A dog called Paul

She took a handful of the water and spilled it on the little crop of fine hair that had so recently sprouted between her legs. The water chilled her, stung sharply, but she felt it drip over the folds of her skin and a delicious warmth continued to spread out from her vagina across the inside of her thighs. The skin between her legs was swollen. She noticed a tear in the flesh, a surface wound, nothing that could be internal damage. She noticed a swollen nub of flesh at the top of her little fissure. She poured more water onto it and the heat of her blood pushed out further into this tight thumb till the throbbing pressure inside was almost too much to bear. She touched it gently, tenderly with her ocean-chilled finger, rubbed at it, and was overcome by a rush of sleepy pleasure like the moments before sleep.

Leda stretched back on the rocks and felt the heat of the day soaking up into her shoulders. She stroked the little nub of skin and let her thighs fall languidly apart. The dog’s rough tongue startled her out of her stupor for a moment. Paul lapped at her and Leda lifted her hand away to let his tongue do it’s work. She remembered her cut feet and how his tongue had heeled her.

Her skin was torn. There was some blood and yet this tongue and the slipperiness of it’s saliva made it right again. She let the sleepiness overtake her, the sun on her naked skin, the sand and the smooth warm stones against her back. All this and everything coalescing in that one place, the swollen lips between her thighs and the rough but gentle tongue lapping there.

Leda and the Swan

Whatever you think about the dogs or the horses or the goats, there is always the swan. My favourite version is by Peter Paul Rubens. There is something so sensual about the way the swan dips his beak into the mouth of Leda. Leda herself is all flesh. She seems to be half asleep. That drug that is sex, arousal like a sleeping draft, relaxing the muscles, readying the body for sex.

The penis of a swan is shaped like a piece of spiral pasta. The male bird takes the female on the water, holds her head under, a kind of aquatic rape. There have been stories of female swans who drown in the act. Our Leda is more robust than a swan, but still I imagine the bird's spiral penis inching out between her legs, it's beak in her mouth, it's cork screw penetration. All this and heavy-lidded Leda falling backwards into that poppy-sleep of lust, her thick thighs tipping open, her small breasts listing sideways, the nipples erect and brushing against the sinewy neck of the bird. A fantasy, surely, because in real life there would be the tearing of webbed, clawed feet, the water and a kind of drowning. But this is my fantasy dragged from an image by Peter Paul Rubens and in this fantasy I am overwhelmed by my lust and the feel of the snow white feathers soft against my aroused skin.

The mare

They have the same concerns as anybody. She struggles with her jealousy. He struggles with his irresistible desires. He likes her as much as any woman. When he watches the dog mount her he has an erection that is the hardest ever. When she wakes in the night and he is absent she feels the loss in her gut and even burying her head in the Labrador's neck and inhaling his calming scent cannot fix it for her. She crawls out of bed and the shock of the cold is what she wants right now. Her feet icy on the floorboards, the rough damp of the boots beside the door. In the barn it will be warmer. There will be the smell of hay and horse, the scent of his arousal.

She knew it would be this way when they married. His hand clutching hers so firmly when she lead him around the yard. The dogs, the miniature pony, the stable and the mares.

"I'm Zoo." This admission right at the beginning of things, an email exchange, one zoophile to another. It wasn't a lie at the time. There was the dog and the miniature pony. It isn't a lie now, and yet she stands inside the barn and he is here again, up on the ladder and sweating over her flank, the shuddering of his hips as he thrusts. He never shudders quite like that with her.

I am Zoo, she tells herself, I am Zoo. And yet she would give it all away to make him clutch her thighs with the same intense arousal, his hands shaking, that uncontrollable twitch of the hip.

He sees her and he comes. These two things converge a single moment. He sees her and he gives that final thrust, his fingers clutching at the mare's rump, the twitching spasms of his hips.

She knew this about him when they met. She watches him pump his love into the warm furred flanks. He watches as her heart pumps it's poison through her veins.

I am Zoo. I am Zoo. And yet in this moment she is nothing but the icy creep of jealousy and if she had a gun her love of animals would not be enough to save the mare at all.

consent - ZOOPHILIA

How do you know if an animal is consenting? Consent is such a slippery issue for human sex. Sometimes it is simple. Someone consents to it or they do not. An easy dividing line. But there are gray areas. And it is in these muddied waters that I choose to fish.

But what if the sexual partner is an animal? I have seen videos on youtube that show a dog mounting a girl who is in bed, trying to hide herself from his thrusting hips under the blanket. Her partner films and laughs. The girl is not consenting to this act but the dog's consent seems clear. Surely there can be no question when the animal is a virile male and the human is a female or submissive male.

