her: Can I do like, the same process as with the transitive verbs, but with “ich”? Like, instead of “give you tea”, to say I (points to her own chest) give you (moves the hand, still pointing to herself, towards me) “ich”? “Ich bin dein” (signs the word “Frau”, mouthing:) “Mädchen”?

me: I mean communication in DGS is pretty flexible and I'm sure the meaning would carry… But I don't know, it sounds a bit off to me, grammatically. Like, you could always phrase it explicitly like, (points to self) “ich” (opens palm, turns towards her and moves in her direction) “deine”. But it does sound a bit distancing because the word for “yours” looks a bit like you're pushing them away…?

her: Yeah I dunno…

me: But that's the word for “yours”. What about this: To make it more romantic you could do it like, (points to self) (open palm moves towards her) (but I keep going until actually touching her chest, smiling, looking into her eyes..)

her: (Points to self) (opens palm, moving towards me: “yours”) (lays her hand on my chest) (keeps inclining towards me) (sits on my lap as we kiss desperately)

The one type feels lust for the female form, in the sense that the secondary sexual characteristics typical of estrogen (curves, thighs, soft skin, breasts, girlsmell etc.) will trigger something in their own body that causes attraction and longing. By contrast, the other type isn't really attracted to bodies at all, but rather to, like, entire human beings with regards to conversation, shared interests, sexual compatibility, trust in bed, mutual kinks etc. They just happen to prefer the company of women for doing those things.

This is different from being ace (in the sense of experiencing no or reduced sexual attraction) because women of the second type can very much define their attraction to other women as sexual in nature. Some I know identify as hypersexual, even. It's just that what they crave in sex isn't the materiality or shape of your body but like, what you can do with them. Maybe there’s already an ace-spec label for this somewhere, I don't know if people have a name for it.

Say, imagine I'm on a tram sitting next to a lover, and some thicc lady waltz by in a minidress exhibiting long, squishy, gloriously bare round thighs. I can immediately think of which of my partners would be drooling alongside with me, and which would be indifferent to the sights—why would anyone be affected in any way by the body of some random stranger who they know nothing about and might not be their type of person at all?, and so on.

Lesbians of the “drooly” variety often have had to struggle with a guilt and doubt stage, like, do I really like boobs or am I just being brainwashed by the overload of male-gazey imagery of a patriarchal society, am I objectifying women and being as bad as men, etc. This reluctance is usually cured when you figure out that a lot of other girls are desperately yearning for some feminine eyes to please ogle their breasts, and for certain other fem-on-fem interactions involving their breasts.

Within the second type of woman, many (but not all!) have described themselves to me as being “functionally lesbians” – like, since she doesn’t care for the body of her partner either way, she would potentially be open to dating men, too. If she ever finds a chill, kind, emotionally mature man who neither pedestalises her nor treats her as therapy-maid etc. Ooor she can just go and date women. So, in practice, lesbian. (Protip: if you want to explore bisexuality but struggle to find men who are cool, there's a lot of them from this country → 🏳️‍⚧️ )

Speaking as a serial top, many bottoms enjoy being aware of my attraction to their bodies but aren't particularly attracted to my body, or to women's bodies generally, at all. Their thing is to lie temptingly and be taken, or to follow orders, or to fail to follow orders and get punished, or whatever it is that does it for that particular woman. This isn't a bad thing for me, it makes me feel like I'm reliving a traditional butch/femme dynamic (with the classic butch top preferring not being touched) and even though I'm not like, a butch, I get good feelings when exploring that dynamic. I'm a sucker for tradition after all x3

And like, it's not that the “conceptual” type of lesbian doesn't make me feel desired too. It's just that they desire other stuff than my body: my company, my conversation, my devotion, my skills in bed, my overly syrupy affectiveness and/or sadism, and so on. But it's still special for me when my physical, carnal, sweaty type of lust can be reciprocated, too; when I put on a slutty dress and can feel her flush and getting distracted from conversation in public, or when greedy soft hands grab my thighs on the way home, or when I'm doing her from behind, and I draw closer and press my breasts against her back and it provokes that little shudder in her hips, that sharp intake of air… Yes I am yearning for her and for her again, yes I'm like that every day, why do you ask…?

1. There's a saying, “the wrong note on rhythm is jazz; the right note with the wrong rhythm is noise”. Rhythm makes the difference between boring arpeggio exercises clashing with the music, and music; much more than any complex harmonic theories. Pay attention to the drums and percussion. Tune in with the rhythm with your whole body and keep that in your bones, that will put you in sync with the music.

2. Easy mode: Backing tracks. The type that shows the chords on screen is ideal: look up the notes on each chord, and a pentatonic or other improvisation-friendly scale to play on that key. (For the miyakobushi scale, “Phrygian” backing tracks work well.) First play only the root note of each chord; then try arpeggios or a few free notes of each chord as they come, in rhythm. Don't get overwhelmed trying to hit all of them, one or two notes are fine – instead, focus on staying musical from the get-go. Then experiment with the rest of the scale. Don't be afraid to break the rules and play passing notes fully outside what you're supposed to play, oftentimes they sound sick.

