Who Am I Anyway

[as asked by a Presumed self-aware individual]

Photo by Ayush Srivastava on Unsplash, text by Brianne McGuire

An effective argument can be made that any questioning of self is an indication of growth and capacity for change. Sure sure that’s all well and good but what about the blindspots? The fuzzy items that have been in front of your face the whole damn time that you have somehow never seen? Are those not indications of something else entirely, like denial, naivete, perhaps even self-sabotage?

You may be wondering what the fuck I am referring to exactly and I must tell you it is yet another train of thought whose main passenger is sex. Specifically, how my sexual interests play a majority role in my sense of self [queue the clutching of pearls and general shock].

For years I’ve known that my approach to sex may be somewhat atypical, and my interests perhaps more consuming than most. Recently two other things have become apparent, 1) I’ve been foolish not to seek out romantic partners who share my kinky interests, and 2) sex is a giant-ass part of my professional interests, and I may as well embrace it instead of feeling self-conscious and fearful about who I might turn off as a result of sharing all my thoughts and work with sex. Also, as an addendum to 2), surprise surprise one of my ulterior motives for creating an uncensored and crowdsourced media platform is the hope that by removing content boundaries, I will sow the seeds of filth thus facilitating the emergence of a porn/lifestyle site like I’ve always dreamed about.

Let’s start with 1), the idea that I would be well-served to seek a relationship inclusive of kink — it seems like a no-brainer, but in fact this has been the biggest revelation. Just a few weeks ago I was wondering if I was a kinky person, sincerely and honestly wondering… and now I have total acceptance that I am in fact kinky… and also determined to engage solely with other people who share my alternative interests. I have to credit the stranger in Britain with whom I’ve been Skyping with for this change of heart — if it were not for our boundary-pushing exchanges and subsequent debriefings, the subject may have never come up.

Which actually reminds me of yet another discovery, 3) I have shame boundaries.

Yes, you read that right. I, queen of “oversharing” and hyper-transparency, have hit a nerve — a sensitive spot that makes me go, “ooohhh, eh, yeah I don’t think I can put this out into the world.” Thank you again to the British guy for also prompting this development, for when I say “I’ve been Skyping with” him, I mean sometimes we talk at length about sex and kinks and interests and histories, and sometimes he tells me how to masturbate or otherwise submit to him and I do it.

As it turns out, I’m not so good at the submitting. In BDSM terms, I am a “brat,” and that is a difficult thing to navigate over the internet as my drive to act like a brat comes from a desire to be taught a lesson. How exactly can that happen when the only contact I have with my dom is an audio feed? In an attempt to remedy the situation, we agreed to add video so at least he could see if I was telling the truth about doing what he demanded, proper punishment to be figured out as we went.

Anyway, getting back to the shame boundaries, the audio interactions weren’t phasing me but when we finally added a video feed [coming from my end only], shit started to get a little tricky for me. There I was, 3am on a Saturday morning because of our 5-hour time difference and fine, I’d consented, we’re on Skype, I’m naked, the video transmission had started. Everything was hunky dory-ish — and I say “ish” because I had to turn on my overhead light for him to see me properly and that fucked with my whole, sexy lit-from-the-computer-screen vision of how things would be. I felt uncomfortable and vulnerable and kind of ugly but nevertheless I persisted.

To provide some context to what happened next, leading up to this exchange, the Brit and I had conversations at length about what we both hoped to achieve from engaging with each other over the internet. He wanted a play partner to dom and be sadistic with, ultimately leading to the total submission of a female’s body and will that ended in orgasm. I was interested in challenging myself with some psychological sex stuff, being pushed past the safety and boredom of my comfort zone. I wanted to be scared and I wanted to be “broken,” at least in the sense that I was taken so far out of said comfort zone that I entered into brand-new sexual territory.

I responded well to his verbal humiliation and judgment in previous audio exchanges, but I expressed a desire to go further because that sort of play barely made a dent in my internal experience. All through our initial play session, I was hyperpresent; compliant but unaffected. Also the insults hadn’t come till the end, and only after enduring instructions to smack myself, call him sir, ask for permission to use my toys, etc.; all told, I was only aroused for a very brief segment. For the follow-up, we both wanted me to get to a place where I was able to submit to him in the most complete manner possible.

During this newly augmented exchange, he tried many avenues of psychological maneuvering as a means of hitting that point which would provoke an uncontrollable response. He knows a fair amount of my past at this point, so he brought up childhood abuse and molestation, my alcoholism and drug addiction. There was little to no effect, other than boredom and a dry vagina.

Finally he started getting much more aggressive in his demands for things I must do to myself physically, positions to put my body in, what to insert and where… He got closest to “that point” once he began combining the verbal insults with the aggressive physical demands, eventually adding in the most effective statement of the night, “is this why you’re 39 and single because you’re willing to do all this for a fucking stranger.” Hot damn I really thought about that when he said it but I didn’t want to be thinking at all; my mind spun with that statement as I tried to keep up with what he was telling me to do. At one point I almost cried — not so much from the words, but more from the sensory overload of his yelling and my almost violent masturbation.

All about that podcast i won’t shut up about…

The exchange was a lot — but it didn’t break me. Yes, I was affected but I still maintained control and presence of mind, the exact things I was hoping to lose. However, it did hit the aforementioned shame boundary and that was a surprise. Immediately after we hung up on Skype, I felt so vulnerable and embarrassed about the things I just did that I thought I’d never be able to publicly share the experience, even though I recorded it specifically for that purpose. And to be absolutely clear, the recording was for the project; the participation itself was a personal challenge and one of my “alternative interests.” Writing about it is certainly helping to ease the discomfort of knowing it will eventually be available in a podcast episode.

The point of all this is that exploring these things with a total stranger halfway around the world has done wonders for my self-awareness. Not just anyone would be doing these things, and the fact that I am doing these things does nothing if not demonstrate how much I value the exploration. It’s important to me not only personally, but professionally. Which is how I’ve come to conclusions 1) and 2) regarding both romantic partners and creative endeavors.

A few times since starting the sex project I’ve thought, it’s a good thing I’m single right now because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do these things I’m doing, documenting, and ultimately using in the podcast. I’m not only being a sub to this British guy but also attempting to dom a Canadian and planning a future group masturbation session with some guy from another state. What partner would accept this as appropriate behavior in a committed relationship? After mentioning this in conversation, the Brit asked me why I had such a traditional view of relationships, why I wouldn’t want to be with someone who shared these interests and even participated in them with me, why I was so limited in my thinking? Why indeed!

In just a few weeks of pursuing the podcast project, the goal of which is to change the way people think about and interact with sex, I have changed my own mind and attitude. So consider this your warning that I will no longer be tempering the frequency with which sex appears as content on this site. Not that I was all that much but still, you get the idea. My freak flag is flying high from here on out.

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