Woman on Fire (30 page)

In order to give yourself permission, you also need to practice getting permission from others.

SOME THINGS TO CONSIDER IN GETTING PERMISSION:

1. Communication and negotiation go a long way to set up the fun. Negotiate with your partner, ask a lot of questions, and get clear so you can really go for it. Knowing the boundaries of the playing field allows you to play full-out because you know the parameters of play.
   
2. Have a safe word. It helps because if something goes over a limit, or a limit shows up that you didn't realize you had, you can reset and find your way back, and so can your partner. This is far preferable to the typical reaction, which is to shut down and not tell your partner what is going on or to keep going with something you don't want. A safe word can be anything that you wouldn't normally say during sex, like “coffee” or “rain.” Some people just use a simple “red” for stop, “yellow” for warning/slow down, and “green” for more, more, more! (“Yes” also works, and it's way hotter than “green.”)
   
3. Giving permission is expressing consent. Consent is hot. “Yes” is hot. When you're in it, it's appropriate to check in if you're unsure. “Is it okay if I do this?” “Do you like this better, or
   this
   ?” “How does that feel when I touch you like this?”
   
4. “No” is healthy. It's clear. It allows you to trust a relationship. Really listen for the ways your partner might say no. It's not always direct. If they seem to be avoiding sex, dodging questions, or focusing elsewhere, ask them about it. Help them define their “no” if they seem to be having a tough time saying it. It will feel better for you both.
   
5. Permission helps you explore and learn about your partner—this is a huge gift. “Can I massage your body?” “Can I go down on you?” “Would you like to hear a sexy story?” Or just “What would you most like for our sexy date tonight? What do you know you don't want?”
   

The more you explore these various aspects of who you are as an erotic being, the more self-understanding you have. Your self-knowledge allows you to choose a place of truth in your sexual expression. If you are used to pretending to be something you know you are not in order to please others, hold on to a relationship, or attract a particular lover, it needs to stop. If you are role-playing, fine. But when you are pretending to be something you are not, it does not serve you—it disempowers you. When you know who you are, you can be more authentic with how you walk in the world and in your relationships. So you have to give yourself permission to be you.

You are not a clone of your friends or your partner. You are a unique sexual being with an entire erotic language that is yours to creatively express and explore. No one can take that from you or make you be someone else without your permission. And why would you willingly submit to that?

We often do it unconsciously. It's wise to examine your relationships and see if there are places where you are not being the real you. Who are you molding yourself for and twisting who you are because you think it will please them? It is not only harmful to you when you people-please; ultimately it is also harmful to others because they believe you to be something you are not and eventually that ends up being duplicitous and hurtful.

Yet when you know who you are and you express yourself from that place, you feel empowered, authentic, aligned, and right where you need to be. From that place you will draw to yourself experiences and relationships that you really want and that are aligned with the life you want. Stop wasting your life trying to get what you want from people who are incapable of giving it, like Rain did.

If I hadn't signed up to work with you, I would be stuck and still in the same old rut, crying myself to sleep at night, begging my husband for sex every six months, locked into the ideology that I'm married and stuck where I am at, believing it's not okay for me to want more or to expect more and it's not okay for me to challenge the status quo, locked into that cultural norm. I am more content now. Another part of me is still frustrated. I feel like I have to shelter Mick from the fact that I am moving on. I've done a lot. I have reorganized my life. I've come a long way.

And truly she has. Since we first met, her life has transformed and so has she. A big part of our work was the permission giving—me to Rain, and Rain to herself.

I've given myself permission so many times since my college professors modeled it expertly for me by telling the class to go home and masturbate. I gave myself permission to explore my own body. Permission to find my way to orgasm. Permission to say what I want. Permission to flirt. Permission to be sexy. Permission to scream louder. Permission to fuck myself silly. Permission to buy sex toys. Permission to have anal sex. Permission to bring a woman into my bed. Permission to be boyish. Permission to dress in drag. Permission to be feminine. Permission to submit. Permission to dominate. Permission to explore naughty things and to like them. Permission to play out fantasies. Permission to watch porn and read sexy stories. Permission to have more than one lover. Permission to be proudly single. Permission to not want children or marriage. Permission to have sex in risky places.

I could keep going—and I will. I hope you will too. For the permission you give yourself directly correlates with the amount of exploration you get to experience. Sexuality and exploration together light you up, help you live fully and without reserve, and help you to find out who you really are as a sexual
being.

Element 7:
PLAY

DEVELOP SEXUAL SKILLS AND REMEMBER HOW TO PLAY

Play is the exultation of the possible.

