23 minute read
COVER STORY
You hold in your hands (or on your screen) the product of about a million emails. When we set out to compile our annual Love & Sex issue, we start there, accepting pitches from around the Love & Sex-o-sphere with an emphasis on finding stories that matter. We get many a good idea from many a good writer, but we ultimately hope to provide pieces of substance; things that might help or alter your perspective or even just realize that sex workers are people providing an essential service. This year’s pieces skew a little darker, too. We’re fighting a pandemic, after all, and love, sex and all the little bête noire in between aren’t always pretty. You’ll learn why it’s always important to get back on that horse (page 18) and why it’s not always so easy to walk away from that volatile relationship (page 15). But you’ll also meet folks expressing their sexuality well into life (opposite page), hear about plans to love more fully after this COVID-19 business finally stops (page 14) and how a new generation of content creators are celebrating body positivity while taking hold of their own financial futures. We know it’s not easy to love well in this era of lockdowns and distancing, we know sex maybe doesn’t quite feel like it used to feel. But we also know you’re likely not alone, either, when it comes to how you love and fuck and feel.
The Lifestyle
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BY WILLIAM MELHADO | WILLIAM@SFREPORTER.COM
New Mexico’s swinging community, alive and well, helps people of all ages and types ‘hit your button’
Sheila’s coming off a mid-morning threesome with a couple she just met when she tells SFR about the duality of her personal and family life.
But, she explains, the idea of what a grandmother should—and shouldn’t— do, doesn’t capture her true humanness: “When you see me eating another woman’s pussy, they don’t want to think about that.”
Born and raised in Santa Fe and an active member of the swinging community, Sheila, 65, doesn’t want to be limited by polite society’s notions of sex, age or anything in between.
The swinging community, known as “the lifestyle” among its members, encompasses a big tent. Broadly, it’s for people who want to have sex with multiple partners and break free from the rigidity of monogamous relationships. But for those taking part, the lifestyle isn’t easily defined. For Sheila, the possibilities provided by the lifestyle disrupt the traditional narrative first presented in TV shows, she says, like “Leave It to Beaver— the everyday, always, same-old husband, wife-and-two-children.”
For those maybe stuck in sexless marriages, Sheila says the freedom afforded by polyamorous relationships or a swinging lifestyle opens doors to new ideas about what relationships look like.
“As long as you’re over 21, we’re open to everybody, every body type of every age,” Dave, the host and self-proclaimed godfather of swinging events in Santa Fe, tells SFR. Dave explains he’s tried to make the lifestyle scene in New Mexico, which tends to skew older, as inclusive as possible in light of the bias he’s observed in his time swinging. He entered the scene in his early 50s as way to socialize and have sex given his limited free time as a single father of three. Over a decade later at 67, Dave says he’s taken a leadership role in the community by planning and hosting events. In turn, he says, “my sex life is way better—better than ever in my whole life.”
Another reason for Dave’s notoriety in the lifestyle is his reputation for a never-ending supply of those little blue pills that “always made me popular.” Viagra, it turns out, is popular at swinging events.
Sitting outside the DeVargas Starbucks in a skull-sequined mask she made herself, Di shares a similar trajectory of her experience in the lifestyle. Feeling the need to expand her sexual horizons, she began attending events in Albuquerque before building a reputation, she says, as the “queen of the scene,” and eventually helping Dave host events closer to home in Santa Fe. At 55, Di tells SFR, she’s ob-
-Sheila, a local swinger
served all the different ways people practice swinging, which ranges from simply watching others, to jumping into the “puppy pile.” Di points out that the inhibition-free lifestyle enables everyone to meet their needs.
“When somebody can hit your button and when your button is really hard to find, when somebody finds it, you don’t care what he or she looks like,” she says.
While the sex lives of older individuals can sometimes take a backseat to hormonal changes, menopause and other challenges that can complicate sex in more advanced years, Di and Sheila both note the abundance of older couples pushing their sexual boundaries.
In her conversations with her swinging friends, for example, Di says they tell her, “‘This saved my marriage.’”
