Cheap Shots

I have an urge to post about a million things, but the fastest thing I can slap up on the internet right now is a picture of me in a karada that Robbie whipped up over Thanksgiving. His rope technique is getting much better; he’s been reading and studying for a long time–before he met me, really. He very much wants to learn more, and he has all the ingredients I imagine would make a good rope top: 1) toppiness; 2) the ability to tie things–he has been using knots for practical purposes since he was a kid; 3) an OCD-type focus on learning things–he’s willing to look at a picture of someone in rope until he figures out what’s going on, whereas I look at it until I get distrac–squirrel!

What he doesn’t have is a rope bunny (at least one that’s close to hand) or a mentor. A few weeks ago, he got to go to a rope workshop, and then he got to come see his preferred bunny. The rope workshop was awesome for him–he learned a lot, got a lot of feedback on his ties, and felt, I think, like he was doing it well enough.  Certainly when he got his paws on me at Thanksgiving, I could tell the difference; he was much more confident and much faster.

Lots of our previous attempts at rope ties have been abortive, because I get so turned on by rope that I hyperventilate and get dizzy within seconds and we have to stop.  (I gather, too, that I’m not supposed to lock my knees?)  This time, he sat me down on a stool for the first part of the tie, and had me in this body harness in under 5 minutes; I was comfortable and happy the whole time, and he was talking to me and checking in.  Because I was talking to him, I didn’t spin off into loopy la-la sub-land . . . at least, not until after he got the rope on and got about 500 pictures of me.  He spent an hour or an hour and a half watching me gradually cream myself before he fucked me.  Such is the hard, hard life of a bunny.

 

Rollercoaster

I have written about 2 dozen drafts in my head the last few weeks, and several on paper or pixels.  As soon as I get a few strands of narrative going, the threads of real life take a new turn, my fine twist breaks, and I can’t connect any of the events I’ve been writing about to the present state of my affairs.  It happened again between the time I started this post, a couple days ago, and now, but I already picked out the illustrations for this one, and so this title is staying.

It has been impossible to write about what’s going on between me and Robbie over the last month, because it’s so hard to capture the rapidly-changing present.  One night on our past visit, Robbie and I would have a deep and much-needed, cathartic talk about what was going on with pain in our BDSM relationship, and I’d be mentally taking notes on the realization we’d reached when the talk would tank into sadness and separate sides of the bed.  Another night, I’d be seething for hours at the thought that he was going to leave me wet and frustrated on our last day together, until he came home at midnight from an unavoidable and important errand to make very tender and emotional love to me until the wee hours.  On a school night, even.  I left his house for home deeply in love but deeply pessimistic.

(There is so much to explain, and I have been not saying so much for so so long–here, and to him.  I don’t know where to start, and so if you want to read, bear with me or ask questions about what doesn’t make sense, and if it’s all too confusing or too raw, I apologize.  But I can’t keep all this bottled up and I can’t keep writing about us if I am not more honest and I can’t be dishonest about us anymore.)

Two weeks ago, we tried to figure out when we would get together this summer, and he could not tell me when he had time to see me.  Around that time, I read an article about babies and found myself sobbing.  Ten days ago, I told him that I had stopped being able to see a way for us to make a future together, and that though I loved him, I wanted a husband and a family and I needed to go look for those things before my clock had fully and finally ticked itself out.  (I am close, closer than most.  I am 37-and-a-half.)

Robbie dealt with all that with some equanimity.  I had told him before I even met him that I wanted a family, and we talked more about it the first weekend we met.

But then I actually met someone I wanted to date–a local Dom who asked me to play–and the emotional shit hit the fan.  Or perhaps that’s not fair to Robbie–I think he would have felt the emotional impact anyway.  But that event made it particularly strong.  And somehow in the middle of this we started talking.  A lot.

We’ve been talking every day for an hour or two and spilling our guts.  Many of the times we talked over the past two years–many of which, in fact, were over email–seem like pale echoes of actual meaningful conversations, now that we are having the latter.  We’ve stopped the incessant fighting.  We are crying and telling each other we love the other and talking about really bad and painful stuff–and good stuff too–and we are so, so vulnerable.  And I did not expect any of this.

I wasn’t (consciously) breaking up with Robbie or dating other people in order to “get him back”; I expected Robbie to let me go without much difficulty because I thought he had already let me go.  And he believed, it turned out, that I had been going for some time, perhaps believed that I didn’t really want to try.

I don’t really know what else to say.  I just am still here and still in love with Robbie.  And I am reeling in good and bad ways from having spent a day playing with someone else.  And all of a sudden it seems that Robbie was right that life is not a dress rehearsal and that he and I are really very necessary to each other and we best stop making a hash of things because we just can’t afford that.  And also, because we don’t have to.

