HUNGRY & HORNY
In the words of The Black Eyed Peas, “Let’s Get It Started”
An introduction
I’m Devin Devine. (Birth certificate, I promise.) I’m 31. I live in Portland, Oregon. I am an only child. I am non-binary. I love mashed potatoes. I love oral sex, giving and receiving. I have an unfortunately loud laugh. My dog is a cunt and I love her for it. I will probably never pay off my college debt. I am a widow and most days it feels like a technicality. I will be four years sober from drugs and alcohol in November. I have been institutionalized twice. When I was a kid, I put butter in the first section of the food pyramid. I currently listen to Harry Styles on repeat. I read five books in a week in June and it’s the most myself I have felt in years.
There. We’ve scratched the surface. We’ll dive deeper, but for now if you’re new here that’s a solid foundation for what you’re getting into. Shall we?
An origin story
I have tried in several ‘failed’ iterations to start a blog. Over a decade ago on Tumblr, various efforts with Patreon, even my posting on Instagram has often felt like a diary or a journal. Last year, I did the Artist’s Way with my good friend, and found myself consistently grateful for the morning pages. But what feels true is this — the longer that I am person on the internet (and in the world!), the more desire I feel to share myself. And to be clear, it’s not that I need to share deeper or darker truths (I did slam poetry for awhile, I’m good there) and instead it is more this idea that I want to create connective tissue with a greater audience.
I want to create what feels like relationship with those who consume my work, my work these days meaning: my poetry, my comedy, my rantings & ravings, the recipes I share, the memes I love, photos of my dog, a video of a sunflower waving in the wind, getting excited about a new impact toy, asking friends for advice on butt plugs, selfies in clown make up, venting about bad dates, and so on. I’ve seen these relationship created by this platform via the work of Samanatha Irby, Marlee Grace, Ethaney Lee, Caroline Gelen and even pals of mine like Desireé, Sam, and Sara Mae. My readership of their work was a seed! I wanted in! I want to be invited to the party!
(Guess what, you can invite yourself to the party as a writer/creator/etc. Anytime, any day. If anyone ever makes you feel like that isn’t true, fuck ‘em! 🫡 You might have to do a lot of work to be comfortable and have a good time at the party, but you get to go regardless of what anyone might say or think.)
Having friends over the last few years as incredible examples that this format is not only successful, but also can be rewarding for the creative self firmly planted in my mind that I was also capable of this pursuit. And at first my hesitation was clear — I am not someone with a clean and concise email inbox. It is a 30,000+ unread email minefield of accidental subscriptions and ads and the occasional scam.
And the second hiccup remains that I am an adult with a mid-life diagnosis of ADHD, who frequently struggles seeing projects through. But that’s the crux of the issue! I’m seeing it through! Let’s do this shit! SNL is on writer’s strike, but we here at Hungry & Horny are doing it live! (I am very sorry in advance for the amount of times I will reference myself as the collective we.)
The third — I did not want to start a newsletter without an intention or specific purpose. Deciding this took months! And unfortunately, the answer was right in front of my face. In fact, it was tattooed on my right leg. In 2021, I tattooed hungry and horny above and below my right knee. I gotta be honest that I reached a point in the tattoos on my body where if I have the idea, I typically follow through at this point. (We can blame 2011-2014 tumblr & the incredibly hot and tattooed Alysha Nett and Ruby Rose for that.)
Being hungry and horny are not inherently separate sensations, for me, I often think they are hand in hand. If you fuck with astrology, I’m a Taurus sun with a Taurus venus! Who else would write this newsletter if not me?!) And so I decided that I would talk to y’all about what I know and love. I want to talk to you about food. I want to talk to you about sex. It’s what I know best!
Being hungry and horny are not inherently separate sensations, for me, I often think they are hand in hand.
But combining things of my life that I love has always felt like a feat. I was a creative writing and theatre major who thought I found it with slam poetry. I’m a sexually curious slut who thought I broke the code when I started impact bottoming (and even more so when I found sploshing, 🎂💥) The problem is always feeling like the world can’t accept my entire self. With my nuances! With my vast interests! What audience wants to hear about what I’m reading, watching on TV, what I can’t stop snacking on, and about my deviant escapades.
