Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about power. I’m a writer working on decriminalizing and destigmatizing all things sex. I synthesize empirical evidence, stories, and personal experience to interrogate existing power structures to propose new, hopefully better, ways of relating. To support my work, buy a subscription, follow me on OnlyFans, or just share this post!
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Alright fam, I think it’s really happening. On Tuesday, God willing and the covid don’t resurge, I’m actually going to leave SF. (I accidentally didn’t email out my last post, Last Friday did not go as planned. TL;DR, I got Covid the day before I was supposed to fly home.)
Today, a friend of mine was texting me about his recent “career pivot into sex politics.” It got me reflecting on what I’m proud of when I think about my time here.
I remember walking Nob Hill with this friend years ago. He was working on environmental activism at the time, not yet “face out,” with regard to his non-monogamous, kinky proclivities. I encouraged him, as I do all my friends who I think can cover the costs of coming out. Now I won’t take full credit for him joining the board of Orgy Dome and starting this new path. But you bet your assless chaps I’ll take some.
When I think about what I’m proud of, I think about the people who told me they never really thought about zoning or land use policy before I became obsessed with it. I think about bringing Maeve into the Bay Area sex-positive community. I think about being broke, dumped, living off my Bitcoin holdings, crying in my nasty-ass Tenderloin shower feeling semi-suicidal and then managing to find another tech job just in time. I think about hustling. Making porn. Making it work in the most expensive city in the world. Forced femmeing a billionaire. Accidentally taking way too much molly at my first post-pandemic play party. The machine learning researcher who ate keto and didn’t drink at all because he wants to live forever. The community input meetings where people were as openly racist, bigoted, selfish, and small-minded as anything I’d ever seen in Alabama. All the dicks at Folsom. I think about living between worlds. Not a gutter punk, a burner, or a tech bro. Neither fully wonk nor fully philosopher. Never rich enough for the rich kids nor poor enough for the poor ones.
I think about the two friends who came to see me when I was sharing a living room with two college students in Park Merced, which, if you don’t know the Bay Area, is bumfuck Egypt. It was $550/month and got me out of an untenable living situation ASAP.
I think about how it took not one, but all two of my SF Black friends to tell me that my main sex party community wasn’t as inclusive as I’d thought. And taking the byline, and doing the edits, so no one else had to take the heat when we wrote about it publicly. I might have been slow to see something, but I did say something once I did.
Realizing my relationship was probably over when he talked shit about YIMBY. Hearing him tell me much later that he was wrong and I was right. YIMBY-pilling at least two high-net worth individuals who are now donors.
I love cities’ sense of high variance. One minute I’m walking down the street. The next I get a phone call from a friend telling me to hop into the Orange Element. An hour later I’m smoking meth and getting introduced to the Bay Area sex-positive scene. After two more tries I decided meth wasn’t for me. But the group sex was.
One minute you’re cleaning your friend’s shit out of your white shag rug, the next you’re eating at one of the fanciest places of your life as a thank you.
It’s so hard for me to stay interested when I think I know how something’s going to turn out. I rarely re-watch, re-read, etc. anything. I hate watching previews of movies I intend to see. It’s hard to maintain sexual interest once I’ve figured out someone isn’t going to be a great love story for me. I love high variance people. One of my favorite people in the world is probably going to prison, going to be a billionaire, or both.
I’ll always love San Francisco. I’d always prefer to live here to absolutely any other place, money and family aside. It’s the highest variance place I’ve ever seen. It’s where I’ve seen the worst dehumanization and the heights of human achievement, all in less than 50 square miles.
I know variance exists everywhere. I know I’ll find adventures in Huntsville, Alabama. But for now I’m just happy to remember some of the variance I found while I was here.
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