Despite the inclusive nature of the lifestyle, it isn’t completely detached from reality. Dave, Sheila and Di each confirm the age bias in the lifestyle doesn’t affect all participants equally. They explain that a double standard exists such that elderly men more often get the go-ahead to join in the fun, while older women don’t see such broad acceptance at events.
While many swinging communities across the country tend to be cliquey and heteronormative, Dave explains, he’s made efforts to expand the tent to make more feel included at events he hosts. The primary problem isn’t making attendees more comfortable, however, it’s the discomfort of those outside the events. With the closure of spaces previously friendly to swinging events, Dave says it’s become difficult to find locations to host groups.
He attributes this, in part, to the stigma associated with the lifestyle; unsurprisingly, COVID-19 certainly hasn’t been friendly to group sex parties, either. Sheila, meanwhile, echoes that everyone’s comfort level around sex differs, noting her family. Still, one liberating aspect she gains from swinging is the joy she shares from having multiple partners and the opportunity to share the gift of sex with others. “I think a lot of times, what makes people comfortable about sex, makes other people uncomfortable about sex,” she says.
Howls & Whispers
BY JACKS MCNAMARA | @JACKSMCNAMARA
An experiment in post-pandemic love
Let’s imagine it’s my 43rd birthday and the pandemic is over. After turning 40 on Zoom one week into the first lockdown, 41 in a chilly park with friends eating cupcakes in distant clusters and 42 burned out on Omicron and upgraded to KN95s, I’m going to do it up this year. It’s going to be a costume party. I’ll be dressed as love—decked out in chain mail of scratched mix CDs and Trader Joe’s roses, fried chicken and cupcakes, bacon and kale. All the guests will be invited to eat their favorite foods right off my clavicle. It’s going to be hot. Once we light the bonfire of face masks and signs reminding us to stay 6 feet apart, once it flames up high enough to singe eyelashes and catch the tips of branches, once we get to dancing, I’m going to take it all off. I’ll carefully remove the skirt I made of my daughter’s preschool drawings, the leggings crafted from treasure maps and pocket knives, the headdress of rain in the desert and miles of clouds. All I will need now is skin, body, this body, your body, our bodies. There will be sweat and spit, and we will luxuriate in the mess of other humans and we will touch. For hours and hours, we will touch.
In my thought experiment this becomes an orgy or a riot, but let’s be real, we might be a little afraid of skin by 2023. We might be ready to collapse. There will probably be tears. Where have we been, these three fucked up years? Who remembers how to touch anyone outside their household anymore? Who remembers dancing close enough to breathe each other’s breath and feeling no fear? Who forgets the textures and smells of desire, grief, fingertips and nostrils, bare cheeks and uncovered lips? What has this pandemic done to us?
Perhaps the idea of wearing love to a party is far too decadent for these times and I need to love wisely instead. Perhaps love is creating space for ritual. Perhaps I will celebrate my birthday by holding a collective howl, perhaps we must shake and scream as we take the masks off our children, off ourselves, before we will be ready to celebrate. Perhaps the birthday gift I’ll request is other people to hold my child, to hold every parent’s children. We are all so tired after these years when nearly no one was willing to get close to our kids because they went to school and might be vectors of disease. Perhaps love means all the parents get to lie down for a few months, become still on the earth and do nothing, nothing at all, while the rest of the missing village steps in. Perhaps love means we all become quiet together, quiet but close, lighting candles, whispering prayers, incanting spells, close enough to hear each other, to feel the heaviness and the light.
Perhaps love needs to become more political now. Perhaps love is making sure all the disabled and chronically ill folks who’ve been hiding out for three years get to leave their homes and set the public health agenda. Perhaps love is making space for legitimate rage at our astonishing failure to practice interdependence and collective care. Perhaps love is holding space for elders to gather, gather, gather. Perhaps love means we get to talk about something other than pandemics and catastrophes now, perhaps we get to organize for liberation and climate justice, perhaps that is the party; having a potluck, writing a manifesto, together, on the same earth we are ready to save. Perhaps this has all gotten too grandiose. Perhaps I just have a party. Perhaps we need that more than anything right now. Perhaps there’s cake and paper plates, a few balloons, and the miracle is that it feels safe and obvious to eat together inside. Perhaps I do dress as love, and keep it simple, hearts and chocolate, cupids and valentines. If that doesn’t feel special enough, I could always wear the earth’s astonishing love—a constellation of seedlings reappearing after snow, the first sunrise beyond a hurricane, an array of healed scars. Jacks is a queer writer, artist, healer and troublemaker living in Santa Fe. Find out more at jacksmcnamara.net
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Everyday Mantra
BY LAURA BURGESS | AUTHOR@SFREPORTER.COM
“He just needs a couch,” my oldest child’s guitar teacher said about his tattoo artist/ musician buddy who had overstayed his welcome.
