How About Now?

(The End)

2008-06-13T18:21:00.006-06:00

cartoon from Gaping Void

DTW, again and always. Upgraded, a thrill for me as well as for Power Girl. Thank God we’ll get some sleep, and the little china houses filled with liqueur the attendants bring around at the end of the flight…yes, they give you gifts in business class, thank you for flying KLM. I am as happy as I have ever been – the universe is conspiring to shower me with blessings, as Rob Brezny might say.

I walk to the fountain, the massive black oval in the center of the terminal, the leaping water momentarily still. It’s time.

And as I call up each unforwardable photo living in my phone, I think, yes, that was a good time. And then I hit delete.

Pumpkins lined up to be weighed at a fair.
Waterskiing drag queens.
The mermaid I painted, now painted over.
Bruises on my breasts.
The time I dyed my hair Lola red.
The girl in Las Vegas.
Mary Magdalene with her jar of ointment.
An erection in jeans.
A fortune: You Will Pass a Difficult Test.
His hand in my ass.

Clean.

The fountains start their arcing paths, catching the light of the sun over my shoulder. I realize I have lost my screensaver, this is still my phone for one more month. I follow the edge of the oval, the water reflecting my knees as it slides over, hugging the berm of the pool, and I snap facing into the light, the blackness of the fountain, the clearness of the water, the sun coming through it all, everything clarified, everything clear.

This is what I will look at. Until I get the new phone. And then I’ll snap something else.

This is the end of the story.

It’s not clean – there are still some posts in rough editing, ideas scribbled on napkins and pieces of paper tablecloth, plot lines unfinished, things left unsaid, some of them important.

Here there is a whimper – in my other life, the life where people see my eyes and my smile and my body all in the same snapshot, there is a bang. One big enough to need a pre-emptive removal of this particular risk.

It’s the end of the movie.

Beautiful Girl is on a mountain in Taos. She sends texts when she gets reception. She is clearing her life of alcoholism, laziness, and inertia – only a little of the last is hers. Someday you will hear her voice. Maybe you have already.

Power Girl is standing beside me, finding her power and helping me regain mine. We’re off to cities in Europe, Asia, Canada, and the next big thing. The blond and the redhead holding hands? That’s us.

Secret Scientist is scientist-ing and music-ing, with Hairline Boy, who is happy there weren’t enough pills in the cabinet and has appointed himself a future helpline.

Zurich texts me: Flights have just doubled everywhere – don’t worry, Mandy will get her mail-order booty somehow.

Fucked-Up Guy was good on Friday, and I was fine with it being too late for me on Saturday, and I knew on Sunday it would be too late when I saw the shot in his hand. But I needed the time to pack, no harm no foul.

Be My Real Friend is my real friend. We’re working on girlfriend-with-presents status, and I need to tell him, the thing that makes me a whore is asking for it. If you choose it, it’s a present. Even if it's cash.

Folk Rocker is on the other side of the world. We’re both looking forward to a future meeting, unforced and uncompelled.

Big City Lover has come through as a friend in surprising ways. We’re cool.

I don’t know where Ex-Lover is or what he’s doing, and I’m OK with that. I am at times a little wistful, but my mourning is done. And I’m letting go of feeling obligated to be good to him. The only thing I miss is being a muse. But I suspect that when someone else needs me in that role, they will appear to me (or I to them) and there will be more long conversations, more writing, more listening, more…

Husband is still imperfect, still trying, still next to me when I am home and still lonely when I am gone. He’s made some local friends. He’s planning home improvement and a trip to see me this summer. He's manning up, as Beautiful Girl would say.

And Mandy? Mandy has a big dream on the verge of coming true. And not that lame self-realization, use-the-zen, feel-the-moment crap but in a concrete way. In a big way. The best thing I ever made up ‘til now may be about to place second. True story.

There will be a book. I hope you will buy it. Even (Anonymous) if only to enjoy schadenfreude.

And so, Gentle Readers, goodbye, goodnight, and good luck.

Thank you.

Closer to Fine

2008-06-03T21:57:00.003-06:00

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains

Me: I think we should be not-friends for awhile and see how that works out.

Him: OK, I'll talk to you...later.

(sound of two car ignitions)

And there it is. The magic-fucking-bullet. And not the silver bullet I use so much the paint's starting to wear off, thank you Doc Johnson, but the bullet that puts the whole damn thing to rest, stops me tearing out my hair and my heart. Confirm delete friend.

An hour later, I'm in therapy, with my dread-locked doctor nodding seriously at me:

"So, he started dating one of your employees? That's a very angry move."

I have never thought of it that way. I tell her, I tell Beautiful Girl, I tell another friend, yes, we went on vacation together for a few days, we came to a meeting of the minds, we moved on from oh-our-relationship-made-me-a-bad-person-and-now-I-am-redeemed, and he told me he always wanted to be full time and permanent, at heart he is monogamous, he didn't want me to fuck other people but emphasized getting turned on so he could deal with it, he wanted me to leave my husband.

They all say, "That certainly puts it all on you."

I tell Doctor Dreadlocks I'm screwed, I have to make a decision whether to hire his girlfriend and keep her where I can see her, or not hire her and have her show up where I am without warning, to visit him.

She says, "That's his mess. He made that problem. Tell him to clean it up."

And maybe I will.

But right now the feeling of not-talking, not-poking, not-friending, not-worrying is so freeing and lifting me from the dark fog of maybe I will take all these pills that rattle so invitingly in my purse, that I can't be bothered to pick up the phone, not even for a tiny victory.

There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive...

(Not Dead)

2008-05-27T13:40:00.001-06:00

Just so's you know.

Hoping to write tonight.

Thank you for reaching back - it truly helps.

xo
M

Press One If You Are On A Ledge, Two If You Are Holding A Pill Bottle…

2008-05-23T19:44:00.004-06:00

As the Ex and I drive back from our little vacation (more later), I call Big City Lover and let him know that no, I can’t continue my drive to Midwestern City, I need to go home. Husband needs me, I need to be home. He is, to his credit, totally cool and understanding about this. Mandy Brain is amazed that a guy is OK with her not driving five hours out of her way today to fuck him (he still likes me?!?!), thus again demonstrating the self-esteem of a walnut.

We plan to meet up Friday instead, and I arrange my day and my excuse. It will still be a five-hour drive, but at this point, it would be nice to spend some uncomplicated time with a man as resolutely non-dramatic as Big City Lover.

I wake up with the beginning of a yeast infection.

Determined to soldier on, I apply cream (bought by the ex, anal always spreads things around) and head out to get a new phone. At the phone store, I discover that I need to forward all my saved texts…shit. As I send them from one device to the next, I trace the dissolution of the relationship. I ask the guy behind the counter what to do about my pictures. He grabs the phone to help me, then blushes and hands it back.

“Whoa, maybe you want to do this yourself…”

Um, yeah. Zurich, my breasts, Zurich in a towel, me in the shower, hot shoes, more breasts, the last hotel, and of course, at the bottom, Ex-Lover’s hand in my ass, his cock inside me, facing away.

The photos may not be salvageable. There is a cord to be bought, I’ll make another attempt. My attachment to the photos surprises me – there’s the drag show from the time we spent in the islands, the mermaid I painted, the Mary Magdalene he sent, sunset in Vegas.

I learn how to use the new phone and seek food – I had no breakfast or lunch and have no appetite but maybe that’s why I’m crying over a set of old photos. I call Big City Lover and plan my departure. I don’t want to go. And when I cruise up the street towards my home, the sign for unleaded at $4.18 triggers and the waterworks start.

Google for my last therapist’s number. Voice mail, if this is an emergency call…I feel ridiculous and hang up, then call back and get the number. It’s a holiday weekend, I don’t want to bother her. Still crying.

Pull out of the parking lot and speed dial 3 for Beautiful Girl. Voice mail.

Scrolling through, my main concern is this: I grew up in a state where if you threaten to harm yourself or someone else, you can be involuntarily committed. I can’t face that, I don’t have time to spend peeing in a cup and wearing a cocktail napkin that ties in the back. Two weeks at 15 was more than enough.

Directory Assistance. The hospital please. Yes, I know the ER does not answer medical questions. Hold. Sure, I’ll talk to a social worker. Hold. Yes, they can commit me, but they probably wouldn’t, you don’t have insurance, why don’t you call the hotline?

I leave a message on my therapist’s office voice mail. Still crying.

Text to Big City Lover: Have started crying and cant stop. Probably will not make it after all. V sorry.

Hotline, please hold. Yes, I’d like to talk to a counselor. Hold. Heidi is pleasant and I feel stupid taking up her time when there are probably people with real problems who need the line I’m tying up with my stupid baby life. I can’t face explaining the whole thing from the beginning. She wants my number to follow up, but I’m not able to give it.

