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Del continues to walk his difficult path with grace and fortitude, talking about the things that most people would be tempted to leave unsaid.

Del's avatarDying for a Diagnosis

Since this whole infection/abscess situation started, I was holding onto a secret. Something I thought I might keep a secret, not make public in any sort of fashion. It isn’t pretty or nice or paints me in a good light in any way. It cuts me to the core, but I have come to a place of peace with it now, so I think it might be safe to start writing about it.

I had hoped that this business was going to kill me.

I am sworn to Loki not to take my own life, and doubly so to Baphomet that suicide is not an option out of my physical struggles. But there I was, a few weeks fresh from being dumped by the person I thought would walk me to death, and I was done. I saw no reason to keep fighting, to keep dealing with the constant pain…

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Not So ‘Queer’ After All

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I don’t make a habit of reposting my Bilerico blogging here on NFABS, because I don’t want this blog to become a feed for my Bilerico work. That said, this post both fits well with NFABS’ general themes, and with my new commitment to greater openness. This post originally appeared on The Bilerico Project on 9/26/12

Not So ‘Queer’ After All 

Early this year, not long after becoming a regular contributor for The Bilerico Project, I wrote a post on the controversial subject of the reclaimed word “queer” as a personal identity.

At the time, I laid out the arguments for why I felt “queer” was the right word for who I was and how I lived my life. I’m not only someone whose partners are of the same gender, but also someone who is polyamorous, kinky, and who rejects the very narrow confines of who the gay world, and media in particular, sometimes try to say “gay” people are.

I also wrote about the fact that while I didn’t see having trans men partners as inherently contrary to someone identifying as “gay”, the widespread and destructive transphobia I often see within the gay community made me reluctant to embrace the word as my own. 

When I wrote that post in January, I’d been identifying as “queer” for many years, and didn’t really expect that I’d be writing this one less than a year later.

 You see, I find myself feeling as if I can’t continue to identify as “queer” anymore.

Before I get to my own situation though, I want to briefly address the use of “queer” as an umbrella community term. Talking about the “queer community” as an alternative to saying “gay community” or “LGBT community” has never really sat all that well with me. Sure, the alphabet soup of letters such as LGBTQQAI can get incredibly cumbersome, but the whole point of a reclaimed word is that people make the choice to reclaim it forthemselves, not have it thrust upon them in the manner of their oppressors. If you don’t like the word “queer” you certainly shouldn’t have to have it used to describe you.

Personally, I’m a fan of GSM or GSRM to describe our community more than any other acronym I’ve seen lately. It stands for Gender & Sexual Minorities or Gender, Sexual & Relationship Minorities, and has a deliberate catch-all quality that I appreciate.

But it isn’t the advent of a new term that has me felling the need to let go of my queer identity. As far as I know there isn’t yet a term for a someone who fits within the GSRM umbrella, and I’m not eager to invent one.

Rather, the issue is that I have come to find “queer” a less inclusive word than either it once was, or I once perceived it to be. I’ve always been a bit of an anomaly as a cis man who ID’s as queer, particularly as a cis queer guy who is primarily interested in same-sex relationships. Which isn’t to say I haven’t met others, I’m not a special snowflake.

But I’ve noticed more and more that queer spaces are not open to me as a cis guy, Many organizations, parties, etc, that identify as being queer-focused are formally or unofficially only open to cis women, trans women and trans men. An interesting corollary to this is that when I’ve been in open queer space, people have tended to assume I’m trans*, and are sometimes taken aback to discover otherwise. This has, at times, let to some ugly situations, with there being a perception of deceit on my part, or of me as a cis guy intruding on, and compromising the feeling of safety of queer space, even if that space hasn’t been formally designated as not open to cis men.

Words and labels are slippery things, that’s what makes them so powerful, and yet so potentially contentious. I understand that I could choose to continue to ID as queer and no one can stop me. But I also recognize that labels serve a valuable purpose, and if the broader definition within our community, or at least my little corner of it, of “queer” has becoming something I’m not, it makes little sense for me to continue using it.

On a selfish note, it’s painful to be told “this thing that is like you, isn’t open to you.” To be completely clear: I’m not saying that anyone has to include me in anything, or that my experience is somehow unique or particularly onerous. And yes, I do acknowledge that an expectation of inclusion on my part can be chalked up to my own white-cis-male privilege. But if the definition of what it means to be queer has evolved in a way that doesn’t include cis men, my point still holds that it is a poor descriptor for me to continue using.

