Stars

When I first started blogging, I had huge crushes on other bloggers out there.  I absolutely adored chelseagirl and wanted to be her; I even emailed her for advice.  I wanted to fuck Jefferson, with Robbie and three or four other guys there.  I eventually got up the nerve to email him, too (though not to fuck him).

After I’d been blogging for awhile, I got more comfortable with bloggers, and started to feel, rightly or wrongly, as though most of them were colleagues and some of them friends.  I think this is pretty common.  We admire what others do, and if we’re lucky or smart or foolhardy, we get up enough nerve to try it ourselves.  Once we try it, it doesn’t seem superhuman or impossible.  It’s just normal.  It’s kind of like the awe you felt for grown-ups until you were one.

About a year or a year and a half ago, though, something distressing began.  Blogs started to disappear.  The blogs I loved the most died off in a giant wave of blog extinction.  The first one to go, as I recall, was spiral submissive’s.  She was a young woman in Virginia, very devoted to a rather strict Sir, and I often worried about her after her web page disappeared and her url sported a title in Arabic.  Puppy Tales, Brooke’s outrageous and filthy fantasies about humiliation, was next, deleted, so the story went, by a moody and (over?)protective Master.  Then came chelseagirl, who gave up blogging in a the wake of a wave of post-breakup mourning.  One Life Take Two went dark when Jefferson’s ex-wife sued him for custody of their children on the basis of information she’d discovered in his blog.  Kitten in Chains petered out because Kitten and her master decided that D/s was not for them anymore.  And various other people, like Marianne at Indiscretion, just decided to stop.

All of this has left my blogroll rather patchy.  And yet, even though dead links have always infuriated me, I’ve intentionally not updated mine.  When spiral submissive disappeared, I wanted to keep her name in my personal lights, because of what her existence had meant to me at a time when I needed very desperately to figure out what kinky sex was.  It was the bad old days—that’s right, before FetLife—and knowing she was out there, and might still be, was comforting to me.  And when each of the bloggers who followed her winked out, I kept that tradition of tribute.

Time has passed, things have changed.  chelseagirl and Jefferson are back, their writing as fine as ever.  Brooke and Kitten have returned, as has a blogger named milla, whom I love.  And I have met or stumbled upon many, many new bloggers who work I want to honor and note.  So I’ll be changing my blog roll soon and gradually.  But before I do, I wanted to pay a small tribute to the people whose names will of necessity be removed from it, as well as to the people, like aag and TBK, who continue to write day in and day out.  I want to say thank you, and to say, along with Confucius, that “Words are the voice of the heart”.  Thank you to everyone who shares their hearts in this ethereal, fragile medium.

 

The Product of Yin and Yang

No needle play for us, after all, last weekend.  The friends we invited over for dinner have a newborn–the baby is a month old–and barely have time for kink with each other, much less for kink with friends.  I’m not quite sure what we were thinking about the needle demonstration, but we had a lovely time with our friends, watching them enjoy their new arrival.

These friends have been with us through major thick and thin–with Robbie, especially, since they are closer to him than to me.  I think I’m ready to start writing about that thick and thin, about what some of the fights of the last year(s?) have been about.  It’s not pretty stuff, the past.  But what’s come out of it is better and better.

“Eyes of True“, from Odilia Luzzi’s lovely photoblog, Dreams of Light.

 

Club

I just got this email from a friend of mine, who is most assuredly grown up.  It read:

The doorbell rang. Three little boys were there.  One said they were starting a friendship club and wanted to know if I wanted to join.  The other asked if there were any little people in the house.  “Kids?” I asked.  “Yeah.”  The first boy repeated the invitation to join their friendship club.  I asked what I had to do.  “Nothing,” he said.  I asked if I had to play with them.  “No, we are just going around to the houses seeing if people want to join our friendship club.”  “Sure, ” I said.  I’m going put it on my resume.

What I want to know is why people don’t do this more often.  Any of you want to be in my friendship club??  We have cookies.

