Vanilla / Cherry / Some sort of frozen yoghurt

Ok the vanilla conversation will not apparently die. Some people have suggested that the scale simply isn’t complex enough and we need at least 3 axes (that looks wrong, axises, axii, axeeees?), involving flavouring, chunkiness and some sort of topping. Other people claim I’m obsessed with being vanilla when I should be proud to be a deep rich vein of many flavours. To the one person who asked nervously if I was ashamed of my sexuality/ sex life/ sexual experimentation, no I’m not. I really, really love my life with all its mistakes, might-have-beens and miracles. But I’m hugely puzzled by it.

I have no idea how half of it happens, I mean I’m just walking along my own sweet way and then I’m in bed, or up Mt Fuji or scuba-diving off the Japanese coast. People have some really weird images in their heads of me and I think that it comes to a very clear point when talking about sex. I’m not nearly serious enough about sex to be anything other than vanilla in my head. I mean could I get dressed up and go to a real BDSM bar somewhere looking to be taken home for the night? The dressing up would be fun but the rest? Almost certainly not. I don’t have the attitude to sex that would be I’d enjoy it. Well ok, partly it appeals but so does getting naked in a house full of friends. I’m not consistent enough in a fetish to be a serious person about it.

I don’t know if I’m explaining myself clearly here, but I like sex, in a full range of flavours. I don’t have any one single fetish or desire that sex should involve X and I’m not serious enough about any of them to need to ask my partners to do X/Y/Z – I like to find out what turns them on and then have fun with it. Most things I’ve found out about are fun at least once. I mean sex is the one chance we get as adults to play when we’re allowed to, theres no social etiquette that *needs* to be followed when you’re naked and in bed with someone/ people, you get to play with someone else and I like to play. Sex is just an extension of that.

I know someone at least is going to be saying ‘um what about all the textbooks and books in general that you have about sex’. Sex is a subject that fascinated me before I’d even slept with anyone and it still intrigues me academically what I can get my body to do. I see that as being separate from playing with people, most of the experimentation I’ve done finding Annie Sprinkle’s different orgasms has been masturbation with a couple of exceptions with long term lovers who find my fascination… a turn-on/interesting/something they want to do.

As I get older I am finding that I do have some sexual bits and pieces that are more fixed that I had previously realised, if I do go out in a lesbian situation then I know I’m femme and am happy to describe myself as such. That doesn’t mean I’m looking for a butch incidentally, just that I’m very much more comfortable in my lesbian sexuality and know much more about it than before I went to Japan.
As for the straighter parts of my sexuality, I come to realise that I can be in a sub/dom situation quite happily and I can be involved in sex without. However though I can be dommy (which initially came as a surprise) my natural inclination is far more on the subby side of things (if you’re surprised by that you know you’ve never slept with me).

I guess these things are all kinks of mine, apparently everyone knows about the spanking thing and obviously I’ve blogged about the boots (but that was weird and new, I mean normally I’m happiest with the foot/boot thing by gazing longingly at Princess Lex’s and wishing I was licking them…) but, I’m not serious enough about them to think of them as kinks. I just want to play with people, serious sex is actually a bit on the scary side. I can’t take my own kinks as anything more than a bit of a giggle but I like to pay attention to other peoples.

To me, the fact that I don’t have any hard and fast kinks (though I do have preferences) makes my head regard me as vanilla.

9 thoughts on “Vanilla / Cherry / Some sort of frozen yoghurt

  1. Interesting, well I think the idea of the various icecream flavours comparision isn’t that its a sliding scale (from Vanilla to something) but more its just a joke to describe how people are all individually flavoured (as it were).

    Anyway, I’ll ramble more in depth at a later date, but I’ve been prompted to suggest that the boots thing (putting boots on) really isn’t that new 🙂

  2. Yo, Paul,

    I think the vanilla thing in general came into use as a pejorative term that made various minority interest groups feel special when compared to the rest of humanity at large. The military call everyone else ‘civilians,’ religious folk call them ‘infidels’ or ‘nonbelievers,’ Harry Potter calls them ‘Muggles.’ The list is endless. Rarely does it mean anything other than, ‘the people who aren’t in our club, and are therefore dull.’ In fact, Mish’s recent post on cliques connects rather well to the whole idea.

    A few generous folk might like to think in terms of everyone being different flavours, but that is pretty rare in my experience.

    As any dessert afficianado will know, however, the secret of vanilla is what accompanies it!

  3. Yo, Mish,

    It is axes, and it does look wrong. I still remember spending far too long as a teenage magician being puzzled by a ritual rubric that suggested one should visialise axes taking up the space from the centre to the cardinal points. OK, as it was a bit of viking magic the choppy-choppy version seemed *almost* relevant! … ;o)

    Sex is play, in tantric terms it is the play that keeps the whole universe going, and anyone that hasn’t twigged is pashu. Of course some have a limited view of sex and thus a limited view of the world. For such poor dears the world can be all about submission and dominance, for instance, with no joyful pause for a warm wind on bare skin, or helpless giggling inspired by make believe based on 19th century Scandinavian folklore.

    Mostly I think I want to say that I agree with you. I like to enjoy all sorts of fun and games, but have never been serious enough about any of them that I want to join a club or support group for such things. They are part of the complex pattern that is me, not my raison d

  4. The ice-cream thing was me, on LUBBS years ago (and possibly Jo may have been involved too). It was a joke that seems to have fallen into general use 🙂

    And you get to chose pretty much any flavour you like, though I have to say that you’re far too interesting to be plain vanilla (even the very expensive kind with speckly bits).

  5. Mmmm am I myself too interesting to be called vanilla or do I just bring out the interesting in other people? We’re back to the catalyst question again. I mean is chocolate sauce better on chocolate icecream or vanilla?

    I don’t know really. But I guess I do go well with others…

  6. Neither. Both.

    You are genuinely able to choose to be open to new experiences.

    That has a lot of effects.

    It’s not really about different flavours of ice cream, it’s about the way that vanilla clears the palate to allow the savouring of new sensations.

    In that sense you are vanilla and gateaux, vanilla and chocolate fudge cake, vanilla and brandy snaps…and we haven’t even got as far as who else is at the dining table, or in the jacuzzi, or whatever!

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