Which of course, leaves me in a bind. The reasons that “gay” doesn’t work for me don’t magically vanish just because “queer” doesn’t either. If we’re only interested in the question of who I seek sexual and romantic intimacy with, the overly clinical “homoflexible” could conceivably work. But for me that may be a descriptor, but not really a coherent identity. Likewise, “a GSRM” makes my orientation sound like an expensive Japanese motorcycle rather than a way to navigate the complex waters of self-identity.

For now I’ll explore and try to make my own road. There will probably be times when “queer” is the most useful shorthand, and others when “homoflexible,” or “gay” might be. Hopefully in time I’ll find a new place of comfort with one of these words, or someone will invent a new one entirely.

I call “not it!”

 

As an aside, the multifaceted topic of self-identified “women’s spaces,” such as the Boston-based group MOB, that are open to trans men as well as trans women and cis women could easily be a post in itself, but it’s one I’m completely unqualified to write. I hope someone else will do so, maybe as a guest post for us one of these days. 

Coming Out About A Difficult Truth

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It’s now after 4am, and I’ve already worked nearly seven hours today for Dark Odyssey, and an additional three hours on my second day as associate editor of The Bilerico Project. Yet instead of going to bed, which would be the logical thing to do, I’m sitting here in front of my computer. Because in the end, for better or worse, I am still a spirit worker, and sometimes the Work takes priority over needs like rest. 

I have quite obviously been away from Notes From a Barking Shaman for some time now. Astute readers may note that my most recent stretch of regular blogging here pretty much ended after I wrote a now-deleted post about a delicate and personal subject that landed me in no small amount of social and professional trouble. Not to mention requiring from a me a difficult spiritual sacrifice that I am forbidden from discussing. 

It is easy to conclude that the personal or professional ramifications of that post are the reason I have been away from NFABS, and I will admit to doing little to dissuade anyone from drawing that conclusion. But while that post was tangentially related to the issues that drove me away from here, the truth is in fact far more complex, and difficult for me to grapple with:

Over the past year or two of blogging here, I have been incredibly dishonest with you, my readers, friends, and colleagues. 

Somewhere along the line, I made an unconscious decision to convey a certain image of who I am. In a time of great uncertainty, strife, and doubt in my life, I chose to present myself not as I am, but as I so dearly wished to be. Within the pages of Notes From A Barking Shaman I have deliberately avoided mention of anything that manifestly detracted from the image of me as confident and self-assured, while in truth my Journey has been far more challenging. And one in which I don’t know that I’ve always succeeded in rising to meet that challenge. 

I have spent the past few years caught up in the tumultuous throws of what one might choose to call a “faith-quake” or maybe more aptly a “purpose-quake.” I’ve tried my damnedest to keep that fact out of the public eye, because many of the people whom I looked to over the years as models of how to be a spirit worker in the pubic eye are deeply invested in maintaining an illusion of infallibility. I believed that if anyone knew of my struggles I would be unable to do my Work. 

Much though I’d dearly love to dwell on the “why” and avoid the “what,” there is no way I can hope to move forward with NFABS without acknowledging some of the “what” right off the bat. 

For starters, I have felt abandoned by my gods. 

I don’t know if you can appreciate how hard a sentence that is to see written in black & white. While proofreading this post I found myself unconsciously lowering my voice when I got to it. 

There are many ways this manifests, but perhaps the most stark is in the matter of the disillusion of Fire, Summer (who now goes by Asrik), and my relationship. 

Ours was a partnership arranged by the hand of the gods, and it was something promised to Fire and I in the earliest and darkest days of our association and Work. While responsibility for the actual failure rests at once with all of us and none of us, it is all too easy to see it as a failure on Their part to stick to a bargain. That Asrik has been manifestly rewarded by the Universe for leaving us, while our own road has been far rougher and uncertain only deepens both Fire and my feelings of resentment. Lingering spiritual complications between he and us only serves to make the situation more difficult. 

Then there’s the matter of the Work itself. There simply hasn’t been much, and what there has been has more often than not led only to heartache and hardship. This is where The Blog Post That Shall Remain Nameless serves as a valuable example. In a community of people where doing and saying what the gods tell you to is generally seen as a Good Thing, I received significant criticism for that post from within the spirit work world, even when I explained that I had made binding promises to both a mortal person and the gods to write it. Moreover, despite having been told by my patron that I was to write it when I did, I felt like She left me out to dry when the consequences threatened both my spiritual and mundane work. 