3. The purpose of all the harmony rules and stuff is to describe which notes sound good together. More important than that is to develop your sense of what notes sound good together. If you think they sounded good, then they did, you're making music that you like. I find the theory useful because if I just play random notes with no restrictions whatsoever it doesn't sound like “music” and I don't like it, and the theory gives me a starting pack of things that are easy to make work. But don't let the theory and the rules distract you from the need to exercise your own musical sensibility, to pay attention and tune your ear.

4. When you find a thing that worked, milk it. Repeat that little successful riff a few times.

5. Sometimes your intuition will want your fingers to do something with lightning-fast speed, and you have no idea why. It comes from some instinctive, sub-rational place. That place is the fountain of music; give your fingers to it.

6. When playing with finished music, the bass is your cheatcode. In the large majority of cases the bass of each measure is informing you of the root note of the chord, right at the first note. The rest of the bass riff gives you a little bag of notes that are guaranteed to work on that passage. It's much easier to pinpoint the bass notes than trying to reverse-engineer chords from harmonies. A bass tab gives you a map of stuff you can use to jam safely, and from there you can experiment. Moreover, the bass is lowkey percussion; paying attention to bass will automatically put you in the rhythmic vibe of that song.

7. Do like the bass and become percussion. E.g. pick a single note and go like “tuh-tuh-tuh” or dunno “tuuh, tuh-tuh / tuuh, tuh-tuh”, or whatever fits that song. Instead of trying to add melodies, add to the rhythm of the music.

8. On a similar note: drones. Instead of adding melodies, become atmosphere. My wind instruments like the flute, the xūn and the melodica work great for this. Swell in and out of long notes on the back, like a backing vocal going “aaahhh…”, and find out how that harmonises with the passage, or doesn't. Often a single note will be common to many chords and therefore work for very large passages (someone pointed me that almost all chords of “Hey Jude” have a C note, and the ones that don't have a D note, so you can “aaaahhh...” through the entire song by singing a C and changing to D when you feel like it doesn't fits; it works and it's very fun).
   A good example of this is Otonoha's shinobue adaptation of Cosmo Canyon – not the more obvious main flute melody, but notice the “backing flute” layers playing long notes in the background.

9. Call-response. Instead of trying to play alongside a singer or lead guitar, let them draw a melody, then try to repeat it on the flute an octave higher, or repeat it but change it a bit. Listen to jazz jamming to get a sense for how they do it.

10. Counterpoint! I mean I can't do counterpoint on the fly with my flute lol but at a super simple level: when the singer is going up, try playing along but going down instead. See what happens.

11. I have to take my own advice on this: just do the thing from the get-go. Since I want to play with existing songs, to embellish or change or add to them, try it. Yeah it doesn't sound very good but doing it regularly starts sinking in some skills. Just be sure to stay deliberate—pay attention to what worked and what didn't; experiment and keep what works.

So the lady was like at the top of her game, asked about my country, praised my tattoos, told relatable stories about her own life etc., and she was so bright about showing me the vegan options, and made me try like half a dozen different flavours of halva. (It was genuinely delicious). She was a great conversationalist and I had a pleasant time chatting with her for a long while.

So finally I decided to bring home 10€ in caramel halva. This is where the scam hit: she was already packing it but at the minimum quantity of 100g, which was some ridiculous abusive price, 38€ or something. At this point I wall up and put on my best bimbo face to claim that this 10-buck bill is all I have. It's obvious that it's a lie and she knows that I know that she knows it's a lie, this is a glove slap: I mean what are you gonna do about it, call the cops? So the man of the pair approaches and starts a spiel that they've already cut the halva so now I have to pay. So I say with the most blatant cara de pau I can muster that oh well, my train is about to leave, and I give them the warmest goodbye smile and a wave, and leave them protesting without looking back.

Only afterwards I realise that I had tied up the woman for a good fifteen minutes that she could have been hustling, plus I got to try a significant amount of halva of various flavours, without paying a cent. She was good at the game so the sample portions were quite generous, too.

The lesson we learn from this is, you gotta roll with the punches; your story can't be static, it's a tool not a script. Con artistry is a dance, at the first sign of resistance from the mark you have to change your step. They really should have cut their losses and given me a miserable thumb of candy for 10€ profit, I had opened myself a weakness when I said “gimme this much in candy” without checking the price/kg first. But thanks to their all-or-nothing commitment to the script, I ended up indulging my sweet tooth for free and out-scamming the scammers, purely by instinct. And if they're smart they'll think twice before trying to con a Brazilian again lmao (I mean the Germans are right there—)