A man leans over. This in black and white. The footage depicts this act for only a second, but the image hovers in memory like a camera flare. The horse has mounted him, not as it would mount a mare. The horse in the image is tall enough to stand above the man. It's penis is huge and another man is there to hold the horse back, to insert his arm between the horses cock and the man's anus. Without this second man it seems obvious that the horse would call the first man injury. It is as we imagine, the power of the flanks rippling with sweat, the terrifying length of the cock, the grunting sound perhaps from the horse but some of it, pained and determined from the man. And yes, when I rewind, play, rewind, play, the rhythm and the sound of it and the image of that huge animal meat sliding in and out, all of this is arousing.

I am easily aroused.

Perhaps for others their repulsion would cause them to recoil. Certainly the idea seems painful, the thought of the semen, alien, smelling of fur and barn, would be unpleasant if it were on my skin let alone inside me. The reality would perhaps repel me. The idea arouses.

I recently visited my sister and although I am fond of dogs, the sheer number and size of her animals, the exclusion of a dividing line between animals and humans, the smell of them, the weight of them the scent of my clothing after days of being with them, the shit smeared into my shoes, the dogfood in the air, all of this I found difficult to live with. I am unused to such powerful smell of beast in my skin and hair. Although I liked her dogs, they seemed welcoming and friendly, I felt suffocated by a lack of human space. I am not a zoophile. Despite my own arousal at the sight of a horse entering a man's anus, despite this, I am certain that, in real life I would be less than happy to trade places with the man in the footage that I pore over.

If I can find myself aroused by this act that is so complicated, this ethical minefield of consent, then I can make a reader share this arousal. I can make a reader enter the barn with me, crouch in the corner and watch the act taking place. The reader and I will emerge into the light with the same uneasy questions. Is it wrong to feel sexually aroused by an animal? How do you define consent? Is it wrong to lick your dog or suckle on his penis? Is it wrong to let your stallion mount you? Is it wrong to enjoy the feeling of a mare's vagina pulsing out her orgasm around your cock? Are you giving her pleasure? Is it pleasurable? Where are the lines and have you crossed them?

Welcome to the first day of my research. A re-birth of my Furiousvaginas. A barrage of questions. So it seems we will start with Zoo.

kate holden

is awesome.

that is all.

so anyway

so anyway. I have been absent for some time. Struggling with the new book, wondering how the Vagina project can become the Sister project, generally feeling insecure about my work - no surprises there. But I am excited about talking with Kate Holden ('In My Skin' and 'The Romantic') at Avid Reader on Tuesday night. I can see so many parallels with our work and I am quite excited and a little nervous about meeting her properly. I said a passing hi at the Text Publishing party but now I will get to have a proper face to face beer with her followed by a very public chat about writing sexual memoirs. For some reason the idea of this has made me feel nostalgic for writing about sex. I have been struggling with the sister stuff. I have to admit it is much easier for me to write about sex than for me to write about sisters. I have such a complicated relationship to the idea of family. Somehow writing fiction seems more revealing than writing memoir. This meeting with Kate makes me want to get back to the easy stuff, the bodily joy of skin on skin.

I dreamed about a vagina the other night, not my own, someone elses. The dream was quite graphic, a pubis,shaved so the fine hair was cropped to a little line. there was a strong smell, but not unpleasant. The hair was light brown with a reddish tinge. There was a taste and texture in the dream and I woke up wet as I am rarely wet. I was itchy in my skin.

I am inundated, busy with work and the NYWF coming up next friday. It will be my birthday. It has been 2 years since I finished that first draft of Affection. I feel like I have been running ever since.

Tomorrow I will sit and talk about writing about sex with Kate Holden. On Tuesday I will sit and talk about writing about sex in public. Now I am in the mood to read sex, write sex, have some, although that is something out of my control. Maybe Furious Vaginas will take up where it left off. Keep my sister stuff for my weekend novel scrawling. Keep my sex stuff for the web. Who knows. I make no promises.

name

she only remembers your name because you are absent. There is a lesson in this, about absence and the heart. It is a cliche but it can be used over and over and we will never tire of it. I am too constant in so many parts of my life. I am the thing to be taken forgranted or overlooked. And yet it is so hard to be strong and distant and uninvolved. Hard as beginning or sticking to an exercise programme or a diet. In a handful of days I have re-learned much. Be absent. Be distant. Remove yourself from the picture and they will start to notice you.