Best Friend, five times zones away but she’s a night owl. Answering machine. Mobile. Voice mail.

Tom Paine. Gone, I think I remember from his blog, and gone he is.

Another friend picks up and I realize I can’t tell him, can’t bear to explain enough to make sense. Let me tell you about my website guy, my video girl, the media company that’s working out for me.

Hairline Boy. Voice mail. Secret Scientist is probably having a lovely weekend with his lovely girlfriend, can’t wreck that up.

I call another friend, let her think I called because I’m a good friend who calls for no reason. I’m generally a pretty shitty friend, so at least some good is coming from this.

Beautiful Girl, still no answer.

I call my therapist’s emergency number. Voice mail. I leave a message asking for an appointment, at least it will be something to look forward to.

A few hours later, she rings me, she’s in China, she’ll call Sunday when she’s back. And there’s the lesson, the one I should know from my dedicated devotion to clients in all my professions, the one I should know from short-changing the Ex my attention, the one I should know from skimping on wifely duties.

You get what you pay for.

Chasing God

2008-05-19T22:39:00.002-06:00

(I am not Christian, but that is the language I know how to speak)

* * *

Every time I come here:

This is it. This is the time I have gone too far. He will not be here this time.

The cobbled streets are grey with damp and edged with snow that melts at my step. The Minnewater is before me, open boats laden with tourists even today, their umbrellas blooming over the gunwales, bottoms shifting on the hard bench seats as they dutifully point their cameras left and right, five houses in a row with five styles of roofline, history in a digital frame. I cross the bridge, the heavy wooden doors open, the whitewashed buildings of the Beguinage low before me.

There is a carpet of daffodils, where I expect last year’s green commons. They stop me in my tracks and steal my breath. They are a sign to me in all my arrogance, a sign that no matter how shitty a person I am, no matter how much of my holy talents I squander on the maintenance of Big Lies, God still gives with both hands, God still loves endlessly, boundlessly, God forgives the unforgivable and loves me despite my profound absence of loveableness.

Inside, the church is warm – signs entreat donations for “HEATING” in four languages. There is the chanting of vespers, and I know as I enter behind the German girls sharing an ipod that this is not atmospheric recording to aid in the parting of tourists and their money. The chant is slightly flat, in partial tune from daily use and not from anything so useless as practice – how can living this chant be practice? – it is round, perfectly incomplete, the edges soothed by acoustics, the nuns’ honking their noses through each others’ singing (older in full habits, those merely fifty- or sixty-something in fleece pullovers) coughing through the readings, they are not performing, they are not living a Big Lie, they are not lost and afraid all the time, depending on the hands that yank away. They are here. They reach for God as I do, but I am tentative, stepping to the edge of the crosswalk knowing in my head that cars stop here, but still unconfident enough to hover at the pavement, the drivers waving their hands in frustration – are you crossing? Are you stopping? These women, I am sure, stride into the road, the Bruges drivers accelerating to a stop just as they do in London, in Amsterdam, in Paris. These women stand at the edge of the table and fall backward into the arms of God.

I light a candle. I always light a candle. A nun reads in Flemish. The chapel is filled with the warmth of candles and expensive heat and the smell of wax. I do not have the right to pray, but I hope I can be good.

Officially, Intermittent

2008-05-19T16:26:00.004-06:00

I did *try* to write every day. And mostly, I did actually write at least something. And then was felled at the knees by lack of internet, lack of privacy, and much mental time occupied by being The Boss.

So yeah. This is now an intermittent blog. I can't keep letting you down, Gentle Readers, by saying I'm going to do something and then not doing it. So when I do, I'll make it as good as I can. And I'll also not kill myself by saying, oh, don't post that until it's perfect, because that way inaction lies.

Where am I now? In a secret location (let's note that it's a major honeymoon destination), shacked up with the Ex. I know. Dumb, dumb Mandy. So far there's only been minor shortness of breath. And really, who knows? The part of me that says, hmmmm, you're* kind of self-involved and a little bit boring and really, the sex had been going downhill, is strongly considering making this a last hurrah. The part of me that thinks, hey, never know when you'll be hit by a bus, would rather not end without closure. I'm working on having Part A strangle Part B but then the thought of choking just turns me on.

Where will I be Thursday? Possibly in a Midwestern City with Big City Lover. We're texting it out.

Where will I be the first weekend in June? With Fucked-Up Guy, plotting and planning to give my team-members and his fiancee the slip so we can shag intensely and silently in shared lodging.

Where will I be all year? Why, on the road, of course. That big beautiful pond full of fish, maybe one of whom will touch the thing in me that needs it beyond my control...

* * *

Quote of the week: "I never learned in health class that wiping front to back thing, and that's why I got a gall bladder infection that almost killed me..."

Words to live by.

* * *

*note intentionally ambiguous pronoun

Day Eleven: Motorcycles

2008-05-09T23:23:00.002-06:00

(Because tonight I rode in a tank top and jeans in a no-helmet state, legs wrapped around the driver (no pegs), arms wrapped around him, speaking softly into each other’s ears. Harley Nightster. I want one.)

* * *

Last year. My ex-student comes to visit, his Harley still not paid off, the loan from his ex-girlfriend one last tendril in his new relationship. He takes me for a ride around town. I lean into him, young, handsome, talented, totally fucked-up, and wish I was younger and the kind of girl he likes. A minivan pulls in as the left lane ends and he politely drops back.

“You could have made it,” I say into his ear.

“If I didn’t have you I would have.”

“Don’t stop on my account.”

* * *

Two years ago. Bike rally, Fourth of July. Kentucky. Three other girls and I watch fireworks and lounge on a riverbank. After the finale, we want to ride. Two of us have never been on a motorcycle before. "Come on," I say, and we head through the parking lot full of black and silver and red and yellow and every tattoo-like tank-paint job imaginable. I see a group of men. “There’s four of you and four of us,” I say to one. Wanna give us a ride?” We figure they’ll spin us around the block, nice to meet you, have a nice night. But fifty yards out of the lot My God I’m in fake pleather pants, not even vinyl, Power Girl’s in a halter top, two girls in skirts they pull left instead of right, onto the highway, into the fog. Fireworks are still distant in the hills, other towns not finished “GoAmerica!” yet. None of us have helmets. The bikes rocket up to 90, 95, 110, 135, I stop looking.

I realize, this could be it. One pothole, one bad bump, one careless motorist, we will all die. We don’t know these men, they might take us to their secret gang hideaway…does anyone have a secret gang hideaway any more? If one of us got separated, we’d have no way to find them…

Halfway, we pull into a Conoco to fill up, get Power Girl a pair of sunglasses. I ask my new friend, “So, how do you all know each other?”

“We don’t. This is th’ first time we rode together.”

“But I thought you guys were together! You said, yeah, we could all ride with you all!”

“Well, I didn’t figure they’d say no.”

* * *

Fifteen years ago.

My boyfriend Doug, chosen largely because he looked like my brother, takes me home from seeing the director's cut of Blade Runner. Lakeshore Drive, Chicago, and we rocket down the eight lanes by the water, the light on his jacket, my miniskirt, very MTV. Hair in the wind. Sunglasses at night. Doug deals with a traffic slowdown by striking up the middle of the lanes, and the cop who pulls us over is so disgusted he stomps up, huffs out, “If you want to kill her you should put her in front of the bike,” and stomps back without writing the ticket we richly deserve.

Later that week, I am in the parking lot of a grocery store, buying what I buy every week in college – cheap steak, eggs, potatoes, macaroni, canned tomatoes, broccoli, oatmeal, raisins, half and half, exactly twenty dollars every time. I set the bags in the back seat of my hatchback and watch a beautiful motorcycle cruise the parking lot – it’s the first time I’ve ever seen a reproduction vintage Harley, brand new and antique, everything shiny and silver and art deco turquoise.

“You want a ride?”

I do very much want a ride and since I am 19 and away from home and getting more reckless by the day, I hop on. It is wildly different from Doug’s tiny, shaky Kawasaki. This is like riding a bus, so stable and solid. The rider is an elementary school janitor, he has saved for twenty years to buy this bike, this machine, this moment of “wanna ride?” and the 19-year-old blonde with the nice tits says yes.

* * *
Twenty years ago.

