Vampire Valentines Day Giveaway!

What do you suppose the three sisters did while Dracula was out chasing British girls?

I'm not a big fan of Valentines Day. But this wasn't always the case. When I was a kid, I loved the little cards everyone gave each other, the heart-shaped chocolate, and all the lovey-dovey decorations of winged babies practicing archery. Then junior high happened and it started being about someone special paying attention to you. This didn't go particularly well for me. As an extremely shy, and as I would discover later, an extremely gay, junior high girl, I didn't get all that much attention from the boys. This isn't to say I didn't have a boyfriend in junior high. In fact, that was the only time I ever did. To protect the innocent, let's just call him Jimmie. He didn't understand Valentines Day either and as it turned out, he was just as gay as I was, so you can imagine how little we actually got done when it came to traditional boy/girl, awkward junior high relationship stuff.

In hindsight, this was an odd card to get from my junior high gym teacher (kidding! I got it from your mom)

High school was worse--much worse. My high school did this thing every Valentines Day where we had an archaic competition among the men. Everyone would be given little construction paper hearts, about the size of a real heart as my biology teacher pointed out, on a ribbon necklace. These little one-day pendants were to be given to the guy you thought was the hottest. I guess they gave them to the guys so none of them would have zero at the end of the day. I don't even know what the person won or who the hell made all those stupid little hearts on strings since I went to a school with more than 2,000 students. A large percentage of people just chucked the things, myself included. By that point, I was irritated with the world (as all good high school girls are) and I wasn't about to participate in the patriarchal competition of helping a man collect women's hearts...or maybe it was because I didn't want to contribute to a society that valued looks above substance...or maybe it was because by that point I was out of the closet and a lesbian giving a guy a heart for being "hot" was dumb beyond reason...or maybe the whole thing was an antiquated waste of pink construction paper and time. There were so many good reasons to throw the heart thing away, I can't precisely remember which one I went with for the first three years of high school.

I wish I'd had this design on a t-shirt at the time. I could have pointed to it when someone asked about my paper heart.

 
Then something happened between my junior and senior year. Nikki, who had been one of my more vicious tormentors since I came out, kinda come out to me during that summer. She started being nice to me, started calling me, started coming over to see me, and even though my traumatized little brain didn't think any of it was genuine, I still sucked up all the attention I could. I remember, at the time, being completely certain it was all an elaborate ruse to fuck with me. After a couple months of nothing bad happening, I came to the conclusion it was just an odd summer friendship that would end when school started up again and she remembered she was amazingly cool and I was a total outcast. But that didn't happen either. In fact, my senior year, everyone was actually pretty nice to me, or at the very least nobody picked on me anymore. Nikki and I would still occasionally talk, I'd go to her volleyball matches when I could, we even went to lunch together sometimes. She gave me an actual Christmas gift that year. I still have it--a weird pink trucker hat that said "World Champion" on it because she knew I liked 30 Rock.

Can't we just go back to innocent cards? Not like this one; this one is naughty...maybe, it depends if you know Kirby

Then, Valentines Day happened with its construction paper hearts on red ribbons. I didn't throw mine away. I thought I had someone to give it to. Now, I can't explain what I was thinking at the time, but I saved it in my locker until I knew I would see Nikki before lunch, and then I tried to give it to her. Girls were supposed to finish the day with one heart or none at all. If Nikki had two, that would mean something strange had happened. Strange like the outcast girl with an oddly masochistic lesbian crush had given her a heart. She wouldn't take it; she wasn't there yet. In my histrionic high school girl brain, I actually believed I might die of emotional trauma. We were cordial the rest of the year, but didn't really talk much after that.