—M
ARTIN
B
UBER

So much of what gets in the way of sexual freedom is how seriously we take sex. Well, it
is
serious—
and
it's meant to be playful. Most of us lose some of our ability to play as children. We have our desire for play and our unhinged imagination squashed by overly serious adults who want us to be something other than what we naturally are. Then we grow into adults and want to get back some of that pure joy of play and authenticity we had when we were children before someone told us we were wrong for it.

“Quit horsing around!” my father would snap. I was the oldest child and had more serious
responsibility in my family early on than my younger siblings. Somewhere I learned to be annoyed when my two younger sibs would play, joke, and laugh. Partly I might have felt left out because I was finding it hard to let myself play like that. And partly, well, they were just annoying younger siblings. As the oldest, most mature child, I thought that being grown up meant being more serious, which is where most of us land sexually.

I didn't really re-embrace play until early adulthood. Sexuality was a doorway into play, into imagination and creativity and getting back some part of myself I might have lost when I was little. By allowing myself to play and explore sexually, I allowed myself not to take life so seriously and to have more fun. No one ever thinks I am my age because my playful self, style, and fashion show a side of me that is tapped into creative imagination and expression. And creativity feels vibrantly alive, not old and decaying.

We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.

—S
ATCHEL
P
AIGE

I never got to go to summer camp when I was a kid. My dad was just trying to hold it together to make sure he had childcare taken care of and dinner on the table each night at five p.m. sharp. Looking back, camp would have given him a much-needed break.

I always felt like I missed out on something. So I started going to summer camp as an adult. First, I started attending women's spirituality summer camps, where I taught classes, led rituals, tended the fire at sweat lodges in service to the community, and got to stay in a cabin with other women. We would decorate the cabin, add to the graffiti on the cubbies, dress in fun outfits, and leave witchery treats for the young girls who would come to camp later that summer after we left.

Then I went to adult sex camp and discovered a whole other
adult playground. There was the cabin experience and the dress-up. There were also playrooms, kissing zones, playshops, dungeons for sexual and BDSM play, wooded areas where extensive role-plays would be staged, and a pool. Talk about adult playground! If you don't know how to play, adult summer camp will teach you to let go and allow opportunities for possibility, even if it's just through being a voyeur. When do you get to see real people have sex? When do you get to explore sexual activities that range from cuddle piles to group sex to people being restrained and flogged by a dirty-talking top? You won't be into all of it, but getting exposure to new ideas and varying sexual experience is exciting and it inspires your own play. People play in so many ways, and creativity inspires more creativity. It's the law of energy at work again. Life-giving activities reproduce themselves. Sexual desire leads to more desire. Creativity to more creativity. Ideas spawn more ideas. It's like the urge to go home and make art after a visit to a museum. When you are a part of a sexual community, you learn endless ways to explore your own desires, your kinks and perversions, or your sweet spots.

Mimosa was a playful, thoughtful twenty-six-year-old woman when she came to participate in my women's sexual empowerment program. She was ready to break through all of the ways she was inhibited and keeping herself contained as a sexual person.

Sex was always about the other person as far as enjoyment. It was always a means to an end. Like most children, I was very curious about sex. When I was younger my girlfriends and I would kiss or touch. This was stopped after my older sister explained to me that according to the Bible, lesbians are “bad.”

Around the age of twelve, I stumbled upon my brother's porn on
our family computer and was totally turned on. There was shame in watching, I didn't want to be caught in the act, but I couldn't stop. I wanted to know what all of that felt like! But no one in my family talked about masturbation, and sex had been painted as dangerous and something to be saved. So even though I was curious and my body was saying, “Let's play!” I knew my will and modesty were the only things that would keep me safe.

I didn't give myself permission to explore myself sexually until I was twenty-three years old. Once I shed my shame of being attractive and embraced my beauty, I was able to appreciate those elements in others and step into my full form. I cut my hair and wore different clothes; I danced on stage in lingerie and learned how to wear makeup. I invested in my own jewelry. It has allowed me to appreciate the beauty around me rather than feel threatened by it. I have more authentic connections with both men and women.

Remembering that life is abundant with opportunity has helped me free myself to play. I used to worry about how I would be perceived by a person based on one interaction. With abundance comes permission to mess up because there will be another chance to do it again. It's funny, but within that safe space of making mistakes is where my true authentic nature comes out to play. I have learned that life can be light and meaningful simultaneously. I have learned that you can have powerful sexual experiences without it being serious.

One tangible activity that helped me come to this place was participating in a literal play, specifically a cabaret. Playing different roles in different scenarios has proven to me that I am infinite. That each moment is another opportunity to re-create myself. That I can become whomever I want to be whenever I want to become it. That who I was yesterday does not need to dictate who I am right now, and who I choose to be now does not determine who I will be tomorrow.