A brief story: many years ago there were two blogs/online magazines named Gods’ Mouths and Blood For Divine respectively. They were created by my partner Fire at the instruction of our Lady, and he was incredibly proud of their early successes. However, they dealt with difficult topics: spirit work and ordeal work, and soon became lightning rods for people’s personal agendas and vendettas. They went down in flames, and both the community and the gods left our bare asses hanging in the wind. Even today, years after the last time they were updated, they still serve as weapons to be used against us. Some deep rooted hope in my partner died a hard death when he lost them, and he still can’t talk about what went down without either crying or becoming unendurably angry. 

Today it seems like just one more in a long line of times we’ve done what They asked of us, only to be smacked down for doing our Jobs. Yet at the same time, a part of me feels more wounded by not having much Work to do, than by the fact that the Work often leaves us feeling isolated and ostracized. I don’t know what I’m to be doing. They have invested considerable time and energy in Tashrisketlin, yet it often feels like we sit on the sidelines with little idea of what we could do differently. 

But even in the best of circumstances, one cannot thrive on the Work alone. I’m a polytheistic pagan and a spirit worker. Ironically, it sometimes seems like many of my fellows leave religion, worship, and practice behind as the spirit work consumes more of their energies. But I cannot live that way. We have not had a spiritual community where we felt at home since leaving Raven Kaldera’s Pagan Kingdom of Asphodel, although in truth we hadn’t felt at home there for a good many years before we left. 

The Lady says that the answer is that we need to create space for respectful polytheistic pagan worship, particularly in an alternative lifestyle inclusive way, and which addresses some of the aesthetic problems gnawing away at the pagan demographic, a topic I intend to address in the near future in this blog. 

For a while, we thought we might be able to do that here in the Portland Maine area. But we have been nomadic for some time now, and it’s looking more and more like Portland will prove just another layover rather than a long term home for us. Not to mention that we, and Fire in particular, are so burned out on the drama and pain that comes with community that the idea of trying to form one of our own is beyond daunting. 

Then there is the issue of my non-spiritual work. 

For the first time since Brigantian Designs closed it’s doors and sold off its assets, I feel like I have achieved some measure of personal success on the job front. This week marks one year I’ve been working for Dark Odyssey Events, first as a programing assistant, then a programing coordinator, and now as both a programing coordinator and production assistant. Over that same time I was made a regular contributor to The Bilerico Project, and starting this week have become associate editor. Neither really gets me a living wage (ok, The Bilerico Project doesn’t pay at all), but it is intensely satisfying work, and for the first time since my pain issues began to become debilitating, I feel like I’m helping to pull my financial weight, and like there may be a path forward for me professionally that I don’t want to screw up. 

My work with Dark Odyssey is remarkably spooky friendly, and I’m supposed to be working to bring more spirituality programing into the our events, although I fear I haven’t done as well as I could have hopped, due in large part to my own issues. 

On the other hand, The Bilerico Project is a serious LGBT politics and culture blog, and the LGBT community is emphatically not friendly to spiritual and religious beliefs. With the deep vein of skepticism and atheism that runs through the community, it is easy to see how a blogger, educator, and activist who talks to the gods and spirits (and they talk back!) might not go far. I find that I care about that more than I would have imagined a few years ago. 

What everything I’ve said so far boils down to in no small part, is that my confidence in the Work and in my own voice as a pagan/spirit work blogger is totally shot. I have a backlog of posts I want to write, or at least feel that I  should, that I can’t get out on the screen because I have become so fragile that even the fear of criticism leaves me a gibbering mess. Not because I’m hurt that someone might disagree with me, but because on some level I can’t seem to believe in myself. 

I can’t shake the idea that to be “good” at this (whatever that looks like) I have to be a vision of collected confidence. But that’s not working for me, and as a result I simply haven’t been able to do what I need to, both on Notes From A Barking Shaman and elsewhere in my spiritual Work and my life. 

Thus, I’m committing to a personal ordeal and inviting you all along for the ride. I’m going to resume a weekly posting schedule here, although I am not resuming my Posts of the Day as I’m doing basically that same thing for Bilerico, and only have so many hours in the day. I’m not going to try to pretend I’m perfect and I’m going to be more upfront about my own Journey and process.

Some of the posts here will be of a more personal nature than we’ve had this last year or so, but at the same time I’m not going to turn NFABS into an LJ analog. Many of the posts will be unrelated to the issues I’ve discussed here, such as an upcoming essay on pagan spirituality and space exploration, while others may very well be the sort of the thing I wouldn’t have written publicly during the last couple of years. 

It’s daunting and terrifying, as I suppose an ordeal should be, but for now it’s 6am and I really must go to sleep. There’s a good bit of both work and Work I need to be ready for after all. 

