Boring. Boundaries. Balance.

~ Tael ~ Leave a comment

While catching up with friends during a very extended birthday celebration week and commenting on the year’s impending end, I reflected on how chill this year has been for me.

And how, I couldn’t remember the last time I was able to say that. That my year was not stressful. Lacking in chaos. No severe disruptions. Damn near breezy. I mentioned this to my cousin at Christmas and he immediately (and impressively) confirmed what I’d done differently this year: Boundaries. The thing my therapist had kept coming back to for forever before she graduated me some time ago. This year, I veered away from any signs of toxicity. If it didn’t bring me peace, joy, or some kind of fulfillment, it didn’t get my attention. If it was fuzzy, lacked clarity, or made me question myself, I walked away. If it made me feel icky or negatively influenced, I fell back.

Even if it was family, friends, or familiar.

They say the healthiest actions are the most boring ones. Routine exercise and eating well. Getting proper sleep. Drinking water. Not chasing immediate gratification in drugs or substances or adrenaline or attention. Not very exciting elements. And yet, my year was not dull.

I showed up for friends who needed me. I went to PoGo Fest in Jersey City. I pushed myself to progress in my salsa journey, going to socials and asking strangers and teachers to dance when I was terrified at my lack of skill. Building a hobby out of nowhere, I made connections in the new community I’d found, and as a result, I was more active and more social. With more movement, my body began to show me the importance of rest and how I needed to prioritize it more, and not just go-go-go until I buckled under fatigue. I finally spent more weekends guiltlessly doing absolutely nothing and it felt amazing and refreshing and not boring at all. I embraced the concept of rest as a necessity and not a waste of time that could be better spent. And after a day or two of nothing but loafing, I was always ready to unpause and get back out there.

I represented at my sister’s graduation when my mom was absent, cheering with pride when she crossed the stage to take her diploma. I planned a random family trip to Barbados since her own graduation trip got cancelled, her first out-of-the-country experience. For my birthday, I decided to get a second helix piercing to make the first one I got during Covid a set. I chose “mutiny” against long-time family holiday traditions, choosing to stand up for changes I found enjoyable, rather than swallowing my own desires for the decades-old practices my family was glued to. I broke tradition, but maybe started new ones. I maxed out my Roth IRA for the year. I finally decided that, whether I found a flight deal or not, it was time to book my dream trip for next year, and have delighted in researching my itinerary.

I had so many late nights, planned and impromptu, filled with dance, joy, popcorn and ramen. I wandered the East Village with a friend one night and ended up in a restaurant where we were invited to be added to their wall of customer polaroids. I went to my first SOUP PARTY in Brooklyn where you sample homemade soup varieties. I HALLOWEENED. I built a consistent morning routine of tea and gentle stretching to start the day. My message and social media response time grew even worse because I was immersed in situations that appealed to me, more attractive than idle scrolling to pass time, which equaled more presence.

I’ve long since realized that much of the chaos I’ve encountered in life has been other people bringing it to me. But this year, I didn’t need to keep anyone entertained, lest they grow bored with stability. I didn’t need to manage anyone’s unhealthy habits or anxiety or walk on any eggshells from their stress. I marveled in silent apartment time, peaceful walks, reciprocal conversations, sunsets falling behind water towers of urban landscapes and discovering more Lofi and Chillhop. And I feel nothing but gratefulness for this year. Grateful that I’ve made it this far in life and the fact that I’ve always been able to appreciate tiny, joyful things. And realizing, I just frequently found myself in the company of others who couldn’t.

If I have any “resolution” at all as this New Year approaches, it would be to stay on this path of “boring”. Of staying active and loving sunlight and reading more. Of healthy calm, doing what feels best for me and not vying for validation outside of myself. Of minding my New York business and staying out of others’ chaos, while staying grounded in my inner-peace party. That La-La land in my head. Because mentally, I made my own inner space a happy place to be. And healthy mind/body/spirit has always been the goal.

Wishing you your best boring New Year too. 🙂 Stay ninja.

~Tael

Holidaisical

~ Tael ~ 1 Comment

This is the 3rd year in a row that I’ve bought a live pine tree all for myself as an adult living alone for the Christmas season. Nothing crazy; about 5 feet and slender, to fit in the little space between my TV and desk. The first year I tried this out, it was on a random whim under the premise that it was for my cats. You know, so they could experience an indoor tree in person. But who was I kidding? Once I set it up, I remembered my own delight at having one.

