So once upon a time, I saw someone use a racial epithet I’d never seen before.

I posted about it on FetLife, and on Twitter.

I learned a new racist epithet! Wanna poke one of the Native Peoples of North America in the eye?You can call ‘em “Prairie Spooks!” #EvilLOL

Someone replied about how dumbass that was and compared it to another epithet.

I then replied

OMG! @(anotherTweeter) Dude! I know! I threw my back out laughing! So awful. I ain’t been that amused since I heard the term “Sand Nigger.”

I then got the following “question” on my Formspring account

I saw your post on twitter about the racial slurs. I was quite astounded. You’re on a global stage as a title holder, and frankly, I’m embarrassed.

I read it, re-read it, scratched my head, and responded thusly: (more…)

Reality Chex: the worlds coldest cereal. Now with enough fiber to stop up a blue whale!

Yep, I hate ‘em. Well, I hate them and I need them. Those moments when you come off of the people mover of floaty, high wonderful (e)motion and sail, face first, into the brick wall of “reality.” I wish I were of a mind to ignore these things to be frank. But my ostrich days are over and God’s pulled me off of the sand dunes where I might easily hide my head. I’m only intermittently at peace with those hard checks. Mostly because? In addition to “thinking too much,” a charge levied against me for the whole of my life, it would seem that I also “feel too much.”

Is it possible that the seemingly unbearable sensation of emotion I feel is a gift presented in muddled clotted wrappings for me to unwrap with hesitant shaking hands for the sole reason that I can bear it?

It is true that change can be fearsome. But for me it is not nearly as fearsome as the thought of not knowing what might have happened had I stepped off into void. (more…)

Travel Days are their own disorienting haze and yesterday’s was particularly brutal what with a 5 hour time change and an 80° temperature differential. Aruba to Dublin? Nice work if you can get it.

On the second leg of my trip, JFK –> DUB, I was worn a bit thin, but I was wearing the Yeti hat so the smiles and random conversations it generated perked me up. As I was squeezing through the aisle with my knapsack and bag-o-shite, a woman seated towards the front of the plane looked up, saw me, and her face burst into the brightest smile. She gestured to me, making an encompassing movement with her hands

“You are so beautiful! You just glow, so radiant…! Everything about you..” she gestured again “…perfect! SO lovely!”

She smiled and I, totally taken aback and my eyes a bit prickly with tears, nodded and smiled back “Thank you…” but my voice broke a bit. She nodded, her hand outstretched towards me and in that moment I did feel that. Radiant. Beautiful.

Thank you, madame, stranger who saw me, for your share, for your energy.

See, I have an ongoing assignment to see myself as others see me and today? You gifted me that moment so beautifully and in a way that was so humbling and joyous.  I am grateful.  SO grateful.

Despite having no lack of photos of myself in compromising positions, every time I do a fetish shoot, or one where I’m gonna have my big old butt in the wind, I become a bit apprehensive. Yeah yeah fat is flabulous etc. But like anyone, I can be a little self-conscious when it comes to letting it all hang out.

I have been rather fortunate in that I have had people in my life who have loved  me and my body in all of its incarnations and shifts. It used to be I was fine with someone who had the attitude that they “didn’t mind what my body was like, they loved the person I am.”

Which is nice.

You know what’s better?

Someone for whom my body, AS IT IS, is the hottest, sexiest shape they could possibly imagine.

The Pizza Guy was one of those people, and I am pleased to say he rather spoiled me in that regard.  You can hear about him and his bellylovin’ ways here.

The Un-Boyfriend and The Hungarian were also aficionados of the gals with more cushion for the pushin’, and The Dominant Guy has zero complaints about my thick thighs.

I highly recommend finding someone who loves your body and treats it with lustful reverence. It rocks.

I also highly recommend finding someone to take a picture of you looking smoking hot being fat. I’ve got a few here and there on this blog.  It helps to have friends and cohorts who are magnificent photographers! Even if you don’t have pro photog buddies,  you can find someone to help you out with that because, I’ll tell ya, nothing has helped me to see my own body as s delicious playground that having it mirrored back to me through the lens of someone with gusto and appreciation.

I know, I ‘m stalling. Photo beyond the cut and there are some titties in, so minimize that shit if you’re at work :-p

(more…)

When I was three, I went to see the Broadway revival of Hair. As we were dancing in the aisles at the end, and day-glo body painted naked hippies were slipping out of stage traps I turned to my Dad and said “I’m going to do that, too. I want to be on the stage.”