I turned 18 a few weeks after and I started dating outside the school, usually older women and always by lying about my age. Once I started getting my college acceptance letters (by the way I went 10 for 10 and I applied to some really nice schools--SAT prep courses and not having a life paid off), I mentally checked out of high school. I still had to physically go through the motions to graduate and all, but mentally, I was already done and in college. That summer, the 4th of July to be exact, Nikki fully came out to me and explained that she'd been completely gone in love with me for years. I was in a slightly better emotional/mental state at that point than I was at any point during high school, but my brain still didn't think this was something real. It would be a little like Brad Pitt saying he was completely in love with Rachel Dratch and that he was leaving Angelina to go marry her--I think that's actually the analogy I used at the time to describe why what she was saying didn't make sense. She promised to spend however much time it would take to make me believe.

It went a little something like this...

It'll be four years ago tomorrow that she rejected the little paper heart and it'll be four years ago this 4th of July that we've been together. We've had Valentines Days since then and they've been really romantic and sweet and sexy and blah blah blah, but I still equate Valentines Day with something really awful and traumatic and the 4th of July with something romantic.

In that spirit, I'm giving away a vampire book this Valentines Day. And not just any vampire book, the one with the most fucked up relationship I've ever written, horrible, depressing, frightening things, suicide, abuse, murders, revenge, and even worse things. This isn't Twilight where misogynistic vampire boys prance around trying to seduce boring girls. The vampires in The Vampires of Vigil's Sorrow are actually scary and for the most part fucked up individuals. Like my own story with Valentines Day, there is something of a romantic happy ending, but it doesn't come in the way one might expect. For anyone who is single this Valentines Day and unhappy about it, or anyone who is like me and still doesn't like this holiday, or anyone who just likes real vampire stories, enjoy a free ecopy of The Vampires of Vigil's Sorrow.

In the town of Vigil’s Rest, vampires haunt the forest, luring young girls to their doom with promises of forbidden love. After Deborah Poole, a local beauty queen goes missing, the town’s long history of cover-ups begins to unravel. She returns from the dead, more angel than demon, and acting as a spirit of mercy in the haunted forest that has known only vengeance. Oppression and tightly held secrets keep Deborah from love for decades, finally shattering when the unlikely fulfillment of an ancient prophecy gives her a new chance at love and humanity in the form of a disillusioned teenage girl, Annabelle. But to sever Deborah’s chains to the past, the duo must unravel the 200 year old mystery of the forest’s haunting and the town’s dark past.

Sampler Giveaway!

I was going to advertise in a newspaper, but apparently these three women are the only people who still read newspapers.

As many people know, I used to be a brand ambassador/promo model, which probably explains why I don't like working for people now. After three or so years of handing out cans of soda, fliers, directing people to enter their personal information into a computer to win a key chain, and cajoling people into taking product placement pictures (with or without me in some ridiculous costume) I picked up a few things. One of which was a revulsion for having my picture taken, especially with groups of people (bad experiences, trust me).

The glamorous world of promoting lite beer by dressing up as a slutty referee! (From how it generally went for me, I'm going to go ahead and assume the guy has placed his hands inappropriately on one or both of the women next to him)

The more useful thing I picked up from promotions was how to give stuff away. So, I'm going to give stuff away this month! Next week, during Valentine's Day, I will be holding a Vampiric Valentine's Day giveaway where you can get The Vampires of Vigil's Sorrow absolutely free (2/13-2/15). It'll be a nice read for anyone who can't find a date and wants to feel better about it since several of the relationships in it tend to be the kind that'd make you glad you were single.

This whole week, however, I'm giving away a sampler book I compiled that shows off all the fun stuff I've published over the last year. In addition, it has the first chapter of the much anticipated sequel to The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head. Yep, you'll get to read a not even released yet excerpt from the next book in the Raven Ladies series! The free sampler book promo ends this week, but even if you miss getting the book for free, you can still pick it up for 99 cents and read the first chapter of The Steam-powered Sniper in the City of Broken Bridges along with a lot of other goodies including a few complete stories and the steamiest excerpts from the Grift Girl series.

So head out and get your completely free copy of The Sapphic Pixie Sampler!

The cover of the not yet released sequel to The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head!