• Carinho: caress; cuddle. Literally “little care”. In the strict sense, a gesture of physical affection; more generally, any action that makes you feel cared for.
• Carinhosa: cuddly in a caring way. Affectionate and care-giving. A highly valued trait in a partner.
• Carente: the emotional state of being in need of carinho. Care-seeking. Like “needy” but without the negative connotation. “Hon, be nice to me cos today I'm carente.”
• Chorosa: the emotional state of feeling prone to crying. Vulnerable due to an influx of emotions. “Feeling fragile right now”. Implies similar needs as being carente. Distinguish “chorona” which is crybaby; being prone to crying as a stable personality trait.
• Aconchego: coziness; a cuddle that feels cozy.
• Chamego: a more intense form of carinho. In some dialects it's sexually charged, like, to grind on someone while dancing can be described as giving chamego.
• Chameguice: chamego-ness. The trait of being highly affective, in a physical sense.
• Colo: “lap”. But metaphorically like, nestling. The happy safe place in your lover's arms. To be “asking for lap” is essentially a way of expressing being physically carente.
• Cafuné: headstroking. Making carinhos by lightly massaging their head, passing your fingers between their hair and so on. Used symbolically in a similar way as English “headpat”, but it's slower and more intimate than simple patting.
• Xodó: someone who is your xodó is your baby. A xodó evokes in you an intense warm fuzzy protective care-giving emotion, maybe to the point of you getting overprotective or jealous. Not an exclusive term to romance; can also be used e.g. of a child or a pet, or a prized collector's item, etc.
• Mimar: to spoil. To treat someone; to go all-out on spoiling them, no holds barred. A highly valued behaviour in a partner.
• Mimo: a treat. A single “spoil”. Can be like, a physical gift, or a service like making fancy breakfast, or just a bout of intense affection, praise, cuddles etc. “You better be ready cos I'm gonna stuff you full of mimos tonight you cutie”.
• Dengo: when you act in a childish or playfully cutesy-dramatic way in order to elicit mimos and get a good chamego. The quality of dengo-ness is denguice.
• Manha: similar to dengo but hits different in a way I have trouble expressing.
• Manhosa, dengosa: being in an emotional state where you do dengos or make manha; or having that as a personality trait. Bashful from Disney's “Snow White” was named Dengoso in the Brazilian dub. n.b. being dengosa is a positive trait in a partner.
• Melosa: “honeyed”. Someone who expresses affection verbally to a shamelessly intense degree.
• Grude: “sticky material”; “glue”. Someone who wants to be up close to you at all times. can be used negatively or positively; e.g. “these two are such a grude lately [admiringly]“.

Much of our rich vocabulary for this field is indebted to Bantu languages. Once again, there's probably more I'm not remembering, exact nuances vary with speaker and age and subculture etc.

Have fairly close English equivalents

• Namorada: girlfriend
• Esposa: wife
• Mulher: woman, as in wife
• Amante: lover (illegitimate)
• Amizade colorida: friendship with benefits. Implies a recurring sexual relationship with no or lightweight emotional involvement. Lit. “colourful friendship”.
• Flash: a hookup. a one-night stand.
• Crush: as in English.
• Parceira: as in the English cognate.

No exact English equivalent

• Ficar: to make out with; lit. “to stay with”. Probably but not necessarily staying short of sex, though often sexually charged. Implies a fun/joyful aspect, and also probably an emotional/honeyed/crush aspect. Can be a one-off thing; if it's recurring, you have a
• Ficante: “stayer”, “stayent”. Someone you often make out with, but no committed relationship is declared. Implies non-exclusivity. You probably have feelings for one another, but keep it light.
• Pegar: to hook up with; probably but not necessarily sexual. Literally “to seize/grab/take”; often implies an active seducer role on the part of the speaker (“see that hot piece on that table? I been grabbing her”). Implies emotional casualness. Can be used of a one-night stand; if it's recurring, you have a
• Pegante: someone you have a sexually torrid, emotionally light, non-exclusive recurring relationship with.
• Peguete: same as “pegante” but the suffix makes it feel even more casual. Has a connotation like “plaything” or “boy toy” in my mind.
• Pegadora: assertively promiscuous and good at it. Seductress. “She fucks.”
• Ficante séria: You never declared a relationship but she's de facto like a girlfriend and if you forget her birthday or cheat on her there's gonna be trouble. Extremely Brazilian concept in that “serious casual” is a logical contradiction and makes perfect sense.
• Ficante premium: More or less the same as “ficante séria”, but funnier. Can be extended like “ficante premium gourmet comfort plus”, etc. “Yesterday my ficante premium plus saw me with the ficante comfort limited edition and SHTF.”
• Pensante, olhante, conversante: “thinkent”, “lookent”, “chatent”. The concept of “ficante” is so useful that the -ante suffix (the same as in “student” or “resident”) has now generalised to describe your beloved at stages of the flirting process, from when you’re thinking about or staring wistfully at her down to the actual making out.
• Ex-ficante: You never declared a relationship and you were never exclusive but your former ficante came to the same new year's party as you and your current ficante and now there's a maior climão (A “biggest atmosphere”. I think you get the idea.)
• Amigada: The wife equivalent of “ficante séria”. You live together and are for all intents and purposes a married couple, but never legally married nor declared your relationship to your family. Very very old word, like literally from the renaissance, so it has a bit of a grandma energy—it sounds to me like, “and your aunt ran away from home and became amigada with her cousin back in '63…”—but I still see young people using it, too.
• Namorido: Portmanteu of namorado “boyfriend” and marido “husband”. Not your husband but the relationship is so serious that the social role is like a husband. Maybe you live together (=amigado), or maybe not but you stay at each other's houses so often that you practically do; you go to family events together; you travel together in vacations etc. Boyfriend with husband characteristics.
• Namorida: Feminine of “namorido”; girlfriend with wife characteristics, even though the implied marida (a feminine of “husband”) isn't a regular word.
• Rolo: “It's complicated” relationship. “Situationship”. “In a dynamic with.” It's recurring, and it's not just sex for fun. Maybe not formally dating but there's too many feelings involved, you're falling for one another but one side or both is afraid to say it aloud; or you want to live in this state of ambiguity for longer; or maybe it's illegitimate on the part of someone; or not-quite-illegitimate-but-better-if-she-doesn't-know, that kinda thing. Literally a “roll”, but it's originally slang for trouble; mess.
• Rolo compressor: “steamroller”. You had a rolo and they came drunk to your party when you were petting your peguete and made a scene and you're the talk of the town for a month. Then they called you at 2am to break up, but then called next morning to say they're sorry, and…
• Caso: A “case”. An affair. An older word that can be used like amante (illegitimate lover) or like rolo (it's complicated). For example, a torrid, intense, and knowingly temporary relationship for the duration of a summer trip would be a caso de verão (“summer case”). Has a mature adult connotation in my mind, compared to the more young folk/nightlife energy of ficante/pegante.
• Contatinho: “little contact”. “I'm in her DMs”. Nobody has proposed or confessed anything yet but it's clear for everyone involved that you two are a thing already. They're like, incoming queue. You get sugar syrupy/flirty every so often to keep moving things towards IRL skinship. Back in my day we called this being fofinhas no MSN (“being cute on MSN”) but nobody uses that anymore.
• Contatinho de reserva, aka step: “Backup little contact”, aka “spare tire”. Not a side piece but a side potential piece. Someone in your DMs you've been jogando verde pra colher maduro (“playing it while it's green so you get to harvest it ripe”), like, no expectations, but the hustle never stops…

