#06 | Sex Lies

Wild & Sublime Podcast Transcript

#06 | Sex Lies

[Wild & Sublime theme music]

Tazima Parris: Especially when we're young or especially if we are inexperienced, there's so little information and we're judging ourselves without context.

Brandon Hunter-Haydon: I think trying to get rid of it is the mistake. If I try to convince myself that it doesn't exist or doesn't live there, then it will have an influence that is unseen to me.

Jessy Lauren Smith: In terms of secretly bisexual feminists growing up in the South, I had a pretty good experience with religion.

Karen Yates: Welcome to Wild & Sublime, a sexy spin on infotainment, no matter your preferences, orientation or relationship style. Based on the popular live Chicago show. Each week I'll chat about sex and relationships with citizens from the world of sex positivity, with spicy additions from storytellers and musicians. I'm Karen Yates. In today's episode, Sex Lies: what assumptions did you pick up as a kid about sex from family culture and friends? How is it impacting you today? our panel discusses plus a storyteller relates how she learned about sex in an Italian restaurant and my Sermon on the Pubic Mound. Keep listening.

Wild & Sublime is sponsored in part by Uberlube -- long-lasting silicone lubricant for sex, sport and style. I highly recommend it. Go to Uberlube.com.

[Music ends]

I'm really interested in how the beliefs we hold impact our lives and perception. Belief systems can become imparted to us even before we as children hold language capabilities through our home life and society. In March 2019, we did a show called Sex Lies, in which our panel chatted about the beliefs we picked up as kids about sex that might still be causing conflict today. During that show a few audience questions had to do with how to dismantle negative sex messages, both for adults but also for people raising kids today in order to create a more sex-positive home. The next three shows are going to look at some of these ideas. We'll be drawing from previous shows, but also interviewing professionals about their work today. Here is that March 2019 panel on sex lies. This was recorded at Constellation in Chicago. And since it's alluded to here, I just wanted to remind listeners that the show at that point was still called Super Tasty. Our panelists are sex and intimacy coach Tazima Parris, sex positive therapist Brandon Hunter-Haydon, and Chicago kinkster and Dom Mksthinghappin.

Karen Yates: Welcome. Whenever we do a panel, we get on the phone first, and it's always an amazing conversation. We always say ‘we need to record this!’ But let's dive right in. One of the things, Brandon, you were talking about on the phone call was about virginity. And it came up earlier in one of the things we read and you know your experience as a therapist You see virginity come up over and over and over again.

Brandon Hunter-Haydon: Yeah, I think for a lot of folks, there is something really tied up in that for them, and it doesn't necessarily matter about the religiosity of it, per se, sometimes there's a huge piece, right, but there is something about a person's feeling of having their own power. And I think this varies depending on how you’re gender-raised, right? But this idea that it's something that you must safeguard and it is an aspect of you that is so precious in it, and it can be taken from you, that there is something inherently you that can be lost or can be taken from you. And the idea of that is really profound when you get to really exploring that there's a part of me, that part of my energy, a part of me that, you know, is either God-given or I came into this world with and I can lose it or it can be taken from me -- and I just think that that is a really -- there's a lot wrapped up in that. Usually, you know, people are so used to talking about virginity that we kind of -- it's like a bump in the road. If I'm taking a sexual history, for example, but we really sit with it. There's a lot of energy wrapped up in that

Karen Yates: Tazima, you wanna say something?

Tazima Parris: Yeah, as you're talking, what I noticed is, there's a value judgment. I think it's not about the religiosity. It's actually about the value that we place on this moment. And it also puts a lot of importance on... because when two women are together, and they haven't had sexual experience, do they both still stay virgins if they have sex contact? If there are things being inserted in things... And then that puts a value on a penis deflowering a woman. I like you used "a bump in the road,"  but there's almost like this "before and after." So it's literally before penis and after penis. [audience laughter]  And there could be such a wide variety of other things that could bring pleasure and I love.  I watched a video, it was a TED Talk, recently, and the woman...a woman who was a lesbian, an identified lesbian. She had never had sex with a man, and she was asked how did she know whether she was a virgin or not, and she offered that you lose your virginity or you're no longer a virgin when you have an orgasm with someone else present. And I was just like... That is just so, so good! And then it doesn't have to be all penis-centric. It can be pleasure-centric.

