Sans Hands

       Riding a bike hands free with any proficiency remained a skill that eluded me until just recently. Actually, very recently. Like, yesterday.
       The inspiration to ride with no hands came from my then girlfriend a few summers ago. We were cruising down the bike path in Falmouth and she was in front of me, happily peddling along sans hans, looking very beautiful and free. I wanted in, but didn’t know how to do it. So I decided to try it on my own first, lest I take a digger and ruin what was shaping up to be a wonderful afternoon with the woman I loved.
       Over the course of the next few months, I would occasionally try to take my hands off the handlebars and pedal. I had some success. But It was intermittent and sporadic. I hadn’t mastered anything, just met occasional moderate success.
       There’s a reservoir next to my condo, circumnavigated by a path used by cyclists, joggers, and walkers alike. It’s unpaved, uneven, with lots of curves. The wind whips around the reservoir in unpredictable patterns. And there’s usually a fair amount of people on the path, going both ways, at any time of day.
       Being a beautiful sunny, seventy-five degree end of summer day and with my early afternoon free, I decided to do my cardio outside,. The last vestiges of a shirtless summer were fading fast. I wanted to take advantage of every moment of it.
       The path around the reservoir is flat, and I’m always looking to make the ride more challenging and cardio-rific. After a lap or two, I started riding without my hands. Slowly at first, and only on the straightways. As I gained confidence, I sped up and started taking corners with my hands off the wheel. When somebody was headed my way, I would grab the handlebars again, because I didn’t want to slip up, go careening into them, and create a major lawsuit. Soon, that was no longer a concern. By the last three or four laps around the mile and a half route, I was completely hands free, all the way around, grabbing the bars only a few times when I felt discretion was at that moment the better part of cycling valor.
       Riding sans hands proved a potent metaphor for what’s been happening to my life over the past few months.
       It’s inspiring to realize that I can manifest newness and change in my life, no matter what my history or my age. I firmly believe that we all have that ability. In fact, I hold that humans are like trees; we grow until the day we die. If not, we’re already dead.
       Bike riding without hands may seem like a silly example, but for me it hit home. My concept of what’s possible for me has expanded. I see opportunity where before I just saw a problem. I’m experiencing opening after opening, effectively creating space, both inside of myself and in my world around me, to manifest more of what I want. I’m slowly taking more and greater risks, especially in areas where I was previously most cautious. And, believe it or not, I’m even more expressive, putting myself “Out There”, in explosive fashion.
       Stripping away what isn’t me to get to what is me, and then taking what is me and gradually putting that pedal to the metal. At the same time, expanding that concept of “What Is Me” to include a wider range of behavior, responses, possibilities, and experiences. Expansion means getting bigger, and that’s what’s been happening for me. Except in my waistline. That’s actually gotten smaller. I wore a pair of pants the other day that I bought for a wedding in 1986. Fit like a charm. But I digress.
       My life has been and continues to be a most unconventional, unique path. The drummers I follow and the rhythms I dance to have always been my own. The danger in hearing those sounds that others do not is that I sometimes lose the beat or can’t hear the song. And I have a poor frame of reference when that happens, because what I hear seems so different and strange. At the same time, I can learn a lot from being with those who follow a more traditional route. They provide a stability and a grounding that I sometimes struggle with. As much as I am drawn to the fringe, I am drawn to the middle. I can integrate both to create a life that is mine and a life that I love. I guess that’s what I’m really working with now.
       And riding hands free is also a shitload of fun.


©2012 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and Positively Expansive Wrongs) Reserved.