And maybe I can write some of the other two-dozen posts if I let out this rollercoasterish one, and if it all doesn’t have to make sense.  Because it’s not all adding up now but it’s closer to that than it has been in a long, long time, and mostly I don’t feel miserable when I think of Robbie anymore, I just feel full of love and happiness and that is pretty darn nice.

Cool drawings, including a few dominatrixes, by Swedish illustrator Klas Fahlen.  Check out his cute animation, from which I stole the tiny ones (click to make them grow).  Also: more Swedes where he came from, on the same site.

 

Say Goodbye

And with that, we were done.

It had been years in the making; almost three, to be closer to exact.

Three days of near-silence after Valentine’s weekend.  No panic, I thought.  He’s always quiet and depressed after a weekend together, while you’re energized.  He needs his space.  Try to give it to him.

This morning I had a dream: he had left me.  I was alone, in his town, trying to find a doctor, a taxi, a telephone, a place to sleep for the night, and I could not reach him.  He would not help.  My family, my mother’s large, extended family, loving and funny and bittersweet and enduring, stepped in, did the necessary.  And when he arrived at last and walked with me for awhile, they made room for us, and when he left again so soon after he’d come, they surrounded me with love.  It was a very real, very vivid dream.

Around noon I got an email from him: “Perhaps we could have a meaningful conversation early this evening?”

The conversation was short.  He said to me what I’d said to him two weeks before–that we wanted different things, that we were wasting each other’s time.  Except when I say it to him, he listens, and is compassionate, and saves us, again and again.  And when he says it to me I am so desperately hurt I just say, “Fine, go, forget it”–or I start to pick at him, and to argue.  So I asked, tonight, “Do you want me to try to change your mind?” and he said, “I don’t know, I want you to say whatever you want to say.”  I suppose I should have asked for permission to try to change his mind.

At some point–and that point would be now, or else I wouldn’t be blogging about it–I think we have to say goodbye.  We have given each other so much joy and we have made each other so, so, so very unhappy.

Once, when he was down, I played a Leonard Cohen song for him.  It didn’t occur to me what a bad idea it was to play that kind of song for him until I saw the tears rolling heavily down his cheeks.  I like melancholy; it might be one of the biggest differences between us.  And I loved the sad and beautiful strains of the song I played for him.  But he–he was listening to the lyrics, and the lyrics were about a woman leaving.  Say goodbye, they said, and I could see on his face all the times loves of his had said farewell, and I could see, in his tears, the anticipation of when I might do the same.

I guess we are there.

Alexandra Leaving

based on the poem The God Abandons Antony, by Constantine P. Cafavy

Suddenly the night has grown colder.
Some deity preparing to depart.
Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder,
they slip between the sentries of your heart.

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure,
they gain the light, they formlessly entwine;
and radiant beyond your widest measure
they fall among the voices and the wine.

lt’s not a trick, your senses all deceiving,
a fitful dream the morning will exhaust—
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving,
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin.
Even though she wakes you with a kiss.
Do not say the moment was imagined,
Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for this to happen,
Go firmly to the window. Drink it in.
Exquisite music, Alexandra laughing.
Your first commitments tangible again.

You who had the honor of her evening,
And by that honor had your own restored—
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Alexandra leaving with her lord.

As someone long prepared for the occasion;
In full command of every plan you wrecked—
Do not choose a coward’s explanation
that hides behind the cause and the effect,

You who were bewildered by a meaning,
whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed—
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Hydra, Greece
September 1999

 

Screw the Roses, Send Me Beer

I’m going to Robbie’s for Valentine’s Day weekend, which he has been planning with care.  We’ve had lots of good talks lately, including ones about what to do together to make our time special and fun.  (We have both officially agreed that debating the ins and outs of our relationship is not fun.)

We talked about going out for dinner, which we almost never do unless we are with friends, family, or fellow perverts.  (And since most of our friends are fellow perverts . . . )  I suppose I should have lept at the chance to have some romantic quality time with my man, out and about on Valentine’s Day.  But Robbie has high standards for food–he prefers fine dining, and prefers it to be almost-free–and so it can be a challenge to find a place with ambience and value.  While I was waiting for him to finish sussing out the local options, it occurred to me that I really don’t like fine dining.  That is, I adore good food and I like being waited on.  But really, when I go out, I mostly want the chance to see and be seen, to feel like I’m sensing the pulse of a city, drawing near to the sexuality and daring that surge up in groups of people and flow through busy evenings.

I want to be out on the town.  I want to be my exhibitionist self and I want to flaunt what we have.

And since, after all, we can do that at a bar just as well as a restaurant, and since we are quite, quite poor, and saving our money in the ever-more-realistic hope that someday not that far away we will be together, we are going to a pub for Valentine’s Day.

Robbie said he very much thinks I need to get out in public, and I agree.

From Darker Sights and Sounds.