Naughty Poetry

This is how I write my poetry except I don't usually wear my shoes in bed unless I'm getting laid

Awhile ago, I promised a naughty poem. And then I didn't like the way it went when I first tried to write it, so I gave up and got back to writing novels, blogs, stories, and columns. I did return to the poem eventually though and it even did close to what I hoped it would. It's an English form sonnet although not Shakespearean because I didn't do iambic pentameter. Keep in mind though, I'm a novelist/columnist, and don't make any claim to be a poet. But, like most girls who spent a lot of their teenage years reading and writing angsty teenage poetry, I do still have the urge to sometimes jot down a poem. This is a lovely little sonnet about how often I've been hanging out horny at home, waiting for my girlfriend to get done with her classes so I can pounce her and tear her clothes off when she gets home. Who knew sitting at home all day writing and editing romance/erotica would have such a sexy effect on me? By the way, I wrote it on a funny page in my little inspirations poetry book if you check the prompt on the bottom. Enjoy!

Self-Discovery Through Spirit Zoology

Self-Discovery Through Spirit Zoology

or

WTF is up with Spirit Animals?

 

I was talking with my dad on the phone yesterday. He was helping me pick out which DVD to watch for MLK day. Father/daughter movie time is kind of an old tradition with us that is getting a revival now that I’m out of my hideously evil teenage years. Anyway, I was sifting through my DVDs at the same time he was sifting through his and we only found two overlaps:  Fight Club and Kill Bill Volume 1. This raised two obvious questions:  why the hell did he have either of those movies and more importantly, why the hell did I? Anyway, I let him decide since I didn’t care. He picked Fight Club to avoid the creepy father/daughter = husband/wife dynamic that was in Kill Bill.

I'm glad we didn't watch Kill Bill because I would have had to make a joke to my conservative Asian father about this scene being a thinly veiled "gang bang" motif .

Most of the movie was spent joking about the movies and being snarky. Kinda like what I do on my Tweet hashtag: #TweetingThroughABadMovieOnFX but without the tweeting, bad television censorship, and my audience was just my father instead of my twitter followers. Anyway, we got to the part of the movie where we find out Ed Norton’s spirit animal in his spirit cave is a penguin who tells him to slide. This is the weirdest part of the movie for me--even the shooting himself in the mouth to kill Brad Pitt thing made at least some sense in comparison. Seriously, what was with the ice cave, why a penguin, and what was he supposed to do with the instruction of “slide”? Disclaimer for any Fight Club Fanboys who have stumbled across this blog, these are rhetorical questions of course; I don’t really care what interpretations you came up with unless it’s something really crazy and really out there, in which case go ahead and post it in the comments section.

This sparked a whole discussion of what spirit animals we thought people had. My mother, we agreed upon as being a tigress, my sister is a bird of some kind (he said peacock, I said goose), and then we came to me. Without hesitation or any time to think, he answered, “rattlesnake” as though he’d been waiting his whole life to tell me what my spirit animal was, needing only to be asked at long last.

Let me tell you a little something about my relationship with my father and I’m sure this will make a lot of sense to my readers since many of you probably have similar relationships with your respective fathers. I’m the younger of two daughters, I’m tiny and adorable still and in his mind I’m sure I’m still five or six when I was even tinier and even more adorable, I’m the fuzzy-freaking-pink King Kong of daddy’s girls damnit! He’s not supposed to call me a rattlesnake!

Are you seeing this picture I threw together? Fucking computers, man--you an think something and then make a visual for it just like that. Clearly I have too much time on my hands though.

 

By the way, I thought my spirit animal was a house cat in a spirit cave that looked a lot like a library but with comfy chairs everywhere to nap on.

