EL

BACKGROUND

I am a 27 year old lesbian.  I have held workshops for gay women to learn about spiritual sexuality, but I don’t do that currently. I used to be a sex worker. 

YONI LOVE

In general I think I have a healthy attitude around sex and pleasure. 

What I love about my yoni is that I think of her as being “ornate.” I think she’s very attractive, and I’ve been told so. I’m fond of her, but I still feel like she’s numbed out sometimes. I suspect there’s so much further she could take me. What I don’t like about my yoni is that sometimes it’s painful at the opening. I do have a point of tension on the right side internally. Can be painful even outside of sex.

SEX LIFE

I am not currently sexually active.  It’s been six months since I’ve had a partner, but 2 month since erotic contact. Been traveling, and also moved to a new city. And finding female partners is harder. The dating pool for a gay person is about a twentieth of the size of a straight person’s. I’ve started dating again recently, and I’m thinking of branching out to men. 

As far as what I don’t enjoy about my sex life is, well, in many ways, I haven’t really enjoyed being a lesbian. It’s a difficult path. I wish the dating pool was larger, and other femmes were more common, and I didn’t get bothered by couples looking for a unicorn. It has often been depressing so far. But things do get better. It is better than it used to be. But sheer boredom is driving me to open up to men a bit recently.  I wish I could have sex every day, but it’s not the case. 

I’m part of the Tantra community, but I’m not that promiscuous. I enjoy the emotional intimacy and support more than physical.

It’s been six months since I’ve been sexually active with a partner, but I went to a play party two months ago that was really wonderful erotically. I have never participated in any Swingers Clubs, Orgies or anything like that. 

AROUSAL

What gets me aroused with someone is when I feel I can really rely on the person. Sometimes I can feel my pupils dilating in adoration, and it’s such an amazing feeling. My whole body opens up at the same time. “Opening” is so important to receive pleasure as a woman. So what brings me into pleasure is feeling taken care of and adored. Getting attention. Being called affectionate pet names like princess, buttercup, or similar. The type of foreplay that gets me to almost climax and have an amazing orgasm is making out while grabbing at each other. When I feel like I can put my hands anywhere, and every movement in our embrace is flowing freely.

COMMUNICATION

I find it difficult to communicate around sexuality to please not neglect me, even though my sex drive is probably higher than yours.  What I would want a new lover to know is about my yoni and how to pleasure her best is just give me love and let me open my heart, I’ll figure out the rest in the moment. I’m not shy as long as I’m free to express myself. So don’t be a judgmental person in general. Be an open person. I’m open in relating, I could be monogamous for the right person and life situation, but I don’t feel too much possessiveness. I strive for generosity and compersion in love, and I would hope a partner would also cultivate those principles even if it might not come as naturally for them.

FETISH / KINK

I don’t have much desire for fetish or kink, I don’t really need it. But I do think mommy stuff is pretty hot. I could be on either side of the dynamic. Animal stuff is hot too. That comes up in my wet dreams a lot.

MASTURBATION

I don’t really masturbate to get off quickly, not really in that perfunctory way, I always attempt to prolong and expand the experience as much as possible. Sometimes I fail to expand it though. I used to masturbate a lot, multiple times a day, and it really drained my energy and destroyed my mental health.

It typically takes me 30 seconds to reach orgasm when masturbating, but I try to make it take at least 10 minutes. I rarely can make it last that long though.  In masturbation what gets me to climax and have the best orgasms is when I have my fingers inside and Im stroking really deep, at the same time as clitoral rubbing. sometimes stroking my anus too. lots of coconut oil.

SELF PLEASURE

I self pleasure, maybe a couple times a week. Being intentional helps to not lose so much energy. Or sometimes I just give enough touch to be soothing, and if I start to get relaxed enough, I’ll let myself fall asleep.

ORGASM

My orgasms really don’t last long, but I can have multiple. I would say I am essentially tantric, I’m energetically sensitive for sure. I can experience clitoral, vaginal, anal and sometimes amrita (female ejaculation/squirting). Basically anything being inside my vagina brings me to orgasm. My orgasms last a few seconds.. or longer, depends on the type.  I used to think I had a huge problem of inability to orgasm with a partner, but it turns out I just wasn’t with the right people and I wasn’t safe. I learned a lot about my ability to orgasm through psychedelics. Mushrooms, LSD, and 25I NBomb., The type of touch that gets me to climax and have the best orgasms is Internal touch in tandem with a lot of full body loving like stroking and embracing and kissing. I’m definitely orgasmic but not always with just random other people, love helps.

In penetrative sex what gets me to climax and have the best orgasms is creative stroking, twisting fingers.. multiple fingers moving independently. When it feels like the person isn’t afraid to reach every little bit of me and stretch me. I’d like to try fisting, but I haven’t yet. How long it takes in from foreplay to orgasm on average is hugely variable. 

So it depends, I can be orgasmic without any touch at all, or sometimes it will never happen. In the best situations, not long at all.