 

Friday Night Wishes

Unsurprisingly, I miss Robbie most just after seeing him . . . that, I suppose, and after not having seen him for quite awhile.

But when I leave his house and drive home, I find myself launched on a days-long jag of feeling achey, uncomfortable, out-of-sorts. I think he feels it too, because we act bizarre towards each other. We fumble for the rhythm of nightly phone calls and friendly chats that we share for most of the 3-or-4 weeks between visits. And when I fall asleep at night, I feel the ghost of his arms around me; and when I wake up in the morning, I imagine I am in his bed.

I have no plans tonight, and I can think of little to do except perhaps to curl up with a glass of wine and some reading. He tells me it’s a waste of energy and emotion to wish that things were different than they are, and I know he’s right. But right after I see him, just after I am home, I sometimes give myself permission to indulge in those silly, wasteful wishes, and I think about what I would do if he were here, instead of there.

This photo and similar at the appropriately-named Just blowjobs. Via Bend Me Over.

 

200 More Miles of Rain Asphalt and Light

I’m heading to Robbie’s today for the billionth eight-hour trip. I’m nervous; I always am before I go–distracted with practicalities and worries. Preoccupied with work or errands not done.

That lasts for the first two hours. The next three or four hours are boring. And then I get within striking distance of him and I can feel it . . . and my own fantasies start scrolling and I push the pedal down harder and I imagine that first kiss, better even, usually, than our very first kiss, which was the best of my life.

(Though last time I saw him, he dispensed with the kiss right off the bat, and had me crawl across the floor to him and suck his cock while he nonchalantly filed his nails, the better to finger me later. Little avalanches of nail-dust sifted onto my nose as I applied myself to the task. I do love objectification.)

Photograph from Autumn Sonnichsen‘s “Compasses” series.

 

Just the Facts, Ma’am

The next however many posts won’t make sense without some basic information. To review the summer to date: Robbie and I decided on freakishly short notice that I would move to his house for the summer. After a bizarre start, we spent three weeks together in a state of alternating bliss and misery. We agreed I’d go home to my mother’s house, which I did. I stayed there two weeks and we negotiated a week together, to be extended if things were going well. I think we both hoped the second time around, things would stick, and stick firmly, until the end of the summer.

We lasted three days before the big, blow-up, I’m-packing-my-stuff-yeah-you-better-pack-your-stuff fight.

So I rented an apartment near my usual haunts, and I am licking my wounds, and Robbie is licking his. Actually I am not so much nursing sore places as I am just paying attention to me again.

Or, as we were singing together while goofily dancing down the aisles of the grocery store together on the second day of this last trip:

And there’s a rose in a fisted glove,*
And the eagle flies with the dove,
And if you can’t be with the one you love, honey,
Love the one you’re with.

I can’t be with Robbie right now, and the only one else around is me. And right now, that’s just fine with me.

* I really always thought this was “a road in the distant sun”. Knock me over with a cane, had no idea about the kinky rose and glove thing going on . . .

 

Home

Again, excuse my absence. I haven’t wanted to write here lately because I haven’t wanted to reveal much about what I am doing right now. I know better, though, than to think you can leave something out of writing and still string the sentences together—you can’t do that and write the “one true sentence” (as Hemingway called it) that you need to build on.

Two weeks ago, I left Robbie’s and came home to my mother’s house. More than any other time in my life, I feel like I am failing at a crucial relationship. Something irrational tells me Robbie is supposed to be in my life, while another part of me thinks that a person can choose her destiny, can choose whether to invite struggle and confusion and uncertainty into things.

I am an emotional kaleidoscope at the moment, which is hardly surprising. What I feel most overwhelmingly is that I want to go home, to be home, to find a place where all the parts of my life are together and I don’t have to work so hard to overcome distance, to knit work and love and family together, to simply do the days.

* * *

Longing for home is not new to me. I have always travelled itinerantly; always sought out new things or blended myself into new places. One of the things Robbie and I have in common is our ability to be chameleons, to fit into all sorts of situations. But sometimes it’s necessary to feel that things won’t always change, that one will settle down, that there won’t always be upheavals, packing, unpacking, confusion, disorganization, flying-by-the-seat of one’s pants. (Other times, the lack of that sense of adventure is achingly real, causing me to throw all kinds of things to the wind in pursuit of a sense of freedom.) I bounce between these two poles, of belonging and longing, often and in many ways, but not more so than wondering where I might live my life out.

In fact, one of my favorite poems, by Robert Graves, is called Here Live your Life Out! Graves is good at capturing the unbearable lightness of being, the difficulty of only having one life to life when you’d really like to compare and contrast.

Here Live Your Life Out!

Window-gazing, at one time or another
In the course of travel, you must have startled at
Some coign of true felicity. “Stay!” it beckoned,
“Here live your life out!” If you were simple-hearted
The village rose, perhaps, from a broad stream
Lined with alders and gold-flowering flags—
Hills, mills, hay-fields, orchards—and, plain to see,
The very house behind its mulberry-tree
Stood, by a miracle, untenanted!

