Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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The pressure builds slowly, sometimes imperceptibly. I can almost forget about it. But at a certain point, the tautness can no longer be overlooked or dismissed. Lately I've conceived of this mounting pressure as a balloon filling, slowly at first, and gaining momentum as the weeks pass. By the end, before my balloon releases, the pressure demands notice, requires my attention.

Tonight I'm relishing a sensation. It's deeply rooted in my gut, the same place where the echoes of my orgasm reverberate in the bowl of my belly. Tonight's feeling isn't from orgasm. It is similar, however, being primal, older than language, shimmering under the surface of words.

Sometimes this feeling is fierce and comes like a jolt in my loins. Other times it is soft and languid, comfortable. Most often this belly-based feeling is familiar, in an elusive, smoky way. It carries with it the sense of ancient ways, of DNA linking backward and forward in time, a spiral that folds into and around itself, enveloping me in a cellular knowledge, outside my chattering brain.

(photo credit: Eric Francis)

The second of the two questions in our Bodysex circle framed my answers to both. How do I feel about my orgasm? I hadn't considered it before. At least not directly. Do I feel anything specifically about my orgasm? I asked myself. Or do I simply feel my orgasm?

The first question, how I feel about my body, was one I chewed on at length. But mulling how I felt about my orgasm was unfamiliar. Taking my time to consider the questions before, during, and now after the Bodysex filming, has in itself been enlightening.

How do you feel about your body? How do you feel about your orgasm?

These two questions focused and grounded my Bodysex experience into a tangible, personal narrative. They rang in my mind over several months, peaked with the documentary's filming, and have continued clanging since I returned home.

In tandem, the questions bounce off each other. Taken together, they intertwine, snaking into and around the other until they cannot be pulled apart easily.

Nearly a moon cycle has passed since I rode the elevator up to Betty's temple for the Bodysex filming. I've needed these weeks since returning home to integrate and breathe and begin to recognize the impact that Bodysex is having on me. My off-the-cuff description of the smells of our masturbation ritual rolled off easily. But to share what happened in a more fundamental sense, and what it means, has needed time to gestate. It will probably take several posts, an ongoing conversation.

Two women board an airplane, they kiss, people get offended, an altercation ensues, and those kissing women are kicked off the plane.

Uh Huh Her bandmates Camila Grey and Leisha Hailey, also known as a cast member of "The L Word," were asked to leave a Southwest airplane Monday. Twitter chatter flowed, official statements are bouncing back and forth, and there have been calls of a boycott (though the National Gay Pilots Association is asking folks to chill out and take a pause before using the b-word).

One of the parts I eagerly anticipated about the Bodysex filming was the smell. What would it be like, I wondered, to be naked and aroused with a circle of women masturbating? Not only what would it look like or sound like or feel like, but what would it smell like?

In one of their weekly videos, I remember Carlin talking about the Bodysex circle in Copenhagen and the musky scent that collected in the room during the group masturbation. My excitement grew at the prospect of gathering with my sisters being filmed for this Bodysex documentary. Among other parts of our ritual, we would masturbate together in Betty's living room, the temple she built over decades to the Goddess of Sexual Love and Abundance.

We're in the midst of filming the Bodysex documentary.

Cast and crew are gathering, many of us meeting each other in person
for the first time, and old friends reunited.

The welcome and the energy and the excitement are providing me with a rush of adrenaline and emotion. I am endeared, and we haven't even yet sat down together, naked, in a circle, the director and crew capturing the ritual to edit with our interviews, and share with the rest of you.

The overlaps have been in castration form this week. I've told you about my first ride on the Sybian, but what I didn't tell you is that I destroyed the phallic attachment.

I like to claim pussy power, but admittedly, when I settled down onto it, there was already a slight tear. I'm guessing it was the time spent on my hands and knees, rocking back and forth, that enlarged the small tear, nearly decapitating the phallus.

Staying with a friend this weekend, I noticed the saddle vibrator set up in the corner.

"I've never played with a Sybian before," I said. "Would you mind if I took that one for a ride?"

My gracious host agreed, and I eagerly pulled a condom over the dildo attachment. Using nitrile gloves, I fashioned barriers for the places my vulva would rub against the vibrator. Without ceremony or prelude, I lubed the dildo and settled myself onto the erection sprouting from the black half-moon.

I gasped as the needle took its first bite. In an instant, I was propelled back eleven years, when I had last experienced this sensation. The stinging waves synced with the buzzing sound, and I was soon lulled into a headspace of surrender.

Lying on that table, my face buried in the familiar smell of the pillow brought from home, I smiled, thinking of Jenny.

“I’m not much of a pain slut anymore,” she had once told me. A pain slut? That was the first time I’d encountered the term. I could understand the concept, intellectually. I could understand craving the endorphin rush. But the pain itself?

Sinead O'Connor, writing on her website:

"I've been repeatedly asked will I 'do anal sex'. Let me make it very clear.. Any man I contemplate has to be into anal sex.. It was a family paper so they wudnt have printed it but let me now take time to make VERY clear that yes I 'do anal' and in fact I would be deeply unhappy if 'doing anal' wasn't on the menu, amongst everything else$$ So if u don't like 'the difficult brown'.. Don't apply... I've had reasonable complaints from lesbians that they have been excluded. This was terribly remiss of me and I would now like to make it clear that women will also be very much considered."

The time has come to bid farewell to Dee Greene. I’ve been pondering Dee’s departure for some time. Ultimately it was a mixture of NPR, married men posing as lesbians, and a long-overdue chat with my dad that prompted me to put the pseudonym to rest.

Due to a serious medical situation in my family, this spring and summer I spent countless hours driving to and from a hospital. I listened to podcasts and audiobooks. I listened to music. I listened to the outward silence that accompanied my own thoughts. I also listened to a lot of National Public Radio.

In the US this June, PBS stations will begin airing Two Spirits. This film memorializes Fred Martinez, a 16-year-old killed in June 2001. It also goes behind Fred's personal story, exploring non-binary gender systems within Native American traditions.

Upon entering a sex shop, I usually head right to the glass and metal dildo displays. After running a fingertip along the length, I like to pick one up to feel the weight in my hand, imagining how it would feel inside me.

Drawn to sleekness and heft, I bought Betty Dodson's Vaginal Barbell. This particular instrument has played a significant role in my ever-widening sexual universe.

The ways I experience sex have grown from a specifically-administered regimen that guaranteed orgasm to an array of options. After homo and hetero encounters expanded my solosex reality, I added varied sensations, powerplay and pain, anal stim, group sex, shared and witnessed masturbation.