Within 2 years, I was.

When I was six, I knew I wanted to go to NYU’s prestigious theater school, and within 12 years, I did.

When I first became a part of the BDSM and Leather communities, I didn’t see many people who looked like me in leadership positions…didn’t see many people who were submissives or slaves presenting, taking leadership roles.

Within 3 years, I was.

Then somewhere along the way I became reluctant to ask for what I wanted. I was drowning my sorrows, along with my power, in an effort to drown out what I then perceived as overwhelming pain.

The past 3 years, 8 months and 22 days have seen me re-learning how to crawl, toddle and walk, emotionally, mentally and, to some extent, physically. Being sober doesn’t mean your life snaps back into place the day you put down the booze. Its a process. Long, ongoing, committed. It is a process of putting down some things, and picking up others. It is a process that sometimes feels like everything is being pulled out from under you. The Dominant Guy laid a (modified, for the G_d leery) Charles C. West quote on me a little ways back that goes something like-a this:

“Many of the times we turn to our higher power when our foundations are shaking, we find that it is our higher power who is shaking our foundations.”

So yeah. MY higher power has 4 arms and the whole prehensile nose thing going on, so when he shakes shit up he does NOT fuck around
(more…)

Dear concerned friends:

Every once in a while, I will share my life, my journey, my thoughts and fears and shit with someone on a personal level who has known me for some time. Maybe for years in the Leather / BDSM community. Perhaps from outside of the community. Or a friend I’ve known since long before sobriety was even a consideration.

I’ll tell them about my life, abut what is happening for me, and they’ll hear it all and home in on one or two aspects that they find troubling.

You probably know how this goes.

I had occasion to catch up with a long-time confidant with whom I’ve not spoken for a bit. Laid out what was going on for me, told them about my shit as I’m sitting and watching the sun set beyond the beaches of Aruba…

And of course the concern started kicking in.

Worried about my relationship, concerned for my choices, side-eyeing my thoughts on re-arranging my life.

Let me say this, for those “worried” about me?

Stop.

Your worries aren’t about me, really. Your concerns about my emotional safety? Your sincere hope that I’m not compromising unnecessarily or dangerously or whatever in the steps I’m taking in my life are probably not even about my wacky-ass life.

They probably have to do with your own fears of doing what looks crazy.

I’ve survived a dire round with alcoholism. I’ve survived heartbreak, loss of friends. I’ve survived loved ones pushing me out of their lives because my behaviours were unacceptable. I’ve lived though very difficult relationships, and I’m still here. I’m-a Gloria Gaynor the fuck out of this life, see if I don’t.

SO, when you furrow your brow and worry that I’m not being responsible? That I’m contemplating moves, situations, relationships, commitments that are nutso, ipso-facto?

Take a look at your life. Are you safe? Comfortable? Happy? Did you get that way by doing the “right thing,” the sensible thing, every time?

And if you aren’t…aren’t happy, that is? Look at me and listen carefully.

I am.

Even in the midst of what *seems crazy to me,* I am standing in a river of joy that threatens to pull me along with it, even though I sometimes desperately cling to fear’s jagged rocks. Even as I struggle and doubt and breathe and fucking LIVE, I’m happy. Even when I am staring, pie-eyed, into a terrifying abyss of confusion? I’m in ecstasy of how beautiful that terror is.

I feel it because I’m fucking alive, and I am striving.

SO relax. Congratulate me. Support me. I do all of the self-eroding shit quitewell on my own, TYVM, and with FAR more efficiency that you can ever hope to achieve

And if I fall on my face?

I’ll get the fuck up, dust myself off, have a cupcake, and keep rolling.

Thanks!

Your Friend

Mollena

Capitalization’s a tricky thing.

What gets caps and what does not when it comes to titles and people we have to address outside of their given names?

The shit’s Byzantine, man.

(I grabbed this from some grammar site where there was discussion about when pronouns are capitalized.)

Names of relationships only when they are a part of or a substitute for a person’s name. (Often this means that when there is a modifier, such as a possessive pronoun, in front of such a word, we do not capitalize it.)