Alas, you could not alight, found yourself jolted
Viciously on. Public conveyances
Are not amenable to casual halts
Except in sternly drawn emergencies—
Bandits, floods, landslides, earthquakes or the like—
Nor could you muster resolution enough
To shout “This is emergency, let me out!”
Rushing to grasp their brakes; so the whole scene
Withdrew forever. Once at the terminus
(As your internal mentor will have told you),
It would have been pure folly to engage
A private car, drive back, sue for possession.
Too far, too late:
Already bolder tenants were at the gate.

* * *

Graves is surpassed in tracing what-might-have-been by Elizabeth Bishop, one of my favorite favorites. Much of Bishop’s work ponders the question of where she belongs, whether in Nova Scotia, where she lived as a child with her maternal grandparents; in Key West, where she wrote her first, Pulitzer-Prize winning book of poems, North and South ; or in Brazil, where she lived on and off with her lover, Lota de Macedo Soares, from 1951 until Soares committed suicide in 1967. Famous for her villanelle “One Art,” written after Soares’ deatg, in which Bishop (seemingly) casually describes how she lost “some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent”, the poet was on intimate terms with her own rootlessness.

My favorite of Bishop’s books, Questions of Travel, overflows with the wonder of her discovery of Brazil. But the book also never loses the sense that all the wonders a person discovers come with a price, or at least, a set of irresolvable doubts.

* * *

Part of me feels that home is where my parents live, where I grew up. So much of what I think I ought to embrace is here—education, culture, politics, “the chattering classes,” a world of people who always appear to know what their neighbors are accomplishing, a comfortable, even privileged world. My parents worked hard, and still do, to make me feel that what seem like luxuries to me here—rich stores of education, money, leisure, and intellect—are my birthright. It’s not something I particularly wanted to inherit and it has its own minor drawbacks, but it’s rather too late to go back into the womb now.

Part of me feels my home is where I live on my own, where my cats are, where I work and have connections, where I have built a life for myself. I woke up the other night feeling pressure against me as I slept (I think I’d fallen asleep on a book), and for a few moments I thought the cat who likes to sleep curled up next to me was there. I was overcome by missing the routines I’ve had, for better or worse, for nearly a decade now.

Part of me feels that home is Robbie’s home. The first night I met him, Robbie took me out to look at the stars behind his house. I had never seen the sky that bright; never seen the Milky Way like a cloud against a field of stars. He put his arms around me and pointed up at the constellations. It felt perfect, and I told him so, told him how amazing the place he lived was to me. “Yes,” he said, “It feels like home, doesn’t it?” And then he kissed me deeply, so warmly. I fell in love with him that night.

So now, home again, I am, still, homesick. I am once again faced with what Bishop asks in Questions of Travel: “Where should we be today?”

* * *

Questions of Travel

.

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams

hurry too rapidly down to the sea,

and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops

makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,

turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.

—For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,

aren’t waterfalls yet,

in a quick age or so, as ages go here,

they probably will be.

But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,

the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,

slime-hung and barnacled.

Think of the long trip home.

Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?

Where should we be today?

Is it right to be watching strangers in a play

in this strangest of theatres?

What childishness is it that while there’s a breath of life

in our bodies, we are determined to rush

to see the sun the other way around?

The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?

To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,

inexplicable and impenetrable,

at any view,

instantly seen and always, always delightful?

Oh, must we dream our dreams

and have them, too?

And have we room

for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

But surely it would have been a pity

not to have seen the trees along this road,

really exaggerated in their beauty,

not to have seen them gesturing

like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.

—Not to have had to stop for gas and heard

the sad, two-noted, wooden tune

of disparate wooden clogs

carelessly clacking over

a grease-stained filling-station floor.

(In another country the clogs would all be tested.

Each pair there would have identical pitch.)

—A pity not to have heard

the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird

who sings above the broken gasoline pump

in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:

three towers, five silver crosses.

—Yes, a pity not to have pondered,

blurr’dly and inconclusively,

on what connection can exist for centuries

between the crudest wooden footwear

and, careful and finicky,

the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.

—Never to have studied history in

the weak calligraphy of songbirds’ cages.

—And never to have had to listen to rain

so much like politicians’ speeches:

two hours of unrelenting oratory

and then a sudden golden silence

in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:

.

“Is it lack of imagination that makes us come

to imagined places, not just stay at home?

Or could Pascal have been not entirely right

about just sitting quietly in one’s room?

.

Continent, city, country, society:

the choice is never wide and never free.

And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home,

wherever that may be?“

.

.

Photographs I couldn’t stop staring at, by Erica Shires.