Karen Yates: And one of the things we're talking about is gender. Mksthingshappin, did you want to say something?

Mksthingshappin: Well, yeah, I wanted to talk about the stress you have when you are younger, with the concept of virginity. I learned about the concept of having sex, maybe in third grade. And I didn't really actually have sex until I was, you know, 18. That's a long span to be thinking about sex. [laughs] And the message I got from my friends, from my father, ultimately, is that the first time you do it, you had to be good. So there was a lot of stress created on, you know, first time as a guy, you are supposed to know what you're doing. And, of course, I had no clue. And, you know, even today, you know, I'm a little more experienced we'll say--safe to say--but there's still a little bit of a voice in my head, you know, just prior to having sex of "you got to be good." And it's funny how that recording sticks with you.

Karen Yates: Right. It's almost this idea of… I keep thinking about productivity and value and worth. It's like it's almost commodified. I don't know, there's something like the commodity, the commodity of being you know, female-identified in this society, that you're a commodity and you're of less value, right, when you are... You have more value when you're a virgin. Less value--unless you're a mother, you know, so it's like all of these things that kind of come up... I mean, there's thie schism between Madonna/whore that came up in our conversation. We were talking about "men that play around but then they're family men." So these kind of these ideas are in play.

Mksthingshappin: Yeah. And in preparation to talk about this -- obviously I only knew my own personal myths and recordings -- so I spoke to to my anchor partners. And they were telling me from their perspectives that are female, the recordings, the myths, the things they heard growing up. Things like "You can only have sex when you're married." I think that's pretty common. The thing that was surprising was that this person was told that your husband could have sex with you whenever he wanted, it wasn't about you. And that was actually a myth that was told to her. And I thought that was pretty shocking.

Karen Yates: So how does one begin? And is there anything else, Tazima or Brandon, you want to say?

Brandon Hunter-Haydon: I do want to share just a quick snippet of a story about a client that I was working with around virginity in particular, and the way that this person repurposed it was that virginity was the essence of newness or a frontier, and we explored how can virginity be something that you're always a part of? Like, I was a Constellation virgin until tonight, right? It's like, you know, and there are Super Tasty virgins in this room, you know? So how can the idea of that actually turn into something that is, that is an experience you only have once, right? But it's something that is cultivated in your daily life, how can you cultivate that sense of newness, that frontier, the thing that you're sharing in the moment, knowing that you'll never have it for the first time again, right? But that you are consenting to, that you're engaging in, that it's yours to give, it's yours to engage.

Karen Yates: Right? It's like a more holistic way of existence. Right? Yeah.

Mksthingshappin: I'm gonna disagree with...

Karen Yates: Of course you're gonna disagree...

Mksthingshappin: [Laughs] You know, I'm coming from a kink perspective. So if you're talking P in V, yes, you know, that obviously can happen just once. But in terms of kink, there's many different disciplines. There's rope and there's flogging, and there's heavy impact and there's rough body play. There's tons of things that you can experience. And each time you learn or do one of those activities, it's almost like being a virgin again, because the excitement, the anxiety, the... the hotness, the... the fails. All come about again and again and again.

Karen Yates: Mm-hmm.

Tazima Parris: And the last thing I want to add here is that there's this, there's this fundamental expectation without information. And that--

Karen Yates: What do you mean?

