Musings

One of the toughest things to do is to have a communication style that works for all humans in a relationship. The best you can hope for, usually, is that all parties involved remain in a compassionate mindset and keep striving to do their best to meet the other as close to the middle as…

My first forays into BDSM were heavily influenced by service, and the concept that doing for others could be eroticised. Much of that was extrapolation from an initial encounter I’d had in the early 90s with a man which lead to my discovering that my feelings of submission in the sexual realm somehow spawned the…

 Dear Mr. Elba: I admire your skill and talent as a performer. And I am thrilled to see a Black man ascend to the ranks of megastar in an industry that does everything to deny and homogenize. I do not wish to cast any shadow upon the tremendous nature of your achievements. However. You are…

One of the most ephemeral emotional states is that of satisfaction. The sensation of pleasure. By its very nature fleeting, satiation –  emotional satisfaction – is transitory. Emotions do not last. Persistence of vision, that illusory sensation of individual moments weaving together to form a coherent image – is not dissimilar to emotional memory, which…

I don’t cower I don’t kneel I am never ‘less than’ I don’t beg I don’t shrink I am loud and aggressive I’m not abused I don’t take shit I push back when need be I pull hard when I have to I fight demons I feed monsters I don’t iron or scrub toilets I…

Abiola Abrams is a raging powerstorm of amazingness and so when she says “I need you to write me something for Essence online!” I’m all “HELL YEAH!” You can read the article here, but it only contains one of the three tips  shared. Keep reading to see what else I had to say, under pressure,…

Many of us have been there. Doing the online dating thing. I am in the unique position of not only having perused just about all online dating formats available in the past couple of decades, but I have my roots in the primordial soup of online dating: newspaper ad dating. Before that? I’d even spent…

Two years ago today I was feeling…depressed. Laid low after a failed attempt at a book / teaching tour, I was doing that thing where you TAKE STOCK OF YOUR LIFE  and was not sanguine about current status reports. Being back in NYC thanks to the courtesy of the generosity of The Evil Jewish Lesbian…

Dear Mollena… It is tough out here. When you are single, even tougher. You have been trying, with not much success, to be active in your search for a partner. You have heard so many stories and seen so much that dents your already battered heart. I know I am not alone, and I want…

I was listening, the other day, to Dorothy Allison talk about truth, fiction, and making your own genres. I realized just now that the core reason I have been stuck with so much of the stuff I have to say is that I need Bigger Ideas and Stranger Canvasses than one normally sees in order…