Use It Up

This is an ode to the kind of delicious greed that trusts its own pleasure. This isn’t the greed of the ego for power, but the more – well, wholesome greed of the senses. This greed, when it has a fingertip wants the palm, and when it has the whole hand wants to stroke the cheek. This greed uses its own pleasure as a guide, trusting that what feels good to them will feel good to their partner.

Now yes, you do need to actually listen to them to see if that’s true. What I’m suggesting is that if you start from a place of tentativeness, you’re got nothing to stand on. An unsteady touch, a cold handshake, a darting away of eyes scared of rejection reveal someone trapped by their own fears of not being enough. They can’t let themselves use anything up, because they’ve never fully believed there was more coming when they needed it. That’s the opposite of the sort of healthy greed kind of use-it-up confidence I’m suggesting you find in yourself.

Where does that luscious desire to finish to the last drop of juice live in your body? Does it tingle or root you? Is it hot or cold? Deep and dark or bright and sparkly? Get to know they physical sensations so you recognize it when it appears again. Befriend it.

One fun technique I’m borrowing from Esther Perel (see full podcast below) is to develop a persona that has all of the confidence you desire and then some. Imagine a character who’s not limited by your past traumas – someone who now wears those scars like some sexy Bond villain who is all the more alluring for their visceral rawness. How does that confident persona speak? What does their voice sound like? Does it whisper seductively or declare persuasively? Perhaps it speaks with another accent or a foreign language if you know another. Play with it. If you can pretend to be it, you can be it.

Trust your hands to take what’s yours to take, to caress, to use it up. I’m not saying to cross anyone’s boundaries – certainly not. But if you have a willing person, ask if they’re down to play this game and see if it ups the energy between you. You need not be romantic partners, but you do need a solid base of trust to try out a new version of self with them.

Trust that your pleasure will lead you to your bliss and that your bliss to what you were put on the earth to do. Trust that when we connect to the wisdom of our hands we find the way we can be of service to the world in our highest capacity.

Carpe the diem, bitches.