 

A Season in Purgatory

So there I was, trying to get myself installed for the summer with Robbie in as sinful a manner as possible, when some kind of Karmic moral force decided to slap me on the wrist for it.

A very large and unpleasant burp occurred in my plans; the result was that I spent three days and nights in steaming hot weather alone in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, with no internet access.

And no sex.

On the fourth night, Robbie came to rescue me from hell’s waiting room. Being with him is always exciting, but compared to the last few days, being here now is most definitely paradise.

From the creepily sexy work of Michael Hutter, pervert extraordinaire.

 

Summer Lovin’

So we’re shacking up for the summer. As in, immediately. This is moving weekend. I doubt I will have much opportunity to wax lyrical (or less so) while my computer is in the back of a pickup truck.

More after I’m there, if I get a break from my duties. Until then, happy sexy happenings to everyone.

Drew Jarret, via Dadanoias.

 

Card Catalogue: A Polyamory Pamphlet

I wouldn’t presume to collect all the resources on polyamory out there. Other people have put together websites that have tons of information, and in this case, as in most, google is your friend.

However, I did run across something the other day that I wish I had read about 18 months ago, before Robbie and I started to get involved in what we persist in calling “the others stuff”. We (meaning I) couldn’t decide if we (I) wanted to have relationships or flings, to be with men, women, couples, or moresomes, to play separately or together . . . and every step of the way was an opportunity for confusion, miscommunication, and hurt feelings.

I feel much better about this issue now, in part because things are going well between us and I don’t feel insecure; in part because, looking back on what we’ve done, he’s actually played things safe and that gives me confidence in him; and in part because I now have read this: a list of practical monogamy tips from the folks over at freaksexual. This couldn’t be a better list of things to discuss–it’s a list of things you should think about, but might not.

If you are just dipping your toes into the topic, I’d suggest you start here, here, here, here, and all the places those places link to, in addition to buying your very own copy of the Ethical Slut. Happy reading!

Above: party people are part of a panoramic pic by Will Pearson

Edit: Robbie reminded me about Tristan Taormino’s Opening Up–the book and the website.  One of the very best places to start.

 

Blowjob Lessons: Part 2

“Okay okay okay,” my best friend said, tossing her head and flashing her eyes at us. “Listen up. There are four steps to giving a good blowjob.” The rest of us sat rapt in the sunlight filtering down from the street. It was that nameless hour between afternoon and evening, the one before sunset, where all the light turns golden and time stands still. My favorite time of day.

“Number one: Kiss and tease. You start kissing his chest, licking his nipples, kissing down his belly, touching his thighs—everything but his dick. Do not touch his dick. Do this for as long as you can. It will drive him crazy. Lick his inner thighs, lick right up next to his cock—but don’t lick his cock.”

Three heads nodded at what she said. We sat in a tight circle around a pitcher of cheap beer and four plastic cups, gigglingly nervous and predator-serious. Everyone in the circle had applied tongue to cock before, but our friend was the acknowledged expert.

“When he can’t stand it anymore, grip his penis at the base, like this.” She demonstrated a solid thumb-and-forefingers cock ring. “Do whatever you want, whatever feels good. Kisskisskiss it up and down, swirl your tongue around the head like it’s an ice cream cone, dart all along the length . . . “

“There’s that vein . . . “ the blonde interjected.

“Yep, you can run your tongue along that vein. Just, you know, whatever feels good.” She spread her hands wide—she talked with her hands as much as with her words.

“Okay, now you’re gonna start going down on him for real. You want to make sure that you have your teeth covered up.”

“How do you . . . ?” I started.

Two or three of my friends started talking at once. “You cover them with your lips.” “Put your lips over your teeth.”

The speaker took over again. “Look, Sera, like this.” And she showed me, her perfectly lipsticked mouth curving into an “o”, then an oval. “You can do it a couple of ways. You guys—everyone do it.” We all practiced blowjob embouchure. We all drank.

“Alright, step three. Put your mouth on him and move up and down the shaft, slowly. DO NOT SUCK! You’re gonna tire yourself out waaay before he comes if you start sucking right off the bat. You don’t want to start sucking until he’s almost there.”

The other two nodded sagely. They had clearly been there, been tired.

“So you’re moving up and down. You want to try to feel his rhythm—but do not. let. any guy. put his hand on your head.”

We nodded, a little less confidently this time. She was so in control as she told us how to keep things in control. Her level of cool and confidence set a high standard, even as it reassured.

“So, step four. You’re probably going to start going faster and he’s going to get harder, and when you feel that happen, THEN you suck. Still no teeth, just make a vacuum in your mouth like you do when you’re sucking a straw. Suck HARD. And then he’ll come. And that’s it.” She sat back in her chair, smiled a cat-like smile, stopped short of licking her lips, and drank again.