 

I believe I told him his spirit animal was one of those monkeys that gets wasted-drunk on abandoned, partially finished umbrella drinks at tropical resorts. And now you can't claim you've never heard of this phenomenon because I'm betting you clicked the video first. We ended up skipping the rest of the movie when I told him I had to take care of some things. I called him back today to apologize for taking his comment so obviously wrong, and give him a chance to agree with my house cat theory, but he was pretty set on me being a rattlesnake. He had explanations, and with a little distance from the initial shock of my father calling his beloved little girl a rattlesnake, I was able to see what he meant about me being something of a loner, a little prickly at times, loving to lay out in the sun, not dealing well with cold weather, and having a vicious bite that people do get ample warning for but don’t always heed. He also told me again about Southern California and what it looked like before it was settled. Apparently my beloved native Orange County was actually just a rattlesnake-filled desert before man changed it. He said he always believed I was one of those snakes who so loved the area that I reincarnated there again and again until I reached the SoCal girl I am (we’re Buddhist from a long line of Buddhists, so talk of reincarnation isn’t just a flight of fancy with us, and before you go getting all judgmental about it, think about your ownreligions eccentricities from my point of view).

I felt a little better about the whole thing after that.

This whole thing made me wonder how many people are rolling happily through life with absolutely no idea how the people they love really see them. It was shocking to me that the way I saw myself and the way my father saw me were so ridiculously different. The thing is, I may have even known on some level this was true to a hyper specific degree.

“She’s a rattlesnake, isn’t she?” Gieo leaned over, wrapped an arm around Fiona’s shoulder, and gave her a soft kiss on the cheek.

That’s a line from The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head. I wrote it a year ago. Now, I’ve always more identified with Gieo than Fiona, but there must be some part of myself in all my protagonists, and it made me wonder if maybe I didn’t think of myself as a rattlesnake long before my father told me he thought I was one.

They're kinda pretty in a certain way and look, this one is doing yoga just like me!

 

So I’m going to encourage everyone to write down what they think their spirit animal is, and then go find someone who knows and loves you and ask them what they think you are. If you have a really cool one, post what you thought and what your loved one said in the comment section. It was pretty thrilling to find out that my father thinks of me as more dangerous than I think of myself.

A Question of Masturbating in a Relationship

After a nice long break from the world of blogging during my time back in California for Christmas, I’m ready to get back into the sex/relationship advice thing and I’ve got a great question from a Twitter follower that I’ve talked to in the past. It seems previous discussions have led to a relationship and now she’s finding new and interesting challenges.

Hello Sapphic Pixie. I corresponded with you on Twitter back on the summer briefly regarding an NSA relationship that was turning into a bit more. The sex was great and we continued on a sex-only basis for a couple of months.

I am butch and she is femme. I was sleeping with six women when I hooked up with her on a dating sight and was newer to town here. My sex drive is insatiable. I am 40 years old and could have sex four times or more a day if given the opportunity.

We are in love with each other now, and in a committed relationship. We both work at home, and I would take her at a moments notice and lay her down and fuck her at any time throughout the day if I could. That is just not possible, and I know that.  She of course is much more level- headed than I am because, even though she is very sexual and very sexually active with me, I am way over the top... And I realize this!

The problem here with my drive is that I am having thoughts of how I was having sex with many women when I met her--when I was getting off with several women because it was satisfying my sexual needs. But I am worried because with these thoughts of what I was doing before I met my love, comes fleeting thoughts of stepping out on her. That scares the hell out of me! I am, and always have been a faithful partner.

I masturbate sometimes several times a day; she knows that and is usually here when I do. I hate to do that with her here, because it’s hard for me to cum with her in the house, because I'm thinking it could be a woman or her rather than me doing it to myself, and I feel deprived. She doesn't mind that I do, and even encourages me to do so because she knows of my drive and of my fears of stepping out.

I don't know what to do. I love this woman and the sex is a big part of our relationship and how we met initially. Can you help me figure this out?

Let’s handout the easy, universal relationship stuff first since there is some in here to deal with. You mentioned not liking to masturbate while she’s home even though she says it’s okay because you’re having somewhat “unfaithful” thoughts in reference to self-pleasure. This is something you’re going to need to start getting over. You’ve got two things working in your favor here: 1-she’s cool with it and 2-thinking about other people while you get yourself off is COMPLETELY normal and in fact a relationship necessity. This is no doubt a hurdle for you because you’re probably not used to having this much shared intimacy with someone…yes, what you’re experiencing now is intimacy; what you were experiencing with the six or so women you were sleeping with before your relationship was just sex. There is a huge difference between the two.

