The Art of Pregnant Sex

i was inspired by a story a close friend once told me about his pregnant girlfriend. the image has haunted me since, making a deep impression on my already sex saturated brain. the picture is this: a beautiful brazilian woman astride her man, his head thrown back toward the viewer, her neck arched, and two perfect streams of milk erupting from her engorged breasts as she comes. i have savored this image, finding myself wanting to paint it but not being able to draw the body as i imagine the scene. it was after i became pregnant and felt an absence of sexual energy (the first trimester) that i started researching online, trying to come up with videos of men and pregnant women having sex. none seemed as beautiful as i conjured up, so i turned to searching ANYTHING that might turn me on. it was a strange absence of a very familiar feeling..this lack of horniness...so i gave up. i am sure steve found me cold and distant, our schedules perfectly mismatched and out of sync. the image of squirting milk or anything else for that mattered died after a long four months of near celibacy. no one prepared me for the change in my drive, my altered feelings about having sex while incubating a little child, nor the insatiable need for sex now in my sixth month. i have remastered the shower head, the vibrator, the left handed manual drive. nothing seems to do the trick, because in a few minutes after i orgasm, there it is again. persistent, weird, and totally normal. it is a relief to feel somewhat like my old self, yet the quaking of a baby inside of me makes this a more private affair. my man hasn't wanted to have sex while we are staying at his dad's house, but it's hard when the weeks roll into months. i have no privacy whatsoever, so i find it in my commute to work or in the shower. that's all i get these days. even then, there is a presence inside, flipping on her little bungee cord and reminding me that i am NEVER ALONE. god, this can be a scary feeling.
i remember masturbating as a child, undoing my diapers. i think i've had an advanced sex drive since i was very young, and upon reflection it has been the one thing that captured my full attention-when it presented itself- for most of my life. this need to explore and discover new layers of sexuality has developed into a study of the human body, a genuine openness about talking about sexual things, and my desire to go back to school and achieve a doctorate in human relations and sexuality. i think it'll be great. not for some way to perv out on other people, but to get paid to do what i already do. talk about sex. give advice. study cultures and influences. answer questions about taboo topics. i am a sexual anthropologist, psychologist, and couples counselor. i envision tantric workshops and spiritual sex talks. i look around and i can't escape it...the "girls gone wild" videos sicken me, yet at the same time it is fascinating to witness people so disconnected from their souls. we sell everything with sex and not intimacy, shaved pussies but not real people. the sight of plastic globes moving uniformly in waves under the skin sickens me, but these are the "answers" most kids find in porn. i STILL can't understand why americans are so funny about the very thing that has kept our species rolling in for centuries. like death, we avoid talking and viewing sex as a part of life. instead, we sneak around looking for something exciting to touch or watch in private. or we deny it. or worse, we are ashamed. embarrassment over our very creation is absurd. making something normal into something forbidden and unexplained just doesn't resonate with me. how many preacher's kids end up rebelling? i wanted to know everything i could and yet the information didn't hurt me. in fact, i was one of the only girls to graduate from highschool as a virgin. (yeah, i'm serious). thanks to a forthcoming mother and a lot of good reading, i found myself educating my friends who had no one to turn to. sex ed in school was a joke, and the kids who needed it the most got notes from their parents excusing them from vital information.

did i need to get pregnant to realize i am a natural earthmami-educator? no. but seeing the way people react to me as a pregnant and unmarried bartender helps spur on my desire to go back to school. "do you know who the father is?" "is the father still around?" "you shouldn't be working" or "no ring?". i get these comments, along with strangers stretching the necks and extending their hands to touch my belly. fuck off and don't touch me. the whole traditionalist puritanical bullshit surfaces again, even in a new age funky town like encinitas. doesn't anyone appreciate a good old fashioned love child anymore? with divorce rates at an alarming rate, i would sometimes like to ask these people if things turned out so hot once the "big party" was over. i am a realist, recovering from being a lifelong romantic. almost every young person i know regrets getting married except for my sister. i'm not rushing into things because society wants a ring on my finger to make it ok. i'm pregnant and in a committed place in my relationship. i love steve and see a family man when i look at his goals. i'm in the now, and now is good.