I made friends with people who would play with me. I went
to an open improv comedy class where all they do is play games. Probably the most helpful was the home-play through Amy Jo's Women's Sexually Empowered Life Program and Confidence Teleclass, which gave me a reason to try interacting with my world in a different way. The confidence class encouraged me to change my question from “How did I look?” to “How much fun did I have?” That simple question put into motion a different intention, which was incredibly powerful.

Maintaining a perception of abundance allows space for mistakes, which emboldens me to try new things and ask questions that I wouldn't have asked before. Playfulness also changes my approach to masturbating. When I employ the question “How can I make this fun?” it becomes less about my orgasm and more about exploring, trying new things. It invites a curiosity that leads to self-discovery of things I like and things that I'd rather not do again anytime soon.

We evolved through play. Our culture thrives on play. Courtship includes high theater, rituals, and ceremonies of play. Ideas are playful reverberations of the mind.

—D
IANE
A
CKERMAN
, D
EEP
P
LAY

If we evolved through play, sex certainly did! Play always has a place where it happens—a playground, someplace familiar, a new wonderland ready for exploration, a sacred (as in special or exalted) place. I believe we can make a playground just about anywhere if we choose to. There usually are some etiquette or rules of engagement for play in any playground. As part of my women's sexual empowerment programs, I provide lots of opportunities for women to play. We play games, we form puppy piles, we dress up, we create worlds where
unusual things can happen. When being faced with the opportunity for play, some women get uncomfortable and choose to sit on the sidelines watching the action rather than going for it and being in it. And that is okay—it's where they are. Often this is because many of us have had the urge and freedom to play conditioned right out of us, sometimes to the point where it can be triggering. Some people will shut down, withdraw, or go into fear about how their way of playing might be judged. We can feel too embarrassed to let others see us be silly or bring out other parts of the self. When I witness that, I know those are the same fears or patterns that will come up for a woman when she is in sexual situations. We can create our own prisons so adeptly, and the one where you have to do everything perfectly and you have a deep dread of rejection and judgment, so you don't do anything outside of the box and you try to fly under the radar sans participation—that prison is torture.

There are so many ways into play. Play is engaging with the things, places, and people you love, are curious about, or want to explore. Play is for its own sake. In our busy adult lives, we are so overscheduled that we might have a hard time setting aside play time. Yet so many people report they are unhappy doing what they are doing in life. Play does require setting aside time for it, like anything else you care about. Yet just wearing a fun outfit to do housework is play (outfits always make it better). You can make mundane things fun too. We
all
need play. It's an essential part of life and of your sexuality.

How and where do you play? What opens you up to have experiences without needing to have a specific outcome? What allows you to let go and be in a moment without the mental tape running ruminations in your head about what everyone else will think of it? Not thinking about how the critics will receive it—whatever “it” is? What allows you to shut those voices down and just be present to creativity, discovery, imagination, and revelry? To the pursuit of ecstasy?

Consider your current favorite playgrounds. Perhaps you love to play in the kitchen, concocting delicious treats, beverages, and sumptuous meals in an alchemical explosion of culinary art. Or maybe your art room, your camera, or your writing is your playground, where your creative self gets to play and your artistic imagination gets to run with the muses. My partner and I used to go on photo dates, where we would walk around our Brooklyn neighborhood and choose things we wanted to take photos of. Then each of us would get to take one photo of each thing. It was fun to look at our different perspectives in the photos at the end of the day. Maybe your playground is a court, a stadium, or a baseball field where you play in your body and with opponents. Perhaps your playground is the tree in your backyard, the woods where you grew up, your favorite beach, or a mountain you love to hike and explore. Nature is an
amazing play partner. Play can happen in your ritual circles and in ceremony as you create something inspired with a group of people. Maybe you play with your imagination when you read fiction. Maybe play happens in your office (I hope so), your business, or your area of study, where you are excited about what you are learning and creating and the new ideas you are working to understand. Or play might happen in your meditative practice, your yoga, your risk-taking adventures, or on your travels. Animals and children make impeccable play partners. They bring you right into the present and into exploration and fun. Pure glee. I hope your sex life is one of your playgrounds, but if it is not currently, you can inspire yourself to change that right now.

WELCOME TO MY PLAYGROUND

1. Name one to three places you currently experience as a playground on a regular basis
   . What makes them playgrounds for you? What excites you and lights you up about these places or experiences? Make a list of at least five to ten words/phrases/descriptors that describe what you love about each of these playgrounds.
   
2. Next, think about where in your life you'd like to be more present and playful, and identify two to three new playgrounds you want to explore.
   If you look at the descriptors for the playgrounds you already have, can you see possibilities for how to make these new playgrounds resonate with those qualities? What would you need to do to take the leap and jump into exploring these new playgrounds?