And that’s probably where the real adjustment for you is going to have to come in. You’re not used to intimacy--you’re used to fucking. Everyone makes trade offs for relationships. Intimacy comes with a price. But it also comes with some pretty fantastic rewards. Is she ever going to sexually satisfy you in the way six women can? Of course not and it’s ridiculous to think any woman could! But that’s not what she’s offering you. She’s offering you some sex, by the sounds of it a reasonable amount, that comes with an emotionally fulfilling aspect. She’s also offering you companionship, support, love, real closeness, and even some latitude to take care of your biological desires on your own as they arise. Let me make this clear:  this is a good woman offering you a good deal. Do not make the mistake of thinking you’d be better off stepping out on her with six girls because you’ve got an itch you know you’re able to scratch yourself (with help form her).

Take a second to figure out this picture and how hot it is.

Sex drives don’t match up perfectly. Your chances of finding a girlfriend who is everything you’re looking for, as this woman clearly is, with a sex drive to equal yours…you may as well start playing the lottery because you’ve got a better chance of winning that than finding that kind of woman. Adjust your expectations of what is possible. You say you love her, you say she’s special, you say she does her best to satisfy you sexually and then let’s you help yourself when she can’t--that’s a fantastic deal!

Let me address the high sex drive thing though because that’s an issue women don’t really get to talk a lot about because we’re allegedly not supposed to have high sex drives without also picking up bullshit labels like “nympho” or “slut” or whatever the hell double standard nonsense the patriarchal hegemony is trying to put on us to make us feel ashamed for acting right and normal. Having a high sex drive is a blessing, believe me, but it only turns into a curse when you go thinking sex is the best you can do when it comes to another person. You think about other people when you touch yourself and worry that it’ll lead to stepping out? Let that worrying keep you at home and you go ahead and think of whoever you want when you’re having your private time with yourself.

This is Molly Cavalli. She occupies a huge place in my fantasy/masturbation for obvious reasons.

My girlfriend and I have a very healthy sex life, but she’s been a lot busier lately with her graduate degree program and other job stuff, so I end up spending a lot of time alone and a lot of time masturbating when I’d probably rather have sex. The thing is, I know that there’s nothing out there sex-wise that’s going to be worth risking my relationship for. The two things simply aren’t equal. Six fuck buddies will NEVER be as good as one good girlfriend at home. So, yep, I masturbate to keep myself happy because it’s what reasonable, rational people do when they’ve got extra desire and drive left over. And you know what, I think about a whole slew of things that aren’t my girlfriend. Because that time is me time and it’s perfectly normal and reasonable to have your imagination and best vibrator satisfy desires that might otherwise have you chasing girls and ruining your relationship. For fuck’s sake, that’s what porn is for! That’s why I write erotica! So people who need some masturbation material can take care of themselves without expecting their partner to satisfy their every need. Find what turns you on, think of whoever you want, and go to town knowing you have her blessing to keep it at home.

This is Jelena Jensen who works for Girlfriends Films sometimes...also obvious why she spends time in my fantasies.

Take a step back, and this goes for all the ladies in relationships, and realize that your partner can’t satisfy every urge/need/desire you have. It’s simply not possible for one person to handle absolutely everything for you. You’re still going to need friends for companionship, family for added unconditional love, pets for nurturing possibilities, and in the case of sex, you’re going to need plenty of fantasy material, a good vibrator (which you can find by using my guide here and graduate to advanced usage with my guide here), and your own two hands. Getting a girlfriend doesn’t mean your every need will suddenly be taken care of by her. You’re still going to have to masturbate sometimes, but isn't that a good thing too? I mean, the fun you can have in your head can include women you haven't even met doing things you may not actually be capable of if it's all in fantasy land.

