For my birthday I was given a book of Henk Van Rensbergen’s photography. An airline pilot, he uses his downtime to seek out and photograph abandoned places around the world. The book featured some shots of old rusting cars in the woods that reminded me of mine and Tabitha’s day out in August, so here is another shot from that day out. Incidentally, Tabitha passed this spot a week or so later and all the cars had been removed so we were there just in time.
I must confess, I struggled at first to think about how to approach this week’s Wicked Wednesday prompt. There is so much amazing writing and hot photography to choose from, so many of you have produced content that has got me off, educated me and given me ideas and I so admire the authenticity, honesty and hard work that exists in this community that I couldn’t see how I could possibly pick just a handful of people to mention. In the end I decided to go with the main theme of my own blog which is about celebrating bodies in all their beautiful shapes and sizes so here, in alphabetical order, are my top ten body-related posts of this year.
Aurora‘s post about Borderline Personality Disorder (brains are part of our bodies!) is one of my favourite posts of the year. One of my closest and oldest friends also has BPD and posts like this are so important for raising awareness.
Confess Hannah‘s Pussy Pride is an uplifting post on learning to love her labia and also serves as a reminder of the legacy a throwaway comment can have.
Hannah Lockhardt‘s glorious homage to her own body in Geography made me want to reach for my camera immediately to photograph her.
I don’t think anyone does raw and unflinching honesty in the way my wonderful friend Honey does and Hate is a powerful and jaw-dropping example of that.
Jedi Hamster‘s Size Matters was a powerhouse of a post that touches on a whole range of important things from the language doctors use with overweight people to the politics of Fat Positivity versus Body Positivity. This woman rocks when she’s in thoughtful rant mode – go read it!
In my opinion, some of Livvy’s finest posts are when she brings her professional expertise and the clinician’s perspective to the table. The Big Problem did just that and I think it took courage to tackle a very sensitive subject from the medical perspective.
In Passengers, Maria recounts an uncomfortable experience on public transport. How often have larger people, and in particular women, suffered poor behaviour in public because they feel they need to apologise for the space they take up? I would guess the answer is too often.
Molly‘s post about getting her belly button pierced was a frank account of the emotional rollercoaster that sometimes comes with casting a spotlight on the parts of ourselves we like the least. And it also gave a lovely heartwarming glimpse of the love and trust between her and Michael and I always love posts when we see that!
Tabitha shared much of what she wrote about in Sugar – The Good Times and The Bad Times with me during our photo sessions and had even talked about writing a guest post for me because she didn’t think these issues were sexy enough for her own site. Honesty is sexy as fuck my friend and I’m so proud that you owned your experiences on your own site.
Violet’s He’s out of my league (and other lies I tell myself) is a wonderfully raw and honest and beautiful post about sex, fat and lovers making you feel attractive.
Those of you who are newer to the Sinful Sunday and the sex blogging community may not know @curvy_dee who back in November 2015 retired from almost a decade of blogging. Our blogging lives only overlapped by nine months, but oh my – what an impression she made! Her photos were always a mischievous body positive life-loving delight and back in April 2015 I put a glorious photo of her on the rocks, like a luscious mermaid, in the round-up.
Dee and I have birthdays next door to each other and when she tweeted last December that she was 39 I replied with a ‘how about a guest post on E40 when you turn 40?’ So here you have it, back for one night (Sunday!) only, here’s the brilliant smile of Dee in a birthday collaboration with me! If she and I ever meet (she’s in New Zealand so not sure how likely that is!) I promise to take a real photo of me whacking her bottom with a bunch of roses!! Happy birthday, Dee – enjoy your fabulous forties!
“If you’re losing faith in human spirit, go out and watch a marathon.” Kathrine Switzer*
Is training for a marathon sexy? No. It’s exhausting. For 16 tedious weeks it’s you against the weather, your own mind, a life more interesting. You get sunburnt in February and stung by hail in April. Out running you talk to yourself, you shout at yourself, you cry. You – the one who always calls ‘one for the ditch’ – places your hand over your glass after a couple of drinks because you have to run 15 miles in the morning. Men yell from vehicles. Dogs trip you up. You chafe.
But do you feel sexy? Fuck yes. Despite an ever-present tiredness you also feel constantly horny. You pass endless miles thinking about fucking. You lift your running shorts to your face to smell yourself as you strip off. You savour the burning muscles in your arse and thighs, a Pavlovian Bell for other memories. You love your body more.
Are runners hot? Let me think about that? Toned arse and legs. Stamina. Mental focus. Yes, runners are hot.