And it’s you! If you’re here, especially at the start, you’re my audience. You want my whole self. (Some of you might even be interested in hole. You know who you are! 🤭) I want to write about what I know AND more.
It may be that the DNA of fiction is, like our own DNA, a double helix, a two-stranded beast. One strand is born of what writers have experienced. The other is born of what writers wish to experience, of the impulse to write in order to know.
— Mohsin Hamid
I am listening to my impulse. I am listening to my deep want for a different relationship to my writing and the way that I share it with the world. I want more. I am making it for myself.
What to expect
Weekly, or as weekly as I can manage you can expect me to write to you about two categories.
HUNGRY will look cravings, recipes — my own or links to others, restaurants in the Portland area or travels I recommend, etc.
And HORNY, well. This is where we perhaps get generous with language. I’m a kinky, non-monogamous, queer person in the world and man I love talking about sex, about bodies, about sensuality and intimacy and the erotic self. I’ll share a lot of media recommendations here (books, movies, television). I’ll also probably fold in some stories of my escapades of over sixteen years of being a sexual and erotic person in the world! (Currently reading for the first time Pleasure Activism by Adrienne Maree Brown so expect in the next few months for me to be referencing that heavily.)
And then down the road, y’all are also gonna get to enjoy (in the subscription model!) regular NSFW fiction! This section of the newsletter doesn’t have a name yet but I want to get you excited about it from the start. I’m a writer of many disciplines (comedy, poetry, nonfiction, fiction to name a few) and I am in my fiction era! So, in the vain of the erotic writers before me (in a non-conclusive list) Anaïs Nin, Diana Gabaladon, Anne Rice, E L James, and Octavia Butler — we’re gonna turn up the heat.
Other hopes for this space down the road — a podcast, interviews of friends and fellow creatives, and if I am honest for the get go here — I want this space to turn into a way to support myself as a creator and artist. I have been in/out of the service industry since I was fifteen. Currently, I am a nanny. It works out. I have vast amounts of free time. But the pipe dream I am chasing and dragging you along for is this: I will be a writer who spends my days reading and writing and working for myself. But hey, no cart before the horse.
Let’s get it started. (I promise in the future we’ll get right to the meat of this without me giving so much context! I was always pleasure to have in class AND always talked too much!)
HUNGRY
End of summer every single person who cares about the produce section is slowly beginning to lament the looming seasonal end of tomatoes. I fucking love tomatoes. I grew two kinds on my balcony this summer. They were fruitful but by no means plentiful, but man the first one I popped into my mouth (I am partial to smaller varietals!) I thought I could cry.
I love a lazy tomato sauce. Throwing a couple handful of tomatoes into bakeware (maybe if you’re a fancy lil guy with some chunks of carrot and red bell pepper) and garlic, heavily salted, generous gluts of olive oil and roast that looooow and sloooooow. (325-350* for an hour or two!) Smash with a fork or throw in a blender. It’s fucking good. Every time.
I also love a heirloom tomato ate over the sink. Thick chunks with a pinch of sea salt. I will eat a caprese ‘salad’ any and every day. (Last summer I started throwing some of Trader Joes’ everything bagel seasoning on top of my caprese salads. If you can get to a TJ’s that seasoning is good on fucking everything but I definitely recommend letting it hang out with some tomatoes.)
It was hard to feed myself this summer, I’m dealing with health issues and for months thought it was allergies and now I’m on the autoimmune train and tentatively applying some anti-inflammatory guidelines to how I eat. But this summer I was reminded — restrictive eating fucks me up. It brings me back to super disordered eating when I was in my early 20’s and I have never been to avoid eating carbs, fats, dairy, sugar, meat. I have always let myself eat the way I want to eat because I get one life (far as I know) to enjoy food and man oh man I never want to regret not eating seconds or ordering the appetizer or saying yes the ice cream shop.
But I also was busy this summer! Lots of running around, much less time at home than the last few years (sometimes, sometimes, as a Taurus I think I miss when I spent literally every day at home for six months in 2020). And like many in the capitalism/life balance — feeding myself goes out the window first. And laundry. Woof.
