From the Mirror to the Sea

A new kind of container. A reintroduction.

My Vulva Shell

The last woman I made love with, the last I drank from, left a diversity of objects in my apartment, including a bag of seashells she had collected somewhere along the Atlantic coast at some time in the past. They sat on a shelf in a dim back room until one day I took them down and looked at them. I smelled them, like I smell everything. I licked a little to see if I could taste the ocean. That delightful oceanic calcite…

In the mysterious way that these things sometimes occur, I found myself drawn to letting go into it. Into instead of onto; a container instead of a surface. I discovered, or rediscovered, the exquisite feeling of ejaculating into a smooth, curved space that holds my slipstream of joy.

Now after spilling myself into it perhaps twenty times, and tasting myself there, always leaving a little behind, it smells and tastes like me. I can cup it over my mouth and nose. And just lay there and breathe. When it’s full and I’m in meltdown, I can dip my tongue into my salty concentrate and my mind spins and bursts.

For more than a thousand days, I have not released myself into a yoni or onto a woman; or tasted a woman. More than the two years I initially committed to, and less than forever I have suspected might be so, it’s taken me the better part of three decades to get here.

By that, I mean many attempts at longterm celibacy, first starting with the span of the solstice to the cross-quarter (six weeks) and then adding those six week experiments one by one. I think I once did five seasons like that, working up to two years. I felt I should count those years as consecutive, so if I stopped, I would start again….delicately and often with company…

I took small steps on the way to something that feels impossible. During all of these phases I have sometimes made love to myself in the presence of women and sometimes of men. There is only so much I can offer up at this point; and masturbation is itself even in the presence of another, or others.

Through the at times cloying, at times lilting, through moments of grieving and revelation, of mock releasing only to come back and submit myself again…

What has followed me and has been waiting for me is the beauty of surrender to the notion of releasing yoni. That feeling right there, that interval of possibility. The delight of that in full and mutual awareness. Making love to myself into a mirror as a couple makes love with one another behind me.

Singing out, in some amazement, I love cunnilingus, I love cunnilingus (even more drawn out) and if I’m masturbation celibate, I’ll miss cunnilingus the most of all…I say it, I admit it, and then in that truth, my pulsing moans start. I let go right to that notion…into being truthful about what I want in the moment of letting it go…I’m now moaning and pulsing..

(And then she says, it feels nice coming out, and it’ll feel even better in your mouth.) And then in this spaced out techno dance scene, I’m holding a mouthful of myself and moaning a little and whimpering right then and there.

Loving, needing, desperately craving the scent of, thirsting for, desiring of, and then letting go — vulva yoni cunt snatch delight — She She She She oh She — often in the presence of a woman who would have been happy to give me what I want from her. Saying it right to me. You can have me if you want.

Sometimes knowing her role was to give me what I need, which was to reflect me and ease my way into my self acceptance. Those experiences of silent understanding of purpose, and that dharma being mutual. I understood and took delight in their experiencing the delight of no. No and yes to you, yes to me, you might need me a little and you don’t really need me. (I know I’ll be alone sometime and remind myself to soak in the pleasure of company and witness. Resonant warmth of feeling, so gentle.)

Usually a mirror was involved. Sometimes I would be alone and sometimes she would hold it for me. She, whomever would meet me in a space of selflove. There was often the dance of: I so deeply want to drink you. And then, I know you do. I’m here to help you drink yourself because that’s what you’re asking for.

Purple mirror, photo for Michelle Comeso.

If there was a mirror, it was always covered with the product of many previous episodes of surrender, dry and going back days or seasons or years. It’s right there between us; we handle it; it’s an ordinary object.

Never in my life had I ever felt more naked than licking back my dry semen in the presence of a woman whose loving presence was bestowed on me for this purpose alone. So then imagine we’re returned to the outer world in waking life. Every time I see her face or hear her voice, I’m reminded she understands this about me.

I know this was not a typical mode of sex for my lovers as they explored this space…so beautifully for and with me…

Sometimes looking at the pattern in on the glass, sometimes looking for my eyes amidst the cakes and tongue streaks, I would wonder what I was feeling and what I was thinking during each of those times I spilled my passion onto my own reflection. And after a moment of reflection, it was only and always one thing: I am a mirror masturbator. I lick and drink my semen.

Yes you are, and yes you do.

And right around then I could not hold back my love and it would happen again. Many times seeing, observing or studying the expression on my face. Sometimes, often, fully penetrated, feeling my orgasm clasp to the earth mounted at the center of my core. Crying out, throbbing, releasing myself, being free, seen and heard and daring to see and hear myself. I cannot say I like to see the expression on my face as I let myself go. I have cultivated and grown into deep respect.

Often in periorgasmic space, circling the vortex, I would arrive at the point of distinction that is contained in every word I write, is the proto-thought. I would never think it. It would think me. I would move from desiring the pleasure of being told no, as in no vagina, for the sake of my inner growth (we’ve had this discussion).

Then I would feel, this is my choice. My decision. And then the almost unbearable waves and throbs of pleasure, pulsating with its own truth, the truth of my choice, would simply take me. I would know in that moment that I always choose, and choose once again.

OK and next time I’ll do this alone…I want to do this alone. Again…and I get into that space…and say things to myself…touch as close to inner truth as I barely can…crying out to existence (we both hear me) and searching my eyes…

OK, now I’m alone…mm hmmm…feeling everything all at once.

This series is called Missed Opportunity, because in our conversation before Neal photographing me we understood I wanted to be depicted eating my semen. But after the orgasm you see here, I just could not do it. I couldn’t do it in front of him, which I desperately wanted to do! A missed opportunity and Neal knows exactly what’s occurred. He’s impeccably gentle about it. What this series has become is a document of just that, of having and not wanting. This was deep in the winter of 1998 to 1999 (Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey), that forgotten time. I keep asking him what happened to my semen if it didn’t end up in my mouth. I know he remembers, and his inscrutable way, he will not tell me.

I want it to be over too…all this bad stuff happening in the world…

Notepad:

Ery Erica

Weaning