Fifty Thousand Shades of Clint

       Sexual role playing is, literally, fuckin’ fun. Like Halloween. Every night. In your bedroom.
       You get to dress up. You get to be somebody else. You get to act up and act out.  You get to free yourself of restrictions and constraints (or get yourself in them - either way, it works). When you fully engage in sexual role playing, you give yourself permission to radically expand your spectrum of behavior. And, as if all that were not enough....you get to orgasm. Sometimes, more than once. Sometimes, so powerfully that you peel the paint off the walls.
       Please tell me. What about that doesn’t work for you?
       Let’s face it: when you love someone, sex is serious. There’s a lot at stake. There are emotional and mental and physical consequences. Our beautiful and tender feelings are on the line. That seriousness is part of what makes sex with the one you love so intense.
       Allow me to make an analogy between sex and professional football. In both, emotions run high. There’s lots of action. There’s lots of passion. Your whole being is engaged: body, mind, heart, and soul. There’s an abundance of excitement. And you ride a tide of emotions that leave you exhausted at the end.
       And within that....it’s a game. Meaning that it’s meant to be played. Played. Not worked. Like music. And I better stop with the analogies and metaphors, before I become crippled by them.
       When sex is playful, while existing in the realm of genuine love and intimacy between two people, it takes on a beauty and a power and an intensity that can only be manifested by fully embracing that sense of play.
       Role Playing is just that; it’s playing. It’s about accessing deep inner passion while simultaneously getting far enough out of yourself to really let loose. It’s about completely giving yourself over to whatever scene you and your partner have mutually created. It’s about behaving with a barely controlled reckless abandon that flirts with the “out of control” but never reaches it. That’s what happens when kids really play. And that’s what happens when adults really do too.
       So take this controlled reckless abandonment of play and put it into the electric environment of sex. What you have are all the ingredients for a super charged experience that allows couples to literally transcend the ordinary and enter the extraordinary. That sounds like a tall order, but it’s not. If you fully throw your whole self into your sexual play, the extraordinary is actually a natural outcome. And completely repeatable.
       Within the world of role playing, there exists infinite possibilities. Remember when you were a kid and you wanted to play? What were your limitations? Just your imagination. Why the fuck does it have to be any different now? It doesn’t. Unless you decide it has to be. It’s your call. It really is.
       To fully engage in play, you have to let go of your self consciousness. At least temporarily. If the voices in your head are screaming at you “This is silly! What are you doing? Grow up!”, and you listen to those voices, you can’t really play. Tell those voices that you appreciate their sharing, but you are going to choose not to listen to them. Or just tell them to shut the fuck up. Try either method. It works.
       As kids, we completely embraced our playfulness. If we do the same as adults and bring that embrace of the playful into sex, then, just as when we were kids, we have a natural defense against boredom. If we find out what we love to play at, we can keep ourselves happy for vast periods of time. And when it’s time to play something new, all we have to do is use our imagination and make something else up. And we’re there. You. Me. Us.
       Both partners need be willing to explore, to open up, and to remove their limitations and barriers. Both need to to use their imaginations. If both partners approach play in the bedroom with the same intensity and passion and commitment that they bring to whatever else is vitally important to them, then their sex lives can be a magic carpet ride. Maybe not all of the time. But lots of the time.
       Tonight, I’m a robber who breaks into your place while you’re asleep, ties you up, gags you, and makes you watch as I steal your most valued possessions. I ask you where your best jewelry is, and you won’t tell me. So I fondle you and caress you and turn you on until you are about to climax. But I deny you that sweet release over and over again until I break you, and you’ll tell me anything. Including where grandma’s pearls are. Then, after I make you beg me, all that tension within you gets released, and I bring you to orgasm. You come so explosively that you have an out of body experience. Sound impossible? Nope. Just a Wednesday night in my bedroom, with a lover who completely throws herself into the scene and shares a mutual commitment to the imaginative creation of our romance. Tomorrow night, we switch roles. And we haven’t even gotten to the weekend yet.
       Paradoxically, to fully express ourselves playfully as adults usually means that we need to do some work on ourselves. And when I say work, I mean any number of a slew of modalities, all designed to help us free ourselves. Of our past. Of our inhibitions and hang ups. Of our judgements. Of the horrible stories we tell ourselves. The more work we do to be free, the more intense and enjoyable and transformative our play.
       There is a world within us, locked away in our hearts and minds, all too often mysterious to our very selves, that is worth exploring. Ironically, when we access this deeper place, we are able to more fully and completely engage in play. Play may be executed on a field of apparent frivolity, but it’s roots run to the center of who we are as human beings and who we are as individuals.
       Society may define us by what we do for work, but we don’t have to buy into that. That traditional “You are what you get paid for” is a grossly incomplete picture. What and how we play tells us much more about who we are than we realize. So go play. In the bedroom especially. All of us have the capacity to super charge our sex lives with a healthy overdose of play.


©2012 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a Massive Bedroom Full of Wrongs) Reserved.