If you know me, really know me, you know I love Christmas. My favorite holiday of the year; my favorite season (just Christmas, not winter). My birthday shares the same month (Sag season, let’s go!) but I happily let Christmas overtake and surpass my celebration of birth. Since childhood, my joy for the season has never diminished. I love exchanging gifts with my people, and have never felt the gift hunt to be any kind of hassle. Rather, for me it’s like a quest, physically scouring deal-stomping-grounds for gifts in the wild, or combing through Internet searches for the best sales and hidden gems. And then, thrilling in the final discoveries like rare items plucked from a Zelda treasure chest after traversing the dungeon or completing the random side-quests to reach them.

I mail gifts to friends I haven’t seen in years. I’ve surprised co-workers with trinkets in the holiday spirit. Ever since I got my first really stable job as an adult, I’ve made it a point to make a contribution to a toy drive each year, because I want to help a kid have something to unwrap for Christmas. I love to share holiday spirit with someone else who adores Christmas as much as I do. One of my fonder holiday memories was the opportunity to volunteer to wrap gifts for a youth mentor program amidst Christmas music and a digital fireplace (sadly, they’ve never offered the chance again since). It never gets old immersing myself in the colorful lights of themed bars, the festive decor of restaurants, or the spirited bustle of urban holiday markets. I’m delighted to frolic at every Christmas pop-up activity, sipping hot chocolate and candy-cane drinks surrounded by tinsel and humming Carol of the Bells.

All this Fa-la-la-la-laaa spewing is going somewhere. For the last 25 years or so, my family has had a tradition of gathering at the “dedicated Christmas celebration location.” Me, my mom and sister, aunt and cousins, and godmother convene together with all of our gifts where the “proper” large and full tree is stationed. Then we position the gift haul around Main Tree, looking straight out of a Home Alone movie snapshot. Now, because of this long-time tradition, it never occurred to me to have my own tree as well, because it wouldn’t be the Christmas Day centerpiece to celebrate with. But this barely-my-height-gotta-keep-you-alive-for-a-month giant plant gave me pleasant tingles, just by being there. This tiny, joyful thing.

So this year, I went straight to where I knew the closest tree seller in my neighborhood was on my lunch break, soaking in some much-needed vitamin D happiness daylight in these SAD season times. And I strolled back to my apartment giddily carrying this $60 tree in my arms. “$60 for that???,” my mom would likely say. Yes. For this accessory that bolsters my merriment for the month. I’ve yet to purchase a single decoration myself thus far, because over the years I’ve amassed a hodgepodge of adornments, some left behind, some saved from being thrown away by others, and many gifted, from Super Mario lights to custom ornaments to old candy canes and stockings. I saved them all as they came my way, never foretelling how they’d take the stage now. And here in my home, there is no one to criticize my meaningful mix & match, and tell me that it’s too many colors and that it doesn’t look like a tree out of a Home and Gardens Christmas-edition catalog. I can just enjoy it as is without it needing to be perfect or prizeworthy.

I stuck this year’s tree into the overpriced stand I’d bought last year ($32 freaking dollars from a local hardware store, so clearly I gotta keep getting more trees to get my money’s worth out of it), and cheerfully regarded the Christmas representation in my own space. Then I proceeded to sit quietly on the floor, playing lo-fi music on YouTube and fondly wrapping the collected loot I’d thus far hunted. Gently folding and creasing and pressing little trinkets into pretty, presentable, packages. For me, it’s therapeutic. It’s enrichment.

It’s a reminder that these tiny, joyful things fill me up so much. And I should continue to let them.

~Tael

Why Do YOU Dance? (Or Why Don’t You?)

~ Tael ~ 2 Comments

The most vivid memories that stick with you are the ones where you can recall the pure emotion you felt in that moment. One such recollection: sitting in my older cousin’s room as a child with some of his friends. A 90s Kit-Kat commercial came on and they all joyously sang along. I felt the excitement; I knew the jingle. So I hopped up into their circle, singing and clapping and bouncing along with them. They immediately stopped and silently stared down at me. Without knowing why, I got the hint: my attempt at merriment with them was unwelcome. That was my first encounter with dance-associated shame.