 

Just a Little Bit of News

I’m getting used to this posting-more-often thing.  And so even though I don’t have much time to write what I want to write, I’m posting.

I talked to R. last night after a week of exchanging serious emails with him.  I needed the conversation; I’d been having so many sad, grieving dreams about us that I hadn’t been able to sleep through the night on Wednesday and Thursday.  He calmed me down enough so that I can just be for awhile, just do my thing, and let him do his.  That’s good.

As for my thing, I’m heading out tonight to hang out with a woman R. and I met last Thanksgiving.  She’s smart and kinky and kind, so I’m looking forward to that.  And to the chance to see a new place.  Hell, I’m even looking forward to the DRIVE.

I’m not looking forward to getting lost, though.  When I went to have dinner with the women the other night, I got thoroughly lost, and finally resorted to calling my family to get them to google directions for me.  This happens virtually every time I drive somewhere, and it’s only getting worse with time.  My mother’s entire family wanders through the world in a daze of lost-ness, while my dad’s side is more oriented.  On this occasion, my sister, who has a grid in her head, managed to give me perfect directions, complete with landmarks, by looking at a map on the computer in her office, 2,000 miles away from where I was.  I would have hated her if she hadn’t been so nice and I hadn’t been so very fucked.  So today I’m getting a map–if I don’t flake out and forget.

That’s about it.  I’m feeling lucky to be alive, and happy, which is about all anyone can ask for.

And I’m feeling glad that I found this photo gallery–The Night Day, with photos by Keffer, via ponyXpress.

Edit: I just realized that might be a hookah pipe next to the woman in the picture.  I was thinking it was a whip.  Shows where my mind flows . . .

For our purposes, let’s pretend it’s a whip, okay??  Thanks.

 

The Company of Women

After I started dating Robbie, my social life fell off precipitously, from a rich round of dinners and drinks with friends to basically nada.  This wasn’t his fault, or even mine.  By unfortunate coincidence, five out of seven of my closest friends moved out of state a few months after Robbie and I met, and my work changed in a way that meant I was encountering far fewer people than I once had.

At the moment, I’m living with one of those two friends.  She has a very active social life, and for the moment at least, I’m being encouraged to tag along as she lives it.  In the last week I’ve gone to two women-only dinner parties and met eight new people.  Like someone who’s been in a cave for too long, I’m stunned and blinking at the light.  (And like anyone who’s been alone too long, I have a lot to unlearn.  Last night I caught myself pushing food onto my fork with my fingers–twice.)

In addition to being a sexual switch, I’m a social switch.  Most people think I’m an extrovert; inside, I feel like an introvert.  I spent years training myself to interact fluidly with other humans, and I feel I have lost the knack.  Still, at a dinner party full of women, one has to adapt fast.

This company of women is soothing right now.  They all talk about the same things–husbands, children, in-laws, houses–and since I have none of those things, I don’t feel on the spot.  I listen as stories of other lives flow over and around me, and wonder, idly and with remarkably little panic, whether I’ll ever experience the things they’re talking about.  A year or two ago the prospect of not being married, not having children would have filled me with hysteria.  Not now.  I may just be so stunned by life I can’t feel anything, but that’s fine by me.

I suppose it’s a bit like reading a novel, talking to these women–one of those well-written, contemporary, affirming tales of love and adversity.  For although all my dining companions have all been wealthy, they have not necessarily had easy lives–there are insane relatives, husbands or children with cancer, and the looming economic threat that shadows everyone these days.

But this is not what figures in their dinner conversation, and it’s not what I get out of it.  When I said, a few days back, that I felt vile, fat, and disgusting, I meant it.  I have not paid much attention to my appearance for some time.  Robbie lives in the country, where the main object in winter is to beat the cold rather than to pull together a “look”.  Under our existing agreement, my hair has needed neither cutting nor styling.  Makeup has been optional, and I have opted out.  It would be the usual “letting yourself go”, except it feels unusual somehow.  I can’t put my finger on how, today, so I won’t try.

