(no subject)

It gets rather confusing when I stop to trace the trickling lines that attraction scratches across my skin, little rivulets of my blood and want and scars, the magnetism of gender pulling between the ions of my body. I've been thinking a lot about how Kate Bornstein's order to "become what you desire" may have really fucked me up.

I am incredibly attracted to butch women. Here's Tristan Taormino's quote that pretty much sums it up for:

I love butch girls. Girls with slick, shiny, barbershop haircuts, trimmed so short your fingertips can barely grip it. Girls with shirts that button the other way. Girls that swagger. Girls who have dicks made of flesh and silicone and latex and magic. Girls who get stared at in the ladies' room, girls who shop in the boys department, girls who live every moment looking like they weren't supposed to. Girls with hands that touch me like they have been exploring my body their entire lives. Girls who have big cocks, love blowjobs, and like to fuck girls hard. It is the girls that get called sir every day who make me catch my breath, the girls with strong jaws who buckle my knees, the girls who are a different gender who make me want to lay down for them.

In fact, one night I was discussing which women I find attractive here at school with the Lesbian Mafia (aka Rugby Dykes) and they teased me about the fact that everyone I mentioned is butch. The thing of it is, I've been looking more quote unquote "butch" lately (not to imply that butch is simply an aesthetic, of course--). I learned how to swagger back in my skinchick days, and as I type now I'm wearing that same white tank and boots. And i do take pride in Hannah's tag for me: "the girliest butch I've ever met," and Hayden's nickname of "Butcholive." Of course, Danielle used to say I'm femme. Obviously I'm neither, not part of the butch/femme dynamic, if people have such widely divergent ideas of what I am. Or maybe I'm both, or one in one instance and another in another and something completely different most of the time. At any rate, it's interesting that my "Vassar straight" friend Hannah, who's pretty girly, interprets my dykeyness as butch masculinity filtered through pink, Hayden picks up on what I'm so attracted to I want to become, and Danielle, well, picked up on my incredibly gay lavender-and-silver toothbrush.

I guess what I'm wondering is: have I pulled butch qualities into my presentation inadvertently? Would most butch women see me and write me off? How subjective are these interpretations of lesbian gender?

Also...sex. Right now hardly anything (okay, nothing) gets me hotter than the thought of a studly butch fucking me senseless. But it's not like I always conceive of myself as "the fuckee"---it just becomes complicated, cos when the women that make me want to strap and bend them over aren't butch. Obviously this is charged and sorta problematic- some butches flip, so-called femininity shouldn't be equated with penetrability, and why this dualistic thing in the first place?- but yknow, it's true right now. I think that when I like to feel dominant is also, coincidentally, when I can feel like the Dyke, so suave and skilled that pretty girlies give themselves to me and I take what they offer up and give hands mouth power in return.

Like I said, it's really, really confusing. Any thoughts and dialogue are much appreciated---just post a comment and I'll get back.

Now I have to get ready to make challah so it has time to rise before sundown. Good shabbos in advance.

"I haven't even tied you up yet"

Okay, so by now it's evident that I'm a bit compulsive about writing in this damn thing. I just, well-I have lots of work to do (huge French review to complete, women's studies paper, environmental paper) but I just can't right now. Hence, this.

My muscles ache pleasantly from lifting two days in a row. My room smells softly of Nag Champa and cold air because I have, as usual, vindictively opened the window as some sort of assertion of my power in our room. Heehee, not really. Erm, sort of. It's just so nice to have fresh cold air that smells like snow! We're supposed to get like 8-12 inches of snow here in what I've found is called "the mid-Hudson River Valley" and I am unbelievably excited.

I have a clean red bandana tied around my head in that folded-triangle fashion and it feels crisp and together. I'm sure this is really boring to read, and I apologize. Maybe I should add something to make it worthwhile? I know, my challah recipe! (Which I didn't get to use this week...they had already started with some other recipe which, horror of horrors, uses oil. The girl making it rubbed me the wrong way. If it's not obvious, I'm incredibly controlling in the kitchen.) So, right-challah recipe!
CHALLAH

2 cups milk
1 stick butter
1/3 c sugar
2 packages yeast
4 eggs
2 tsp salt
6 c flour
1/3 c cornmeal
1 tbs really cold water
poppy seeds

-Boil milk, 6 tbls. of the butter, and sugar. Pour into a big bowl and let it cool to yeast-warm temp.
-Beat 3 of the eggs and add them to the millk/yeast mixture. Mix in the salt.
-Stir in the flour.  Turn out the dough, knead it on a floured surface.
-Wash out the bowl and butter it.  Put the dough in and set it aside until it triples in size, like 2 hours.
-Divvy it up and braid it into 2 loaves.  Cover them with a towel and let rise like an hour. Preheat oven to 350.
-Make a wash with the remaining egg and the water. Glaze the bread and sprinkle with poppy seeds.
-Bake for 30-35 minutes.