What continued to follow me throughout life was a confusing cycle where my family constantly picked on my seemingly horrible dance skills while others praised some hidden propensity within me. I got pulled into ballet lessons for 3 years because some scouts came to my elementary school and noticed some kind of aptitude. But when my family pulled me into the dancing fray at family functions, they made a spectacle of jeering at me like some kind of experiment. It became a Pavlovian trigger: dance in front of family, prepare for the ridicule. A script I could never alter, no matter how hard I tried. “You have no rhythm.” “Why can’t you do it like [insert family member’s name]?” “Hahahahahahahayousuck.” I learned early to stop trying and initially compartmentalized it as hating dance instead. I pretended that music didn’t move me.

Except I knew I didn’t really hate it. I was just sick of being laughed at for it.

At my middle-school prom (yeah, we had one of those), I wanted nothing more than to dance with my friends in a non-judgmental space just for us. But keeping up a performative self of avoiding grooving meant I didn’t have much practice. I waited until it seemed my mom had finally stopped lurking and left, then awkwardly tried to boogie down the mini Soul Train line of student spectators. But after ducking away at the end of it, my mom materialized out of nowhere and grabbed me. “I was watching you. See, this is why you need to practice,” she said. Embarrassed once again; still not up to par with her standards. But recognizing that I didn’t want my dancing to be for her standards. Because at that point, I couldn’t recall any memory of me dancing purely to enjoy myself, just a burning desire to perform “dance” in a way that my family would accept and not humiliate me for it.

I finally got that breath of freedom in college. Before then, I’d never really gone to parties. But here, it was spaces crammed with familiar sweaty student bodies and good vibes, far away from my family hawk-eyeing my movements. Like those old-school dance parties they talk about on social media, before social media was really a thing. Packed together, fogging up the windows, not even hydrating properly, encouraging any spectators to join in without judgment. It was liberating. Whether you were showing off, head-bopping from the wall, or taking cues from the latest popular music video shenanigans, everyone did their thing with camaraderie. There was unity in us all wanting each other to have a good time. I even felt brave enough to enroll in a highly coveted Hip-Hop course on campus, just for the fun of trying and freely messing up in a class atmosphere. Nobody taunted my dancing skills here.

Despite my attachment to the college-party life, once I graduated, I didn’t move to clubs or anything like that, because after a couple attempts, I found I hated the real-world club experience. It just wasn’t the same outside, no longer surrounded by the same good vibes and familiarity and pureness. And so, I found myself missing dance again and the freedom of being able to move without feeling like I was under a microscope. At first I substituted with the Just Dance series, where I found I could solo-groove in peace now that I’d moved out of my mom’s house. But it wasn’t enough. So I started attending more Hip-Hop classes (shout out to Hip Hop Dance Junkies!). Sure, part of it was a rebellious move against the constant “You have no rhythm” mantra of my family. But trying to extinguish the love of music and movement deep inside me for so long had done nothing to quell the stubborn blaze, shining fiercely below the surface as if someone only needed to pay attention to see it gleaming through my eyes like a window.

And just as no one ever judged me at the college parties, no one ever judged me in class either. In fact, the opposite. People complimented me. People said they watched me to make sure they were doing the routine right. Folks said “Wow, you’re so good,” and I couldn’t believe it. It felt so alien and contradictory. Why was I good enough for everyone else but my family? Could my mom even pull off the choreography we learned? This wasn’t some backyard Black cookout dancing; this required memorization, drills and muscle memory. All my life my family had made it seem like it was so effortless and natural for everyone else but me, but I would have paid money to see our roles swapped and see how they fared with the moves I was learning.

I got introduced to Tango on a work-trip excursion to a milonga in Argentina. After hopping into some fun mini-classes that night, I tried to take it even further back in the States. From the very first class, the teachers immediately noticed some kind of capability in me; I heard them muttering together as they watched me dance with another student. The school owner even seemed to take an interest in coaching me for the duration of my attendance. It was he who pushed me to join him and select other students at a milonga in the city, and encouraged one of his very attractive student teachers to take me into a back room for “one-on-one practice.” Swear to God it was just dancing, but it was absolutely one of the most seamless, sensually connected dance experiences ever.