In the wake of our disastrous weekends together in February and March, I did what any smart girl would do–I bought lipstick.  Being especially smart, I also bought eyeliner.  On alternate days, I even remember to dab some of this stuff on my face.  I seem to remember how to make myself up, which is handy.

My collar is gone, which hurts–it feels like a part of my body is gone, amputated.  On the other hand, this means I get to wear necklaces, and I have been adorning myself with long strands of beads, fascinated by how they look in the light.

I watch the women and look at their scrubbed faces and careful ensembles.  They let me into their circle.  I’m not sure if this is healing, and I am not sure if this is love.  The company of women can be a harsh place.  But right now, its surfaces and appearances, its brittle, glittering rules and customs, are as much as I can bear thinking about.

The unmistakable Audrey Kawasaki.

 

She’s Not That Into You

I have been toying with the idea of sleeping with someone I am mildly acquainted with from this-yer-Internet-thingy. I have been toying with it, with him, and with my libido. I don’t feel particularly embarrassed about this; I figure he is man enough to handle it. Besides, he reads my blog—I’m assuming he’s aware of what a nut-case I am, and has adjusted his expectations accordingly.

The thing is: I don’t like sex that much. This might be an odd thing for a sex blogger to write. I don’t think of myself as a “very sexual person”, as so many sex bloggers do. (I think of myself as an inveterate pervert, which is different.) I don’t crave sex—not in the abstract. It’s only been within the last five years that I look at a person I’m talking to and think about what it might be like to fuck them. I never look at strangers and think that I want to sleep with them (okay, almost never). Vanilla sex is not a treat for me unless I have huge sexual chemistry with someone, and that is rare. The mere rubbing of pinkish swollen bits doesn’t get me off.

There was a thread recently on the ever-ire-provoking Fetlife that asked the age at which folks had “figured it out”—figured out the distinction between love and sex. I wanted to answer, “What distinction? I’ve never figured it out.” Having sex with someone, in the absence of deep affection, is heartbreaking to me in ways I can’t express. It always feels like a terrible loss to me, a loss of a piece of myself and of an incredibly special moment. (“Moment” is an insufficient word. I want to use a word like flower or orchid or symphony or something, but those would sound cheesy. Nevertheless, the spiritual, universe-shattering dimension of sex, the sacredness of sex, seems to me spoiled by inopportune timing.) It’s true that I’ve slept with people that I wasn’t in love with, and on two or three occasions, I even felt that strong emotional tug linking the two (or three or four) of us. But mostly, sex—and I mean intercourse—does not work for me without the love. (This might be one reason I find it easier to sleep with women I’ve just met—they’re not trying to shove a piece of their flesh into my most sensitive spots. Yeah, I know—leave fisting out of it, okay?)

Robbie gets this about me, finally. After months and months of arguing about “others” (aka group sex), he gets that I’m not about to step up for the gangbang anytime soon. I would love to, in theory. I really want that, and double-penetration, oh, and all kinds of other vile and humiliating things—in my fantasy world. But when the cock hits the pussy, I get tight and weepy and I wanna go home, now.

Robbie said to me a visit or two ago, “I understand that you need love to get open and juicy.” It wasn’t until he said the words that I finally admitted it to myself. This is one of the very good reasons to have him in my life—he understands me better at times than I understand myself. I need love.

He’s not that way. He needs attraction and mild admiration, affection. How I cope with his more frankly sexual self is a topic for another day.

But today, it’s enough for me to admit to myself, and out loud, that I’m just not that motivated to meet a new partner and get laid. I don’t think of it as a fun prospect. Actually, I think of it with terrible trepidation (although with no little arousal)—I think of it as frightening. Even if I feel affection and warmth and attraction to the person (as I do, in this case, to my prospective partner), I need the shelter of love, of its compassion and acceptance and commitment that love brings.

