I am on top. I’ve spent the summer on top. I climb on top over and over - wet hot sweaty. I ride waves of pleasure. I ride her. We climax and come down. We defy the top-bottom binary.
I am one lucky trashE queer to live so close to a magnificent body of water. The bigLake is where I piece together the gender expansive puzzle of my queerness. It’s the place I wrestle with the white bodied supremacy layered in my culture, community, and cunt carrying sack o’ flesh aka meat suit aka feminine presenting outer casing, fuselage, anatomy.
I grapple and grieve with the above- and regain abilities to marvel. This summer I’ve done all three while topping a SUP.
My search for the perfect stand up paddleboard lasted almost a decade. Eight years ago, I first tasted SUP life in July on Park Point (world’s longest freshwater sandbar that extends from Duluth Minnesota- on Anishinaabe land). Three friends, all of us SUP beginners, rented a variety pack of fun including one inflatable and three hard boards. What we envisioned as a half day adventure, turned into a nine hour test of endurance. Lunch, flirting, paddle, laughing, swimming, flirting, paddling, blisters, more and more paddling. We began in the bay then careened into wild wavy water on the open lake. Rough water wants to be ridden hard. While delightful socially, I was spent by end. An exhausting physical beginning left me unsure of my commitment to the sport.
Then summer after summer Minnesota’s water and my community offered up different, more gentle, trashE (less rigid), and spacious opportunities to try topping again. I SUPed whenever I wasn’t writing during week long artist residency (TLC!=where I started this blog!) outside the Boundary Waters. Several friends with wealth bought boards and extended generous offers. I rented from the local University’s outdoor program and paddled north to examine petroglyphs.
In the middle of those eight years, I adopted a blind dog. Bat, now almost six, SUP shopped with me. Some boards were too narrow or slippery for her. She revels at being on the water in our bulky stable kayak, Blue Loon. Sensory explosion central while on the water (she’s unapologetically slutty about enjoying what tastes, smells, feels, and sounds good. Best of teachers!), Bat keeps her nose in the air for hours. She demanded we buy a wide board after repeatedly walking off the side of two smallish SUPS. Lightning fast- I’d grab the handle of my pup’s orange life jacket to haul her drenched body back on board.
Dossie Mae Easton and Janet Hardy write in The New Topping Book “Another hint: get comfortable. If you’re going to spend a nice long time doing something exquisite [to someone’s body], you don’t want to have to stop because your back hurts. Some tops wear weight-lifting belts to protect their backs when they play, others recommend shoulder stretching exercises before a flogging”.
Topping, whether bodies of water or human flesh, is about taking one’s time. Eight years of being on top aka easing into SUP life has taught me to slow down. The pace I move at while on top [of the water] is unlike any other. Easton and Hardy again, “What is actually very sexy is to [move] very slowly, at a ritual pace, so you can savor the entire process.” While they reference restraints and whips, my topping toys include paddles and bondage knots pirate flavor.
Topping (queering life on the water) is where and how I assume my current favorite ecosexual positions. I’ll write more about my ecoSexuality and other preferred entry points to similar pleasures in subsequent posts. As I dive deep, go down on this topic for the fall semester of my second year of grad school, I develop a keener focus on the practice of decolonizing sexuality. Queering methodologies, I engage multi-disciplinary research and risky creativity to center “disobedient bodies embracing nonnormative sexualities”. In the meantime, I must get back outside and top my SUP.