Reading · Letters from the Edgelands

There were around twenty strangers in the room, and three other people I knew from our online connections.

I was about to expose myself – publicly, in the flesh.

Up until now, I’d been able to hide behind a screen.

Up until now, I’d been convincing myself that my art was only for me. I could do and say whatever I wanted. Nobody knew who I was.

But in this swanky, London, basement venue, in the middle of the afternoon, all that was about to change.

I sat in a chair facing the room. To my left was a woman I’d only just met. To my right, a kindred spirit who I’d bonded with online over our shared commitment to truthtelling.

The event organiser stood before the gathered audience and introduced us.

As she spoke my name, I held up a copy of my book, Desire Lines. My hybrid memoir-guide, which includes a description of my cunt and how I like to fuck, as well as reflections and invitations to the reader to explore sexual scripts, gender norms, and walking the paths of our authentic desires.

The event was a writing workshop and author Q&A hosted by The Unbound Press.

They’d published Desire Lines just a few weeks before, and I was excited to be invited to talk about my book.

We’d just finished the first part of the event – a guided visualisation and group writing session – and the air was thick with contemplation and insights. The participants had each had a taste of writing from their depths; now it was time for me to tell them about mine.

I felt my feet solid on the ground, exhaled slowly, and smiled at the audience.

Real, live people stared back at me.

Suddenly, it hit me.

Several of these people had already read Desire Lines. A dozen or so more had bought a copy after flicking through the pages of the assorted books piled on a table near the entrance.

I wasn’t just a name on a page any more.

What would people think of me?

On the train home after the event, I replayed the Q&A in my mind’s eye.

In response to an audience question, one of the other authors on the panel had explained that she always wrote from the heart. When the same question was directed to me, I admitted that my heart didn’t feel strong enough to write what I write.

“If I only wrote from my heart, my courage would fail me,” I confessed. “I write from here,” I said, placing my palm over my solar plexus, “and here,” I hovered my hand over my belly and cunt.

The next day, I felt it.

Vulnerable.

Anxious. Unsettled. Desperate for reassurance.

Urgh.

So unpleasant.

It reminded me of the times I’ve felt sub drop after a kink scene: the inevitable comedown after a peak experience that can leave me asking, “Why do I keep putting myself through this?”

Whether it’s related to my writing or my kinky play, the answer to that question is the same:

If you want to visit your edges, you have to accept that you may end up in some wild terrain.

You may find yourself in a sun-bleached desert, a murky swamp, or being tossed around in a stormy sea.

But there’s always treasure to be found in those places, too. And if you never venture, you’ll never reach it.

In the final chapter of my book, I recorded an “incomplete catalogue of my desire lines. It is incomplete because I know that some have been forgotten, some never even recognised, and that there are others yet to be discovered and walked.

In the last three decades, my desire lines have included:

The desire for desire.
The desire to enjoy and experience pleasure in my body, just as it is.
The desire to be authentically ‘me’ in intimate connections.
The desire for my sexuality, creativity, and spirituality to be united.
The desire to offer my sexual-spiritual self as healing (for myself and others).
The desire to explore and play with power dynamics and erotic pain.
The desire to evolve myself and my desires in relationship with those I love and treasure.”

I’ve experienced other vulnerability hangovers after offering out my writing too.

My friend Jennie, a brilliant artist and mindfulness teacher who co-created the short course, Foundations of Pleasure, with me, encourages people to explore their fantasies in their imaginations by reassuring them “no one can see inside your mind.”

As an erotic writer, however, my work is to let you see the darkest depths of my thoughts, feelings, and yearnings.

That’s not all. I’ve recently submitted a personal essay about grief to Open Secrets Magazine. I cried while I was writing it, knowing I was touching a painful edge that lay on the other side of a deep ravine.

Talking about death – like talking about sex – is generally regarded as taboo.

As an edgewalker, I choose not to let that stop me.

However, walking the edges doesn’t mean being reckless.

I always carry a compass with me.

This compass helps me to discern and honour my boundaries. It directs me to write authentically and with integrity. And ensures I write “from the scar, not the wound.” (Or at least try to.)

Desire Lines was written and published when I was in my mid-forties.

Now in my fifties, I realise there’s lots more to explore and write about walking our unique paths of desire, including what happens when the mountain feels too high to climb, or when we get lost in a dark, spooky forest and can’t seem to find a way out.

This next chapter inspired the creation of my curated anthology, Sex Meets Life.

In this book, a courageous bunch of authors from all different lived experiences share their own stories about navigating intimacy and desire at times when their lives are going through big changes.

One of those authors is Bear Phillips (he/him).

Bear is an intimacy coach and touch therapist.

In his chapter, Bear opens up about what it might mean to be a “safe man”, how he can be in his power without stripping others of theirs, and how intimate presence can offer healing and wholeness. His journey of ‘Losing My Religion (to Find My Divinity)’ is one from shame to sovereignty.

Losing My Religion (to Find My Divinity) by Bear Phillips
How could reality ever live up to a fantasy? The thought was foremost in my mind as the door to a new, cookie-cutter flat, overlooking the wastelands of East London, inched open.
I had been drawn to this point – of want and desire – repeatedly for years, but never before had I acted on it.
My desire felt so shameful. And it had been with me for years…
To surrender. To be taken.
By a woman…
With a strap-on.
…
My whole life I had understood God to be this judgemental All-Knowing and All-Seeing force, outside of and above me, casting judgement and finding me wanting at every turn. But now, here it was – touched with pleasure – a lotus flower blossoming within me. The divinity within. Deep inside my body.
How could a bundle of skin and muscle and bone, capable of experiencing this amount of exquisite pleasure, possibly be wrong?
Through the blur of body parts and positions, I felt the tension I had been carrying my whole life fall away under her watchful and attentive gaze. I arrived back in my embodied self, no longer separate and divided, no longer outside of my Self.
…
I found my power that day. I experienced the possibility of power within limits, and that perhaps the experience of power was all the stronger for the boundary that contained it. I discovered that power and strength could be wielded with safety.
…
I feel blessed that I get to heal my own masculine and father wounds by providing for others the safe container and the safe holding that I did not know in my own childhood. I feel blessed that I get to model for others that it is possible to be a safe man in the world. One who is not denuded and desexualised, but fully in touch with his deepest desires and ever-evolving fantasies – at peace with the knowledge that the reality of our lives can be better than we may ever imagine.

I recently asked Bear what he’d experienced since Sex Meets Life was published (in November 2024).

Here’s what he told me:

"I was fully expecting some kind of vulnerability hangover – perhaps even a shame-shower – at speaking so candidly and graphically of my intimate experiences around sex, kink and power.

As a first outing, it was an incredibly exposing thing to do.

Yet the kick-back didn't come!

There was something so precious in the writing of my story, and the recognition of the arc from a place of pain to one of joy and abundance, that something had alchemised inside of me. Something had resolved itself to a place of quiet acceptance and serenity.

A large part of this was the care with which the entire process of writing, editing and publishing had been held so beautifully by Anna, and another by the sense of being in community with other writers – all of us reflecting on a similar theme and bringing similar levels of vulnerability and authenticity to bear.

What a life-affirming joy this book has been to be a part of. What a joy!"

You can find Bear on Substack here: The Feminist Love Coach

His website is here.

And you can follow him on Instagram, too.

Ever had a vulnerability hangover?

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