FIRST TIME

My first time experience having sex was pretty messed up. I was only 14 years old. I was holding my best friend’s hand as we lay on the same bed, getting fucked by two different guys, probably about eight years older than us. She was crying a lot and it was horribly physically painful. She was definitely traumatized and terrified, but I think I had lost the capability to feel those things by then. I felt a lot of physical pain, but I suffered through it. I was already jaded. I don’t bother wishing it were different though… I can’t imagine a world where I could have created a better experience, I was clueless. It was pretty desolate times. I didn’t have sex again for five years unfortunately. And didn’t start having any pleasure in sex until years after that.

SHAME / FEAR / GUILT

Maybe I carry some shame, fear or guilt.. I think shame is a natural consequence of being erotically rejected and neglected as much as I have been. You feel like you're undesirable, or a burden, or freakish. But I don’t think my genitals are carrying that. I just think I might have damaging emotional patterns at this point, that might even create self fulfilling prophecies. That does worry me sometimes. That maybe I don’t know how to escape my own negative loops as easily as I used to. I used to be flirtatious much more freely. But I still have a playful optimistic side, I just have to be really intentional about only showing that positive, attractive side to people, in order to avoid negative self fulfilling prophecies of rejection.

TRAUMA

I wouldn’t say so that I suffer from any sexual dysfunction. But I’m always in a healing and growth process. Things are always getting better. When it comes to sensation, we don’t really know what we are missing until we feel it.

I have experienced sexual abuse and sexual assault and I’ll share one experience here.. I was chilling with this guy, I had already told him I was a lesbian, but he kept pressuring, saying lesbians like having sex with him, and he’s just a lesbian in a straight man’s body (???) Obviously he was a terrible person, but I gave in and had sex with him. Essentially, I was hoping I could just enjoy it like a “normal” person. I hoped he was right. I was tired of saying “no” to guys without having anyone to say “yes” to instead. Of course there was no chemistry, I’m gay. I think it sucked for him too. I told him to stop, but he didn’t of course. He started choking me, and I tried to fight him off, beating on his chest and trying to pull his hands off me, but eventually I had to just lay still and conserve oxygen until he finished. I’ve always been able to hold my breath for an unusually long time. He asked me if I had an orgasm afterwards. I just said “I don’t know.” That question made me feel like I was the one who was fucked up. But he was the one who had to assault another person to experience pleasure. That was 7 years ago. I still blame myself because I knew there was no compatibility, and I got horrible vibes from him. I ignored my intuition and my true nature because I just wanted to have a good time “for once” like “normal” people do. It took me a couple years before I was able to agree that that was an assault. At that point in my life, I had literally never had any man stop fucking me when I said stop. They simply ignored me and kept thrusting until they finished, while I grit my teeth and cried out through the pain. The first time someone did stop at my request, it was a revelation for me!

SEXUAL HEALING

There have been many blocks. One was inability to drop my consciousness into the lower part of my body and really feel. I was very stuck in head consciousness. Relaxed meditation helped this, and systematic self massage to re-sensitize my vagina. I was very disassociated from sex for many reasons, not least of which because I did sex work, so I numbed myself out to avoid feeling people inside me and feeling my revulsion. Another block was just sheer terror. Another was feeling undesirable and out of place because of the extreme social isolation I experienced in my youth. Plain, old-fashioned stimulus exposure is what helped there to desensitize me. I needed to become more emotionally mature and become used to interacting with others.

ADVICE TO TEENAGE SELF

You have more sensation internally than you think you do. You need to connect to love and safety. Work on your emotional health and try to cultivate optimism and playfulness. I mean sincere happiness and warmth, not a flirtatious role to play for the perception of the other person. Also, oil as lube will help you as you try to generate more good experiences vaginally, so that eventually your body feels safe to self lubricate again. Trauma is creating dryness, dryness creates more pain, which creates more trauma, which creates more dryness. A bad cycle. Also, people keep telling you your pussy is so tight.. This is not something to feel good about. It means you are clenching subconsciously out of fear. You will never experience pleasure like this, you are creating a situation of too much friction which equals pain. Look up vaginismus. You need to consciously learn how to relax, because your “relaxed state” is actually clenched because of trauma. Focus in on the muscles and try to move them open like opening up a fist.

YONI MASSAGE

This was not my first yoni massage. I’ve received maybe ten before. The yoni massage was sweet and relaxing. Once we finished he external yoni massage and had taken the after arousal pictures I decided to continue with moving into receiving internal yoni massage.  As I was experiencing internal yoni massage I eventually asked to stop. It wasn’t going to go anywhere for me. I had made a vow with myself to not be sexual with anyone I’m not in love with, and it felt good to respect that. That was probably my main lesson: the experience of honoring my boundaries, instead of letting them slide in the moment and later feeling ambivalent about it. Which I have done in the past. So it was a good experience, and the one I needed.

I did not climax. I almost climaxed but paused the practitioner from continuing in that moment because I felt like I would like to reserve that for when being together with an intimate partner in love.  

YONI PICTURES

When participating in this project to be photographed, I felt BEFORE: Pretty normal, a bit trepidatious because I don’t like when I feel my responses are being evaluated. It reminds me of times when I felt faulty for not being able to orgasm with people. AFTER: a bit confused by my body’s refusal to receive full sensation, but generally fine.  I felt curious to look at the details of the before and after differences. I was not surprised though. I’m pretty familiar there.