NSFW Sunday Is a Love Letter to Queer Sex
The feature image of Ashley Paige and Ava D’Amore and all of the photographs in this NSFW Sunday are from fetish site Mondo Fetiche. The inclusion of a visual here is not an assertion of a model’s gender or orientation.
Welcome to the last-ever NSFW Sunday.
Selene Sun and Dr. Elody Rose for Mondo Fetiche
On Friday 6 May 2011 at 7:34 pm, Riese sent me an empty email with the subject line, “would you ever want to write a nsfw sunday?”
I said yes.
And today, over a decade later, it’s time to say goodbye.
On the surface, the NSFW Sunday doesn’t seem to be anything deeper than a sprinkle of links about some sex content with a sprinkle of queer porn mixed in. It doesn’t have an arc. It will never be a collected anthology or a book. Despite a knock off or two over the years, it can only live here, week to week. There is no useful way to collect what is past. There is no good way to stockpile it into the future. Over the decade I wrote it, I would sit down to do the NSFW Sunday. I would do it. I would put it into WordPress. And then I would sit down to do it again.
Valentine Boudreaux, Lain Arbor, and River Gray for Mondo Fetiche
In Better than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, Gretchen Rubin writes, “Habits are the invisible architecture of daily life. We repeat about 40 percent of our behavior almost daily, so our habits shape our existence, and our future. If we change our habits, we change our lives.”
Which means that to me as its author, and I hope to its thousands of regular readers, the NSFW Sunday asked the question, what does it mean to make queer sex a habit?
What does it mean to make writing and reading about queer sex part of the rhythm of the week? What does it mean to talk about it? What does it mean (for allosexuals) to have it, or to commit to having it, alone and together, week after week after week?
Ashley Paige and Ava D’Amore for Mondo Fetiche
Later in the same book, Rubin writes, “As a writer, my great interest is human nature, and in particular, the subject of happiness. A few years ago, I noticed a pattern: when people told me about a ‘before and after’ change they’d made that boosted their happiness, they often pointed to the formation of a crucial habit.”
A habit has the power to change your life. And I have found no habit more life-changing, for me, than committing to queer sex and desire and above all pleasure.
Selene Sun and Dr. Elody Rose for Mondo Fetiche
If you’d like to keep in touch, I’m at rl.yates (insta), rlyatesofficial (twitter), rlyates (venmo if you want to buy me a coffee), or rlyates.com. It has been an utter pleasure to be here with you.