A Recipe for Pleasure

As outspoken and sexually suggestive as I may seem, I can be a bit conservative. I will admit, I like the shock factor, but my stories are from my persona, not me. I struggle with balancing sensuality and perception. I want to be seen as sexy…sensual, but also as something more than that. I feel the freest when within the bounds of a relationship. I am not as brave as my fellow feminists, I still worry about giving too much away. It is sort of fucked up. I am most insecure about my desirability. Not in a typical way with the silly question of ‘Am I pretty enough’ but rather if I let you in will you leave. Commitment is a big deal to me, which is why it took a year for us to have a conversation or go on a date. I have a history of being abandoned and with a past that includes sexual assault, I bounce between feeling liberated and not protected. I don’t know the balance. To think, I did all of this over 10 years ago, before my 25th birthday. Those experiences flavored my soul like an oak does wine. My 25th year snuck up without me realizing it; I was not prepared when it came. All the benchmarks I set up for myself before it appeared were false starts. Marriage, over; Dance career, halted; senior management, nah. The things I was taught to desire did not stick. What I imagined success to be was not in my hands. I had been too distracted by everything else and suffered too much with a storm of internal turmoil to make it all work. So when my 25th birthday approached I was living alone in a one-bedroom with a balcony on the park in Atlanta. Looking back, I could not see the beauty of those days. I only saw what I did not accomplish. I was looking in the wrong direction. Now when looking back, life was pretty good then. I did rid myself of a bad relationship, moved onto a career in literary bookings for a museum walking distance from my home, had a handful of good friends that I expressed my love of cooking with and entertained. There was so much abundance around me; I was asked by some, how did I become so lucky? At the time, I never understood that question because I could only see what I thought I needed, what needed to be done, and never what was completed.