I’ve taken in a lot of strays in my life.
A few months later he wasn’t on my couch anymore.
At first I thought it was cute with the subtle, joking jealousy. It was really good feeling like someone wanted me. With all of themself. Who doesn’t want to feel wanted? Toxic love is…intoxicating. And I knew he was sick after a while because I’d have to call to make his appointments so he didn’t cuss out the person answering the phone when he got frustrated at the medical system. Appointments he rarely attended.
“He is sick,” I said. “I can’t abandon him.”
Break up.
Police.
Reconcile.
Lose friends.
Break up.
Police.
Rinse and repeat.
A year and a half later I sat in an ER getting seven staples in my head and worried about how I can afford to fix the door that was kicked in. Again. Post-chemo, at 42: “By the way,” someone said. “You’re pregnant.” Everything in its entirety crashed into reality.
Decisions.
The violence that was subtle and boiled slowly until it spilled over and ruined all my dishes, earrings, sunglasses, car tires, bank accounts, jobs, guitars.
Dignity.
All of it hit me harder than any of my history training, MMA or street outreach in shady areas of Albuquerque. I felt like I was taking off my training wheels again. I didn’t know who I was anymore. My life revolved around anticipating an adult’s needs and saying the right thing at the right time while living in near-constant anxiety that I was doing something wrong. The morning routine of making sure everything was executed to his standards: food, coffee, clothes he approved, makeup. Three bottles of water in the car, two for him, one for me. I could never get it right. I tried so hard but you can’t really hit a moving target with someone not able to be consistent in expectations and temperament. No one goes into a relationship accepting terms that develop into abuse—they just show up.
Evolve.
“I can love him enough to heal him.”
Everyday mantra.
Mission.
You can’t love anyone enough to fix them, except for yourself—and that’s hard work at the cornerstone. Fifteen tattoos and a baby later, I’m doing OK. I pretend some days, but I’m alive and my child is safe. And he doesn’t even know her name; it’s just time and distance and acceptance.
He was, at the time, my best friend. Days spent together during quarantine, skateboarding in empty parking lots and discovering some new comedian, remembering old songs and marathoning them at 2 am.
Inside jokes.
The fact that even writing this makes me put more weight on the “good days,” and warps how bad it really got. The disappointment on faces that loved me when I resurfaced all happy love-drunk because “we worked it out!” The nights I felt like all of my existence would be OK if I could just go hold him close and be warm and feel like I meant something to someone. To him. Honestly? I still love and sometimes miss him. The hardest thing I’ve learned in my life is to say goodbye—on many levels, during many circumstances.
No one truly understands domestic violence unless they have experienced it. It’s embarrassing: “Why didn’t you just leave?”
Do not victim shame. It’s not that easy, and even therapists don’t understand unless they’ve lived it. And anyway, I tried. Running barefoot through alleys in bad neighborhoods, hiding behind Dumpsters cause he took my shoes, keys, bag and phone. But he would show up with my favorite pen and coffee the next day with tears and puppy eyes.
The utter confusion born of feelings you never thought you’d ever experience. Wanting to hold and comfort a person who was breaking down in the car at a parking lot over guilt and that mark they left on your face; asking you to stay in the car so no one sees it. Again. Wanting to console a person who was blubbering sad because of what they did that hurt YOU. Wanting to say, “It’s ok,” but not saying that because it was not OK…but you forgive them instantly.
It’s complicated in ways unexplainable. Please don’t take it personally if someone in a bad relationship dips out.
Please still reach out. Check on them. Boundaries are important but don’t cut them out. Please don’t give up on your loved ones who can’t leave yet. They will need you when they can. I’m still rediscovering who I am, and I am extremely grateful for those who are still around and believe in me.
