It’s not about a power dynamic, not really. I don’t do power stuff. I don’t get it. It’s about roles and ways to relate to another. I’m the receptive one. I’m so very receptive. Receptive to anything, if it’s true and it’s kind and it’s fond and made out of love for the other. I’m not the actor, never the active agent. I will not assert—except perhaps in reception. Active listening, if you will. Following up. Touching base. Making sure. Finishing a thought. Continuing the conversation. Demonstrating my interest.

There are so many ways to receive it’s hard to know where to begin. In my dreams, there is so much to do. Maybe start with four of them? One to occupy my g-spot, another my tongue. A couple on standby, maybe to lend me something to grab. And as things progress, so they swap in. I’ve been on the other end; I know these things can’t last forever. But I can, now. Or just about. As one finishes his run with me, and sends me his gift, the next steps in with his own distinct energy.

It all starts so gentle, then grows to such an eager pitch—the thrust and the slap and the rhythm and the pressure. Kind yet firm and overcome with the frenzy, sending the shudder through my perineum, radiating up all the nerves of my body. Warming my chest and my face. And that’s before even the warmth of the deposits—in me, on me, drizzling so slowly down my tummy and my breasts and what parts of my face they find. As the ones I’ve teased earlier each rotate in, find my main hole, and one by one give me what they’ve brought.

I want it. I want it all. I want the burning heat of it. The sickly slick of it. In my dreams it’s always love, it always means something. It’s never just the thing. It’s always a kind of speech. The semiotics can be so perfect I never have to question, never have to hedge. The semiotics of semen. All the signal, clarifying my being.

And as my face and my arms and my chest explode and my legs and my toes threaten to cramp forever, I want nothing but to live. To be. To exist. Right there. No rush to clean up. No shame. Just stars in my vision. Just me, being human. Just the fondness of the other. The hypothetical form to hold. The light and the music and the feel of the pillows. The lilt of the air of the fan on the ceiling, reminding me of my flesh. This awareness of the moment. This drunken existence. My femininity.

I am a real girl. As I have always been. It’s never been a mystery. But there I am. And I am reminded. And I am in love with myself, as I should be. As I was never afforded. And through that love, I love everything else.

It is worth being alive. I never really got that message.