Tazima Parris: So, so... There's... With the performance...Or how it's supposed to be, or how I'm supposed to be or how it's supposed to feel, or what's supposed to occur. There are all these expectations, and we have--especially when we're young, or especially if we are inexperienced--there's so little information and we're judging ourselves without context and it’s costly--

Mksthingshappin: [over her] And there's always porn--judging compared to porn and--

Tazima Parris: And my favorite quote recently that I heard was "Teaching people to have sex based on porn is like having people learn to drive by watching 'Fast and Furious'." [audience laughter]

Karen Yates: Yeah.

Tazima Parris: So, yeah, even, you know, skewed examples or lack of information or bad information can have us carrying really yucky feelings toward ourselves into every interaction that we're having. And that's deplorable. That's -- I don't like that.

Karen Yates: What is.. what is.. like, how do you begin? Even if you're aware of these things? I mean, I think we're bringing up things that folks are like, "yeah, I know, that's a lie. I know that's an assumption. Yeah, I grew up with that, but I'm beyond it." But I mean, I watched in my own life, things bite me on the ass all the time. You know, and.. and... you know, how can people begin exploring it? You know?

Mksthingshappin: Okay. I always say every show -- I say the same thing, because it really does cover almost every big sex topic, every kink topic: communication, self discovery, and ultimately, negotiation. You know, you have to confront the myths and the fears and the excitement internally, before you can externally express anything. And it takes a lot of bravery. It takes a lot of time. It takes patience. But when you invest that kind of, of love to yourself internally -- I'm not talking masturbation this time. I could... [laughs] Then you're better prepared to overcome these myths.

Karen Yates: Right. Right. [to audience] And by the way, you've all been given paper and pencils. And at the intermission, you can totally write down questions you might have for these lovely folks, to unpack some of the things you might be looking at today in your life and the things that have impacted you. What else?

Brandon Hunter-Haydon: I think I would riff off of what Mksthingshappin was saying and undergirding those behaviors that he mentioned, would be a couple of core traits that I think I would see as really facilitating those things, which are humility, curiosity and empathy. And I think if you're working, beginning with oneself, and and if you're bringing that as an attitude behind the action, whatever it is, you will, even if it's a quote-unquote ‘fail’ in the moment, what you take with you from that moment will be far greater. And the connection, the connection is really the thing with oneself and with a partner, you're looking for that connection. And I think those are the three core traits that facilitate that connection, even if there's disagreement.

Tazima Parris: And I'd love to highlight that there's no finish line to this stuff. If it got loaded into your awareness before age seven, it's with you for life... like that's just... It's baked in, and it's going to be something that's going to show up kind of everywhere. Whatever that thing it is, you get to practice it. You get to practice facing it, you get to practice. I mean, I've seen this time and time again in my practice. I've seen it in my own life. There's no end, where you  finally get over it. You don't finally fucking get over it. You just don't. But you get better at seeing it. You get better at naming it you get better at copping to it. You get better to being like, I agree. You're right. I didn't see that. It was a blind spot. Which is one of the reasons I love about partnership and relationships because that can be an excellent spotting partner for, "Oh, you're doing the thing again. It's actually not true. I love you so much. Actually that's a story. It's all good." And you can work on that together. You can be like a team on it.

Karen Yates: I love it.

Tazima Parris: It's the thing, and it doesn't have to be an enemy, it can actually be a friend that brings us closer, and we can develop more intimacy.

Karen Yates: I want to read a couple of -- you know, we're gonna go to the intermission now, but I want to read a couple more things from the folks onstage. Not necessarily these folks -- but everyone that's up here has written one of the things they picked up. "The sex lie I learned was that if you love someone you had to have or want to have sex with them." "Once you reach adulthood, or teen-age, physical touch inherently implies sexual charge and content."  "Fear that I'm always coming on to someone stops me from expressing physical affection in joyful ways." "How much should I share and with whom? What's appropriate versus too much? Too much information." So yeah, a lot of things that get brought up. Any final words before we go to the intermission?