There's probably more I'm not remembering. This is like, slang, it has all sorts of variants and different nuances depending on dialect, subculture, generation etc. This is how the words sound to me in particular and, I think, most folk from my area and generation.

I often tell people: “if you keep a dream journal you’ll be able to have highly elaborate dreams like mine”. The act of keeping a journal primes your subconscious, as if some part of you who makes dreams gets the message and decides to put some effort. Or is that just an idea that makes sense to me so I tell them to people? Truth to be told, I don’t keep a dream journal, except if you count those exceptionally elaborate dreams I post on social media themselves, with Mastodon being my “journal”, or occasional jottings on my bujo when I have that feeling: “I must note this down” without knowing why. I don’t have the cinematic, plot-heavy dreams consistently or often. If I kept a dream journal, would their frequency actually increase?

2.

The idea gives me some dread. Though few of my dreams are outright nightmares, they usually aren’t super happy or pleasant either, with an anxious character to them. Scarier still are the ones that bleed into real life, with sleep paralysis hallucinations; many times including recently I have experienced a gradual shift from dreams to this reality, so that the last scene of the dream fades seamlessly into the scene I see from my body lying on bed—from virtual reality to augmented reality, so to speak. Watching a demon dog that had stalked you for your entire dream fade into the corner of your room walls, still growling at you, and then realise you're lying awake staring at the same room corner of where you sleep; or watching a parade of disembodied masks/faces coming from the gaps between boards on the ceiling, then realising you're in this reality staring at the ceiling boards—when I was young those things would make it impossible for me to sleep in my bedroom again at all. (Years later, when I found out about the Hounds of Tindalos from Lovecraft and how they are able to manifest from any architectural angle, that… did not help.)

I feel like without my hallucinations I am diminished, somehow; I want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. But maybe I am afraid that, if I start exploring my dreams, that kind of thing will return, and then where am I going to sleep? I don’t live with my mom anymore, I am the mom now; and a single mom at that; there is no one to go say: I’m scared, no lap to seek refuge into.

3.

But I am trying to rationalise something more elemental. There is a base fear that I am very familiar with, since my first few visionary experiences. I call it the “oh fuck oh shit it just got real fear”. Like maybe you are attracted to magick or wicca or lucid dreaming or something, so you go seek after it, after like, something. Though you are also modern and educated and a sceptic, so half of you constantly thinks: you’re wooing yourself, none of this is real, it’s all scams and mind tricks. Metaphors, generously.

And then after a while you do in fact stumble on something, and it’s like falling down into an abyss head first, and suddenly all those metaphors seem actually really dangerous, and the question of the exact realness of their phenomenological status takes second place to: oh no oh fuck abort abort abort.

For example, both times I tried ayahuasca I had a single dose and did not have the strong, transformative visions that the entheogen is reputed for. Both times one of the ritual workers offered me the second dose, and I refused. Both times I got the impression that they knew exactly what was going on and scoffed a bit at my cowardice. Now part of the reason I didn’t want to take the second dose is that the ayahuasca religions I had access to both were Christian-based, and my stomach just can’t agree with Christian stuff, it repulses me at a visceral level. But that’s not the primary reason. The primary reason was that I instinctively knew that if I downed that second cup, shit would get real.

4.