That, or wide unbridled animal lust. One of the two.

* * * * *

I’m really curious to hear what other people think. I was walking down the street today and wondering: is the prospect of having sex, for other folks, like the prospect of going out for dinner, to me? Do they think, cool, great, fun, this is an awesome chance to relax, kick back, have a good time, treat myself and feel good? The notion is just astonishing to me. Do people really fuck that recreationally? I’m in awe of that capacity. It seems like a wonderful thing to be able to do.

Tell me, oh internet denizens—is “casual” sex easy or hard, fun or scary?

Photos by Cornelie Tollens, via fluffy Lychees.

 

Honey, He Ain’t Worth It

Once upon a time, my best friend and I knew a woman who was going through a difficult time.  Her father had recently been diagnosed with cancer, and the news naturally was hitting her hard.  The three of us saw each other often for drinks and dinners, and one night, around the time all of this was happening, we all got blotto, mind-bogglingly so.

Deep into her cups, our friend poured out her grief for her father.  She got so upset that we all retreated to the ladies’ room, where our friend unleashed both her tears and the contents of her stomach.  As we crouched in the stall with her, trying to comfort her, a fourth woman walked in.  And on witnessing the noise and the hubbub, she gave the best counsel she could: “Honey, he ain’t worth it.”

We laughed.  To the fourth woman’s puzzlement, we laughed long and hard.  And when we had a chance to explain to the fourth woman what was going on, she laughed too.  Gallows humor, perhaps, but what else were we to do?  Our friend’s father was definitely worth her tears, although we agreed that most boyfriends were not.

* * *

Robbie and I were talking about blogs the other day.  He rarely reads them unless I point him to them, but then, of course, he has opinions–ones that I think are incredibly insightful, especially when they jive with my own.

On this particular occasion we were talking about comments, and how at times commentators are really too nice.  I have a penchant for argumentative comments, as I have admitted here before, but it’s as an antidote to commentators who act as a chorus of yes-men for the blogger.  Or perhaps that should be “yes-women.”  I didn’t think of the effusion of support that people in comments often offer as gendered until Robbie pointed it out. “You know,” he said, “everyone in the comments was doing that woman thing–that ‘there, there,’ thing.”

I knew what he meant.  The coffee-klatsch is alive and well in the 21st century, and living in bloggers’ comments.  We get to bitch about our sex lives, our families, our pets, our lovers–and most of the people to whom we bitch offer a sympathetic ear.

But a sympathetic ear is not always what we need, and it’s hard for virtual friends to perform the function of real friends.  When virtual friends say, “there, there,” they sometimes get it wrong; sometimes, their response is as automatic as a generic (but vivid) “Honey, he ain’t worth it.”

This was especially clear to me last week, while reading Gray Lily’s blog.  Like most people, Gray was having some relationship speedbumps.  Unlike most people, Gray wrote about them in a compelling and dramatic way that left her readers upset and concerned for her.  Her many readers wrote in to tell her that the man in question was not worthy of her time or attention.  I understand; it’s “he ain’t worth it”.  Except that sometimes he is worth it, and so is she, and so is the relationship . . . and people need to hear that, too.

I feel like I am not making my point here, or perhaps I am making it and making it again, in an obvious way.  I feel like I am not making my point because, of course, this isn’t a point about my friend, or someone’s comments, or even Gray Lily.  It’s a point about me.  At different times my friends and family have told me that the tears I have shed for Robbie are not worth it.  Heck, Robbie and I have often said to each other that our relationship is not worth the pain it puts us through.

But it’s very hard for outsiders to see what is really going on in a situation, inside that bathroom cubicle where the hurt is.  As my mother always says, “Nobody knows what’s really going on in a relationship except the two people in it.”  It’s hard to know how precious or horrible or fantastic or dull life is for two people who chart a course together–or even two people who share one enchanted evening.

Sometimes, it’s just hard to know.