Laura is a mother nurse poet seamstress storyteller who loves 505 and New Mexico, fabric and humans. Jill of all trades and street outreach organizer
CONTINUED ON PAGE 18
SFREPORTER.COM • FEBRUARY 9-15, 2022 17
To Heal a Broken Heart
BY JEROME GERARD | @JEROMEGERARDMUSIC
How a horse and a near plane crash taught me to relinquish my grief
Ifound myself on an airplane flying to New York City and nursing a broken heart.
I’d shattered my then-girlfriend’s trust, and thus she decided to move on, but I didn’t want to let go, and there, in that plane, a little sob escaped my lips. I felt my fellow passengers’ eyes trained on me, and I tried to hold back my tears, but ultimately, inevitably, I gave up.
Embarrassed, I stared out the window. Far below, blue waves curved toward ghostly Rockaway Beach, and farther up the coastline, I could see the Manhattan skyline blending into white, wintry clouds. New York seemed a shining mirage atop the water, but my chest felt tense as I gripped the faux leather armrest. I wanted to stay up there in the clouds, not deal with the grime and noise of the city—or the dull emptiness of my apartment. I still needed this love in my life.
As if to answer my unconscious prayers, the plane started to shake violently as we hit a particularly nasty pocket of turbulence. Other passengers gasped and my stomach jumped into my throat. Would we crash into the water, mere miles from JFK? In that moment, the thought didn’t scare me. In fact, I welcomed an end to my sadness. And the plane dove as the passengers screamed. I closed my eyes and flashed back.
There, in that potential moment of death, I remembered a racehorse I had ridden many years back while acting in a Western filmed outside Santa Fe. Foolishly, I’d listed myself as an expert rider on my resume, though it had been a decade since I’d ridden. Even then, it had been a tame workhorse who walked a path along a South American beach that it could probably have navigated in its sleep. On the set of an 18th century town, however, I was introduced to a powerful horse with a burntflame mane and told I’d have 20 minutes to orient myself before filming.
I climbed atop the stallion, settled into his leather saddle, grabbed the reins and attempted to nudge the massive beast forward. He didn’t move at first, though I’m not sure if that was about his being young, or perhaps he sensed my insecurities. Either way, when I gently kicked his sides in encouragement, he bolted into a breakneck gallop and zeroed in on a nearby barbed wire fence. I pulled hard on the reins, but my new costar wouldn’t listen—he was only interested in that twisted, rusted, razor-sharp death before me. I closed my eyes and accepted it, when, thankfully, he stopped a few feet from my demise.
I later learned he’d been reacting to females in heat on the other side of the fence, though that was cold comfort during a subsequent scene in which the horse and I were meant to move slowly down a craggy, cactus-filled ravine. I cautiously prodded him forward, but he bolted once more. This time when I pulled on the reins, he jumped and, sensing my fear, started bucking me. I was thrown off his back and landed on the rocky soil. Perhaps miraculously, I was OK.
And I still got back on the horse, learning through trial and error that he wouldn’t heed my commands. But at last I understood him. He wanted only to run as fast as he could. To meet lady horses. He had no master, and I could only let go of trying to control him as I held on to his thick, burntred mane. I felt the rhythm of hooves on hard desert clay dirt, I listened to his breathing, I felt his heartbeat and I placed a hand on his powerful neck muscles. Trying to relax us both, I synced the rise and fall of my own breath with his and felt excitement, frustration, incredible willpower. He finally allowed me to ride.
The plane fell into a sort of free fall as I flashed back to that wild horse, to embracing the danger of not knowing where he’d take me had he jumped over the fence, hoping he’d land where he could be free. My own heart, still broken, shot pain through my chest, which surprisingly let me relinquish any thoughts of fear. The grief moved through my body at the speed of my breath; if I were to try and control the direction of my anguish, it would only hurt deeper. The grief tried to buck me off or, it seemed, usher me gladly toward my death, plummeting in a tube into the water just outside the city.