Mksthingshappin: Just that, you know, you can use some of these myths as a source of power, you know, going back to the, you know, your, the myth of you're supposed to be good from the start. I wasn't, you know, but I kind of used that myth, that recording in my head, to constantly learn. Reading books, talking to the appropriate people, and then talking to my partners to find out what they like. Doesn't matter how good I am. It's more about what their needs are and how I can better fulfill their needs. So it can be a source of power.

Karen Yates: Cool. We'll discuss that in act two.  [segment break]

 [music under] We'll be hearing several of the audience questions put to our panel in a moment.

But first, what happens at a kinky summer camp anyway? Did you even know there was such a thing as a kinky summer camp? Well, you can find out more. We will be including, as bonus content on our Patreon site, a segment we did last year on Twisted Tryst. We go on an imaginary walking tour with Mx. Maya, the education director, that paints a preeeeeetty clear picture of all the activities available to the kinky campers. That bonus segment, never to grace the podcast, is available at the $10/month level right now. Check out our Patreon site and consider joining our membership program to support our podcast and connect to us. Even at the $5 a month level, you'll get discounts, soon to be added merchandise, and shout-outs. I'm hoping in the next few weeks to be making some announcements that will be available to Patreon members first. The link is in our show notes.

And now it's time for the q&a portion of the show. The panelists were joined by sex educator, writer, and activist Heather Corinna, whom I had interviewed earlier on the show that night. [music ends]

[Applause, reading] "Does mutual masturbation count is having sex?"

All Panelists

Yes! Hell yeah!

Tazima Parris: Everything is sex! [audience laughs]

Karen Yates: Yeah!

Tazima Parris: Everything is sex!

Karen Yates: Everything is sex!

Tazima Parris: Let's say it together.

Everyone in audience

Everything is sex!

Tazima Parris: I'm having sex with all of you! [laughter] It's really because when we make this, like, line in the sand official, it's official. Again, it's Before Dick and After Dick. Stop it! There's, there are lots of activities that can be done. And and when we add the togetherness that can happen -- it's vulnerable to masturbate in front of somebody.

Karen Yates: Oh my god, for sure.

Tazima Parris: I mean, what? Are you kidding? So the level of vulnerability is high, the level of connection is high, you're both risking at the same time. It's totally sex.

Heather Corinna: You know what always tells me that that's almost more sex than anything, is that that's the one thing adolescents want to avoid doing together at allllll costs. And that's why: it's because of what you're saying. Right? Because of the vulnerability.

Karen Yates: [reading question] Why is cum so magical? [laughter] I agree. I agree. But I've noticed sometimes with men, they treat their cum like it is... like industrial waste, or I don't know, like nuclear material. What's up with that?

Mksthingshappin: I really don't know what you mean. [laughter]

Karen Yates: [to audience] Maybe some of y'all know what I mean. I don't know. Does anyone know what I mean? Has anyone had--

Audience Member

Yeah!

Karen Yates: Thank you. Thank you for that "Yeah." Okay. Thank you. All right.

Audience Member

It's about getting a girl pregnant.

Karen Yates: Okay, good point. Good point.

Audience Member

It's a hetero thing. [laughter]

Karen Yates: Thank you. Okay. For Mksthinghappin. [reading] "As a relative newcomer to the kink community, I find myself shedding some of the more common sex lies about kink. It's not all whips and chains. Impact doms aren't all abusers, etc. How do I go about shedding some of the more subtle, more ingrained, lines about kink, pain, and communication as I begin to explore some of the kinks less well-known by vanilla folks?"

Mksthingshappin: Okay, well, there's a lot to unpack there. So I'll simplify it. Rather than trying to figure out what everyone else is thinking about kink, spend the time to discover what's your internal truth. You know, I've been doing kink a lot for seven years. And, you know, I started out with impact and I thought, okay, love impact. That's what I'll do forever.

Tazima Parris: [to help audience] What's impact, Mksthingshappin?

