OMG! I just found my Carnal Nation columns for 2009-2010 in the Wayback Machine on the internet. The year I wrote a weekly column for CN was the most fun of my writing life. The Carnal Nation website has been long gone, so I’m really so happy to find that these pages are archived.
I kicked off my Love’s Outer Limits column with something few people had heard of – objectum sexuality – and then covered what I could of the sexological cosmos until the website suddenly quit publishing in Oct. 2010. This was one of the saddest days of my writing life. Here are links to my columns from 2009. I’ll add 2010 to a future blog.
People Who Love Objects, Part 1 – 10/14/09
Excerpt: Quasimodo had the bells of Notre Dame. Pygmalion had his statue. Erika has the Eiffel Tower, and, being unabashedly polyamorous, loves the Golden Gate Bridge and the Berlin Wall, too.
People Who Love Objects Part 2 – 10/21/09
Excerpt: “I don’t know who’s worse, the Whack Job in love with buildings, the Whack Job “sexologist” who thinks this is some new form of sexual orientation or GMA for airing this crap!”
People Who Love Objects Part 3 – 10/28/09
Excerpt: “I feel…noticed by my lover. Feel his present [sic]. I communicate seldom in speaking words. I communicate in minds and with touchings. Touchings at special hot spots… I feel a short flash of energie [sic] during the touching.”
Excerpt: I entered the scene late in his life, and though I had a firm idea of the kind of tantric script I wanted to write with a stand-in for the Divine Masculine, Michael promptly demolished it. No “firebreath orgasms;” no “you Shakti, me Shiva” repartee; and he wasn’t having any of this worshipful “lotus yoni” and “diamond vajra” stuff either. He wasn’t into glittering handwoven fabrics or Tibetan bowls.
A Brisk Trade in Panties – 11/11/09
(Before Piper’s Prison Panties in Orange is the New Black, there was me, writing about used underwear for sale.)
Excerpt: I am sure my readers will be happy to know that a self-regulating industry group known as the “Panty Trust” expects “all members to be a cut above the typical lingerie seller… Members agree not to promote, insinuate, or suggest activities or situations that could be considered illegal or unethical.”
Reflections on the Gender Mandala – 11/18/09
Excerpt: Once upon a time, when people still smoked in hospital corridors, a group of us took “Lola” to the emergency room. Lola had overdosed (again), and as she was semi-conscious, she was not looking her best.
Funky Spunk – 11/25/09 (Why did I write this so close to Thanksgiving?)
Excerpt: “Guys may dream of bombarding their partner’s uvula with a “big load” or “a thick wad” but a money-shot’s worth of deep throat, tapioca pudding may not be what the partner has in mind.”
Middle School Confidential – 12/2/2009
(This was later reprinted in Jezebel as “The Mind-Boggling Sexual Humor of Teenage Boys” and I was basically ripped to shreds in the comments section as the world’s worst mom.)
Excerpt: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicavolcanoconiosis. I just found the longest word in the English language, along with some of the shortest and most frequently used, among the pages of my youngest child’s Spanish language textbook.
Sex and Sensory Dysfunction – 12/09/2009
Excerpt: Bondage, mummification, all types of sensory play, just to name the merest few, all can be put to good use for someone who craves grownup help in processing the near senses, erotically or otherwise.
(R.I.P. Marcia Kerwit Wexler, my best friend and a feminst sexual health pioneer.)
Excerpt: Marcia made a significant contribution to what we now (somewhat longingly) refer as the “sexual revolution,” that wondrous burst of innocent hedonism.
Excerpt: The holiday season has worked its magic at last. Yes, Virginia, there IS a fly agaric mushroom impersonating an elderly, flying shaman… (or is it the other way around?), but before we get to that, let’s talk about the mushroom-colored, anatomically impossible phalluses decorating some of our milk-chocolate Santas this year.
Excerpt: My biggest question is, what cute li’l animals have been admitted to humanity’s silicon/latex/hard-plastic-probably-loaded-with-endocrine-disruptors vibrating zoo? Secondly, is cuteness the only criteria for wannabe sex toy animals?
And here’s the overall archive link, in case I forget it!
Amy Marsh, Sexologist & Hypnotist 