The blonde and the raven-haired girl started peppering her with questions about cum—how to swallow it, how to avoid swallowing it, the swallowing debate of centuries. I didn’t, not that I remember. I was busy memorizing the steps. One. Two. Three. Four. And when next opportunity came, a mere seven months later, I remembered them to perfection, which is, possibly, a story for another time.

* * *

I have had trouble finishing this post, and have been sitting on it for days now. I want to say something about my friend—but I don’t know what I want to say yet. That’s okay. Often we write to find out what we think.

There is something I want to say about my friend, something to do with who we were then and who we are now. It is hard to say it without explaining everything that happened in time that has passed, in hectic changes and slow growth.

She has done more life adventuring than many people, so when I first began exploring kinkiness with Robbie, I called her often–to ask for advice, to brag, to compare notes, to get consolation when things felt odd or strange. Almost two decades after we first met, more than fifteen years since that introduction to blowjobs in a tacky bar that doesn’t exist anymore, my friend is still my guide on matters sexual. The authority, experience, and candor she showed then have mellowed, become graciousness, self-knowledge, and a compassionate openness. My own woeful insecurity and inexperience have softened—especially since knowing Robbie—into the beginnings of comfort and, I gather from talking to Robbie, a lingering wholesomeness, despite his unceasing efforts to corrupt me.

For the past year, aside from my immediate family, these two people have been unstintingly generous with me. I keep learning from both of them that lessons about sex are often lessons in love, too. And that is not a bad thing to have learned.

Photograph of couple by Samantha Wolov, whose work is also here. Illustration of girls with headphones by Yuko Shimizu, recolored and otherwise photoshopped on seraglioletters premises.

 

Dating Myself

I love Robbie enormously. But everyone, Robbie especially, agrees that I ought to spend time with myself right now.

This means cleaning house, organizing things, earning money, rediscovering real life friends, and all the other things people with full existences do. It also means “cultivating laziness”, as I persist in believing that the writer Robert Penn Warren once said despite a total lack of evidence that he did. It means silliness and time with my cats and grandiose projects and free rein to my curiosity. It absolutely means downloading Madonna’s Hard Candy.

And it means something deeper. For the last two years I have devoted at least half of every conversation to talk of Robbie. (This might be why I am short on friends, by the way.) He takes up a tremendous amount of my mental space. He is my best friend. But for quite a while it has felt like there’s no one in here, inside me.

Buried in work and frittering away my spare time, I infrequently noticed my increasing sense of emptiness; when I did, I expressed it as feeling either tired or busy. All the things I might have done for myself when I was down got pushed to the side—not because of D/s or because of distance or because of anything else between us, but because I was letting my relationship with him take up the place where my relationship with myself used to be. I haven’t had true leisure in my life apart from the time we spent together. I was counting on him, funny, exuberant, and adventurous as he can be, to provide relaxation and sunshine as well as many of the other kinds of support we expect partners will cough up for each other.

I suppose this is common enough; I certainly don’t want to make it sound tragic. The tragedy for me will be if my failure to balance my needs and our needs has torpedoed us (though believe me, there were plenty of other missiles in the water).

The point is that for the moment, instead of focusing on Robbie, I’m mostly trying to date myself.

* * *

Myself and I have only been dating for a week, so any predictions I might make about myself would be totally out of line and probably disrespectful to me, as well. On the other hand, I’ve dated me before—we are one of those on-again, off-again couples that end up together in the end, no matter how rough the ride may be. I mean, I went for years in college and after graduation not really being very close to me. I’m sure the fact that I didn’t treat me right didn’t help, but the larger problem was that I wasn’t sure how much I cared for me. Looking back I see I loved me all along, though neither I nor myself saw that at the time.

Of course, many relationships later, I realize it takes more than caring and closeness to make a good couple. It takes commitment, for one thing. I haven’t really been there for myself lately, and vice versa. And then there’s compatibility. There are lots of times where I honestly can’t stand what myself is doing. Myself can be a real bitch, and me says I can be uptight.

But this week, I’m diggin’ me. Mind you, I haven’t had sex with myself yet. Oh, yeah, I’ve done it with me—tons of times. I’ve had a rocking, rolicking sex life with myself. And I could get busy with me–sure I could. But I just don’t have the urge, and me hasn’t been sending out any feelers either. I’m guessing its awkwardness, nerves, shyness– plus the fact that myself and I haven’t been back together long. Maybe this weekend we’ll feel like getting it on. I bought some stuff for cocktails just in case, and I think I’m going to give me a nice, long, steamy shower tomorrow night—that should spice things up for me, I think.

Until then, I and me have just been hanging out. I’ve made myself lots of meals, which me really appreciates—I can neglect feeding myself well, and me understandably resents that I’m not willing to put in that effort for myself. I’ve taken myself on walks, made efforts to dress up for me—those little things that really count. I even bought a few books for myself today; me seemed pretty touched by it, although me thinks me might return them because me knows I can get them cheaper on Amazon.