I leave school, cut third period gym, walk down the road across the interstate where it becomes not a nice part of town (I am just now remembering this, this started as a story about motorcycles and joy and risk and wind and maybe a meaningful moment about the janitor) and hitch the four miles to my boyfriend’s house. I am fifteen. He is twenty-eight. I think that this makes me very, very cool. He lives with his mother, he has a six-inch scar from heart surgery as a child. We fuck on his bedroom floor. He is my third partner, he is “friends” with my second partner, but not friends enough not to go after his girlfriend. I make tickmarks by their names in my pink address book, once-twice-thrice-more. He takes me back to school in time for fifth period after lunch, English, which I never miss. People know I cut, but they do not know why. They know I am the girl who answers too many questions with too many words in class, the girl whose parents won’t let her get contacts, the girl we call names and put things in her locker and shove in the halls when teachers aren’t watching. They do not know about my cool grown-up boyfriend and my cool sex life and what I do when I am supposed to be showering with everyone else because I am sick of getting marked down for not showering, not being able to show a wet towel.

* * *

Yesterday.

“Want a motorcycle?” asks Power Girl.

“Ummmm…maybe?” because I already know this is a Candy Mountain moment, and I will be grumpy Charlie while Power Girl fills my world with magical wonder.

“Lie down on your back on the floor!” and everyone gets giggly, I can tell we have all had motorcycles, and yes, I should have a motorcycle, it will be good for morale, whatever it is.

She grabs my ankles, puts her foot in my crotch and jerks my legs up and down while going, “Vroom! Vroom!”

I laugh. Everyone laughs. The Boss played, and everything is OK. And The Boss plays as hard as she can, hoping the outside and the inside come closer.

Day Ten: Sunshine

2008-05-06T06:10:00.002-06:00

So many things are different in the cold light of day.

Here's the fault on my side: I should be more willing to defend, more willing to say, when someone says, "He was a B-List Boy. He still is a B-List Boy," that No, you don't know him like I do...

I don't know if I kept it secret because I like the game, or because I was embarrassed to claim him.

Now, I think I know why I'm here, why I'm in this miasma. Because it ended with a fight and we never made up, we never had a chance to sort things out, look them over, say yes, we're in, or no, sorry, we're out.

And maybe if he now was with someone not bent on making my life hell (while, of course, smiling sweetly and complaining about how I persecute her), perhaps I could wish them both better.

Maybe maybe maybe. Maybe not.

Day Nine:

2008-05-05T22:20:00.002-06:00

Grief fills the room up…
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me
(King John)

I am mad with grief. I am past caring if I give away my power by telling too much, past caring if I am stupid, enabling, whining, boring, needing to get a life. If I am to believe everything that came before, then what came before was such that I would now have the right to ask, to want, to need.

He says “I can’t hurt her.” The unspoken conclusion, so instead, I will hurt you.

One bad – no, one empty day—

Because when I am working from dawn until past midnight, when the job demands more than I have to give, I can be here now. I do not have to be here now. But in that moment of calm – hiding for lunch in a storage closet where no-one can ask me One More Thing, slipping into a borrowed bed at 6AM after one last load of laundry, Power Girl already unconscious beside me, then it crashes in on me.

I’d rather hurt you.

Husband is sweeter, more kind, more supportive than ever. But I cannot tell him this. I should leave him, because I can’t tell him, and it is not enough.

I have done the texting-because-you-can’t-talk-right-now.

I have done friends.

I have done use me as a badge of your virtue, congratulate yourself every time you look into my face and do not kiss me, every time you hold me in the night and do not fuck me, make another tick under “I was strong and good!”

I am an object. I am “look, I can so be faithful.”

She is an object. She is “really, I can be faithful if I want to.”

She has taken to sending anonymous emails to Husband, phoning me late at night, snarking about my company to her friends. Perhaps he is, after all, hurting her.

For me, the line between here and gone, present and absent, is growing thinner as the icy Dread licks up the beach. The barriers left? I have an event…an appointment…something needs doing. I don’t want to make a mess. Too strong a swimmer, too queasy to cut.

(There were only five pills in Hairline Boy’s cabinet. Not enough to do the trick, just enough to fuck up my day. So I didn’t today.)

Day Eight: Better Stories

2008-05-01T00:48:00.001-06:00

At the gym, in a moment between sets, Power Girl notices my elbow. “You have a bump – do I have that bump?”

I hold my elbows side by side to show her the white, raised, dime-sized swelling. Right elbow only. No, she doesn’t have one.
flC
“How’d you get that?”

“Early in our marriage, Husband pegged me with a Coke bottle.”

Power Girl pauses.

“I bet you got a lot of mileage out of that.”

I laugh. “Yep, with the guy I was dating at the time.”

* * *

* * *

If you see me, Mandy, in the street, here is how you will know me. I have a scar across my upper chest, in the shape of a chain, 5 ½ links burned into me. The raised flesh does not tan. It is no longer the first thing people notice about me, but it’s still fairly conspicuous. If we meet in conducive circumstances, I will tell you how I got that scar.

Chicago.

1994.

It’s a good story.

* * *

* * *

Not the first time I ran away, but the first time I ran away at night, on my bicycle, past my middle school, hiding in the bushes at a church where two nice young women found me and took me home. I remember eating a sandwich I had either saved from lunch or made for the next day’s lunch. Probably ham salad on white. My bike in the back of their minivan – minivans were new. My father coming in through the front door, back from looking for me, throwing his car keys hard to the tile floor.

I got better at running away. Ditch anything with your name on it, rip out the inscribed page of Richard Bach’s Illusions, hand over the first grown-up present from my parents to the friend’s mom who drove me to the shelter, “I heard you liked earrings.” Gold ones, bought retail (never pay retail for jewelry), still in the blue velvet case.

* * *

* * *

“Scars are tattoos with better stories,” I saw on a t-shirt. I have good stories. I have good scars. I like where I am and so I must be at peace with what I’ve come from. It’s not your problem, Gentle Reader, that I’m white, middle class, “misunderstood.” It’s not your job to rescue me, solve me, open me up and reassemble the machinery, get rid of the knock, the ping, the way I shake over 75mph, start slowly on cold mornings, overheat too easily on a Texas back road. Something drives me to the iron, the razor, the hot edge of the oven door. Thank God it’s the same thing that drives me to words, to tell, tell, tell and not be silenced.

What will that feel like?

Only one way to find out.

Day Seven: Fumbling

2008-04-30T22:35:00.003-06:00

I breakfast with Beautiful Girl, two days in a row. Sunshine, patio, internet, business, boyfriends. She knows me. She knows nearly everything. I have written her paeans, she has been my favorite girl to flirt with.

The flirting is gone - we are deeper friends than ever, we can say anything, but we no longer say that. Perhaps it's the way I've shrunk while she's expanded. Maybe it's that we're both wrapped up in Boy Troubles. Maybe it's that I can barely juggle whoring and wifing and dying inside a little every day, let alone adding another orange to the pattern. Mill's Mess, indeed.

The first day, I realize, she is right. I should be moving on. The second day, she sits across from the table and sends me this. Yes. That is how I feel.

I speak to Be-My-Real-Friend. I wonder if he feels left out, that I haven't written yet about our last time together. It's on a napkin, it's in the notebook. Many things are in the notebook. Big City Lover - an hour's pleasure. A musician and a video chat (he's emailed twice, just the sort of thing that makes my ego beat a little faster, I cannot bring myself to answer). Folk Rocker and the writing block and how it passed.

And I lie next to my husband, ostensibly napping, and I wake weeping because I realize this is it, it's not fun any more. Writing isn't fun any more. Whoring isn't fun any more. Fucking isn't fun any more. Even the challenge of thirty days has been mired in work, work, work - it's been 21 days without a day off, 21 days of bed after dawn, wake before noon, manage and boss and lead and take on one more job because running and bossing and struggling and resenting the load are all better than thinking or feeling.

The blog is in its throes. I've no call to write the bits of flesh rubbing together that make everyone happy, give us all a wank. It's tripping sadly down the path of the lame little diary, whining about my life, come and share the pit with me, I can't get out.

Day Six: Small Comforts

2008-04-23T23:03:00.003-06:00

Free-associating. Late.

And Power Girl is out dancing at a dive bar (In the car: "Now, what do you do, Third Friend, if someone asks to buy you a drink?" "I giggle and say nothing!" "No, you ask for something nice and give it to me if you don't want it!"), Hairline Boy is asleep in the next room and I am bumping slowly, slowly down dial-up road. That is to say, when I want to video-chat in my schoolgirl skirt with yet another musician, it has to be done in the parking lot of the coffee shop down the road - but that's tomorrow's post.

The first night I spent here, I slept alone. And then the next night Hairline Boy and I talked into the night, both of us a little wounded right now, and I asked him to share his bed given up to me. He said, "All I can do is sleep." I said, "I know."

He is faithful, as faithful to his distant girlfriend as he is to the choices and ideas that have kept him at a lower level of success than makes him happy. He is constant as penury, honest as paper plates, truthful as sloppy guitar playing. He is kind, universally so, even when kindness lays his heart on the table for the cleaver, ends his relationship, breaks up the band. He is exactly the sort of man who believes the woman he left his partner for when she says, "No, we can't openly see each other right away, and I have to see this other guy as a cover..."

