Guest Post: On Sluts.

This is re-posted with permission from my friend Blake, about whom any of my regular readers will have heard of, at the very least. Given my recent and ongoing association with bitches of truly world-class caliber (you know who you are), I thought it might be fun to throw in a little change up, and view things from somebody else's perspective. If nothing else, this shit is funny as hell. So, without further ado:


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Slut.

In my English classes we talk about ‘loaded words.’ Loaded words are words so pregnant with meaning that one must be careful in using them; do not confuse them with words you should or should not use when loaded. In English professor-speak, we would say these words are rich in both denotation and connotation. These are the words you use when you want to say a lot with a little.

Slut definitely qualifies as a loaded word. I’m certain that everyone has their own set of images and understandings for the word ‘slut.’ Maybe it’s the girl you knew back in college; the guy you met at the bars last night. Oh, be sure, slut is non-discriminatory. Boys and girls, men and women alike, all can be sluts, slutty, sluttish, in touch and touching their inner slut.

Setting aside the definitions, both denotative and connotative for just a moment, take a good, long look and listen at the word itself. Slut. It slides out of your mouth, doesn’t it? Or it starts too, with that mandatorily sibilant s… ssssssslut. The s slides to the l, giving brief pause before the mini-grunt of the u—uh—surprised –sounding, almost, and ending with that sharp flick of the tongue to make the t. Slut. You say it and smile; you say it and grin. You say it just to say it. Even said in anger, people still smile when they say it, when they hear it, when they know it.

But the true power in the word slut, what makes me love her so, is in her connotations, in that pregnancy of meaning we mentioned in passing earlier, in the images, acts, and imaginations which the term calls to mind.

I have known two kinds of sluts in my life, and while they were very, very different in nature, they both had one strong trait in common.

The first slut I ever met was a slut because she was looking for something. A searching slut, if you will. She had yet to define herself, wholly and completely, and in her sluttishness, she gave herself a certain kind of freedom for exploration and experimentation that the normal rules of society could never have allowed. She was, when I met her, still a little hesitant, still a little inhibited, but with little prompting from me, she turned tricks that would have made Cleopatra blush. She loved me and left me, moving on to other targets who, hopefully to her, had more to teach than I did. I’ve lost track of her, but I do pray that she found was she was looking for.

The second slut I ever met wasn’t looking for anything more than good time. She was done searching for meaning in life; she had found that she could get anything she needed between the sheets, or across the foot of the bed, or in the backseat, or, once, outside the bar in the alleyway. She fucked for the pure joy of fucking, and anything she happened to learn was simply a little extra frosting on her nipples, ready to be savored by the next up-and-comer.

But all the sweet, sweaty memories the word slut calls into my mind aren’t anything to do with why I love the word. While the connotations of slut run deep into the seedy underbelly of sex, seduction, wantonness, greed, lust, and (often) betrayal, those aren’t the connotations that carry the most power for the slutty at heart.

Sluts are free. They’re clear in their desires and communications. Sluts don’t have hidden agendas, they don’t play mind games, they don’t concern themselves with subtleties of language.

The reasons I love the word slut are the same reasons I dislike the word tease, used in the same context. I have a few scars from my varied encounters with sluts. Only two have taken stitches, and they’ve all healed inside a month. My encounters with so-called moral women, the apparently upstanding girls, the women with ‘nothing to hide’ that have left me drunk, cowering, crying, requiring therapy and vowing never to date again.

I love slut for the same reasons I love clarity, simplicity and elegance. For as rude and unabashed as sluts behave, in all the delightful ways they behave so badly, they’re clear about their intents and purpose. It’s a lovely, lovely contradiction. So honest and so forthright about something that people shouldn’t discuss outside trusted friends and relationships.

It’s little wonder that the rings of slut have grown to include less offensive offenses. I saw a t-shirt that said “Snuggleslut” on it. Please, children. Sluts rarely snuggle. Rarely. I’ve been called a bookslut by those aware of my penchants for hardcover tomes. I’ve known people who’ve referred to themselves as foodsluts, sleepsluts, gamesluts, and puppysluts. I dislike all of these terms. I dislike this watering down of the proud term slut.

Sluts are sexy, sweaty boys and girls who want nothing more than to go someplace where the chances of interruption are as limited as possible, and work you over generally in delightful fashion, leaving you weak, sticky and smiling. People who focus more on the cuddling after the fact simply cannot qualify as sluts. Granted, I love a good cuddle, but I love being exhausted into a good cuddle even more. And, much as I love my books, they’ve never, never done for me anything near what a true slut has done.

I think if we all had a little more slut in us… Wait. I think we’ve all got the potential to be a bit sluttier. I think if we all loosen up the reigns a bit, if we all got a little more in touch with our inner slut… if at times we all took off our dignity and restrictions with our clothing and simply did our sluttish best… I think we’d all be a little happier. Sluts; we should all be so lucky.