The challenge to dance continued to follow me and remind me of its calling. At a rooftop social mixer, I pulled out a slip of paper from an icebreaker bag that read, “Have a dance-off”. I groaned. But I was surprised to find others around me grimacing at the fact that they’d avoided such a challenge because they didn’t want to do it either! They were just as apprehensive about dancing in front of a bunch of strangers. So what did I do? Told myself, “You got this, you’ll never see these people again,” and freestyled with my opponent in front of everyone for a good 30 seconds. And I was glad I did it. Yet again, folks made a point of coming up to me afterward to congratulate me, saying I did so well and they would have been terrified, juxtaposing everything my family had told me my whole life. Was the Pavlonian response of expecting to be snubbed diluting?

And now, this chapter of dance in my life is a Salsa journey. The one dance I never thought I’d be able to learn because the counts are so different from other dance styles, and it always looked so fast, so complex and insurmountable. But from the very first class, I wanted to keep going. It was such good vibes from the students and teachers alike. We were a bunch of beginners bumbling around, messing up and laughing together, but not at each other, simply because we were having a good time with the same goal in mind: to master this. When people tell me I’m good or that I’m a great partner or they have a fun dance with me, I inwardly beam with happiness because I still never feel that great. But I can see my progress in competence.

Sometimes I’ll watch more experienced dancers and feel my anxiety rising thinking I’d give them a boring dance because I’m not on their level. But I try to remind myself that while getting gud is the ultimate goal, not to forget the “having fun” part that I lost sight of for much of my life. Because ultimately, dance should be joyous. And you forget that when you’re so focused on performance and impressing others and not “failing”, rather than dancing with them. So I try to remember to keep my focus on my own connection with the music and my connection with my partner, because while I’m likely being watched (because someone is always watching you in Salsa), my goal has never been to dance for flashiness or to look sexy or to wow other people. If I have a good time with my dance partner, then that’s enough for me.

It also helps that people are not watching you just to tell you that you suck. They are watching for an opportunity to join your good time.

I love that I laugh a lot during Salsa, especially when mistakes are made, because they’re inevitable. If we fail a move, I encourage them to try it again; see if we nail it this time. I laugh because I’m comfortable and at ease. That freedom of dancing to feel good; I found it and I don’t want it to slip away again. And I’ve learned a life lesson that you should be dancing with those you vibe with, the ones you are good enough for, and if you don’t vibe and it doesn’t feel good, then don’t. Move on and find your tribe, (and your joy again).

~Tael

P.S. To those who’ve believed in me, thank you 🙂

Stillness

~ Tael ~ Leave a comment

I looked out my window and saw a tree across the street…unmoving.

I don’t know why that struck me as unnatural.

Like I’d forgotten that trees are supposed to be stationary. Planted. Sentinel. But not even a leaf rustled with a passing breeze. Not even a bird chirping through home’s limbs or a visitor crossing its base.

It felt like a thing unalive.

How odd of me. To immediately feel that something was wrong because, for a brief moment, a living thing was motionless. Not trying to grow. Not trying to climb or achieve or stand out. Just being. Absorbing the world currently around it. Raw.

Remembering that stationary does not always mean stagnant.

Sometimes, it just means rest.

Watching Porn Daily: Unhealthy or Nah?

~ Tael ~ 1 Comment

Hisashiburi! Ya’ll know I love a healthy, intellectual, inherently controversial discussion that most would commonly avoid initiating out of fear of judgment. But since I prefer boundary-tolerant boldness, I found myself commencing a study (haha, it was just an Instagram poll) to try and glean what the masses (of my personal, shimmering oblong of associates) equated with “normalcy” regarding pornographic consumption. And yes, I still prefer to use real, unedited words like “porn” and “sex” because we’re adults and I find the new standard of censoring dictionary-approved terms that social media now deems too harsh, demeaning, and, quite frankly, soft.

I never thought I’d become one of those “My therapist said” people, but honestly, that woman was smart, and I learned a lot from her before she “graduated” me from her sessions this past summer. One of the primary lessons being that things we might have grown up with or observed everyone around us doing, that we perceive as “normal”, may simply be accepted because the majority is participating, but not necessarily healthy. We have tons of tangible examples in America, as statistically our majority is overweight and lacking exercise, with major addictions to fast/processed food, alcohol and substances, and the leading cause of death is heart disease. Common? Yes. Healthy? Ruh roh.