He doesn't want anything from me. We flirt - a very little. His eyes sparkle when he looks at me. And each night we hold each other a little less tightly, grading down from drowning outside our depth to now, merely close. I still wake each time I roll over, surprised to find him there. His hands behave, his mouth stays shut, his heart is uncovered, but not in that way.

And that is why I advise when I know it will not be taken, that is why my expertise in his field is unwasted even if unreceived, that is why I pay him with two checks to be certain he will pay himself. Custom for me is payment in kind, base currency, the attitude of prayer, and that custom is unwelcome here.

I ask him, "Do you not have kitchen things due to circumstance or because you don't want them?" I think I will get him some knives, or nice glasses.

He says, "Like what?"

I say, "Like plates."

No, he does not want kitchen things. I can't give him what he wants. My usual band-aids are all wrong, don't cover a burn unless you have to. His wounds are drying out. I use my hands to wipe his face in the night, thumbs gently taking the tears from his eye sockets, asking if I can kiss his cheek with closed lips.

I can't fix it. I can't fix anything. So I change in the bathroom and come to bed in t-shirt and leggings, lie in his arms and wish him more like me, me more like him.

Day Five: Fun With Math!

2008-04-23T14:08:00.003-06:00

1) Word Problem
Mandy plans to fly to Eastern City to be driven by Ex-Lover to his home for “friend time”. Ex-Lover writes that she should instead fly into Midwestern City where her car is parked and drive to meet him, but he’s not sure if he will be coming home Sunday or Monday. If Mandy’s home is North of Midwestern City, and Ex-Lover’s home is South of Midwestern City, how many hours should Mandy wait in the airport for Lover to decide at the last minute whether he will leave Eastern City and meet Mandy at his home?

Bonus: By what exponential factor does Ex-Lover’s classiness decrease when he informs Mandy of this plan via email?

2) True or False?
Ex-Lover has actually told Cute Girl that Mandy has been invited to spend a week with him in a distant city, which has been planned for more than a month.

3) Graphing.
Using a standard graph, plot a parabola to represent Lover’s feelings towards Cute Girl. Plot another, opposing parabola to represent the number of conversations per week between Mandy and Lover. Label the intersections of the two lines, “I really miss sleeping next to you.”

4) Multiple Choice.
Beautiful Girl tells Mandy, “He’s not worth it, get over him.” A wise friend whose advice Mandy trusts tells her, “He is being incredibly selfish by continuing to engage with you in this way.” Power Girl tells Mandy, “Get over it already.” Mandy thinks to herself, “He wants to have the wonderful friendship we always had, but he had it when he was treating me well and now that is no longer the case. It feels good to be comfortable with him, but afterwards I’m a wreck.” Mandy will:

a) Get a fucking life, count her blessings and get over it.
b) Delete him out of her email address book, phone, Myspace and Facebook, tell him not to call, text, email, message or poke her, and try very hard to mean it.
c) Enjoy only the company of friends who do not expect her to be totally okay with being betrayed and lied to on a fundamental level that violates everything that has come before.
d) Think that anyone who describes his time with her as being a “bad person” while describing being with the new girl he lied to Mandy about and betrayed her with as a “fresh start” is a clueless puddle of insulting slime who is pretty much flat out saying that Mandy’s trash.
e) All of the above.
f) None of the above, Mandy has the self-respect of a walnut.

Extra Credit: Describe your most memorable, triumphant break-up moment.

When finished, turn in your papers and ask for a library pass. Make sure all your work is in number 2 pencil and that you have filled in the entire circle with a dark mark.

Day Four: The Kitchen

2008-04-21T12:31:00.000-06:00

(Just a moment)

Young Turk, yet another musician, is fussing with food and the fridge, he's asked if I'm sated and I'm not, but I'm not hungry for food. We've come from our respective work days, our projects overlapping and coinciding, our friendship growing, his flirting evenly spread between every girl on the team.

I ask him, "Any luck finding a well-heeled cougar who needs a pool boy?"

"It's an ongoing process..."

"I'll let you know when my financial statements come in."

"I'll look you up when I'm tall enough to ride this ride."

He touches me each time he passes, his hand on my shoulder or in my hair. I type away, must write, must write, thirty days. Another long post? Another angst-y piece? The porn was made last night but isn't finished being written up...

Young Turk is an excellent cook. He sets out his tools on the counter, I hear the click of the cutting board, the slap of a filet of something thin and wet. A drawer, a knife unsheathed and the sound of the blade in the air and the sharpener.

Every hair on the back of my neck stands up and my nipples harden.

Day Three: Postscript

2008-04-19T23:19:00.002-06:00

We sleep back to back, pressed tightly against each other. 5AM and lobby call for us both.

Folk Rocker goes to the door, still damp, still wrapped in a towel, and peeks out to see if there’s anyone in the hall. Clear, and I step past him, one more kiss and water drops in my eyelashes. I head down the hall towards the elevator, and as I lean in to press the button, I hear “psst!” He leans into the hall, blows me a kiss, and I smile all the way through the lobby and the cold to my car.

Day Two: Little Postcards

2008-04-19T19:45:00.001-06:00

(Finally)

Also, there is a paragraph in here that has previously been posted, but this story is where it belongs. Indulge me.

* * *

I go to a big city and meet Folk Rocker. It’s been a year. We have exchanged photos and flirty emails, texted occasionally, finally we end up in the same city at the same time again, both for our respective jobs, though I am fudging, my job is technically over, I have other reasons to want to be here.

I pick him up at his hotel, the lobby sleek with stripes and overstuffed chairs, the breakfast room at one side. We both need the same bank, we plan to “hang out” at my hotel. He has been so equivocating in email, so sometimes taken aback by me, that I am treading carefully. I have no plans.

The phone rings, I always take Husband’s calls. I drive and chat, Husband’s ill, I suggest a cup of tea, a hot shower, I tell him it will be alright. I worry that I sound like I’m speaking to a child, that I’m being rude to my passenger and rude to my husband, having a private chat and trying to wrap it up reasonably quickly at the same time, worried that I sound like a mom. Soothing is done and I press the button. As I fold my phone, Folk Rocker says, “I’d give anything to hear my wife speak to me like that, so tenderly.”

I can’t imagine any other way.

* * *

My favorite hotel in Big City, a suite, brand new, lucked out on Hotwire. He pulls my suitcase while I check in, we go to the room, explore the possibility of room service. He draws me to the bed, we make out a little, his mouth large and open over mine. He’s nervous, he’s not comfortable with cheating, I am happy with anything, I am happy with nothing. I have no expectations. I have surprised myself that after a long hunt, I am honestly, truly, delighted just to spend time, I have no desire to push him or nudge him or draw him into one single step that betrays himself. He is over me and under me, gentle, sweet, hesitant, and in my head I write off sex and content myself with a cuddle, just as he puts his left hand on my wrist and presses it over head and his right hand on my throat begins to squeeze. And then I have been rolled over without knowing how I got here other than the heavy fingers in my hair, and he is behind me and above me, his mouth on the back of my neck and his hand coming around to my breast.

* * *

I am learning a new language.

It takes him awhile to get hard, which I prefer. I am used to younger men, I am used to older men popping pills, taking my sore pussy a second time, a third, ready to go again right after the bang. This fortnight I have been with four men and each time there was a moment where they slowed. I am puzzled, and then Folk Rocker says, “don’t want to come yet, feels so good…” and it all falls into place.

* * *

I suck his cock, bent over him, kneeling beside his hip, mouth warm and wet, him warm and smooth and slick on my tongue, the head his penis velvet-textured like the skin of a blueberry, the little drag of skin on taste buds every time. His hand reaches, holds back the curtain of my hair. I put my hand on his, gently, it’s ok to pull a little and he takes the cue, tightens his fingers on the back of my neck (so primal, so hindbrain) and pushes until I gag. I come up for air –

“I’m surprised. I didn’t think you’d like it rough.”

“I like it all ways. You seem like you’d like it rough.”

“Yes.”

And then his hands are on my shoulders, pushing me on my back, prising my legs open and his cock thrusts into me hard, catching a little at the entrance of my pussy, that first thrust that speaks of virginity every time.

* * *

He’s fucking me from behind, first standing while I’m on the bed, then kneeling between my calves. I hear a noise, I feel a sensation and realize he just spit on me. Spit. On my ass. Holy shit, this man watches too much porn…no, wait, it was actually…kind of nice. Close. Like the time I took Lover into the bathroom, took his hand and held it against my pussy while I peed, so very intimate…

* * *

His room, past midnight (I agonized a little over whether to come at all this late), he’s packing for the next leg of his journey. I curl on the bed, watching him pack, watching his rituals so like and unlike mine, so hard to feel at home on the road unless you fight for it to an absurd degree, I have pictures of my cats and Husband, a light blanket that feels the same on every bed.