How To Use Urethral Sounds

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WARNING: TEXT NSFW

How To Use Urethral Sounds

Sounding can be a very enjoyable way to play with ideas of penetration, fuck with gender, and experience new and hot sensations. It can also be easily incorporated into all manner of D/s play. The techniques used for sounding aren’t terribly difficult, but there are some simple steps you can take to make it safer and more enjoyable.  

First off, get an *actual* sound or sounding set. You’re way better off dropping $50 on proper sounds than finding thing around the house that might fit in your urethra. Seriously, I mean it. 

Second off, get some sterile surgical lubricant. The best in my opinion is “Surgilube” and you can order it off Amazon or from your local pharmacy. I buy a one gross (144 packets) box of 2oz packets. There are other companies that are a bit cheaper, but they aren’t as pleasant to use, and honestly, you can probably get a 1 gross box for around $30 and it’ll last a couple of years. If you’re just playing with yourself, you can also get an 8oz or 16oz tube as an alternative. 

Clean and rinse the sounds well after each use. I play with multiple people, so I disinfect my sounds with SaniCide after each use, and then clean the SaniCide off with Dr. Bonners or a mild dish soap (you don’t want that stuff in your body), and then I do a quick wipe with rubbing alcohol right before i use them. But again, if it’s just you, you can probably just get away with just the Dr. Bronners/dish soap and the alcohol. 

Now for the whole “using them” part 😉

If you have a standard set, for instance of Hagar sounds, which are probably the most common, you’ll probably NOT want to use the smallest sound in the set. The smaller the sound, the higher the risk that you could screw up (especially at first) and puncture the urethral wall, which sucks about as hard as it sounds. 

Find the largest size that you can put into your urethral with a minimum of resistance and no feeling of stretching. With Hagar sounds I most commonly start beginners off with the third size up. Remember if you’re using a Hagar set that they are dual ended, usually with a 1mm difference between sides, so that’d be the smaller side of the 2nd smallest sounding rod. 

Lube the first several inches of the sound well, and also spread some lubricant around the meatus (piss slit). Being careful to stabilize the sound with your hand, place the end into the meatus, and carefully and gently guide it into the urethra. Use an absolute minimum of force, if any, at this point. Ideally you want to let the sound “fall” in as far as it wants. Once it stops going in, just let it be for a bit, focusing on the experience and sensation, and then maybe try moving it in and out about 1/2 inch. At this point you may want to take out and re-lube the sound. 

Once you’re used to the sensation of having something in your urethra, which can take anywhere from a few seconds, to minutes, to never, you have two clear options: you can bump up your size a bit, or you can go a bit deeper. 

Either way, you’ll likely need to use more (gentle) force to insert the sound or push it further in. This may be uncomfortable. You may feel pressure, or a burning sensation and this is pretty normal. What you DON’T want is any sharp pain or the feeling that one place hurts *more*, especially at the tip of the sound, this is a big warning sign from your body and you need to listen. 

In order to take a sound deeply, you may have to experiment to find the right angle of your penis to your body for the urethral passage to be conducive to sounding once the sound passes the base of your penis. You also may find in the case of Hagar sounds in particular, that the sound wants to rotate around its axis to continue deeper. 

You generally don’t have to worry about entering the bladder (which you emphatically do NOT want to do) as long as you don’t push hard against the sound once it hits resistance while pretty deep in. You can always check how deep the sound is by feeling for the end between your legs along the perineum (taint). If the sound vanishes into your penis, especially if you are rather well endowed, it’s nothing to worry about. You can always retrieve it by finding the bottom end either at your perineum or along your shaft (depending on sound and penis lengths) and pushing up from there.  

There’s a good chance you’ll have some burning with urination for a few hours or even days, this is normal, as is possibly a bit of blood, particularly when you’re new to sounding. If you have a discharge, fever, or cramping, seek medical attention. Also, if you’re prone to urinary tract infections, this may not be the play for you. 

Once you’re accustomed to and comfortable with the whole idea of sounding, you can start experimenting with masturbating with it in, or using the sound specifically for sensation or pain play. Applying pressure to the outside of the urethra for instance with the sound in place is a great way to add some pain both in the moment, and later, as it will be more likely to burn during later urination. You can also “fuck” your penis with the sound. Use short motions, and remember to be very careful, especially if the sound is relatively small. 

Done properly, sounding is generally on the safer end of the kink/BDSM spectrum. Play safe and have fun!

 
NOTE: If you’re interested in having me come teach my sounding workshop, which covers safety, proper use of sounds, and how to use them in sex & BDSM, or any of my other kink/BDSM/sexuality workshops for that matter, I am currently taking bookings for Winter/Spring 2013 appearances. For more information, contact me here