And I don’t have central air in my apartment! So using the oven or stove, particularly over the last pretty hot couple of months, noooo thank you!
However, summer is when my grill skills shine. This was the summer of STEAK. I love a good steak. It’s great on the grill or in a cast iron (I truly do not think I will use a regular pan to cook steak again now that I’ve figured out my cast iron). And I’ve found this with steak — less is more. Somebody (maybe Alton Brown or Samin Nosrat? Someone else?! I don’t remember who now!) said to salt your steak 30-40 minutes before cooking it and DAMN. A game changer. I truly salt and pepper my steaks and rarely add anything else.
If you wanna get fancy, when you’re using a cast iron you can use lots of butter and some rosemary sprigs. Other than that, throw it on a bbq at 350 and let it SIT. I don’t enjoy eating steak done past medium — medium rare or bust — so I can’t really speak to cooking times for that but most of the time I start cooking a steak it’s ready in ten minutes, depending on how thick you went. Make sure to let it get some good grill marks and to do the sides — caramelize that fat! And maybe the most important thing of a good steak — let that baby REST. Five minutes at least, maybe closer to ten.
I make steak for truly any occasion. When I’m having a pal over and I want to woo them. For special celebrations. Because I truly am only craving the brief first moment when I bite into steak and I’m like “yeah I could survive in the wild” (a bonkers and untrue thought every time I have it).
I am what my friends having lovingly dubbed a kitchen top. I am not great about sharing a kitchen. I hate delineating tasks to someone who I know just wants to help. I would absolutely break down if I was in an episode of The Bear. (Though, if you want to make me weak in the knees, you can tell me yes chef.) I love a steak because it can get me in and out of the kitchen fast so I feel like I can be a better host and better company. That, or something I make in advance before a friend arrives for dinner like a lasagna. (Fuuuuck I’m excited to be able to use my oven again.)
HORNY
So, I’ve been single all of 2023. But! I have had two orgies this year. Absolutely wild that it took me this long to have group sex. I got close, once, in a very poorly not quite executed threesome in 2018 in New York City. (A summary of a bummer story: if you don’t want to fuck somebody who is drinking, when you are sober, don’t! You don’t have to! In fact, you can just…leave! Highly recommend leaving any situation with sex that you are not fully present and/or consenting and enthusiastic for.)
And y’all. Group sex is NOT for the feint of heart. It’s so fun. Both orgies so far have had a dozen or so of my dear friends. It takes a decent amount of organization (thank god for a Google doc) and honestly, it simply takes a lot of trust. I highly recommend that if you are in an open/non-monogamous dynamic that you fuck your friends. Especially if they want to fuck you. Which they might! Just ask! Dive on in! The water is WARM.
Also, if you can, have one or more orgy attendees who know what they’re doing. My orgy captain, Chuck, truly was the impetus for my summer of depravity. (Everyone say thanks Chuck.) I attended a group sex workshop at Portland’s Kinkfest this year and learned a lot of the basics surrounding testing, conversation/ice breakers, and so much more. (The instructor’s name was Courtney, she also taught a hair pulling & slapping class while being very pregnant & I don’t have to tell you this but she was like… a sexy kinky Miss Frizzle, it worked, it was hot). I also think group sex has provided me with an important reminder — sexual intimacy is allowed to be fun. (I also would argue it’s better! Playfulness and creativity and a willingness to be silly are ideal features of sexual partners for me.) It circles back to the fact that my favorite sex has always been the sex that leaves me laughing and crying.
Which brings me to a recommendation — y’all gotta read Milk Fed by Melissa Broder.