Ride The Lightning

       The mutually negotiated sexual landscape between two intimate partners is not a static environment, but a dynamic one. Sometimes that landscape looks and feels like a beautiful walk through a mountain meadow. And sometimes it’s a a virtual reality thrill ride. And everything in between.
       All too often, couples' sex lives are not all they could be because time and space are not created to explore it. It’s taken as a given. But I see each partner’s sexuality, and thus the sexual universe created by their unique relationship, as a beautiful realm that positively begs discovery.
       When you’re pushing the envelope of mutual sexual exploration, you will come to wonderful places together that work for both of you. And you may come to places that won’t. That doesn’t mean you can’t keep exploring; it doesn’t mean that the sex will hit a dead end. The erotic world is vast. And most people’s erotic worlds are indeed far vaster than they even know. If you both stay open and dare to keep digging and exploring together, you may just find plenty of beautiful, fun, hot, sexy places to meet.  
       Figuring out what really turns you on, finding new places that drive you wild, and places you won’t go, is a process. It’s mutually negotiated. It’s not an ultimatum based dynamic. The very act of discussing and sharing and figuring it out builds intimacy and trust and excitement. No matter where it ends up. And if there are things that make either one uncomfortable, then you move away from that and go somewhere else with it. It’s a process. Again, it’s not static, but very dynamic.  
       There are few discussions I would rather have with my lover than one where you share sexual fantasies, open up about deep desires, and just explore your own and each other’s sexuality. Just like anything else, the deeper you dig, the more you are going to find. And sometimes what you find scares you. Or your partner.
       Fine. Bring it on. What would you rather talk about? The weather? The economy? Not me. Give me a juicy discussion about what you want to do to me, what I want to do to you, and how we can make that happen, any day of the week and twice on Saturdays and Sundays.
       Such discussions, however, require that each partner has a certain degree of self knowledge. Not everyone has done the work to know themselves like that. And even if you are in touch with your own hearts’s sexual desires, you also have to be able to risk sharing that. Again, most people have big trouble with that.
       I’m not saying it’s easy to get to that place. But I assure you, it’s worth it. It is so worth it. Self knowledge, and being able to risk exposing yourself, are in fact the building blocks of true sexual intimacy.
       Just like our hearts, I believe our sexuality is a treasure of riches that you usually have to dig for to get to. Life has thrown so much dirt and shit on our sexual desires, on sex itself, telling us what is right, what is wrong, what is “normal” and what isn’t, that we develop crippling inhibitions that block us from getting to that which truly makes our blood boil.
       Sometimes we get to a place where we discover something we like, or love, and tell ourselves that there is something wrong with us for liking it. So we don’t allow ourselves to like it too much, lest we believe we’re fucked up. That’s very real, and I’ve been there. But now I know that line of thinking is bullshit. If whatever you like or love is completely consensual by both parties, and does not harm another living soul, then there’s nothing wrong with it. And there’s nothing wrong with you for liking it.
       Human sexuality is unfortunately a poorly understood, indescribably vast universe that is still grossly under-explored by most. Our sex lives would serve us better if they were more like the rest of our lives - an adventure. Intimate relationships are the most beautiful arenas, and the most fertile grounds, for self exploration that we have. Can you think of anything more charged than sex? The word itself, and certainly the act, are literally a fucking bastion of electricity. It’s a world on fire. It’s made to be plugged into. It’s designed to set us ablaze. So plug into it. Feel the heat. Ride the lightning.
        Many prefer the darkness. It’s easier to hide there. It’s safer there. And I have a lot of empathy and understanding for that sentiment. But my life, across the board, is all about coming out of the darkness and into the light. I’m talking metaphorically here, not whether you use a 10 watt bulb or a 100 watt bulb. But sexuality proves to be a wonderful metaphor. Sex is electric, and that electricity begs us to use it to shed light. To illuminate. To enlighten. And to burn hot and bright.
        I’ll put my money where my mouth is and share something very personal. And relevant to this discussion. I have never been a fan of having sex in complete darkness. I like a little mood lighting, like the soft glow from a candle or a colored bulb. But when I'm co-creating sexual intimacy with my lover, I rarely close my eyes. Even when I kiss. And that’s not because I’m not into it. I don’t need to close my eyes to be into kissing, or fucking. I’m into it. Period. It is s giant turn on to look at my partner when we’re kissing; I love to see what she looks like. It’s even better when we look into each other’s eyes when we kiss. And the creme de la creme is to look onto each other’s eyes whilst making love. That’s magic, baby. That is in fact nerve rattling intimacy. And intimacy can be incredibly scary. But so are roller coasters.
        I have come to value intimacy in all of my special relationships, as a sacred thing. It’s vital to me. For those closest to me, from my best friends to my lover, it becomes the air I breathe. And with each person, that intimacy looks and feels different. And sometimes it scares the crap out of me. But it’s worth the risks.    