Mksthingshappin: It's paddling, flogging, spanking, the whips, chains, you know...And when I discovered over time that I was into things that I didn't know I would be into, and I come to realize that the kink you have is already inside. It's just a matter of discovering it. You may discover it by accident watching a particular porn, a partner may introduce something brand spanking new to you, and [laughter] you go, "Hey, that's cool!" And just like with anything else, you have to kind of almost ignore the external factors and find out what's true for you, and then go from there. And then when you're confronted with everyone else's misconceptions, it's an opportunity to educate. You know, one of the reasons I do this whole thing is that, you know, there's a lot of misconceptions. There's the "50 Shades of Grey" BS that you hear that it has to be hardcore, it's abusive, it's bad, there's something wrong with you. And the reality is I've never felt more stable, more authentic, and that is the work through kink.

Karen Yates: [reading] So the question is "What myths if any, do you still find yourselves disproving or unpacking?" And I think that is for all of us on the stage.

Tazima Parris: For me, there was this -- when I was growing up, I grew up with the West Indian/Caribbean culture background, and everything is dripping with sex. If you've ever seen Carnival, that was -- that's just normal. Okay--not -- we don't do the feathers at home. But you know what I'm saying. {Laughter] But it's really sexy, and my parents were also conservative. So it was super confusing for me. And so I had my parents being like--everything is like sort of flirty and oozy but then "don't have sex." And then I'm like...? Well, you know, I'm having to try to figure it out. So part of the lie was like, "don't do this thing that seems incredibly awesome and everybody wants to do it." The lie was like this contradiction. And then I'm with my young friends and everybody's like, "go ahead and do it." But also, "if you dance that way, the way that your parents are okay with you dancing, that's nasty!" So for me the lies were like the these contradictory experiences that I was having sort of both at home and out in the world, and I was left with "what the... what the fuck is happening?" So... so a lot of it was more contradictory than it was like an overt specific thing that this is not true or this is true, because I couldn't figure out what was true.

Karen Yates: And as you grapple today, what goes on today?

Tazima Parris: With that, there are is there are times when I'm like, Wait a second. This feels good. This feels like something I want to do, but then there will be this little ticker, like, is it okay? And who's saying is it okay?

Karen Yates: Mmm-hmmm.

Tazima Parris: Like I'm still with that question. Is this a judgment from way long before? Or is this actually me with a doubt about this particular?

Karen Yates: Right! I mean, I think that's really what it comes down to! Is this my authentic voice? It's like learning the difference. And I think the longer you sit with yourself and get to know yourself, you start knowing the difference between -- is this the fake, you know, voice of dominant culture or is this like, "really, I don't really want to be doing this," you know, but it takes a while, it takes practice day in and day out--

Tazima Parris: And listening, listening to what feels real, like double gut-checking -- and actually, I use the pussy check. She always knows.

Heather Corinna: And trusting your own authority.

Brandon Hunter-Haydon: I think it's interesting because, uh, you know, Tazima and I were talking about having kind of similar energies, like these contradictory energies and upbringing where, particularly from male figures in my family, there was a lot of sexualization of the world and a lot of encouragement -- "the sooner the better, the more the merrier." But there was also this this contradictory idea that once you get serious about it or once you have feelings, then you have to transform into this "Family Man" as it were; you have to transforme into this other figure, like that's the threshold that you cross. And if somebody really likes sex, or somebody really likes experimenting, then that's not the person that you pick to have the family.

Karen Yates: Hmmm.

Heather Corinna: Yechh!

Brandon Hunter-Haydon: Yeah, right. So there's this sort of mythology around that, which is deeply contradictory as well. Deeply contradictory. I think later in life, one of the things that's come up, and this comes with a lot of clients too, particularly masculinized clients, is "If I'm into kink that is especially humiliation play or violence play with someone who is feminized, is that just my internal misogyny playing out?" There's actually a lot of people who have come to me because they're really disturbed by that question, because they have discovered a kink, right? In a consensual relationship and a play space, but they're disturbed by it. Does that mean that I am somehow... Is that a part of my ugliness showing itself and therefore, should I not, even if somebody likes it, should I not embrace that? It that a forbidden power? 