Holidays and Traditions

With Christmas coming up and family visits almost inevitable, I thought I’d write a little about the often stressful world of family holidays that most LGBT individuals live in. There’s this whole “out-ness” and “acceptance” factor that can really make things awkward and unpleasant depending on what your family situation is.

I spent my first Thanksgiving away from my family this year. Being Buddhists, Thanksgiving was never really that big of a deal for my family anyway, but there were a few traditions I missed out on that made me a little homesick for California and my family. Being mostly pacific rim/Asian mutts, my family doesn’t have the same concept of Pilgrims and Indians, and my mom doesn't like turkey. Our Thanksgivings usually involved an atulai fish stew and “watching” football—my dad is a Rams fan and he mostly just complains about the Rams never getting to play on Thanksgiving, so we mostly sit around him and prompt him to go on Adam Carolla style rants about football.

When I moved to Florida with Nikki, because there was no way I was giving up my girlfriend, it didn’t even occur to me at the time that we would have to think of something else to do for Thanksgiving. Part of why we moved to Florida was she had extended family in the state (about an hour from where we are). And these were the people we were going to be spending Thanksgiving with, which pretty much terrified me.

Fair or not, this is what I expected

Let me break down exactly how I saw this going and why. Florida has some incredibly homophobic opinions, especially in the northern parts, which was the direction we’d be going. My girlfriend’s immediate family doesn’t like me and they’re only begrudgingly supportive of her being a lesbian in what I’m assuming is the hope that it’s all just a phase. They’re very traditional Orange County Christians and success mongers, so their fantastic overachieving daughter dating some strange little bohemian scene girl who turned their daughter into a Buddhist lesbian…yeah, they really don’t like me. Then let’s talk about my own extended family—there are the ultra conservative Koreans, the ultra conservative Chamorro, or the ultra conservative Iowans (Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann Iowans to be specific). So hearing that we would be spending our time with her family, but more specifically her extended family in northern Florida…well I started to wonder if we’d actually live through it.

I also have a little Social Anxiety Disorder and some PTSD from some pretty damaging bullying in High School (it's why I'm such an internet nerd and Emily Dickinson style shut in), so when we pulled up to the most beautiful…palatial estate I guess is the word for what this place was and saw that there were about fifty or sixty people (I later found out the exact number was 56 including us) I had a little panic attack. Nikki and I had discussed beforehand that her immediate family had outed us to her extended family in a not too polite sort of way, so I kind of expected us to end up back in the car pretty quickly.

Given a chance, people can surprise you.

Nikki’s favorite uncle, who had made the trip to Florida from New York just for us, showed us around, introduced us to everyone, and acted as something of our tour guide/liaison to the Florida sect of the family. We played croquet, which I actually turned out to be pretty good at, and horseshoes, which I sucked horribly at, and it was all really pleasant. There was no football on, because watching TV would take away from the family time. This was obviously a departure from my usual duties of being my dad’s football watching partner (he had to make do with my sister’s husband this year and he kept texting me that my brother-in-law didn’t understand the game). But there was a puppet show for the kids, during which I was apparently clinging to Nikki pretty tenaciously (I get like that when I’m nervous…or drunk…or within a few feet of her), and one of Nikki’s, I want to say aunt but I’m not really sure, leaned over and asked if we were a couple. We said we were, and she said, “You’re so adorable together.”

Seriously, people can surprise you.

Then there was a campfire and a sing along. All the kids produced instruments, and not just traditional instruments either, weird things like ukuleles, a box drum thing, and other stuff I’d never seen before. I’m hopelessly untalented when it comes to music, so they let me play the tambourine and kind of just mumble-sing. Still, it was nothing like I expected.

As we were saying our goodbyes about to leave, the same woman who asked if we were a couple came up to us and gave us a huge hug (not really an aunt—Nikki’s father’s cousin’s wife…what is that?), and said maybe we’d be married and/or expecting when we came next year.

Thanksgiving was strange, but strangely wonderful.

This makes just as much, if not more, sense than the story about a virgin birth.