“I want to hear you sing “I’m On Fire” sometime.” He already does a little Springsteen occasionally.

As he picks up things from the desk, the bedside table, the coffee table, lays out tomorrow’s shoes, pants, he sings it softly, his voice husky with late and drink and the show:

Hey little girl is your daddy home
Did he go away and leave you all alone

And right now there is no place better in the world than being up too late, listening to this song, listening to this man.

Day One: Aftercare

2008-04-17T22:50:00.001-06:00

There is the blank page.

There is the empty notebook, the block of time constantly rescheduled, filled in, replanned. No time to write, so busy! So busy…

I have been having a writing holiday. Taking four weeks to travel, restore my spirit, see the world with new eyes –

(that’s a lie)

Not much has happened around here, the sex has been marital, the adventures limited –

(liar)

I haven’t written because I have been focusing on my marriage, on my husband, exploring Amsterdam, Paris, my sacred city Bruges, reveling in the Northern European cold, the white and startling snow that followed us from city to city, “I don’t know whether to say Merry Christmas or Happy Easter” from our tiny gay host—

(also a lie. Fact, but a lie.)

I’m debating whether to continue whoring. Continue sleeping around. Continue blogging. Continue writing—

(closer)

I am afraid. For the first time in my life, I am afraid to write, afraid of what will come out – this from someone who used Columbine as material, triumph coming at last from the memories of the days when I would have done the same. I cannot eat, it is dangerous to open my mouth. Telling the first word means telling them all; I don’t know if I can stop. The poison dissolves me from the inside, wracking my guts, destroying my sleep, calling me to the Dread, the lure of the medicine cabinet, the icy road, the rope, the knife, the gun.

There is something in BDSM called aftercare. It’s when the parties involved calm down, come back to “normal”, release each other from their roles. Mostly, it’s the dominant partner bringing the submissive partner back to a place of equality and comfort, soothing their wounds, their ruffled spirit, their mind.

Ex-Lover used to be very good at this. “Good girl,” he’d say, and I felt approved, that my efforts to please him, to scream when he wanted, to fight against screaming when he wanted, were well-received, pleased him as much as they took me down the dark hallway of terror and release. For four years, he cut me open and sewed me up, told me when to do the job myself, put me back together. Not just with my clothes off, but in my head, my daily life, tormentor and refuge, hell and hope. I fucked no one else without stepping outside my body, recording the scene for him. Lately for you, too, Gentle Reader.

I debate for three and a half weeks whether to see him in Europe as we planned. There is the pleasure of making Cute Girl uncomfortable, the worry on what the time together will be like, the sense that this is senseless, there is no friendship to be had, no going back. Finally, I weep with my best friend in her foreign city, I weep with Beautiful Girl via Skype, and I change one plane ticket. I will go only to the city that finishes my trip, wait in the airport, get the next flight home I can. I tell this to Ex-Lover, first via text, then phone to be polite.

He meets me in the city, taking a train some six hours to be there. We share a room, a bed, a walk through a street festival, oranges, chocolate lemon rind, meals he orders in the language I do not speak. We sleep on separate sides, we dress in the bathroom. We see the church. We decide to go to another city, where we meant to spend time. And there we take long walks, hold hands, share candlelit dinners, look at views, have conversations. Everything is as it always was, except we do not fuck. Or kiss. And in the night he says to me, “roll over and I’ll hold you,” like he always did. He wraps his arms around me, so tightly one of us is drowning, one of us cannot breathe. Three nights next to each other, three days side by side.

And still, there is his girlfriend nervously texting, trashing my company (for which she works) on her not-so-private-as-she-thinks blog, snarking at me in email for business decisions I made after weeping and then clear-eyed asking my partner to choose, to be even-handed, to be fair fair fair enough to cut off my own finger lest she think I’m pointing at her.

And still, there is everything there always was. Right down to

I love you.

I love you, too.

And in the night his hand reaches across my body, he mumbles in his sleep,

mine.

His hand on mine, my hand on his cock,

yours.

We ride together on the train, he sees me to the bus. I lose my head, I’m nervous, I say, still yours, just a little bit. Still mine, just a little bit.

He turns three times as he walks away.

I am happy. I think I am happy. And then there is the long ride over the ocean and I pour out into emails what I do not even know is in me, I realize I am shaking in the corner, raw and beaten and the man who is excellent at making the hot girl writhe beneath his hand has no time for the bloody creature at his feet, there are new games to play, a fluffy new puppy to pat and love, and I watch everything that should have been mine (all anger comes from should thoughts), everything I need to come down, unspool, release, be let go, let out, told that was enough, that was good, it’s time to go now, watch it all be given away.

I am waiting to come down. I am waiting to be released. It’s not enough to walk away, to be my friend, to plan things that feel like dates and thread me on. I have spent four years learning to stay wired until he fades the dimmer and it is not enough to simply flip the switch.

He texts:

I feel like once you’re serious about another lover things will be easier with us…I keep hoping for simple solutions to complex problems, and that one would require nothing from my lazy ass

I can’t come without weeping. I can’t touch anyone else without remembering his hand on me, starting the recorder in my head. I don’t see another serious lover in this picture.

He is not worth it, and I know this. Beautiful Girl knows this. My best friend knows this. He knows this. I start a phone call, “Maybe we shouldn’t be friends any more.” The call finishes with plans reaffirmed, plans to talk again soon, a request for my schedule to make that happen.

So I will write. I will hide the limp and swallow back the poison and open up the vein to dip the pen. I will write for you, Gentle Reader, and for me. There are things in the notebook waiting to be shaped, notes from time with Be-My-Real-Friend and Secret Scientist and Folk Rocker and Big City Lover and Zurich. Some of them are lovely, full of drippy porn and happy laughing faces.

Thirty days. Every day. An obligation to you and myself.

And then - ?

Perhaps I will be done with him.

Perhaps I will be done with me.

Coffee, Gentle Readers?

2008-03-30T01:39:00.000-06:00

I am on my own again and in London, England. Holler if you'd like to coffee, Pret, or show me something I'll never find on my own (and I'll warn you, I go off the beaten path, it's a place I visit often, and my standards are high - that said, I love a person who rises to a challenge!). The email's to your right, as always.

I'm debating whether to have any...erm...professional contacts while I'm there - on one hand, new city, new rules, don't want to get into a bad situation or god forbid get deported, on the other, well, have you seen the dollar versus the pound lately? I can only hope to make it out with my pocketbook not too badly dinged...Your thoughts? Any sources you know (other than Craigslist) where a girl might meet like-minded individuals and have a chance to vet them before committing?

Journals

2008-03-13T00:52:00.004-06:00

Next week, I go to Amsterdam. It's to be a long-delayed honeymoon for Husband and I, his first time to Europe, my eighth? Ninth? And as per usual, I dig through old notebooks, smiling at who I was, rewriting the note that begins them all:

Remember, you were afraid and lonely when starting the trip. It's OK to be that way. It will pass.

The former me is very reassuring to the present me.

I make lists of things to see, my favorite cheese shop, a store with hats, the photography museum. I contemplate whether this year will be the time I try space cake, visit the live sex show, consume substances more altering than ice cream, though even Euro convenience store ice cream gives most drugs a run for their money.

I turn the page, and there is the first night I spent with Guitarist, who lately sends me emails with photographs of his cock, messages no less sexy for their simplicity and bad phonetic porn spelling, and codes to good software for the mac (it's like I've joined a cult - when do I get the sneakers?). I wrote:

Changed in the bath - earlier, in the lobby, "I hope you don't think - I'm not getting fresh or whatever." Asking me about my deal [with Husband]. "You're a very adventurous person." And later, "Let's get adventurous." Jewish men are the best lovers, the first time I came [age 19, partner number 37], no wonder they're God's chosen people [thank you Wex]. Kissed hungrily. "I love how responsive you are." Pinched my nipples. So sensitive in his nipples that he gasped. Turning me over, taking my pants off on all fours, thrusting his fingers inside me, still tender from ex-Lover's hand days earlier. Rolled me over, went down on me, very good. Went and smoked in the bathroom, brushed his teeth, came back and it burned my pussy, so intense, I could have come but I think I didn't want to. He finger fucked me again, very good. "I really like my hands, I'm proud of my hands and forearms, I think they're my best feature." I sucked his fingers, took them into my throat, he was excited by that. Went down on him, told him he could come (in my mouth) if he wanted to. "Yeah? In your mouth?" He stood by the bed, I knelt, he asked me to look up at him, open my mouth, he slid on my tongue and came over my face, in my mouth, rubbed it on my face. "That's so hot. That was so hot." In the morning, we made out, I gave him more head (last night, I worked my way down his body, kissing his side, under his arms, put my fingers in his ass, sucked his balls), he came in my mouth, holding my head down to take it. It was amazing. He walked me to my car, I said, despite my being an inherently slutty person, I really like you. You're the only person I've slept with in Europe. He said the same. It was nice. He was nice. I say nice too much.