Sleep paralysis phenomena should be generalised as half-sleep phenomena, I think. Not every hallucination I have is accompanied by paralysis. The paralysis itself doesn’t seem to have the same terror & dread edge that it used to have, after I learned that it’s like, a thing that happen to people, the scientific explanations of it etc., and then just let it happen. But regardless: there’s a particular kind of hallucination/vision I have when in a state that is not quite awake but not asleep, either; both before sleep and after waking up, whether or not there’s paralysis.

5.

Most often my demioneiric visions are visual or auditory; the voices used to be more common, these days I think visions are more common. The one time that involved any other sense was the ghost girlfriend, who visited me three times; that was intensely memorable, hugging an invisible girl who was not(?) there, who felt so real that I swear I could see the indentation she left on the mattress next to me afterwards. The first time she came was in a period where I was dating a lot of women, but that night I was alone, and suddenly I had a girl to hug to sleep and I was like, “how nice, one of my girls came give me a surprise and lie with me”, and only once I was awake/sober enough to realise, “waaait a minute that would be a weird thing to do and how would anyone open the apartment door at 3am anyway”—that the feeling of her was suddenly gone from arms. The second time I do not remember at all; but my memory of this vision noted down “she came three times”, so I’m reporting it like that. The third time was the only time ghost girlfriend told me something, namely the word “goodbye”; her body them seemed to dissolve into a thousand pieces; the tactile feeling of snuggling to a human body and then have it shatter under your arms like polygons in a 3D game animation was so real and unexpected and unprecedented that I was more marvelling at how this felt than anything else. Ghost girlfriend never came again, nor have I ever had a tactile experience like that again.

6.

The first experience with sleep paralysis that I remember was umbanda-related, in my early teens. It was magnificently terrifying, maybe the scariest I ever had. The voice I heard—a sickly-sweet female voice—repeated a word three times, stretching out the stressed vowel in the third; I was desperately trying to move my legs, but they would only shake nervously; the voice stretching that vowel made my leg shake like a bamboo switch in the wind, and then the half-sleep state, and the paralysis, were gone all of a sudden. With no idea what was happening or what to do, I went to the kitchen and cooked something purely to calm down. Then I dug through my grandmother's husband's family's old box of books, and found Polyanna, which even to 11ish-year-old me felt too facile and condescending; but at that moment the book saved me, its message of positive thinking and optimism is absurd motivational-speaker material in daylight, but past midnight and terrified? it was a life raft in a sea of terror, it made it possible for me to try to sleep again. Then the same voice did the same thing—a word, three times, long vowel at third, leg shaking etc., with the same effect; only it was a different word this time. Curiously, that made it less scary; a weird thing happens to you and it’s a dreadful unexplained phenomenon, if it happens twice it’s like, a thing that happens. Repetition defuses. I was finally able to sleep.

I was able to remember the two words for years later, but I never noted them down and at some point I forgot them. How I wish I had them in the era of the Internet to look up, to analyse with my linguistics skills…

7.

A widespread half-asleep phenomenon that I also have and that one of my kids inherited from me: Mind radio. This is when you hear voices saying sentence fragments in your mind when you're about to sleep, in quick succession, changing speaker for each fragment, as if you were zapping through radio stations: I don’t drink milk I don’t drink—today she was fond of white jackets—in Vietnam the peasants might—nani ittenda, kono yaroo—butterflies rose and pink, I will give you, etc.

Mind radio does not sound like the voice of the normal internal dialogue, intangible in your mind; there's a definite acoustic quality to them, the voices have a very specific timbre and volume and a definiteness of sound. At the same time you're aware they are in your mind; you don't think they're coming from real life, that there might be a physical person in the room with you.

My mind radio tends to be pretty unpleasant and cause the oh-shit-it's-getting-real fear, which bothers sleep. I usually dread this when it happens, and try to drown it out with a youtube video or something. The voices don't normally make any sense, at least not in an obvious way; but mine lean towards mean words and a certain aggressive tone. Once I tried experimentally asking them things, inspired by techniques of how one explore one's plurality. The succession of sentence fragments didn't really reply directly, but I felt like they were kinda interacting with what I was asking, if in a sarcastic/mocking way sometimes. That's another rabbit hole I didn't get very deep into.

8.

Only now in my middle age, I started having an occasional phenomenon that seems to be a visual analogue to mind radio, happening in the same situation. Instead of voices I see images, each lasting maybe 3–5 seconds. Like the sound of the voices, these images have a strange definiteness to them; I'm not normally able to conjure images in my mind, I have a poor visual imagination, but these images are as if I was looking at a drawing, every detail visible. I can't make any sense of them, and like a dream the memory of them disappears fast. A chair on a furry carpet. A toy duck with ducklings. A masked man sitting and staring at me. The moon and stars, etc.

Curiously, these flashing images don’t seem to cause the type of dread that commonly accompanied my auditory mind radio, and accompanied also many (but not all) of the half-asleep, “augmented reality”-type visions. Could I invite the mind images on purpose? I have a vague idea of how to do that; a journal, the absence of distractions like music or podcasts, and just asking, opening myselves to it. Do I dare?

9.