I listened to and felt the rhythm of my own restless spirit, and for a brief moment, as we became one, I lost any sense of separation between myself and the intangible rush of my emotions. My own heart, still broken, synced its beat to the rise and fall of my breath. I let go of control, I let go of emotions. I sighed. And in that moment, my sadness departed, and my mind was at peace.
The plane leveled off.
We landed safely.
My own heart was galloping.
I was free.
Jerome is a writer and musician living in Brooklyn, New York
The Naked Truth
BY LAYLA ASHER | @MISSLAYLAASHER
The no longer secret life of a local sex worker
I’m Layla. Many in Santa Fe know me, just not by this name. And even if you don’t, you’ve likely seen me around town, maybe on a barstool at the Matador or in line at Trader Joe’s. I’m sure our paths have crossed in some Santa Fe way or another, but what you don’t know about me is that I am a sex worker.
Sex work is something that is constantly expanding and evolving, but at its most basic is an umbrella term for consenting adults who exchange sexual goods and/or services for money. It includes obvious things like erotic performances and sales, pornography and engaging in actual sex, but it also includes a relatively new world of online content creation. As someone running an OnlyFans account, that’s where I fall in.
My exploration into the world of sex work started about five years ago when the body positivity movement took off. Overnight, my Instagram feed was flooded with plus-size women—women who looked like me—celebrating their bodies in a way I hadn’t seen before. Big booties like mine were everywhere and people were loving it! As a plus-size woman, I’d constantly received the message that my body should be hidden, that there should be shame around it, that it certainly was not sexy. Seeing representation like that on such a large scale was an incredible feeling, and I immediately knew I wanted to make other people feel that way.
While I weighed my options, I learned sex workers were making unreal amounts of money. I’m talking upwards of $40,000—per month. Many were also choosing to pay their gains forward in some way: I followed a woman who traveled the world building homes with Habitat for Humanity and paid for her expenses by selling photos of herself in lingerie. I followed others who opened animal sanctuaries and founded nonprofits. I discovered a community trying to be and do things in the world they’d have likely needed when they were younger, and they were doing it all by engaging in sex work of some kind. That’s when the lightbulb switched on for me. Was there really a way I could be my authentic self, celebrate my body, have a little fun, make some money and pay it forward?
This is where OnlyFans comes in. Until I went down the exclusive content rabbit hole, I’d lived in a world where sexual imagery was a click away and almost always free. Now I had the option of paying someone for their labor, and not in a some-virus-is-going-to-blowup-my-computer kind of way. Content on OnlyFans was and continues to be wide-ranging, and photos and videos come in every variety, from flirtatious and sexually expressive to engaging in self play, partner play…well, if you can think it up, it likely exists on OnlyFans. New offerings flared into existence as well, like sexting and cock ratings (you read that right). You could even purchase worn panties and have them shipped to your front door. All the while, things like consent and power dynamics and
moneymaking were put directly into the hands of creators. OnlyFans takes a cut, of course, but unlike the mainstream porn industry, their users’ autonomy and consent are prioritized, and people can make real money. Today that’s where I sell my own exclusive content. For me, this is all about the bigger picture. Because of its popularity and accessibility, OnlyFans is helping to de-stigmatize sex work one subscriber at a time, and it helps independent creators such as myself earn money how we see fit—through carefully curated materials decided upon by sex workers themselves. I never have to do anything I don’t want to do, and I earn a little bit while I’m at it. I’m excited to finally tell the world that for the last 13 months that’s exactly what I have been doing. I don’t make an unreal amount of money just yet, but I’m still paying it forward in my own way. I am a radical self love enthusiast, so engaging in sex work in a meaningful way has not only expanded my own concept of self love, it’s encouraged my audience to do the same. I have created a wonderful space online, but my real dream is to build a physical space that fosters self love and body connection in a safe and mindful way. Something close to my heart and something my younger self definitely needed. My vision is of a self love ripple effect that starts right here in my own community. I truly believe helping people in this way helps everyone.
My journey remains a unique experience influenced by women who have resonated with me. It feels important to say that every sex worker has their experience and identity, all of which are valid and deserving of respect. They all are a part of a community somewhere with a little dive bar and a hipster grocery store. Maybe you just know them by a different name.
Layla is a local sex worker on a mission to spread radical self love to her community and the world