What I remember most is the look on ex-Lover's face when he read it, later, in another city, in another country, another place. For years after, I could make him harden by opening my mouth, rubbing his cock on my tongue, and looking up.

Coming Around to the Mac

2008-03-11T02:24:00.003-06:00

...so to speak.

Things still troublesome -

- Hate iPhoto
- Can't play my favorite solitaire, for which I may yet install Windows.
- Something's funny with my iTunes, it won't sync up my podcasts. I'm sure there's some button I need to press and the gang at the mac store - who by now need "I survived Hurricane Mandy" shirts - will help me.

Amazing Thing One
I filled out the online survey about my experience with the mac. You know, the standard, tell us about your shopping thing. I wrote quite a bit, most of which boiled down to, "I'm probably experiencing the same level of difficulty I would switching to any new computer, mac or PC. But because you market the mac as easy-easy-perfect, that's the quality of experience I am hoping to have and feel that I'm missing out on."

Two days later, I sit down to drinks with friends of Power Girl, who also work at the local Apple store. Geek Boy says, "Oh....you're that Mandy. I've heard about you." Geek Girl (whom I already know) says, "After your first Genius Bar appointment, our guy came back and told me, 'I think I may have met the first person in the world too high-strung to own a mac.'" They fall over themselves with helpfulness and indicate that I may be eligible for either an upgrade or money back, because in the five days since I bought the computer, during which I have been at or on the phone to the store every day, a better version has come out. I resolve to call the store the next day.

The next day, Geek Girl calls me. "Yeah, we got your online survey and the manager really wants to make sure you're having a good experience, so come in when you get back from your business trip and we'll give you the newer, better computer, transfer your data for free, and set you up with a free hour of one-on-one time to learn to use it for what you need."

I suspect that, as a whore, I value good service even more than most...

Amazing Thing Two
When home with jet lag, watching Alisha Klass and masturbating (damn that girl is enthusiastic!), it's so easy to use the two-fingers-on-the-touch-pad scrolling method with my left hand, so my dominant hand can focus on my personal touch pad. Now I can balance dildo, vibrator, and not run out of movie right before I come! Go mac!

Bits and Pieces

2008-03-04T01:00:00.006-06:00

Gentle Readers - I am so darn cold...I'm in a geographical location right now that just involves being cold all the time, and it's sapping my will to live. I swear I'm trying to write, but between the cold and the cold and the worrying about gaining weight and the cold and the working 15 hours a day and the being around other people and the cold, it's been challenging. Until such time as I pop out something better, I hope you will enjoy this. Just keep hitting "random"...

* * *

...I'm working with a member of a local team who is 100% Survivor Called, They Want Their Fan Back. He has long straight hair with poufy bangs, tight jeans, and wears a lot of vests. He has become less openly skeeve-y since the last time I worked with him, now appearing merely socially inept and wanting to play a flirting game he hasn't properly learned rather than oozing slime over every woman he meets. As I think this, while executing some work tasks with him, my hand brushes his and I realize, shit. If I was sixteen/fifteen/fourteen, I would have dated you. And not the you at that age, the you now. We'd have made out in your backseat, you'd have picked me up on your motorcycle when I cut Gym, it would have been you coming over when I was babysitting, asking if you could "just see if it fits." Sobering...

* * *

...due to some wacky phone zone issues, I'm not able to call ex-Lover. And work has been busy enough to keep me from texting much, or emailing at all. Which is a lie. If I wanted to badly enough, I'd make it happen, just like always, slide into the bathroom, the closet, get five minutes alone however I could. But there's a new stage happening, sliding up on me like a Prague pickpocket. The footsteps get closer, closer, why doesn't this guy pass me? The sidewalk's plenty - oh! and then I check my bag, change purse, postcards, pens, notebook, camera, what's missing is trust.

A Little Postcard

2008-03-02T02:40:00.000-06:00

I am learning a new language.

It takes him awhile to get hard. I am used to younger men, I am used to older men popping pills, taking my sore pussy a second time, a third, ready to go again right after the bang. This fortnight I have been with four men and each time there was a moment where they slowed, I was puzzled, and then one says, “don’t want to come yet, feels so good…” and it all falls into place.

Ungentle Thoughts

2008-02-29T01:17:00.000-06:00

(Should they happen by, I hope that each of the three men I was with this week will assume this bit happened to one of the others…)

I’m fantasizing before I come. I often do, calling up the faceless strangers who watch me on the stage, the pool table, the bar, in the back alley. And in the crowd of eager hands, eager mouths, suddenly there is Lover’s face. I change venues, now it’s a club, I’m in another ring of grasping fingers, the collar around my neck. Follow the leash to the hand that holds, the arm rising to a familiar shoulder, Lover’s face again. Change. The hand that holds the bottle, his again. Change. The hand across my face, across my ass, twined in my hair, the voice in my ear, low, murmuring, come now, come for me, and I do.

Things That We Have Carried Here

2008-02-26T01:30:00.003-06:00

(beautiful muffins from Foodbeam, where the recipe also lives)

Sunday morning, lazy Sunday, and Husband and I have brunch at a local foodie place. We nibble muffin samples, I observe the price of cheese, and we sit at the breakfast bar to miss some of the wait. A happy hippie artist sits down next to me (Later, “Well, yeah, I have a name, that my parents gave me, but I just think names are so limiting so I don’t really use it.” I think, you’ll have to use it if you want to apply for that grant I just told you about for your sustainable housing project, Rainbow.

When he first sits down, though, he smiles big and says, “Is your bag over here so far so I can look in it?”

“Sure is,” I say and push it towards him on the counter.

“It’s open, that must mean you’re a very open person.” But he bails out before actually poking around. I wouldn’t have minded, but the gesture was really to see how big his balls were. I poke through his sketchbook, he’s pretty good with pen and ink in an anime/Banksy way, but my slouchy just-big-enough bag remains inviolate.

And for you, Gentle Reader – a list.

ipod (red), earbuds, itrip, charging cord
Dark chocolate raspberry lemon biscotti bar, ¼ eaten by Power Girl and I on the way to see Folk Rocker in Midwestern City
Purse pack of Kleenex
Smart phone, which has to go into the case the same way every time or it turns itself on and then it’s dead when I need it.
Camera (digital) in case, camera a present to me from me, case a present from Husband
Brown kraft notebook with red spine, for ideas relating to a specific project
Blue and green spiral notebook for writing ideas
Pink Japanese notebook that I’m trying out to see if it’s the right size to carry around in Europe next month (it’s not, sadly)
Card from Be-My-Real-Friend, with notes for a contract on the envelope
Pen from a city I visited in Austria
Utility pen
2 passports
Receipt for the Mac
Contract to be faxed when I get to it
Corner of a condom wrapper that fell into my purse during a visit with Big City Lover and can’t be thrown away at home
Black Swiss Army pouch with chapstick, ibprofen, gum, enough hair ties to do pigtails, flash drive, token from Sex Addicts Anonymous (one day), lipstick in a color called Stained that I shoplifted from a not-as-good-as-Sephora cosmetics place in Atlanta, pin of Southern City’s crest and accompanying card thanking me for service to said city, vitamins, 2-inch origami paper and set of small folded sheets of paper for a conversation game called Oracle that I made up.
Wallet (black leather outside, hot pink silk inside, lately I’ve started liking pink which is a first, don’t worry, I’ll never buy underwear in pink) with ID, bank cards for two countries, debit card, ancient student ID (still works at the movies!), AAA card, Barnes and Noble gift card from Power Girl, business cards, frequent bagel, coffee, taco and smoothie cards and $268 in bills only.

What does your hippie-spider-sense tell you?

Zurich (again)

2008-02-24T23:15:00.003-06:00

(there would be photos, except that there is mac.)

I take a plane to Midwestern City, a place of ice and ugliness, where I am going to see Zurich. Lately he has been unusually unguarded. I find myself hoping, hoping that we will connect, that he will say he likes me, that I will feel worthwhile. He is handsome, and when he wishes to be, charming. He looks like Michael Keaton. I want to curl into his arms, I want him curled into mine, I want to touch his skin, and see him breathe more slowly. I want, I want, I want most of all to be what he wants.

He is finishing some work when I arrive, surrounded by people who adore him, are impressed by him. I watch him work, watch him reassure, lead, goad, coax. I am silly, I am proud to leave with him, leaving the girl who wants to walk with him behind. The cold makes us both gasp, his car follows mine, we run to the door of the hotel.