Karen Yates: Right.

Brandon Hunter-Haydon: Yeah.

Karen Yates: And how do you work with that? For yourself?

Brandon Hunter-Haydon: Slowly.

Karen Yates:  Yeah?

Brandon Hunter-Haydon: Yeah. I think staying staying humble about where it lives when it comes up. Feeling what it feels like in my body when it's present. And staying curious about it. I think. I think trying to get rid of it is the mistake, right? Nature abhors to vacuum, right? And if I try to convince myself that it doesn't exist or doesn't live there, then it will, it will have an influence that is unseen to me.

Karen Yates: Right. Right.

Brandon Hunter-Haydon: So getting with it in a way, is a way of retaining control.

Karen Yates: Heather, did you want to say something?

Heather Corinna: Well, you know, actually, listening to the two of you and then kind of, I don't know, taking in a lot of what has been brought up tonight, one of the things that I was kind of just thinking about is when I think about... I was very precocious sexually. And when I think about how it was with my parents... My parents were very different people that pretty much only got along for five minutes. I think you could figure out which five. [Laughter] The messaging from them was very different. You know, for my mother, it was that absolutely my own sense of myself and my decisions about anything with sexuality couldn't be trusted, right? If it was about sex, it couldn't be trusted, but certainly it couldn't with me. My dad, on the other hand, kind of came from this perspective that was like, "I do trust you, but you have to take care of everything by yourself. And if you can't take care of everything by yourself, Well, maybe you're not really ready for this." I think that when you look at those things, that sends...There's a message out there, I think, that says that if you are ready for all of this jelly, and if you can handle all of this, that you also don't need help, when in truth, what it really is, is that... Or if you trust your own authority, you don't need help. When you can do all of these things concurrently. You can trust yourself, right? You can give yourself authority and know that you know what you want and you know what you need and that what you want is okay, while you still need help and support and information and process and someone to really hold you in the space that you're in -- and needing both of those things doesn't mean that something's wrong. In fact, I would posit that that's exactly right. That's what everyone needs all the time.

Karen Yates: Right. Wonderful. Anything else?

Heather Corinna: [to Mksthingshappin] I thought you said "50 Shades of Gravy." And I was really excited.

Brandon Hunter-Haydon: That's a cookbook.

Mksthingshappin: Or is it?

Heather Corinna: I was holding on to it for a while and you said ‘anything else’? Yeah, I thought "you know, it's IN there.." And now it's...[laughter]

Karen Yates: Thank you. So, thank you. Okay. [laughter] Well, I want to thank the panelists for showing up tonight and talking. Thank you so much. And now we're on -- let's give us all a round here. [applause]

[Voiceover] For more information on our panelists, go to the show notes. In several weeks, you'll hear Heather Corinna's full interview about their recent books and Scarleteen, the wildly popular sex education website they founded for teens and young adults.

Jessy Lauren Smith is a playwright and storyteller. I got to know her when I voiced this very cool promenade theater piece that she co-wrote and produced called "Artifacts," where the audience walked around wearing headphones through a warehouse filled with salvaged stuff. When we were recording that, I asked her to be on the show, and she said, "I think I’ve got a story." This is also from the March 2019 show at Constellation. Enjoy.

Jessy Lauren Smith: When I was 10, my parents took me out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. In my memory, it's a seafood/Italian fusion place, but hopefully that's wrong. They ordered Pouilly Fuisee for my dad and Bud Light for my mom and a Shirley Temple for me, because this was a special occasion. They were going to tell me What Sex Is. When the waiter stepped away, they both took deep breaths. "First of all," my mom said, "sex is a beautiful thing." "Between a man and woman within the bonds of marriage," my dad added -- which, duh, I knew.