A half-sleep phenomenon I experienced at least twice and never saw described anywhere else. I am sleeping somewhere outside and under the stars, somewhere natural, with all the stars we don't see in the cities. I always feel at peace under stars, like coming home, so I stare at them with love and gratitude. Eventually I close my eyelids, and find to my surprise that I can still see or imagine the stars, in all their incountable glory, exactly where they were before, every colour and position and everything. Baffled, I open my eyes again; there's all the stars. I close my eyes; the stars continue to be there.

Like in the “mind TV zapping”, the visual quality of these stars is tangible, concrete; very different than trying to picture things in my mind on purpose. I never had this happen with anything other than stars. It's as if stars, and stars only, could pierce right through the cover of my eyelids.

10.

I saw a recommendation that you try to talk to characters in your dreams, even while awake—like just write on a notebook and “imagine” or “pretend” you're talking to them, and you might be surprised at the answers. This seems exactly parallel to how it works to talk to plural selves, which leads to the obvious question: if the beings in your dreams are you, or at least some of them are you, are they a type of plural self?

11.

I like the idea of blurring the lines between dream and reality—wearing a piece of clothing you remember wearing in a dream, for example, or adopting a catchphrase or humming a melody, etc. If dream-personas are a type of plural self—could you invite a dream self to front? Extract them right out of one reality to the other?

12.

Conversely, could you have your awake-time plural selves hang out together in dreams, as in with different dream-bodies, to have adventures or romance or guidance etc.? Maybe lucid dreaming techniques could help inducing that?

13.

An experience I've had countless times was to fall deeply in love with someone in a dream, only to wake up and find out that the recipient of my affection does not exist, which is a very offputting kind of bummer. But I've had sequential dreams more than once—like the recent series of dreams that all took place at the “decrepit ghetto neighbourhood somewhere in Tōkyō” which achieved some notoriety, culminating in that cinematic story with the teenage serial killer/performance artist character.

Apparently it’s something that dream explorers do, try to get back at an old dream on purpose, to continue unfinished business or just to explore promising territory. Could I have been doing this all along when I have one of those romantic dreams, and keep up a long-term dream-relationship?

OpenBSD-chan tem 3 smartphones differents, cada um com níveis diferentes de segurança vs. aplicações disponíveis. Ela nunca deixa nenhum dos smartphones tocar um SIM card. Quando um serviço força validação por SMS ela usa um actionphone selecionado aleatoriamente de um sacão mantido no HQ do grupo dela no centro da cidade, longe do apartamento. Quando ela cruza as pernas você vislumbra um coldre, e tem mais ou menos certeza que ela não tem licença. Quando ela te leva pro apartamento dela ela pára dois ou três pontos de ônibus depois, e espera o ônibus de volta. Se você perguntar sobre qualquer uma dessas coisas ela diz: “opsec”, e não elabora. OpenBSD-chan não bebe, mas fuma maconha. Se vocês estiverem chapadas e você falar de política, ela começa a discorrer sobre como a direita e a esquerda são ambas corruptas e o povo ignorante. Fugu girl. A rota dela é yuri tóxico. * Tipo sanguíneo: B * Cocktail favorito: Virgin Mary

FreeBSD-chan herdou uma jaqueta de couro crop top da mãe dela, decidiu que era fashion, e usa a mesma jaqueta todo dia desde os anos 90. Ao contrário das irmãs, FreeBSD-chan aprendeu a se divertir em festas, depois de ler uma porrada de livros tipo “como fazer amigos” e “como se divertir em festas”. Hoje em dia leva mais de 30 minutos pra uma mulher que ela está dando em cima perguntar, “então você é nerd?” Ela trabalha no mesmo departamento que passou em concurso público há 20 anos e toda sexta à noite bebe exatamente 1 drinque no mesmo bar depois do expediente. Quando alguém tem treta com a namorada e precisa de um ombro pra chorar é pra ela que telefonam, ela tem fama de gente boa e com juízo. Devilgirl, com asas grandes e chifres de cabra. * Tipo sanguíneo: O * Cocktail favorito: Manhattan

OpenBSD-chan has three different cellphones, each with different levels of security compromises. None of them has ever touched a SIM card. When she needs SMS verification she uses a communal actionphone randomly chosen from a bag kept by her squad downtown and never brought anywhere near her house. When she crosses her legs you can spot a holster (isn't that illegal where you live…?) When she's taking you to her flat she always stops a few tram stops beyond, walks one back, and takes another tram the other way. If you ask about any of this she says “opsec”, and does not elaborate. She does not drink, but smokes weed. If you ask about politics while high she talks about how both left and right are dumb. * Blood type: B * Favourite cocktail: Virgin Mary

FreeBSD-chan has a slim leather jacket she inherited from her mom, decided it was cool, and wears all the time since the 90s. Unlike her sisters, FreeBSD-chan has learned to enjoy parties, after reading several books on how to socialise and how to enjoy parties. It now takes over 30 minutes before women she's hitting at in parties ask, “so you're a nerd?”. She's been working 20 years at the same corporation and every Friday evening stops at the same bar to have a single drink. People call her when they need emotional support or help with moving, she has a reputation for having her crap together. * Blood type: O * Favourite cocktail: Manhattan

FreeBSD-chan is obviously a devilgirl, NetBSD-chan too but the devil features are more subtle. FreeBSD-chan has goat horns and large wings; NetBSD-chan has pointy little horns and wears glasses. OpenBSD-chan is a fugu girl, necessarily, and her dating route is toxic yuri.

