Milk Maiden

(11th July)

I woke up late and coming down with a cold, and pumped after my morning meditation. Deep down I can sense my breasts begin to stir, to talk incoherently in their dreams and wonder sleepily what time it is. In the afternoon I pumped again. This time when I removed the pump from my left breast there was the tiniest half-drop of white fluid coming from my nipple. Somewhat excited, I rang my supervisor to tell her, and sent the Boy a rather blurry picture taken on my mobile phone camera. He asked what it tasted like, and though it was too small an amount to really swill around my mouth I tell him I think that it was sort of sweet? Not sure if this impression came from experience, expectation, or both, but it seemed right somehow. (Anyway, I told him, if you play your cards right you’ll get to try it for yourself.) Down at the ocean, I watched a big yellow full moon rise and sparkle across the water and felt that delcious sense of knowing just what you have when you have it. At the next pumping, quite possibly my last for the day, I noticed my left nipple exuding a small amount of clear fluid. True, this is not lactation as such yet, and it may well be all the liquid I squeeze out for quite a while. All the same, these are encouraging developments! Think this week I will buy some cream for my nipples, already looking slightly traumatised, and perhaps some nursing tea. The current plan is to pump as much as possible for the next fortnight and reassess my progress. Maybe I will try motillium if nothing new is happening. And I need to find somewhere to pump at Uni. I’m not overly concerned about being seen from a privacy perspective as such, although sometimes one does just want to get on with doing what one needs to do without becoming a public education campaign EVERY time. And I can see this happening if I should pump, well-meaning women making small talk about children and me feeling obliged to explain the whole story and… sometimes this is okay, even fun, but not once or twice every day I am at work. The unit needs a power supply too, and is not exactly quiet, so my shared office space is not very appropriate. The women’s room might be an option, but is very easy to see into from the hallway. Perhaps I could hide in the corner? Oh dear, this is all beginning to sound like so many accounts told by breastfeeding mothers— possibly I should invest in a large shawl for me and my pump?

Writing Myself in White Ink

(10th July 2006)

Tonight I began seriously pumping- only about a month after I had planned to! It simply seemed like time.

The first half of this year has been one of many personal losses. My partner of two years abandoned me. I lost a lot of money to her. After a long period of having my spirituality, my identity, my sexuality, my body and my work demeaned by someone I loved dearly I lost touch with what I value in myself. Somewhere along the way I also misplaced the ability to live without apology, and the faith to trust my gut instincts. A number good friends gave up on me, as they no longer knew me anyway. I was homeless for a while. A close friend (and ex-lover) died. The combined force of this all shook me to my very foundations and I began to doubt the stability of both my mind and my matter.

It is time to rebuild and reinvent. Through luck (and rather brazen text messages) I became somehow entangled with the very sweet Boy, and he has done much to reacquaint me with the pleasures and possibilities of my body. My new home, a gift from a truly inspired friend, is one of sanctuary and silliness. A most intuitive hypnotherapist reminded me that I can have confidence in the capabilities and knowledges of my flesh. After quite a hiatus I have begun pushing my bodily boundaries again— having undertaken a hook suspension, rope suspension, piercings and cuttings recently (and I have a saline labia infusion planned for the near future). Today I went swimming in the mid-winter sea until my veins felt like they might burst open with adrenaline and then sat alone at the edge of the ocean, laughing and shivering with the seagulls and the waves. I am performing in public again, and revisiting the joys of dressing in whatever drag my fancies dictate. I’ve rediscovered how to flirt with strangers, and pull faces at small children when their parents aren’t looking. Most of all, I am remembering how to play with myself— to be joyful and adventurous, to discover and imagine and participate in my own evolution. Without apology.

I include inducing lactation as part of this process. It is a gift from myself to myself, a dose of feel-good oxytocin and nurturing not reliant on another body’s participation or permission. Self-loving and auto-erotic. Its something that I have always wanted to do, although for the most part I always imagined it as involving a baby of some description. But inducing lactation now is not for a baby, or for anyone else at all— it is for me. Fiona Giles gives an account from ‘Lilith’, who fantasises about breastfeeding her grieving friend as a form of solace and healing and to ‘erase the pain of another’s breast with one’s own’(2003: 46). In this vein I will provide myself with some of comfort, consolation and confidence. To paraphrase Helene Cixous, I will write myself in white ink.

And so I begin to pump. I fiddle about with positions and for twenty minutes my nipples and areole are sucked by this machine as I sit cross-legged on a rug in front of the heater. I imagined I might be able to read (some lacto-porn perhaps, just to help with the mood), but with both hands required to hold the pumps in place it proved quite difficult. This strikes me as an activity more easily in front of the TV, or at least with some musical accompaniment. It’s an odd sensation, and I find myself both mildly aroused. I can feel the swell already, the tide is coming in...