©2012 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and an Intimate and Naughty Amount of Wrongs) Reserved.   

Muffin of Change (part 1)

       Last Saturday, at the Super Stop and Shop in Falmouth Massachusetts, the Gods of Growth hit me with a bolt of lightning. Whilst I was eating a muffin. My first muffin, in fact, all summer.
       During the ten years I lived in North Falmouth, between 2001 and 2011, I partook in a ritual that made Saturday my favorite day of the week. I would grab a cup of joe and attend an early twelve step meeting at the Super Stop and Shop at nine in the morning. Then I would eat a muffin, the one muffin I allowed myself each week, while food shopping.
       I love food shopping. So I don't rush it. And becauseI I always have a well stocked fridge and pantry, I would buy a lot of food. During my shopping, I would run into people from the meeting in the aisles, and we would talk and have mini meetings all over the store. It was glorious.
       This meant that I would usually get home around noon. After eating and unpacking my food, I would run to Old Silver Beach, about three miles away, and spend  a few hours there before walking or biking home (I would often drop my bike off at the beach on my way to my nine o’clock meeting).
       This ritual nourished me from the inside out. Spiritually and Emotionally, my morning meeting and the mini meetings in the aisles of the store fed my heart and soul. Buying lots of good food and then running to the beach made my body feel alive and cared for. And the cheat muffin tasted like heaven.
       I haven’t done that Saturday ritual in about a year, since I moved back to Boston. But I was on the cape Friday night and went to the Super Stop and Shop on Saturday morning to attend my favorite meeting. I didn’t have to food shop, so I grabbed my muffin and decided to munch it down before I "got my ass in the chair", as we like to say.
       So I’m standing in the store, happily chowing my cinnamon chip muffin, when from around the corner walks my older brother. Whom I haven’t seen since my mom died in May. Whom I haven’t had a relationship with in ten years. Whom I made a conscious decision to exclude from my life. And there he is. Serendipitously right in front of me, as I’m eating my yummy muffin, waiting for my meeting and hence my spiritual and emotional nourishment.
       He smiled when he saw me. We gave each other a hug and a kiss. There were some tears, mostly from him. We talked. He asked me if I wanted to stay at his house for the weekend. I accepted. I went to my meeting. It so happens that the chairperson didn’t show up, and I got to chair the meeting. Chairing gives me the opportunity to talk for about fifteen minutes, and I love to talk, so I was thrilled. I spent two nights at his house.
       There exists a mountain of shit between my older brother and I so big that I can’t see over, around, or through it. The house he has on the cape is the same house I spent my summers in. There is a ton of stink on that house. So much so that, although I played in a band in college called The Albino Skunks, and we all lived together in what was known as “The Skunk House”, that moniker would be just as appropriate for this place. And the house that I used to live in, but moved out of, because I was sued by my twin brother and sister, is right up the street.
       Bottom line, there is enough bad energy in that collective physical and metaphysical space that I felt suffocated by it. The oppressively bad vibes choked me out of being back there, for any length of time, for almost a year.
       And all that shit evaporated with a simple “Yes”. Whilst eating a muffin.

©2012 Clint Piatelli. All Rights Reserved.       

Unself Reflection

Destructive behavior
Hurtful actions
A shattered mirror
Reflecting back to us
Broken pieces of ourselves
Pieces not whole
Incomplete
Sharp
Dangerous
Pieces out of sync
With the whole reflection

Constructive behavior
Loving actions
Align the broken pieces of ourselves
With the whole
Reflecting back to us
A truer self
A more complete self
A self less in conflict
With itself
A self more whole
A self more loving of its own reflection



©2012 Clint Piatelli. All Rights Reserved