Daguerreotype: Arai Takashi, “Ōsaka-yuri 2,” 2008.

Content notes for this piece: Explicit discussion of sex; historical lesbian art, some of it graphic; BDSM mentions.

When I think of folk I've been with who were equipped with a vagina, almost all can be clearly classified into two general types: the clitoris-oriented, and the penetration-oriented. Those who primarily like clitoral stimulation usually also like penetration but are kinda meh about it, and won't, like, chase it on their own initiative. And vice-versa for penetration enjoyers.

A clitoris-oriented bottom likely will enjoy oral sex, as well as clit toys (vibrators, suction devices, pain tools if they're a masochist). When doing penetration, it always pays off to find ways to simultaneously stimulate the clit. If you're doing PIV, for example, you can “ride them high”—lie on top of them to fuck face-to-face, pushing your body up so that your cock or strap-on is pressed from the inside towards their belly button, and move your body in such a way that your abs and shaft rub against their clit. You can also use rabbit-type cock sleeves, hold a vibrator between you two, etc. If doing fingerfucking, you can tongue the clit at the same time as you penetrate them, or do a pinch grip with fingers going inside and thumb hitting the clit (keep thumb well lubed; if their vag gets wet, adding your saliva is enough).

Bottoms are often subby, and a clit-oriented bottom may see penetration as a thing they do for you, an offering of their body. Depending on their kinks, this may matter for them more than physically getting off from clit rubbing. If you get one of these, I advise you to seek the level of intimacy and trust where you can really let go of the need to make them feel pleasure, where you can black out from all sense and reason and just pound the hole in whichever way makes you get off the most; that ends up being a superb experience for them too.

A penetration-oriented bottom, by contrast, actively craves a hard fuck. They generally want it intense, vigorous, and long-lasting. But you can't just shove it in either, their lust needs to be switched on first. I mean I've been with girls who like, needed to be bred unceremoniously anywhere, in a corner of an empty lot or their home building's stairwell or at a dark corridor at the university; you pull down her panties wherever, and she's instantly ready and eager to take it. This is because they get off on those situations, as a kink. But in most cases, penetrative libido arrives slowly, and it's best to turn on the heat gradually, playing with their body without hurry, until they're coiling and twisting and begging for it. The longer you edge them the better it feels when you finally fuck them.

People who like to be pounded often divide into a few subtypes:

• G-spot enjoyers: Curve your fingers up inside towards their belly, not too deep in. Feel for a spongy, ribbed texture. Press on their Venus mound from above to increase pressure against your fingertips. Experiment around the area and monitor their reactions. If they say something like, dunno, “oh god oh god fuckfuckfuckfuck”, that's a G-spot enjoyer. I've never found a toy that does this better than my fingers.
• Cervix bottoms: Constantly yearning for a deep fuck. You can test this by getting two of your longest fingers as deeply inside as humanly possible, pound that a few times, monitor their reactions. If they get off on this, you can go hard and long and rough, but not necessarily fast, certainly not fast from the get-go. Let them feel each plap. This type benefits from dildos and strap-ons.

Be aware that many of these activities aren't for everyone. Most women I've been with find cervix pounding downright unpleasant, except the ones that crave it the way a plant craves sunlight. Some folk find G-spot stimulation a disagreeable peeing pressure, not desirable at all. There's no secret here; ask how it usually works for them, experiment with touch, observe, learn the language of their body.

Photo: Jessica Tanzer's “Bear and Aphra”, for the magazine “On Our Backs”, 1989.

For every type of bottom mentioned so far, once you find that one thing that hits the spot, they'll be wanting a lot of it. Like a lot a lot. Be prepared to do it until your hands hurt, until your arms ache with spasms and cramps, until your jaws are so tired you can't speak. Then keep going anyway. Take short breaks when you need it, snuggle them a bit, then continue. These long sessions of lesbian intimacy, weaving in and out of sex, with no clear boundary between fucking and cuddling, each aftercare snuggle doubling as foreplay for next round, lasting four, five, six hours nonstop are the best thing in the world in my opinion… Be ambidextrous, when one hand can't go on switch with the other. Or when one hand is tired, try holding its wrist with the other hand and keep pounding it as you would a toy (this also allows to increase the intensity, so instead of feeling the stimulus weakening when you tire, they'll gasp with the new wave of pleasure). When tonguing, try various different movements—circular, lateral, vertical; at varied spots; with and without suction; with hard suction—and once you find something that makes them spasm with pleasure, do a lot of that thing, for a very long time.

Keep every fingernail of both hands trimmed as short as possible. (“Oh no but she's straight, I'm just visiting my friend”—trim those nails first. “It's a company party, it's not like my coworkers would—” trim your nails. “He's not into it actually, we do shibari nonsexually”—trim those nails before the shibari. “Ew no it's a political protest not a hookup spot, it would be #problematic of me to flirt, these are just comrades”—trim. those. goddamn. fucking. nails before you put one fucking foot outside your house. Trust me on this one.)