And there’s the emotion. Running over Tower Bridge with tears in your eyes, not because you’re halfway through but because you just spotted your friend, a few days out of surgery to remove a tumour from her breast, waiting for you. At mile 23 your brother sends you a photo of your niece, still wired up to the oxygen that’s feeding her weak premature lungs and later a friend who was tracking you on the app asks why you suddenly got faster at that point. At mile 25 you hear a partner call your name and knowing he’s fresh from a train from his Grandma’s funeral you feel a surge of affection that back in the normal course of life you forget to translate into words.
You’ll become an enthusiastic cheerleader for others. You sit in bed on a Sunday, eating croissants and tweeting as you watch two blue dots move round a European city. You wobble in after a night of comedy and wine and look up the progress of someone you won’t meet for another few days as they churn through 100 miles. You sit with your friend and her four-year-old son, warming your hands on coffee cups, waiting for Daddy’s head to appear over the brow of a hill on the South Downs at the end of his 60 mile race.
It can make you a bit weird too. You’ll suffer Marathon mentionitis forever more and your friends will rib you mercilessly. You’ll stare at other people’s running shoes in the street. You’ll pass off slovenly behaviour like eating peanut butter straight from the jar as part of your nutrition programme. Whether you run in knickers or not becomes a very important conversation topic (I’ve actually had this chat with at least six female friends over the last four years!).
When you start out you think it’ll be ‘one and I’m done’. But you’ll be back. For all of the above reasons but also the medals. Oh yes, medals! Big, hefty, satisfying medals. Sigh
*In 1967, Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon when it was still a men only race. During her run a race official attempted to rip off her race number but he was shoved to the ground by her boyfriend and she completed the race. It was not until 1972 that women were allowed to run the Boston Marathon officially. This year, aged 70, she marked the 50th anniversary of that race and ran again wearing the same bib number: 261.
To see who else is writing for this week’s Wicked Wednesday marathon prompt, click the rainbow button below!
Photo courtesy of Candysnatch Reviews
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Two’s Company, Three’s A Crowd
Why should we call ourselves sinners?
Repeated Patterns
*You really should consider adding your popular posts here too*
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The Red Chair ~ A Cuckold’s Story – Part 1
Caught Part 3: the punishment
Get up! Stand up!
Chastity Fiction: Aaron & Melissa
Afflicted
Tooth and nail
Event Horizons
Bee’s wax
Sex Q&A: An Adventure into Ass Play
She was poisoned by your utter indifference.
Orally Ambiguous
Walk in, beat him, leave
What Is My Dream Trying to Tell Me?
Thought of Her
The Biter
I have a guest post for this week’s Sinful Sunday, from this man. I love this little homage to how brilliant technology can be. I’m certainly enjoying what technology is offering he and I, and it’s enabled him to influence one or two of my previous photos, but this is the first post written by him. I’ve had this photo for a couple of weeks and was always planning to use it this weekend but when I earmarked it for today I hadn’t realised it was also her birthday weekend, so welcome to Exposing 40 and happy birthday! Xx
Ones and Zeros From Afar
Technology is amazing. Technology allows us to stay in touch and communicate with people across the globe in unique and different ways. Utilizing technology to say I’m thinking about you and appreciate you is where things get tricky. The very access and convenience that technology provides can at the same time emphasize the disconnect between two people in two different places. A free moment for one person may for the other be a frantically busy day. So what do we do? Instead of bothering those we love and care about, we fire off texts that accentuate the bullet point nature of our lives.
This is the situation my wife and I found ourselves in a little while back. She had back to back conferences and was out of town for a week. On my end, this meant being solo-dad to my two girls; managing work, school, extracurricular activities, and making sure we all ate too! After about day three or four it was clear that my wife and I just weren’t connecting. The phone calls and texts made clear that we were operating on different planes of existence. Even when we both had a down moment, her excitement to catch up was met with my desire to lay in bed and mumble incoherently.
Ever the astute one, my wife realized that words were not going to improve the situation. The next afternoon, she excused herself from her conference, took the elevator to her room, undressed, took a picture, and sent in off to my phone. No words, no emojis, just her sending a sequence of ones and zeros from afar to say I love you.
Yesterday I read this smoking hot guest post about the effect of a leather skirt over at Girl On The Net’s place (if you haven’t read it yet go and check it out and then come back!). It reminded me of some photos that Exhibit A took of us way back in early 2015.