"In some ways," my mom said, "we feel closest to God when we're having sex." The waiter started to approach with our drinks, overheard my mom, and backed slowly away. [Laughter] My dad breaks it down: "When two people have sex, the man puts his penis in the woman's.... You know what? You're here. I don't need to cover this." I got penetrative sex talk, is what I got. You might wonder why I was getting this information from my parents over clam risotto. Probably. I looked up a list of Italian seafood dishes for this story. It is not a long list.

Anyway, I was homeschooled. I was homeschooled in the South by post-hippie, ex- druggie, Christian parents. It was very confusing all the time. [laughter] Like in this case, they curated this experience to convey that sex is good -- clam risotto-level good. And they didn't want it to be like a thing where I could only talk to my mom about it because sex and bodies weren't just exclusive to a specific gender conversation. They wanted it out in the open, but of course, there's also the casual homophobia in the way they set it up.

My parents didn't raise me to hate gay people, they were more like, "Well, it's the ‘90s, and God says not to be gay, so our hands are tied." And then later in life, they met openly gay people, and they were like, "How could God be mad at them?? They seem great!" Sometimes people change their minds when they learn something new. We've all been that person at one point or another on our way to this room. Anyway, so in terms of secretly bisexual feminists growing up in the South, I had a pretty good experience with religion. [laughter] And even though I met people later in life who strongly corrected me, I clung to this belief that the god of my childhood was real and good, and wanted us to show mercy and seek justice and look after the oppressed and wanted me to feel close to Him. [laughter]

About 20 years after the Sex Talk, I'm coming off a bad breakup and not ready to get into anything serious and I'm pretty wound up, so I start dating soooo hard. I quickly get good at it because practice makes perfect, and asking questions is not actually that hard. It's boring, but I'm gaining a useful skill set and getting laid whenever I feel like it. Which leads us to John. Over text, John asks me what my favorite book is. I tell him it's "Franny and Zooey." He chooses a bar near his house and makes a half joke about getting me to come back there. This is all fine with me because I have decided that unless this guy sets off warning bells, I'mma fuck him. [laughter] When I show up at the Whistler, John is reading a copy of Franny and Zooey. It looks like he's halfway through, but like, was he...?? [laughter] When I approach him and smile, he does a double take. "You're really pretty," he says. It is a genius combination of actions. I am so excited. I'm gonna fuck this guy and then steal all of his tricks! [laughter]

"So what were the best and worst things that happened to you this year?" he asks as I sit down. "I would like a large whiskey," I answer. John's super-transparent move of getting women into deep personal discussions in order to get into their pants is frankly a huge relief after a year of telling people "if I've seen any good movies yet." I haven't. And where I'm from: "America." As we keep drinking, and he keeps asking questions, I start talking about God. [laughter] I tell him a little--that's what I do when I get drunk I, I talk about religion, and I ask people how old they are for some reason. I'm super fun at parties. Anyway, so I tell him a little bit about my childhood. I tell him I still go to church sometimes.

He says, "But you're an artist and you're a liberal and you're, you know, bisexual. How can that work?" I don't have a good answer for this. I know it's not supposed to fit together. I know I'm crossing enemy lines from whatever side you look at it. "So you live nearby?" I say instead. [laughter] We get inside and get our clothes off. He tries to flatter me. I find it disingenuous and annoying. So I pull him into bed. He goes down on me to prove he's a feminist. And when I get bored, I pull him back up again. [Laughter] You know, you know! He had more to drink than I did and he's having trouble getting it up. He uses a toy on himself. I kind of space out thinking "maybe there isn't a God because I certainly don't feel closer to him or her now." Though my parents have been pretty specific that it was the penis and vagina insertion part of sex and I hadn't really been my experience… I suddenly tune back in. John's trying to push his half-erection into my vagina. "Are you wearing a condom?" I say. "Shhh," he says," I need you to trust me, Jessy."