If your bottom is both able to orgasm and needing to come, then your forearms will cramp like mad and your jaw will get unbearably painful right when they're about to climax. This is a law of physics. Keep going anyway. Ramp it up.

The key is to enjoy fucking them. If you actively get off doing their holes, you'll never get bored no matter how many thousand times you repeat the exact same movement. In other words: be a top +.★(UωU ).*o☆

You can increase the speed of stimulation gradually over time, but—don't rush to this. Too much speed easily gets unpleasant. Marathon not sprint.

A further word on orgasms: Not everyone orgasms. Among people who do, not everyone wants to orgasm. Even if they do, they may prefer for it to be pushed off for as long as possible. Many people can masturbate themselves to orgasm, but never come when stimulated by others. And some would, in fact, prefer if you make them come hard before you're done for the night. You have to talk about this, and ask how it works for them. I advise always looking beyond orgasm-oriented sex, as it opens new, wide and spacious vistas. People with vaginas who can orgasm usually do it through clitoral stimulation; a few can orgasm from penetration but that's not very common at all. Magic wands often (not always!) can induce orgasm; some bottoms actively dislike this about wands, it's too much too strong then over too fast.

(Always get the cable-powered magic wands. In my experience girldick tends to take better to the Hitachi/Europe Magic Wand (greater head travel/bump), while factory-installed clitoris tends to do better with the Doxy (greater speed of vibration). I don't have enough data on neovag to observe a preference trend. Fundraise an Europe MW for us, and I'll report what my girls say about the Europe MW vs. my trusty Doxy-sempai.)

Woodblock: “Fumi-no-kiyogaki”, by Chōkyōsai Eiri (1801). The top is saying: “Seeing as we’re going to do it like this, I’ll put lots of the cream on it. So really make yourself come. Without the cream this big one would not go in.”

The last subtype is size queens. These will not reach a truly transcendental experience with soft girlcock. Probably not with hard mancock either, for that matter. To top one of these we don't just want length; we want, crucially, girth. With fingers, you'll be working towards fisting; with straps, towards dilating onto thicker and thicker dildos, until they're scarily massive. Size queens function much like masochists, they're tough as nails and proud of the extremes they can get to, and enjoy the process of always pushing those boundaries further. Your role is to be the pusher, to find a pace that's neither boring nor unbearable.

I can't write a full guide to fisting here, but there's a ton of info online. The key is to study it well, then take it easy. Go slow, enjoy the process. If both of you end every session thinking you could have gone further that's great, it means you have a reason to meet up again. Get familiar with fisting lube (it's basically lube by the buckets; you'll need all of them buckets). Learn about safety. Imagine the worst happened and you do serious damage, assume there's heavy bleeding, panic etc.: what would you do next? Study and prepare for the worst possible accident before it happens, then do the work so it doesn't happen.

Almost everything you learn from fisting guides will also apply for dilating onto bigger dildos. Learn also about anal sex if you haven't; at big sizes a lot of it is similar, how to keep it pleasurable even when constantly pushing the limits. Keep adding lube and keep working with their psychology; at challenging levels of penetration, it all rides on their internal relaxation, their comfort and trust, their welcoming of you.

(As an example of what this can look like, a thing I've done a few times to cuddly bottoms during genital penetration, when they have trouble with my girth, goes like this: I will start with a finger, then two, maybe a lubed three, then just tease with the tip of my cock, and all the while I'm cajoling them in a sweet syrupy voice, “oh this feels so good, you feel so good, dang look at this juicy bod, you're making me so happy right now, you're great at this, you know?...” then as I push just the tiniest bit in, I started getting more suggestive like, “you're doing so good, you can take more, right? for me?, yes that's it, relax, I know you can do it, I won't hurt you don't worry, let me, you can stop at any time, just let me in, it will feel so good to be all the way in, yes relax and let me”... then when I feel like they're ready for it, I switch brusquely into a low dommy voice, clear imperative in command: “Let me”. At this their canal instantly relaxes and opens itself for my cock like a flower to the morning sun. This gets me off like, so much.)

Painting: Believed to be from the Puruṣāyita (“virile behaviour in women”) chapter of a Persian translation of the Indian Kokaśāstra (11th century). The Persian manuscript is lost at the Bibliothèque nationale de France since 1984. The butchy top with the bow-dildo in the painting is believed to be a female harem bodyguard, said in the Kāma Sūtra to practice puruṣāyita; the bow was their prescribed weapon. Puruṣāyita in the Sanskrit originals clearly refers to the use of dildos between women, but English (male) translators often render it as a woman heterosexually riding a man. Source: Penrose, “Postcolonial Amazons”.

Do keep in mind that this entire guide is just like, generalisations from experience that I use as rough roadmaps when getting to know a new partner. There's infinite individual variation. Maybe someone loves a deep fuck but hates penetrative toys of any kind, or thrives on a clitoral suction device at the same time as being fucked, and so on. I've been with masochists who hate being spanked with something inside them, and others who can only really enjoy penetration with that extra spice. You always need to stay open and curious, to talk, experiment, observe.