“You know, you could have parked farther.” He’s deadpan as always.

“I didn’t think you could run it.” Two can play bitter and acerbic.

We walk in, Hotwire has graced me with a four-star glass tower, the last time I was here was with Ex-Lover, not the best surprise but at least I know my way.

“This is way nicer than anywhere I would have taken you.” He’s right, but in fairness, the last two beds we shared were booked by his clients. Elevators whoosh us softly to the twelfth floor. Going down the hall, he texts his wife.

“How are things going?” I ask.

“We’re allowing each other space. Mostly by not talking to each other.”

The room is well-lit and warm. He starts the shower while I call Husband, check in, share the day. I get in the shower and Zurich’s touch surprises me, I am always slightly astonished when he reaches out, volunteers anything. His hands soap my back, the curve of my neck, my ass. He kisses me, the water on my back, his tongue in my mouth. His skin is soft, his hands callused, I love his hands.

We go to bed, good sheets, good mattress, Zurich flips channels, “Should we fuck to Home Shopping or Crossfire?” then turns it off. We kiss for a long time, his mouth gentle on my face, my ears, the side of my neck. He moves down my body, licks my nipples, takes them in his mouth, pinches with his fingers don’t worry it can never be hard enough runs his hands along the sides of my body, kisses the inside of my thighs where they meet my body, moves his mouth over my pussy, his tongue wide and soft. He’s good, he’s always good, but it’s so hard to come this way without feeling I’m asking for too much, taking too long. I pull his head up, he kisses up my body, I sometimes wonder if men do this to take away the taste, but I like tasting me on you. I roll him over and take his cock in my mouth, so sweet and hard. Suck him, lick him up and down until he laughs, “Sex, please!” Roll on the condom (always a little sad, but he has more to fear from me than I do from him) and slide on, his cock rising into me, filling me, hurting just a little as it connects with my cervix. I come almost immediately, the velvet of his skin against my breasts, my thighs, my belly as I lean in. Shaking, crying a little, release is still immense in my heart, in my head, almost more so than my body. He sits up, gathers me into his lap, I fold my legs around his back and we rock eye to eye, pelvis to pelvis, his favorite position. Roll over for mish, he tucks my legs over his shoulders, thrusts into me, I can’t remember how he came, what it was like, the look on his face, just that I was still trying not to cry, to make a scene.

He gets up to toss the condom, comes back and lunges for his underwear, he can’t stand to be naked in front of anyone else. I tear them away from his hands, “No! I like you naked!” He dives for them, we wrestle, I pull away and hide them in the bathroom. In the night, he finds them when he gets up to pee, puts them on, holds me in his arms.

I mumble in my sleep, “wake me before 7 and I’ll kick your ass.”

He waits until 7:15.

Ah, the Mac

2008-02-23T10:37:00.004-06:00

Still behind. Still trying to catch up. Not helped by the computer change-over. Thank you all for the wise advice. I have to say, the shopping experience was less than thrilling - I got a lot of "Mac is so great/easy/fantastic/drink this Kool-Aid!" and not a lot of what I needed to know to need to run this sucker.

I feel a bit lied to, because the thing I perceive Apple touting all over their ads (and the thing I hear from my Mac-cult friends) is "It comes with everything you need! No more pesky shopping for software! No more uploading!"

Well...it comes with a lot of bright shiny toys. And if I want to build a website for my cat, or start a band in my garage, I'm set. But as far as the programs I actually need to use to do my business on a daily basis - word-processing that can pick up all my documents from Word, spreadsheets and so on...those have to be bought separately. Just like PC. And let's not get started on the 600 emails I need to rescue from Outlook Express...

At least I've managed to open up my documents, so I'm hoping to get you back to your regularly scheduled blog sometime tonight.

(If right click isn't important, why is there anything at all that can be right-clicked to? If right click is dumb, make another way to do everything! If you need right click, support it with a button! Auuughh!)

The only thing keeping me from chucking it out the window is that I may yet return it.

Bursting forth, ready to...oh.

2008-02-21T18:20:00.001-06:00

Late last night, I began tentatively emerging from the coccoon of
writer's block, tapping away at any and all of the past three weeks'
adventures in no special order, letting my brain happily pursue dead
ends and false trails, just pleased to be making words again.

This morning, my laptop became a paperweight.

Gentle Readers, Mac vs PC?

(I must say, the lovely feeling of not panicking, of saying, oh, it'll
be alright, this is a problem money can fix, has been worth any number
of hours flat on my back. Vive la whoring!)

(Laughing)

2008-02-09T17:53:00.000-06:00

So I have another pseudo-deep whiny-whiny post already written, and it will eventually see the light of day.

But not yet.

I am lounging in the syrup of once again being with someone where I replay what happened in my head in the car, the next day, as I fall asleep, it distracts me from eating, I pause with food on my fork and get temporarily lost in the warm glow of memory all the more precious for being fleeting, tenuous, likely to be recaptured eventually from mutual desire, but unlikely from circumstance.

Notes were taken, porn will be written - but I beg your indulgence for a few hours, while this swirl of sensations and skin-tingling memory settles into transcription. You'll excuse me if I am disinclined to reach that point...

Well...

2008-02-08T06:22:00.000-06:00

...if I stay until 6, the breakfast buffet will be up when I get back...

OK, ok...

2008-02-07T23:27:00.001-06:00

...but I absolutely *have* to get back to my own hotel by 3AM.

Mandy's Mailbag

2008-02-06T23:26:00.000-06:00

I write:

B____,

Because your sig says "newbie", I'm answering a message I normally would delete without reading. I'm going to be a little harsh here because I think you will have a better time on this [hobbyist]board if you put slightly more thought into your communications.

I'm not interested in making friends with anyone who can't write a complete sentence. It pretty much specifically says that in the bottom of my profile/sig line. I don't know what kind of experience you are hoping to have, but do you really want to meet a lady who is so un-choosy that she is willing to meet up with a gentleman whose first message reads in its entirety:

“[city name]?"

Do you really want to share your gift, your time and your person with someone willing to just dive right in there with so little information?

You don't have to write a novel. But you might find it worthwhile to start off with something more along the lines of "Hey, I saw your profile/post/you-at-a-meet-n-greet and would love to chat more/meet you. I'm in [city name], are you near me?"

Good luck, happy hunting, and a friendly smile and hug your way -

[Whorename]

art by Nick Bantock

Whore Sex Vs. Not Whore Sex, Episode 4

2008-02-06T11:57:00.000-06:00

Painting by John Currin, who is doing amazing things with porn images painted with Old Master techniques.

(Episodes One, Two, Three)

Pre-dawn, I usually wake up right before the beep but today it yanks me out of sleep, the puzzled “why did I set the alarm?” feeling lasting for a few minutes. Out of bed, first thing move all my stuff to the hall, laptop, suitcase, extra bag, pillow, make all the noise at once so Husband can go back to sleep. Why am I doing this again? Oh yes, taking Husband to Europe, every day of whoring is another week abroad.

Space heater on in the bathroom so I won’t freeze after the shower, contacts in, teeth brushed and flossed. Home dermabrasion with my hair in a band. It’s a trade-off – better skin, more pimples (say breakouts, Mandy, it sounds less disgusting, do you want them to think you’re gross?) from taking off the layers.

Into the hot water, shave all the bits, grit in my mouth from the dermabrasion, how the hell does it get there? Towel dry, blow dry, hate hate hate my hair, I just got it cut and it won’t do a damn thing. Makeup, I never used to wear makeup, my best eyeshadow is starting to crumble and only half-used. Undies, cute enough to be seen in, comfortable enough to travel in, bra bought with Be My Real Friend’s money so he can see it, leggings, top, hot pink mini that’s on the safe side of funky/trashy. The hair still sucks, no product can save it, the straightening iron helps but not a lot. Keep it down, men like it loose no matter how awful it is. Last kisses goodbye, pat all the cats, and into the morning, thank God it didn’t snow enough to have to dig out the car.

The sun rises. Breakfast burrito. Mocha with only half the coffee. Two hours of more-boring-than-usual NPR, a chat with Secret Scientist, a chat with Lover (still my safety friend), through security and onto the plane.

Know what sucks about whoring? The hours.

Whore Sex Vs. Not Whore Sex, Episode 3

2008-02-02T21:05:00.000-06:00

Be My Real Friend calls, or I call him, I don’t remember, it was a month ago, we talk about the election, about the weather, about his sons, about sports. He has an idea – we’ll meet in another city, get some sun, avoid the pressures of time and being recognized – even in a city as big as his, he was asked the morning after our first meeting, “Who was that redhaired woman you were walking with last night?” I call him to set dates, I get the voice mail.