This book has been on my radar since it came out, big fan of Melissa’s work and follower of her instagram, but I am so glad I finally read this book back in June. I jerked off to it at least twice? Maybe three times? A massive head’s up that if you have experienced disordered eating this book does not pussy foot around it. The main character’s eating disorder is a really damn honest portrayal. It was tough for me, but sticking through it to get the wet mess of healing that this book offers. Wheeeeew the pay off is sweet. The book combines queerness, mommy issues, spirituality/faith, AND food??? C’monnnnnnn it doesn’t get better than that. (Or honestly more specific for all of my niche interests!) And it also made me crave frozen yogurt which I truly felt as if I forgot about for six or more years???? (Okay so I worked at a frozen yogurt shop briefly and cleaning those machines turned me off for awhile, but we’re back.) And in her interview with Bomb Magazine, she said —
“We’re always asked to compartmentalize various appetites. It’s like: this is sexual appetite; this is spiritual appetite; this is hunger. But really, they’re interdependent. Really, they’re all connected.” — Melissa Broder
They’re ALL CONNECTED!!!!????? Are you kidding me? This book captures desire, hunger, and value of self. Finding our self! Finding purpose. I love a narrative where someone figures shit out and it’s not necessarily a shiny happy ending. (Oops, spoiler? Not really, whatever, read it) Anyways. I think about shit like this all the time. Thanks Melissa for making an entire book about it. Big fan. Everyone say thanks Melissa. Or go buy the book. That’d be good too. (Don’t you dare buy it from Amazon, I recommend bookshop.org! (That’s a link to Milk Fed specifically, but in general buy from them if not your local bookstore!) Also if you’re a good friend in Portland, I’d lend you my copy too.
In August Hozier released a new album. If you’ve been on TikTok… (or at least a similar TikTok to my FYP) you know how fucking HORNY this album is. The longing! The drama! The desire! Just gonna reiterate that this man is an honorary fucking lesbian. The whole album’s great but this song fucking does something to me.
Also gonna throw out recs towards Cherri Glazer (Daddi) and Sir Chloe (Animal) who I found this summer and those songs specifically strike an absolutely feral chord for me. And this is massive throwback to last year, but since Euphoria’s Season 2, Episode 3 (Cal, the shitty dad = GAAAAaaaaay, in case you need a reminder) I cannot STOP listening to INXS??? It’s close to embarrassing at this point. Whatever. I will always argue that 80’s music is all horny. Can’t be surprised by that. There was (apparently) a lot of cocaine. By no means do you have to watch that season of Euphoria though, if you haven’t. That show is good, yes, but fuck’s sake is it hard to watch.
But you know what show I will recommend??? (It was on Hulu, then removed — I was devastated, and now it’s back and on HBO!) If you haven’t watched it by now, the whole series is out/it’s over, so even those of you delightful media snobs who hate watching popular shit when it’s popular… I fucking swear. Watch Killing Eve.
This show gets so much right. Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh are fucking brilliant. The costuming and fashion of Villanelle is bar none. The SOUNDTRACK. The soundtrack! The soundtrack. I also think this show does incredible arc of cat and mouse, enemies to lovers, and is one of the better depictions of a bad ass woman assassin I think I’ve seen. (I do love a femme fatale, a la Angelina Jolie in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and will one-day diatribe to you at length about Angelina’s role in my sexuality at large.) I also recommend watching compilation videos of Jodie Comer speaking in various accents. It’s so fucking impressive (& hot, can’t forget that). And Sandra Oh has been a gay icon to me since I watched Under the Tuscan Sun when I was like ten years old, so. There’s that.
If you haven’t seen it — you are going to hate me, briefly, after the finale. It’s fine. I’ve decided no show can end the way we want it to end. It’ll never happen. Have you read the books? I haven’t yet. Please tell me if the books have the same ending. I gotta know if it was just the writer’s room who fucked us. And if you’ve seen the finale and you want to start a support group, lemme know.
This was the maiden voyage! If you’ve enjoyed this and want to recommend it to friends, boy would I sure appreciate it. We’re only gonna get hotter & weirder, folks! Share on your socials, forward it to a friend (or your mom!), and let people know that this exists! Help me find my fellow foodies & freaks!
And if you want to support me & make sure you never miss a post, please consider subscribing!
I cannot begin to describe to you how excited I am about this project.
Until next time y’all —
Picked up Milk Fed because of you and I am EATING that book up. So hot. So raw and real. It’s helping me heal. Thank you for the recommendation!
#1 Jodie Comer Fan Club Member here