This morning I went looking for them. I couldn’t find them. They weren’t in the folder with all the other photos we took in that hotel room. Then a little creeping dread came over over me. I remembered deleting those shots. I didn’t like them. I didn’t like the way my tits looked, the weird expressions on my face or the roundness around my middle. I kept them for a short while but every time I looked at them they made me feel bad so eventually I deleted them. After much rummaging in my recycling bin I found them and recovered them.
So what do I see today?
I see a snapshot of a really hot moment and remember a happy 24 hours. I think my tits look pretty good actually. I like the way he’s gripping my leather skirt. I smiled when I saw the green wristband that was such a part of him for so many years. I chuckled at the memory of his dinner turning up with teeth in it. I remember it was the first time he talked to me about Livvy and I feel a little bubble of happiness at everything that has happened on that front since. I think about walking in the New Forest and playing pool. I recall being annoyed that they’d run out of croissants by the time we went down for breakfast and picking all the chocolate out of a pain au chocolate. I grimace that we were charged £42 for two gin and tonics!
And I feel sad that it’s taken almost three years to appreciate the photo.
How many of us have deleted a photo in haste not realising that with it we have closed the door on a whole host of happy memories? How often do we take a photo then fail to appreciate the nuances of the shot because we are focusing in on our perceived flaws? Why are we not kinder to ourselves?
I’m glad I read that leather skirt post. I’m glad I fished this photo out of the recycling. I’m glad I’m sending it out into the wild. And I’m resolving to not delete in haste again and to zone in on the memories of moments, not the bits of me I don’t like.
I am writing this from the back of a vehicle in Nigeria. I’m in Lagos, the biggest city in Africa and home to 21 million people. New Africa. A so-called mega city. Vibrant, ambitious, tenacious, captivating. And becoming increasingly liberal as the trappings of our globalised world take hold? Not where it really matters, no.
Today I was told of a dress code for women who attend a business skills development course. Encouraged into business and championed as role models for a modernising country? Yes, but as just as long they don’t do it in trousers, v neck tops or skirts that end above the knee. But worse than that, sexual freedom is being curtailed.
In 2014, the Nigerian government increased the punishment for homosexuality to 14 years in jail. Anyone ‘assisting couples’ may face a 10 year sentence. In 2010, just 18% of men who have sex with men were reached with HIV prevention services. They do not access the services they need to manage their sexual health out of fear for their freedom. The result? In 2007, 13.5% of men who have sex with men were living with HIV. By 2016, that had risen to 23%. It’s not only men who have sex with men whose health is being failed by the Nigerian government. They are falling short on recommended target for testing, treatment and counselling services for the whole population. The country has second largest HIV epidemic in the world.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, in my hotel my room in Lagos, I exercised a privilege many Nigerians don’t have. I took an HIV test. The kit came courtesy of Freedom Shop and was given to me at Eroticon. The whole process took about half an hour in total: a few minutes reading the blurb that came with the test, five or ten minutes rereading The Other Livvy and Emmeline Peach’s great reviews, an embarrassing number of minutes summoning up the courage to use the lancet and then 15 minutes for the test to progress. It was easy, discreet and, actually, quite an empowering experience. It may sound odd to say I enjoyed the process, but I did. I was in control.
I live in the UK. Here we can pick up a kit like the Bio-Sure HIV Self Test for under £30 and test at a time that suits us. If we have a little more time and are not anxious about visiting a clinic we can test for free. Home testing kits are free for high risk groups. Yet, despite the ease with which we can access testing and a low prevalence rate, the UK still needs to make progress. Here, new diagnoses are almost double the average for Western Europe, it is estimated that 13,500 are unaware of their positive status and 40% of those diagnosed positive receive a late diagnosis. The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles found that just 14% of those who identified as high risk had taken a test recently.
It is easy to think that the world has got a handle on the HIV pandemic. Comparatively speaking it has. The first time I worked in Africa, in 2003, I was visiting communities where almost the entire population of working age adults had died and the majority of households were headed by grandparents or children. Then, fewer than 200,000 people around the world were accessing treatment, now 19.5 million people receive antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. An HIV positive person on ARVs who has had an undetectable viral load for more than six months can’t pass it on.
But there is still a long way to go. 17.2 million HIV+ people still aren’t getting treatment. The rate of HIV infection hasn’t declined amongst adults since 2010. There were 1.8 million new cases in 2016. We all have a role to play in tackling HIV, by taking care of our own sexual health, especially if we are lucky enough to live in a country where stigma is (relatively) low and testing and treatment services are free, by staying up to date on the facts and testing our knowledge and joining campaigns where our voice can make a difference.
Happy World AIDS Day!
For self-testing kits plus a whole lot of other useful stuff for staying safe and heathy visit https://www.freedoms-shop.com/
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