 

Unexpected Support

I’ve been putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) for going on three decades now. Like lots of bloggers, I write in “real life”; it’s a thing I do, for money, for kicks, and for my sanity. When I started writing here a few months back, I expected to have the kinds of profound, soul-searching feelings around writing I have always had, the angsty lows and giddy highs when contemplating what I was going to write or what I’d written.

Despite my New Age talk of making a “safe space” for myself, I didn’t particularly anticipate feeling any safer here than I do in my other writing. I figured it would be the same nerves in new bottles.

But writing like this has been gigantically freeing. I get to write things and hit “publish”. And–most unexpectedly–people stop by and read the things I write (or at least look at the pictures. Eye candy is my bribe).

Even more freeing–people respond, with kindness, and generosity. The comments I receive blow me away. I write something feeling like a complete mutant pervert from hell, engaging in the sort of relationship that only a self-loathing freak would engage in . . . and people cheer me on. Which is to say, it is really, really, really good having kinky friends and acquaintances.

(And it is fan-fucking-tastic to have a loving, kinky lover.)

Whether artistic, acrobatic, or arousing, daring dreams require some sense of safety, don’t they?

Images are from the wonderful “I dreamed I [blanked] in my Maidenform bra” ad campaign of the 60s and 70s–more of them here.

 

Where’s the Smut??

I still feel like I owe everyone (that is, Robbie) smut. Especially a graphic account of the first three or four days of the last visit, which were absolutely amazing in smut terms (and in general).

I’ve written hunks of smut, but I find it much easier to write the emo soul-searching stuff than to describe how he can control me with just a look, just two fingers on my shoulder.

There was one moment the first night I got there, after some preliminary beating, sucking, wax play, and other casual foolin’ around, when I ended up with my head on the pile of pillows at the foot of his bed.

He was lying on the bed, face next to mine, stroking my cheek. “Cunt,” he said softly, his thumb gentle against my skin. “Dirty little girl.” I stared up at him, my eyes glowing, waiting for what he would say next.

“Slut.”

“Co-conspirator.”

“Friend.”

“Lover.”

“Fucktoy.”

Is that the smut then?

By Kirill Zaitsev, found through Sexoteric.

 

Fancy Dress

We are going to parties this weekend. Not play parties–cocktail and formal parties. This is exciting. We have never done this. We rarely go out when we are together, and when we do, it’s with a small group of (often kinky) friends. So it’s exciting to venture out into Society (*snorfle snarfle*) with Robbie.

We both like social niceties, especially when we can fuck with them. Robbie in particular likes the idea of mixing elegant manners and perversion–very Story of O, him. For my part, I am an inveterate exhibitionist and can say or do some rather irreverent things, especially when I am mixed with alcohol. I expect it will be some weekend.

One of the best things about the weekend from my point of view is that we will have to dress up. Robbie lives in the country and spends most of his time in (sexy) jeans–and although he likes me in skirts, I persist while down on the farm in wearing really unattractive knit cotton pajama-like things from the Gap, which I can work in.

But today I bought the most gorgeous skirt ever. It’s so long I look 20 feet tall, and it’s so stunning I barely need to wear anything with it.

As it happens, I will be wearing some things with it: heels, underthings, a white t-shirt, and either a necklace or my collar, which I left at Robbie’s house when I left there, the last time, after the fight-to-end-all-fights, which was followed by reconciliation. We are nothing if not predictable.

And he will be wearing a suit. I have never seen him in a suit. When he walked into the place we were staying for our dirty weekend wearing a dress shirt (kind of), I almost fell over, I was so amazed at how he looked. So I am very much looking forward to seeing him in a suit.

And to seeing him again.

Images by Rebecca Beard and erocrush, via a flower a day.

 

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.

 

Butterflies

My best friend has a date tonight.

She has butterflies.

I hope she has a wonderful time. Here’s a wish for her . . .

    “Fly”, from the beautiful work of Erika Harrsch, via Sex in Art