• Let’s go visit Grandmother today.
• Let’s go visit my grandmother today.
• I remember Uncle Arthur.
• I remember my Uncle Arthur.
• My uncle is unforgettable.

This also means that we don’t normally capitalize the name of a “vocative” or term of endearment:

• Can you get the paper for me, hon?
• Drop the gun, sweetie. I didn’t mean it. (I love this example)

All this is to say I find the creative fucking flouting of this already convoluted practice fucking annoying. From the stuttery fuckery of “T/those W/who type any pronoun with a capital and a lowercase to separate the Dominant from the submissive. We are not, it seems, readily enough identified by being called dominants and submissives, masters and slaves: no. Some perverts are so freakish about perceived status that They want to make sure Y/you don’t miss the Almighty L/label. And don’t get me started on dominants who cap “Me” and “My” in the middle of sentences or submissives who lowercase “i” in the same way. If you are going to bumrush the beautiful rules of our beautiful language please, for fuck’s sake, do it artfully and make it something clever and engaging.

Speaking as one with a brain that vocalizes everything it reads, seeing that shit hurts. I skip over posts, articles and writings of those who express themselves that way. I simply cannot do it. There are some people I like and respect very much who address the public in this manner, and that’s cool for them. But I just. Cannot. Read. It. (more…)

“How does he dominate you?”

I was a bit taken aback by the question, indeed by the entire situation. I was in Los Angeles, on an extremely raw, wet and chilly Friday night. I was making an appearance on an internet radio show with a panel of folks that consisted of myself, two other kinky woman and, inexplicably, a cranky middle-aged Muslim dude who had no problem calling a rival Muslim sect “savages” and comparing some of their practices, unfavorably, with BDSM.

Trust me, it was a strange night, and that was only the beginning.

The host of the show on which I was appearing had managed to throw me off stride with a rapid succession one-two punch of oddly impactful, thought-provoking questions. The first specifically addressed “The Dominant Guy“…who was he exactly? And what sort of relationship did we have? I honestly can’t recall what I answered. I was kinda surprised, as I often am when people research my shit, pay attention to my freaky little life, and then call me out.  I’m sure I said something. The follow-up undercut was a very intensely delivered question which, coming from a slender, older blonde woman in a bra and thong wearing a hat worthy of a Sunday morning stroll to church, had that additional j’ne sais  pas.

“So, The Dominant Guy. Tell me. How does he dominate you?”

(more…)

Performer types know how nerve-wracking it can be to wait to hear about a role. Imagine my torture for three months waiting to hear back about a part in a show!

I can now safely share the amazing & stunning development on which  I’ve awaited The Word since September and only today put pen to paper for my contract.

I will be starring in the West coast premiere of the Taylor mac EPIC extravaganza “The Lily’s Revenge” this spring at The Magic Theater.

And when I say EPIC I am NOT fucking around: this show clocks in at about 4.5 hours, with 5 acts and features cast of 36 performers.

See? EPIC.

For those who love me and wanna come see the show, start planning now. I mean it. I don’t wanna hear you fucking forgot, or whatever. even East Coast peeps have p-l-e-n-t-y of time to get a cheap-ass JetBlue ticket and come out here.  The tickets are already on sale, because its fancy like that.

I’m fucking thrilled to be playing The Great Longing. Which is personified by a theater curtain. Don’t worry about it. Most of the cast are revolutionary flowers.

You really just have to come see it.

Especially if you wanna see me dance around nekkid.

A bit about the show:

Winner of a 2010 Obie Award!

When a flower falls in love with a blushing bride, can he complete a quest to become a man and win her love? Should he? Playwright and burlesque performer Taylor Mac, along with dozens of local Bay Area artists, tackle love, marriage, and Prop 8–using vaudeville, haiku, drag queens, ukuleles, feminist theories, dream ballets, public dressing rooms, and everything else in Mr. Mac’s theatrical arsenal, A fantastical cornucopia of theatre, party, circus, and social experiment, The Lily’s Revenge cross examines with humor, heart, and irreverence one of our oldest institutions.

The Lily’s Revenge is a rolling world premiere with Magic Theatre, HERE Arts Center (New York), Southern Rep Theatre (New Orleans), and The National Theatre of Scotland.

And if you’ve got a hard-on for the theater, you oughta get on-board The Producer’s Circle.

Yay!

Let the celebrations begin…before I start FREAKING the fuck OUT again