Why I Identify as a Frog (In the Sack)

A little while ago I found myself in a flirtatious back and forth with someone who was obviously trying to impress me with talk of female worship. He boasted of how he treats his lovers like queens and serves them graciously. I do enjoy pampering, like any one else, but does it get me hot? No. I just feel like I deserve it. But listening to this man talk I felt trapped in some hologram I never chose to be in. Am I just some composit of every other “female” he thinks he has gotten to know? Does he think we are getting anywhere with this? I had to get out right away. This had to be done by throwing him off this well rehearsed spiel. I don’t think he deserved what I was about to share but I decided to share it anyway. Something infinitely more spicy. I told him, I’m not a queen in the bedroom, I’m actually a frog.

Eager to rectify this sudden display of self debasement, he assured me I wasn’t a frog at all. Why would I say such a thing? Well, the main motivation was just boredom really. Not that what I said wasn’t rooted in some truth. A “frog zone” is one that I inhabit regularly. It’s a place I love to be and I think others do to, whether they are aware of it or not. Any attempt to pinpoint its origin is likely impossible but I do have some ideas.

Mainly a family vacation. We could start there. I was at a stage in my life long before any sexual awareness was present, but things were likely getting coded. While wading through the low tides of San Luis Obispo Beach I encountered a giant sea slug between my toes. It was huge. Larger than any slug you’d imagine just stumbling upon. This thing would’ve been impressive at an aquarium behind glass, but out in the wild, it was even more spectacular; Its measurements were  something like 12 inches long and 16 inches in diameter, the size of a dense loaf of rye. A real chunky thing. Without hesitation I lifted it up out of the water, where it immediately lost all integrity. Its robust shape flattened and stretched off over the sides of my hand, almost paper thin in my palm and oozing. I quickly put it back in its rightful place, scared I had injured the poor thing. But it resumed its original state, seemingly undisturbed. Without much thought I decided to pull it back out to show my cousin. I was met with screams and flailing as he ran away, which only emboldened me more. I chased him around the shallow water with the slug bouncing and flattening in my hands. His torment was my pleasure. Was this the pivotal moment that spawned a hundred such scenes? My poor cousin running in terror from me, his tormentor? That I can’t remember, but I do remember the feelings it tinged me with. Feelings of power and guilt that intermingled and stuck to my guts. It was indelible part of our dynamic. He ultimately got designated the title of “Little Cousin” in our family, despite him being older than me. Poor guy.

Whether the guilt I felt was for my cousin or the slug, I don’t know, but I do think it was for the slug.

The sea slug’s oozy form, the way it made me feel, creeped into my adolescence, and inevitably into my nascent sexual fantasies. As I pleasured myself, my mind would often return to some nebulous form that was not too dissimilar from that slug. I’d imagine finding some unidentifiable blob and just wrecklessly rubbing against it, pushing it into my flesh. Like many desires it started off abstract, nebulous like a sea creature, but one night it sprouted legs. Just like a tadpole.

Like I said it’s hard to discern every step of the formation of this maybe-not-so-untypical froggyness in my love life. Frogs do seem to have gotten popular for some reason. Would I be wrong to assume the reasons are similarly libidinal? Whatever the case, I do have another distinguishing moment of my life to recount.

Almost too cinematically, it was a hot and humid night in Memphis. I was getting sticky on tour with a band who was playing music from state to state. On this particular night, I found myself drenched in sweat next to another slippery body. Being on tour with a scrappy DIY band like this one meant you had to make do with whatever space that was generously offered to you. In this case it was a reappropriated closet turned bedroom above a venue. No window, pitch black with the lights off. Because of this we were experiencing a kind of deprivation chamber like effect. The music playing so loud beneath the closet and din of people outside created an almost white noise.  All of this added up to our sense of touch being more atuned. My mind went back to the slug.

Mounted on top of this warm beating blob I gyrated and felt a slimy pulse that transcended my bodily form. Fluids oozed out of any orafice that could, impossible to determine what strand of slime originated from where. It didn’t matter as we slipped around. My thighs held a steady rhythm that our digging fingers and ribbons of drool complimented so well. It didn’t take long for us to throb a nd ooze between my thighs. When all was done we were both melted and in a state of disbelief, parts of us still pulsing. That’s when I said, “I think that's how frogs do it.” They responded with a, “huh!?” It was too loud, so I kept it to myself.

I often kept it to myself after that. But now my legs became frog legs at a moments notice — under the right conditions. An uncontrollable impulse, implanted into my psyche by that slug from so many years before. And this couldn’t have come at a more welcome time. I was in my 20’s, an age where many young girls can’t escape the feeling of being perceived. Eyes were constantly looking and drinking me in. Performing to that gaze got an enthusiastic response and was easy, but so far, another’s enthusiasm was the only reward I’d received from intimacy. Before my sexuality evolved from primordial blob to amphibian. Now it had sprouted legs and could take me to where I needed to go. Getting back to the basics as they say.

I of course didn’t tell this goddess worshipper any of that. It would have been entirely too much. I simply told him I like to use all the muscles and wetness I can get between two bodies so I can forget I’m a woman for a little bit and just feel pleasure. He of course was speechless. I had no intention of going home with him or anything, I just wanted to make him feel stuck at the bar for a minute and think about his silly spiel. A “time out” if you will, while I strutted my froggy legs to the restroom.