As the “study” responses started rolling in, the women were united in their responses that nah, daily consumption ain’t it, while the male responses were much more…forgiving. My stance was already solidified with my female brethren before I even started the poll. Yes, I believe daily smut consumption is unhealthy. Why? Because at one point I did it.

Let’s set the stage.

As a millennial, online porn was birthed in our era. Before that, you had to be 18+ to go past the rope into the Adult section of the DVD store, or the “LIVE GIRLS” peep show joints that littered Times Square once upon a time (any Millennials ever had a chance to go IN one of those before they all got swept away?). So the only access us young souls had (which we probably shouldn’t have had) was coming across someone’s poorly hidden Playboy magazine stash, or the softcore stuff on TV that, once the adults in the house were sleeping (or maybe they just left you while they went out for the night) you whipped out the aluminum foil for and messed with the rabbit-ear antenna trying to get a clear-enough picture of naked bodies, meanwhile you’re getting moist down there sitting next to your best friend and not at all understanding the feelings you’re feeling because you don’t even really know what sex is yet, just that it’s naughty and hidden from you and your body has already inappropriately been initiated into the sexual world by curious relatives. Or you somehow found a way to watch Showgirls on someone’s TV in an HBO household.

But then the Internet rolls around and you learn that along with your illegal music file-sharing, you could also add a 3-hour download on your dial-up modem connection of a 25-second clip of hot lesbian action that you hope completes with time for you to view, process, and delete the evidence before your parents get home.

Then you get your very own laptop to take to college, and while the Internet connection in your dorm is OODLES better and faster, platforms like Napster and Limewire have come under heavy fire in the news and music companies are threatening to come and bust in on you downloading your fast porn, and I can’t be the student that gets caught, shamed, sued and expelled, becoming the disappointment of my very Christian family, because my campus network can certainly track what I’m downloading, right?

So imagine, when you graduate and you’re finally out on your own for real for real, and you no longer have to worry about school networks or parents walking into your room (or you know, the family living room if that’s where your computer was), you can finally dive into all that illicit hentai and debauchery and explore the underworld those Girls Gone Wild commercials and pop-up ads taunted at us, always behind a paywall, or a firewall, or a purple-velvet curtained wall…

All the freedom.

Now you’re over 18, so it’s not just about household internet speeds progressing and private computers; you now have CREDIT CARDS where the bill doesn’t go to your parents. You can now go into that roped-off Adult DVD section with the Middle-Eastern arms-crossed man watching you as you peruse the scandalous material even though you’re of age now, checking the “preview” screenshots on the insert to see if it’s worth parting with your cash for. Pre-redtube.com days (I used redtube.com in a sentence in an IG message with one of my friends, not realizing that it would actually link the damn site there and I screamed at him NOO DON’T CLICK IT!!! WordPress, please don’t link this.) But see, Redtube and Xvideos and the others effectively destroyed the last barricade to access cheap, easy, sexual content without fear of an accompanying Trojan Horse virus.

You now have unlimited access to the most primally stimulating, pleasurable content as an adult, with nothing standing in your way.

And so…you indulge. You watch. You ready your vibrator. You play the voyeur, acting along with the scene. You learn new things you didn’t know turned you on that you would never admit to others, new positions that seem cool to try, new situations to add to your fantasy-bank. Being able to immediately pull up gratifying carnal titillation at the slightest knock of boredom is thrilling. You save favorite videos to your library and surprise yourself at the genres that turn you on.

But that euphoria doesn’t last forever. When it’s no longer new and fresh and it starts taking longer to come because you’re overstimulating your sensitive bits. When you realize it’s been 25 minutes of tedious scrolling to find new material, because not every video is a banger (yes, all the punz). But there’s always another page, another page, another chance to strike orgasmic gold. Maybe. Could be right around the corner on page 9. Or 12. Or 23. And then when you finally finish it’s been an hour-and-a-half, and all you’ve done is stare at a screen and play with yourself.

Because it’s not real sex. But it sure does make you want to have some. Which is the whole point of pornography. It’s to turn you on. It’s to get you aroused for…what…? Well, for me, it’s freaking intercourse, a main course (also wordplay) that was usually missing. Otherwise I would have been indulging in that and not porn.