We’re back in Southern California now for Christmas where Nikki is staying with my family most of the time and I don’t really spend much time at her place since I’m made to feel very unwelcome there (and her brothers scare/creep the hell out of me). So we’re definitely back into familiar familial waters for this holiday.

Since you’ve probably been waiting for the relationship moral in all this beyond sometimes people will surprise you with their kindness, it’s this:  you’re not dating the person’s family or friends—you’re only dating them. So what if Nikki’s dad refers to me as 'the head-case from Nikki’s old school'…seriously, he does pretty much every time, in one breath, “Are you driving over with that head-case from your old school or do you need a ride?” or “Go ahead and turn on Fox News even though it bugs that head-case from Nikki’s old school.” I feel like he should shorten it to an acronym like THCFNOS…never mind, that’s pretty long too. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because I’m not dating her family; I’m dating her. The person you’re dating doesn’t have to love your family and you don’t have to love their family. You might even like their family more than your own family sometimes and that’s fine too. The fact remains:  you are NOT dating their family. The antiquated notion of families merging when couples get married, and you’re not losing a daughter, you’re gaining another daughter, and yadda yadda yadda it’s all old-timey bullshit that people only have to participate in now if they damn well feel like it. As members of the LGBT community, you are not required to go out of your way to make your family feel comfortable even as they’re making you and your partner feel uncomfortable—this goes for straight couples as well. If your family or your partner's family aren't being pleasant and going out of their way to make you feel welcome, they aren't worth being around and no sense of familial duty should force you.

Questions of Bisexuality

Anyone who has followed me for any serious amount of time on Twitter or knows me personally on about any levels knows I'm not psyched about the behavior of many bi-curious people. You've probably also heard me say I never have and never will date a bisexual person--I have my reasons, both emotional and physical health based. It's a preference and one I'm not going to be bullied out of by bisexuals or pansexuals who think the ultimate in liberal mindedness about sexuality is to include everyone. There are plenty of lesbians I won't date because of preference as well, and that doesn't make me homophobic, so not dating bisexuals can't really make me biphobic, now can it? That isn't leveled at all bisexuals or pansexuals. I've met plenty of perfectly nice ones who are every bit as respectful of other people's preferences as they hope people will be of theirs, but there is this very loud, very irritating group within that community who seems to think anyone who won't sleep with them or doesn't share their hyper-specific view of sexuality is somehow a prude or a bigot and they don't mind yelling about the injustice of it all.

So after a recent gripefest with several of exactly that type of bisexual/pansexual group who didn't like the fact that I promoted emotional health over sexual experimentation--yes, I'm one of those crazy people who thinks you shouldn't emotionally abuse your sexual partners in the name of your own sexual experimentation and then say "hey, that's life, people get hurt" by way of excuse. And it is an excuse. A feeble, pathetic, hollow excuse. People aren't toys and one person's sexual exploration never trumps the feelings of someone else, EVER. As Dan Savage always advocates, practice the campsite rule in your sexual experimentation:  leave things better than you found them. Anything else is self-serving, shallow, and selfish.

Which brings me to a question I received via email the other day...
Warning: I usually proof the letters to make them all pretty and easily read, but this one was apparently written from an iPhone (and yeah, I know those can be hard to type on, but I have a Blackberry so I wouldn't know about that) and I didn't feel like going through and fixing everything her phone did, so I kind of just left it. Please don't judge either of us too harshly for that.

"I am 21 and have jus come to terms that i am Bi sexual. I have only had sex with one man my ex and i waited til i was 19 before i wud let him. There is this girl in college who iv had a crush on 4 ages and we went 2 watch a film as friends me thinkin she was totally straight, it turned out she liked me and after a load of drinks she convinces me 2 go 2 her place and we end up havin sex, cheatin on my bf at the same tym, she told me it wasnt a one night thing and this girl is 11 years older than me. I broke up wid my bf but the girl wants to pretend it never happened and has told me not 2 tell anyone about it, now i dont know how to act around her as shes in alot of my classes and is in my social group. Im really gutted because she was my first and i actually really like her shes nice to me stil and seems unfazed i feel a little used and i am stil quite shy and not confident talkin to pretty women and she is absolutly stunning! How can i be as confident as her and do you think theres a chance itll happen agen?? Sorry its a long story but please help! I dont kno wot 2 do and you giv gud advice :) thankyou for reading nevertheless xx"


