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.