constructs of privilege? …

Play On My Friends,
~ Karin

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and consider supporting me, or just click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

Why Write? Why Kink? Why Find? Why Say?

11219643_10206631497961241_2668328861748374150_nFrom the darkness… Creation. A light glows, imperceptible upon arrival, grows; soon unbearable its revelatory castings. Illumination of the surroundings shocks and surprises; we explore further. Knowledge. Finding. Soft touching in the dark becomes heat, breath, desire unspoken and found in shared imperceptible inches of consent. Movement yeses, eyes locked in fearsome asking, receiving smiles — all these affirmations. Together in time, between gain and retreat, we come whole and are spent.

I am asked, how do you set out on this journey into the darkness? How to prepare? How to find solitude and nothing when tears are heavy, excitement ready for flight, inner conversations shouting louder than the rumble of everything outside? What is beyond the trumpeting brass band of living? I hold attention with my eyes. I see you. I sigh. I close my eyes and inhale. My arm reaches towards your body and we touch. Melt, in fact, into one another’s flesh a moment. Held in comfort’s release. This. This is everything in the world. You are here. I am here. We find here for ourselves in one another’s company, sensual input, no input, even in the alone nothingness this body is always here to touch, even to feel from the inside out. My brain will whisper secrets if I listen closely… From the nothing creation will come; a something is born and will be when I let it.

Connection is the Temple where I pray and over time I’ve learned rites for growth, for reactionary anger-fueled tearing down for to build anew, rites for wild abandon to stir it all up, for fantasy sparking, and conversely for touching earth and finding calm, I have learned slow, I have learned the smell of decay, I have learned the fertile ground sewn by Sister Death.

Recently I had an emotional episode, emotional grinding and unbearable. The million wounds of living reopened and scrubbed mercilessly with salt. I was a melted pot holding nothing in the heat and overcome by my task. This went on, and longer. Even after my wet eyes dried and the wracking coughs of misery died, I suffered slow heart and tired. Days shuffled by and no more bearing to feel this chasm could be… Employing meditation, self care, kindness, I came to the conclusion that the only way to move forward was by radically letting go. There is nothing in this moment threatening from the past, and trapped there I am not able to be here. And I am here.

I am here.

I. Am. Here.

I am here now and what I can be is what occurs in each moment of my experience. To remain here is the work of a million moments of failure and introspection. What I need is to cut ties to past and speak to my present. I must listen and consider in real time. Now.

And so I lit candles and let go, jumped, brought free fall into my experience, and in falling I found finding. On the way down time expanded and I could construct all directions from my changing point of reference, even up.

This story is about a person: an Everyperson who considers opportunity for something more — I mean, we all desire, want, fail, hope, move through life with questions and impulses fed by imperfect wantings… Our Everyperson suffers the foils of a limited body and judgmental mind, but the character in our tale also moves impulsively and employs intuition as a guide. Our hero asks and tries and learns. Within these pages you will find magic and inspiration, the musings of kink and sexuality, of sensuality and life force (which grasps all creatures crawling the planet) in search of immortality held honestly in a real and recognized moment… This story is about what maybe we share, and maybe we don’t but can understand and empathize with in our genius. Everyperson is me and Everyperson could also very easily be you. This story is meant to Muse.

To Breath and Being,
~ Karin

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and consider supporting me, or just click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

Age Verification: www.ABCsOfKink.com addresses adult sensual and sexual information, including imagery associated with a wide variety of BDSM topics and themes. This website is available to readers who are 18+ (and/or of legal adult age within their districts). If you are 18+, please select the "Entry" button below. If you are not yet of adult age as defined by your country and state or province, please click the "Exit" link below. If you're under the age of consent, we recommend heading over to www.scarleteen.com — an awesome website, which is more appropriate to minors looking for information on these subjects. Thank you!