anyways, the point i started with is just this: our cycle of life is an aweinspiring mosaic of images. i hope to capture some of them on canvas, some on paper, and others in the imaginations of people everywhere.

diary of a pregnant goddess

i start in slow circles, letting the half ton block of cacao butter do it's magic. please let me remain unscathed, i silently pray to the stretch mark gods. they certainly didn't listen in puberty, but i am taking them on with certified organic shit these days. it's edible, in fact. i wear compression stockings most of the time so i won't fall prey to those nasty spider veins running in my family, and try to drink as much water as my increasingly tiny bladder can take. i look over my options today. it's getting cooler outside, so the long tank dresses are too skimpy but the only thing that feels comfortable. i bought my first maternity pants at target...comfortable and hideous. those only come out to play for alone time. i have heard i won't be having any of this in the coming months, so i soak up each precious fifteen minute swatch of time like i'll be forced to live with this baby attached to my breast for the next ten years. it may not be far from the truth.

the cacao melts into a wonderfully chocolatey grease and reflects the light in the bathroom mirror. i stare for a moment at my swollen breasts now three times their size. my stomach is starting to bulge and i am soft from walking and not kicking ass up mountains. i guess the mountains will me waiting after i give birth. still, i don't recognize my shell, formerly carved with deep curves and thick muscles. i feel like a jellybean with sticks for arms and legs. this too will only continue to expand for the next four months until KABLAMM! well, all the hypnobirthing and yogic techniques tell me it won't be like that, but i am waiting for the red button to come popping up out of my navel: turkey's done! being homeless and pregnant has been alright for a spell, mostly because i have loving friends who leave their beds open while they stay at their boyfriends' houses. thus tonight i have a silent house and my own bed for once. i have a borrowed computer and some leftover midnight oil to burn. gratitude for this, but i can't wait to have my own space back. it's been over a month of couch surfing and i am ready to settle in to a new place.

i'd say that i have six solid days for every shaky one. it's not a bad ratio, but i feel things on a level that i thought lost to my youth. today i went back in time when the radio blared "fools rush in" by UB40 and i was swept back to a time when i was torn between two boys in highschool. i felt the moist saliva cooling in the darkness, the vinegar smell of a red darkroom, the flavor of turning into a wintergreen mouth and the guilt of liking someone new. a senior. i trembled when his fingers raked through my hair and stood my flesh at attention. i remember the tears and salt stained face of the boy i loved but somehow couldn't kiss anymore, knowing the delights awaiting my eager lips in down in the yearbook room. it was a vile thing to do, exploring my own sexual prowess as a young woman. but i couldn't help it.

i drove along the back road to work, thinking about how far i have gotten from that song, that flashbulb moment half a life ago. i was almost fifteen, so precisely that. will i feel the same nostalgia in another fifteen years, thinking of this pregnancy and knowing this person...this person who is growing inside of me right now? some kind of flashbulb moment when the next rite of passage burns bright through the history of growing up, this abruptly punctuated new phase in life?

i cling selfishly to ideas of independence, when i know i will be submissive. i just have so much more to do in life than merely procreate. i didn't plan this, so certainly it comes like a mixed bag of nuts. i'm told this is normal, and that upon seeing my child for the first time i will fall head over heels into technicolored love and forever changed for the better. when will i have time for art? to go back to school? to be alone? to travel the world? to stay up late and do all the selfish things defining me until this point? these are the questions that rise in me. i feel guilty for admitting them. but then, it's just a blog after a long shift. it's just being misplaced and unable to nest. it's the desire to have my energy, my body, and my diet back. i have a list of "don'ts" far outweighing the "do's" and it's hard to reign it all in. it doesn't seem real because i have been running from reality. i guess the upside is that i can come in an instant and i have some new buttons on my body now.

i thought i would be proud of my mothering bloom, stripping off my clothes at any given chance and brazenly taking my pregnancy photoshoot in stride. now it seems i just feel like a razorburned greasy chocolate manatee and want to hide in big baggy sweats and empire waist dresses. the joke is on me today!!

ok, it's late and i am truly rambling. let's spin the wheel of fortune and see what blogging mood i'm in next time i have a spare moment. blessings, love, and understanding.