"Why would I trust you?" I shouted him. "You're a stranger!" [Laughter]

Five minutes later, he's driving me home. [laughter] We ride in silence. I wish I was in a cab because my thoughts feel loud and they don't really have anything to do with him. We're pulling up to my house when I blurt out: "Do you really think it's impossible for me to be... me?" He takes a long pause. "I think that your life will always be really difficult." And in that moment, I like him more than I've liked him at any other point in the evening and it's probably still part of the game, this false intimacy, but I don't know. I think I just wanted somebody to say it.

When I half-heartedly kiss John goodnight and shut my apartment door behind me, I take a deep breath and close my eyes hoping that I'm in the middle of the most difficult and confusing part of my life. I wasn't. But I know he's probably right. Being a lot of seemingly contradictory things at once is chaotic and stressful. And sometimes I feel like I don't even know myself. But I want to decide, I want to decide where the lines are. I want to set the terms of who I am and then maybe change my mind later. I want to learn new things. Find out I'm wrong and I definitely, definitely want to take a shower and change out of the skirt. I get a text from John the next day asking if I want to go see a play at Steppenwolf. I do... but not with him. [Laughter, applause]

Karen Yates: Wild & Sublime is also sponsored in part by our Sublime Supporter, Chicago-based Full Color Life Therapy. Therapy for all of you, at fullcolorlifetherapy.com. If you would like to be a Sublime Supporter, showcasing you and your business and supporting us at the same time, contact us at . And now it's time for my Sermon on the Pubic Mound.

You might think that it's an enormous undertaking to become divested of the various sex lies that you believe but maybe don't want to believe. That they're too entrenched, too long held, that they have just sunk so deeply into the unconscious that there's nothing to be done for it. Now, I don't really think that we are unknowable to ourselves. And I certainly don't believe that we can't change. I believe that it is a question of attention.

For example, last week, I was in a terrible mood. It just came on, seemingly out of nowhere. And I asked myself, "Where did this begin? Is there something specific that happened? Now usually this question is enough to help me locate what the problem is. You know, I might have talked with someone and, you know, gotten pissed off at something they might have said, and you know, I can kind of look at it that way. But in this case, it really didn't help. So, usually at this point, what I will do is I actually will start talking out loud as if I am talking to someone else. And in doing that, in actually hearing myself talk it out, it gives me a little bit of distance on myself and then I can usually figure out what the problem is.

So I started talking. I'm like, "yeah, I'm just not feeling good la la la la la". And suddenly I heard myself say, "What do I have to offer the world anyway?" And in a flash, I saw everything: the weight of this really heavy idea and how much it's tied up with a worth: that to be worthy or to take up space, one has to have something to give that's of value, and how this burden on oneself can really suck the joy out of everything. And I just sat there and I thought, "Wow! Can you lighten up?” And I mean, I wasn't even saying this, like, in a mean way to myself, I was just like, wow, is it possible for you to just lighten up? Can you have fun with these things that you think are just such a burden? And then I just started thinking about people that I admire, you know, that I see maybe on media or people in my life that are just able to have fun without any thought to outcome. And how much I admire that.

And just as I, like, started thinking through all of this stuff, I noticed that I really felt this weight just sort of come off of me. And I just began feeling better. So I was able to catch this belief and really look at it, if only briefly, in order to get relief. Not that it's completely resolved. I mean, this is like a biiiiiiig belief, but it allowed me to consider other choices in that moment. And that is the critical part, because making different choices leads to different outcomes. And that can change you over time.

[THEME MUSIC] Next week, we're back with "What's Up With That?" as we talk with Logan Pierce about the word 'nonbinary." I also interview sex therapist Jennifer Litner about her digital course for parents, guardians, and caregivers in how to give appropriate sex education to kids. Thank you for listening. If you know someone who might be interested in this episode, send it to them. And please, if you like what you heard, give us a nice review on your podcast app. I'd like to thank Wild & Sublime associate producer Julia Williams and design guru Jean-Francois Gervais. Theme music by David Ben-Porat. Our media sponsor is Rebellious Magazine: Feminist Media, at rebelliousmagazine.com. Follow us on social media @wildandsublime and sign up for newsletters at wildandsublime.com