The one thing I stress about is how Robbie will deal with things between me and I. Like I said, I want me in my life and I want him, but me doesn’t feel that way. Myself is kinda possessive, I have to say. Sometimes, listening to me, I think that I could happily spend the rest of my life just with myself. Most of the time, though, I see clearly that I need all kinds of relationships besides my relationship with myself to feel fulfilled. Me gets pissed off then and says I’ve been reading the Ethical Slut too much—me really doesn’t have a lot of time for poly. The important thing for myself and I though is that we’re talking. Communication, communication, communication. I feel good about where I and me are going these days.

Irresistible portraits by June Miller, via fluffy Lychees. More irresistibility at her blog.

 

The Snake in the Bed

I am back home.

I woke at birdsong and automatically reached in both directions to find Robbie. He wasn’t there of course. There were a couple of cats, but it’s not the same.

We had a visit full of up and downs that I won’t describe in this particular post. But to me it’s enough to note that we didn’t kiss or touch to speak of for 48 hours of the hours we were together and that we didn’t have sex for 72 hours. (I tallied it up during the everlasting drive home.)

We have never done anything like that. There is an electric current between us that is almost irresistible . . . or if that is mangling a metaphor I could use the standard but more cliche image of a magnet. Earth moving under my feet; sky rockets in flight; thunder, lightning–whatever words I choose to put to it, the desire doesn’t go away, especially when I’m in his three-dimensional presence.

Lying in his bed on the nights we didn’t touch, I still felt it, felt it across the three empty feet of space between us. When he rolled over and I glimpsed a shoulder, or the rippling muscles of his left arm, or his forehead furrowed with worry, my fingers danced with the need to touch him. When I lay curled on my side of the bed, the wanting felt like a snake coiled under the bed, ready to strike me, at least, at any time.

I’d move and it would rattle through me; I’d imagine him reaching across the arc of space between us to pin me down and say something like, “This is one night you’re not turning me out!” But he didn’t. We don’t live in a movie, and he doesn’t play this game when he is angry.

He wasn’t angry when I left, and neither was I. Sad, upset, hurt, confused, but not angry. When he is like this, he needs quiet–his own space, that distance between us in the middle of the bed.

Now if I could only figure out what I need.

Above is Richard Avedon‘s iconic portrait of Nastassja Kinski.

 

Chapter XXIX . . . Wherein My Muse Deserts Me for Insistently Greener Pastures

We had a lovely, amazing, kink and romance and fun-filled weekend together. Truly. One of those weekends when you feel you are back in the first days of dating, giddy and starry-eyed, except you already know the person so well that . . . well actually, I’ve never had this happen before so I’m going to stop with the “one of those weekends.” It was unique.

And since I have been back I have had squat to say. I still have squat to say. But I thought I would report my squattery, at least.

(Near-squat courtesy of Sharon Davis Photography, via Unscathed Corpse.)

Perhaps I’ll come unstuck again soon . . .

Image found on strange, Strange Eros.

 

Dirty Weekend

Hooray . . . we picked a place and almost a time, and we are going.

I’m putting my mind on hold. I’d have to even if I didn’t plan to, because I know he’ll fuck my brains out.

Lucky me.

From the decadently gritty work of Marc Blackie.

 

Pale Green Pants

This is not (merely) yet another post about my underwear. Amid much sexy talk of late, we have also been trying to figure out what we want from and with each other.

“I love you,” I tell him, incessantly, to the point where it sounds unbelievable even to me. I tell him because at distance, I am not as good at showing him.

Sometimes, it seems to register with him that I actually do. “I know,” he answers me then, laughingly, affectionately, “and that’s what scares the hell out of me.”

I’m not entirely sure what he means, but I do know that sometimes I feel his love so strongly that I freak out, and then he has to pick up the slack. The other night he asked me if I was trying to get rid of him. I’m not, but sometimes I’m scared he’ll want to get rid of me.

So we’ve been going round, like a couple of teenagers, for the past couple of weeks, both vulnerable and idiotic, each in turn getting hopeful and then discouraged by the other’s discouragement. A recent talk about when to get together sent him into a pout of disappointment and me into a nasty silence.

A lot of times love reminds me of that Dr. Seuss poem, “Pale Green Pants.” (Clicky to download the text of the poem.) On a series of odd errands, the Seussian protagonist keeps running into a pair of “pale green pants with nobody inside ’em”. The pants, being empty, and perhaps being green, scare the fuck out of him. Until one day, when creature and pants find each other trapped in the same thorny bush (ahem). Our hero narrates:

But then a strange thing happened.

Why, those pants began to cry!

Those pants began to tremble.

They were just as scared as I!

And realizing that the pants are, like himself, scared and unsure, the creature reaches out and holds them.