I can’t remember exactly how long the daily porn-viewing phase went on for. Maybe a few months? Maybe longer? But cracks started to form. Cracks in the pleasure facade that drained the appeal. Behind-the-scenes clips of women admitting how sore and raw they were from the screen time. Men who ain’t lasting that long without some kind of pharmaceutical assistance. Awful, over-the-top acting with cringe voices and ridiculous facial expressions and glaring phoniness that grated on my authenticity and made it hard to get off to. The 80%-of-the-time money shot of the guy finishing on the woman’s face because yay this is what sex is (and that shit burns eyes). The darker themes you uncover…So much glamorized incest…(Wasn’t the whole “fucking my stepsister on the washing machine” genre recently trending? Kind of sick.)

The biggest crack I could see through, was how this could lead to an addiction if one stayed on that path. How, little by little, you needed more to stimulate you. Watching basic sex stopped cutting it. You sought out variety. Different positions. More taboo scenarios. New kinks to spice up the viewing. Something different, something different, things socially unacceptable, forbidden shit I’d never actually do; this situation is morally wrong, but it doesn’t count because it’s not real so I can enjoy it guilt-free, right? As I condition my senses to find grossly unethical scenarios arousing in secret until cognitive dissonance is born.

I could see how someone could become an isolated hobbit, furiously thrusting into a fleshlight with the blinds drawn in the shadows. Just because it was there and accessible. Easy for the undisciplined. The distance to achieve the same (or greater) high would always continue to extend (giggity) and require…more. And we all know what that sounds like. Like drugs. As you stared at choreographed and controlled pleasure, trying to hold out and orgasm at the optimal point in the clip. Relying on the content to take you to a new level of arousal. And my creative ego would be damned if it was going to let some commodified lust fuel override and control my own sexual imagination and expression.

That just didn’t feel like “freedom” to me anymore.

Porn is controlled and rehearsed. But the passionate, spontaneous dance between two lovers’ bodies in the real world? Mmm mmm… Unless the dance is above my skill level, I prefer to do it, not watch it.

So I tapered off and willed myself to stop. When I was unentertained, rather than just reaching for the laptop and pulling up some XXX for easy pleasure, I just…found something else to do. Or pleasured myself without porn. I went back to using my own imagination for masturbation resources because what was I gonna do when it was time to passion dance with a real person, recall PORNO scenes? Or, follow my own instincts of what feels good, and improvise a sultry wanton tango I wasn’t expecting in the moment, working off my partner’s energy. Because watching the explicit scenes on-screen is always tantalizing, but never comes close to my body reacting from the low, sensual tone of a man’s voice drifting softly into my ears or his warm, strong hands on my body. What turns me on most, I didn’t learn from watching porn scenarios. I learned from feeling lips on my skin, weight sinking deliciously into me, tongue play, and shivers from stroked pleasure points.

The most frustrating part about porn would always remain that it left me wanting the real deal. Wishing someone was actually there to “finish the job” and quench the blazing desire ignited by it. Yeah, you douse it yourself, but it’s almost like I was stoking fire after fire just to do it.

My most euphoric points, my highest highs, the prurient experiences I replayed over and over again that made me flush with warmth reliving them, never came from porn-generated desire. They either came from my own mind, or a real-life encounter. Life introduced them to me.

What’s real will always draw me. I’ll always choose the quality of soul-feeding authentic stimulation over everyday cheap thrills. Daily porn consumption didn’t enhance my sexual life in any way. It just made me horny and kinda threatened my natural sexual dance instinct with unnatural moves. It became pointless to arouse myself every day artificially and then get no sex.

Now, I can’t remember the last time I pulled up a porn site. Might be years. I haven’t banished it to the land of evil, but it’s just whatever to me; my mind doesn’t seek it out. Instead, my mind seeks out organic stimulation and excitement. But it also reminds me that it has no problem generating its own eroticism. Like that one time I needed to quickly change out of some uncomfortable underwear and meet my family downstairs, so, keeping my bubble jacket on I stripped from the waist down and felt the cool air tease my delicate lower lips, while my upper body remained wrapped up like an Eskimo. And in that moment I imagined how hot it would be if a man bent me over just like that to slide into me from behind for a quickie. All it took was an instant for an authentic primal instinct. Our minds can be something if you nourish them properly.

I’ve also been a reader of Sandra Brown novels since like 2nd grade. IYKYK.

~Tael