First and foremost, we have to deal with what you did wrong here. Cheating is cheating and you cheated. Before you do anything to address this girl, you've got to go back to your boyfriend at the time and apologize for what you did. Like I said, campsite rules:  you left him worse than you found him and now you owe him an apology and explanation for it. Take a step back from lusting after this older woman, and realize you trampled someone during your experimentation and their feelings matter too.

As for this woman, take a look at exactly what she's doing and map it out. This is precisely the person you DON'T want to be as a bisexual, and you certainly shouldn't want to be with her. She lied to you, misled you with false intentions, and is now ignoring you after she got what she wanted...sounds a little like she learned those tricks from...I'm not going to say it, but you know who I mean. She did exactly what you're not supposed to do as a bisexual, so learn from her MASSIVE mistakes and don't do to anyone else any of the things she did to you.

How do you be as confident as her? Sweetie, she's not confident; she's abusive. There's a big difference between knowing what you want, how to get it, and being a user of people. Being like her is the last thing you should want. Do I think there's a chance it'll happen again? That's the wrong question that I'll answer with one of my own:  why on earth would you want it to? You cheated on your boyfriend, ended the relationship because of a lie she told you, and now she's treating you like shit in public...what exactly is the attraction here? Let me make this perfectly clear for you:  do not sleep with this girl EVER again.

Like it or not (and sometimes I really don't), you're now in the LGBT community as one of the Bs. So in the sense of community, let me straighten you the fuck out. This girl you slept with is not a role model. What you need to do is go find yourself a real role model within the community to show you how to behave when it comes to bisexual relationships. Don't look at me on this one--I'm a lesbian who doesn't know the first thing about managing relationships with guys, forget about the complexity that bisexuality adds to that--you need a bisexual mentor in this. You've got a good start though; this first female/female sexual experience you had was with a woman who reads like a "shit you should never do" list. First and foremost rule though--campsite:  leave people better than you found them. You can explore your sexuality without emotionally harming others, but you're off to a bad start with this since you did cheat on and dump your boyfriend at the drop of this girl's panties. Resolve to NEVER do that again. People are not toys, people's emotions are not disposable, and the things you do can cause harm to others if you are careless, selfish, and shallow in your dealings with them. Think about how crappy you feel right now and resolve to not do this to anyone else. Am I being abso-fucking-lutely clear about this?

There's a part of this letter that irritates the hell out of me, and I even know why it bugs me so much. Because I'm guilty of it to. You go on and on and on about how attractive this girl is as though that is somehow one of those Mr. Clean Magic Eraser pads (seriously, have you tried these things?) that wipes away her abusive relationship tendencies, bad personality, and probably a myriad of other negative things about her that you didn't bring up since you were typing on a phone. This bugs me, because I used to be (still am to some degree) the same way. My girlfriend is ridiculously attractive and I excused so much of her bad behavior early on in knowing her because I just felt so honored that she even noticed my existence, even if it was in a negative way (and it often was). The thing that helped me break the cycle was realizing she didn't really do anything to earn her looks--it's mostly genetic. Giving her credit for being attractive is like giving most basketball players credit for being tall. Worshiping someone because they're good looking is so silly. There are other attractive people out there who aren't shitheads, so why are you wasting your time pining over this one? Attractive people won't respect you if you willingly take their abuse simply because they're attractive. So knock it off.

If you feel like you got a little reamed by all this, take as me wanting to stop something negative before it can really start. You do yourself, the people you encounter, and the credibility of bisexuals harm if you behave the way this girl behaved toward you. The first two steps on your journey to not be a shallow, selfish abuser of other people:  1. Apologize to your exboyfriend and 2. Tell this bitch to fuck off.