We are all vulnerable beyond belief when we begin to care, and the more we care, the more the door swings open to fear and fragility. I deal with this by brooding. Robbie deals with it, when he can, by laughing. I tell him about the pale green pants with nobody inside ’em, and he growls, “It’d be a lot better to have pale green pants with somebody inside ’em. Or at least, someone pretty nearby.”

More than any man I’ve known, Robbie indulges my navel-gazing–but he also laughs it off, fucks it off, growls it off, or works it off with hard, hard labor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While browsing for images for this post I managed to discover the best sources of green (that is, eco-friendly) luxury underwear around. Lest this accidentally-won knowledge slip away into the ether, I’ll paste a few links in here.

The figleaves online store has a “dedicated department for green products”–greenleaves, they call it. They bring four major brands of British environmentally p.c. underthings to American consumers: Greenknickers, Enamore, Eco-Boudoir, and People Tree. For more green luxury there’s Viva Terra. The beautiful handmade panties in the first picture (which are actually technically yellow, not green) are from Luva-Huva. I’m sure there are zillions more and I’ll add to this when I stumble across them.

My favorite is definitely Greenknickers (advert pic above). Who can resist a pair of panties that say “eat organic” on them?

 

Black Thong Day

I’m running out of clean underwear and clean clothes–mostly because I usually do my laundry at his place on the weekends, and I haven’t seen him in a few weeks.

I am down to my pretty knickers, the ones I save for “important” occasions. That’s how I ended up yesterday wearing a thong he’d bought me as a present. My First Thong. Wow did it feel sexy.

“I knew it would,” he smirked over email; he is capable of e-smirkage.

I’m a convert to these too. Oh thongs, where have you been all my life? Lover man, where have you been?!

I’ve been flummoxed about which black thong picture to choose . . . oh, the pressure . . .

For now . . . here’s this frame from an Andrew Blake film clip, found through Fluffy Lychees.

 

Boyshort Day

Two years ago, I decided to dress up for him for New Year’s entirely in red. Red bra, panties, stockings, garter, and see-through apron. The only thing was that I didn’t manage to find any red panties before I left to visit him for the holidays.

We fixed that, together, stopping at a department store and grabbing whatever was in the budget bin. The pair of red lace boyshort panties went best with the rest of my outfit, I thought, and so I got them.

I discovered that New Year’s that some boyshorts have a strange “fringe benefit”. They cut so tight through the crotch that it’s like I’m in bondage, particularly through the ass. (Maybe thongs do this–I’m still naive enough not to know. Still, the phrase “butt floss” perfectly describes what those boyshorts did to me.)

I told him this sometime around October. It took me that long to 1) realize he’d want to know that they felt this way on me; 2) want to let him take advantage of the knowledge; 3) get over the embarrassment of having to describe it all out loud. My reward was a trio of boyshorts for Christmas (among many other presents).

I wore a white pair he’d given me yesterday, and was acutely aware of it, and of him. These are the kind of things that maintain my connection to him, and remind me of past and future submission.

They are not, however, assigned tasks. I have never succeeded at submitting at distance, but I circle around the idea, like a curious animal . . . and perhaps someday I will pounce . . . or it will.

* * *

I asked him for a specific kind of task last night; before giving it to me, he reminded me of my notoriously poor history at fulfilling tasks. I love the idea; I hate the reality. I complain that the tasks are too detailed, too burdensome, too complex . . . (Do Masters have some kind of OCD that makes them think of fiendishly, almost uncomplete-able fantasy-style assignments? Mine gives me quite modest ones, but I am far less organized than he, and they chafe.)

Most of all, I think, I feel bereft at his apparent lack of interest in “how it was for me”. Here I am, miles away, having a full, complete, intensely physical and sexual experience of his design. I want to tell him about it. For him, the act seems to be complete with the design–whatever benefit (or irritation) I get from it is mostly mine, and doesn’t need reporting in minute detail. At least, that’s my perception. When put that way, it makes sense to me. If I were to give him a task, I’d want him to just do it, and perhaps be appreciative, maybe, at most, tell me about any insights when we were together.

But for me at least it doesn’t work that way. When I am in a couple, a solo sex life is not exciting. Online submission doesn’t thrill. We want each other badly right now–and we want the real, full, three-dimensional thing. It has been too long. Tasks seem like they might fill the gap, but they never do. Only him, and his real-life domination, sates my need.

 

Holding Pattern

We are trying to figure lots of stuff out. All at once . . . over the telephone.

It’s mightily confusing. I don’t quite know when we will see each other again. It’s scary, too.

Beneath all the other emotions, insufferably, unbearably, distractingly, beats the rush of desire. It is a blessing to have it always there. It is a curse; it overrides judgment.

Its creeping over my skin now, and the wanting is mixed with sadness, confusion, hope, love, and anticipation.

A new day tomorrow. We will see what it brings.

Part of a photo by Stephen Neaves, found via Unscathed Corpse.