He emails:
I'm sorry I missed your call yesterday because I wanted to talk to you about my latest thoughts regarding our rendezvous. I know it won't happen soon enough for me, but I'm very excited by the prospect. I think it takes our relationship to another level; one I hope you're looking forward to as much as I am.

I think, I should charge him more, overnight is more time than evening and morning, and then I think, greedy bitch, let it go. This man is nice, this man is good to you. He calls me back, says he’ll get the hotel, he wants to take me shopping. This is a little message from God – calm down, you will be taken care of, the net will be okay. Trust. Even this “another level” shit, let’s see what he really means and if it’s as scary-real-relationship as it sounds before you freak.

We decide on Southeastern City. It’s the city where I found out about Lover and Cute Girl. I have to go back through contracts, daysheets, find out what hotel we were in, warn Be My Real Friend not to book it, Motel 6, Super 8, Crack Whore Arms, anywhere else. I price plane tickets, rental cars, think of things to do. He visits Asia. I spend time in the Southeast, hang out with Power Girl, reconnect with Husband. I tell Be My Real Friend about what I’m going through.

He emails:
I know it's odd that I would get cold feet while I'm half a world away, but that's what's happened. I can't believe I'm writing this, but I think it's best we call things off. I did a lot of thinking on the flight, and something you said and wrote has me thinking that I need to focus my energies on my wife. Although I've really enjoyed our adventure, I realize that it can't compensate for everything, and I need to figure out what I want/need in my life. I hope you understand.

It catches me, unexpectedly, in the gut. But I write:

I understand and it's totally OK. I'll be disappointed not to see you, but we're still friends, I hope, and feel free to call when you get back - love to talk to you and know more about what you're going through and thinking about! (And if you need to not talk to me as part of this process, that's OK, too - just let me know) Have a safe and wonderful journey.

He answers:
Thanks for being understanding…The main thing I got from our last conversation, is that cheaters like us need to be honest, with ourselves if no one else, about what we're doing. In your case there's more room to be open with your husband, but I felt that we're both is similar situations. Cheating comes from being selfish enough to put our own sexual needs ahead of our respective marriages. Like you, at one level I'm ok with that. After all, it's not like we're withholding ourselves from meeting our spouses' needs in that department. If it's selfish to want our (greater) needs met as well, then so be it.

The downside comes from letting that turn into something through which we would also fail to meet other, broader, needs that contribute to having a successful marriage (aside from the cheating)…My concern is that I not lose what I have in order to get what I want. I hope it's possible because when you told me what you wanted in a lover, I knew that it was also what I want. Fucking you has been one of the true joys I've experienced this past year, and I ache to be the man next to you who wants to wake you with his cock sliding into you…

I haven't actually canceled my reservations yet. If you're interested in talking about whether we can be cheaters together, maybe we can still talk through this process.

I tell him yes, I’m interested in talking.

I’m not completely sure what I’m signing up for.

Da-dum...da-dum...

2008-01-31T12:35:00.001-06:00

I whip into the drug store with my mother, who needs milk, and my intern, who needs hair gel. What I need is condoms. Magnum XL, thank you very much. And I *know*...I just *know* that this will be the only convenient time and place between now and when I need to actually have the condoms in my little hand ready to go.

So as Mum debates 1% vs 2%, I nip down the aisle towards family planning, located right by the pharmacy so they can watch for shoplifters and embarrassment, grab the black and gold box, dart towards the cash.

The shelving in the aisles is all just about eye level. And I can't resist.

I catch my intern's eye in the next aisle, hold the box of condoms to my head like a fin, and hum the theme from Jaws all the way to the cash register, the box seeming to float above the shelves, something big and hopefully-not-grey on the way...

I do in fact manage to get them rung up, bagged and into my purse before Mum comes up behind me. But only just.

* * *

CD's just went into the mail box yesterday. Sorry about the delay, so I tried to make them extra special. Holler if it doesn't show up in a week or so!

Sugasm #115

2008-01-30T00:31:00.000-06:00

Aradia Ardor courtesy of My Fetish Diary.

The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #116? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form.

This Week’s Picks

Debauched nothings
“You promised me you’d give me your cock.”

Sex Trophies
“Inside the drawer are two pair of panties.”

Who gets to talk about sex?
“I was thinking the other day about who gets to talk about sex and sexuality.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
Cashback

Editor’s Choice
The houseboy’s rebellion

More Sugasm
Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

Erotic Writing and Experiences
About Chantal, now…
CyberGirl goes beyond amazing
Lady Chatterley’s Ruf
My New York Indiscretion
Off on the right foot
Table Top
Tonia (Part 2)
The Train
Valentine.
Walking Home In Her Panties

Sex Humor
A joke

Thoughts on Sex and Relationships
Because.
Bragging rights and the name game
Circumcise Me
An Eco-Sexy New Year
I mean this in a caring way
A Time For Sex Ed Innocence
An unexpected sexy anniversary
The Way I Like It

Sex Work
Keeping It In The Family II
What Do You Look Like, Rose?

NSFW Pics & Videos
Aradia Ardor
The Cam Lover is lonely and needs rough sex with a new doll
Crystal Klein super hottie
Kyla Cole
Missy Nicole - I’m Bored

Sex News, Reviews & Interviews
Adult Entertainment Expo 2008
Dana DeArmond Submits To The Training Of O (Bondage, Forced Orgasms)
Fetish Fair Fleamarket recap
Harmony HotMovies Interview
Jamye Waxman Wants You to Find Your O Face

BDSM & Fetish
Effervescent
Flavours of Pain
Half-Nekkid Toe Licker
The houseboy’s rebellion
LA Story: the night I learned to f-u-c-k
Padme amidala: My history of blowjobs
Recovery
Sexy porn turns into a sexy mental fantasy
Spanked Her Off to Work. - The Husband
Trick or Treat
(The Worst?) Profile of the week

Text Interlude

2008-01-29T00:45:00.001-06:00

I have just finished 28 days of fairly vigorous work without a day off, (highlights included 78 children, David Duke, two oyster bars, the Lincoln Monument and believers speaking in tongues, not all at the same time) and skipped out on my plane ticket for the sake of warm weather for a few more days...I'm getting caught up, including here. Thank you for your patience.

***

I text: Flying into Midwestern City, where shall we meet?

He texts: Meet you Wed night in Hometown.

I text: Spend the night or just hang out?

He texts: Spend night

I text: OK. I have a conspicuous car. Any chance of a city further from home? Makes me jumpy.

He texts: Lol. You pick.

I text three more times trying to figure out where is good, and then: It s like planning the invasion of Normandy.

He texts: You make plans as you need. I be when/where you need me.

I text: You re the best :) How can I ever repay you...?

He texts: Tee hee hee

Yum.

Yum, yum, yum.

Fragments

2008-01-22T21:41:00.000-06:00

This is when I think of him:

When I brush my teeth
Eating an avocado
In the cities of New York, C_____, N______, Chicago, Louisville and Ann Arbor
In the state of Mississippi
At rest areas
In sex shops
While driving long distances
While shaving my ass
While brushing my hair
While toweling off after a shower
As I wake up
As I go to sleep

***

Looking across the table at Beautiful Girl and Zurich, her skin so smooth and soft, his eyes so blue, her laugh so lovely, his face so open and unguarded (rare). I sniff the beers they try, none of them suit me, Miss Half-OJ-Half-Ginger-Ale-Please. I will see him soon, outside of her company. I will see her soon, outside of his company. I will see later but still soon my best friend, a continent away. My best friend has also recently broken up, finished by her get-over-the-previous-bad-relationship-boy, finished the contents of her liquor cabinet and the contents of her medicine cabinet in one go, not enough to do the job. I call her, I tell her, wait for me. We’ll bring boltcutters and jump from Hornsey Lane Bridge together, the city spread out before us. I am only half joking, only half cheering her up. That’s the half that would never choose plummet-to-a-sharp-stop as the means. Nor guns, gas, water, automobile. Not sure enough, too messy, too protracted, can’t stand not being able to breathe. (Might as well live, right DP?)

I’ve never been drunk.

I’ve never been high.

What I am is addicted to drama. Addicted to mattering, meaning, having the cock that tells me so.

Maybe coke would be less draining. Probably more expensive. Maybe not.

***

I am in the company of others 24 hours a day, and have been since New Year’s. Down side: hard to carve out time to write, to connect with lovers, to think, to be all moody. Up side: hard to carve out time to be all moody. Hard to inconvenience others with feelings, tamp them down, bottle them up.

I am sharing a bed with Beautiful Girl – in the night, I lie with my head next to hers, smelling the scent of her face cream. I am too tired, too tiny, too alone to wrap my body around hers, throw my arm over her shoulders, place my hand on her belly. But even so, her smile is the first thing I see in the morning. I head for [the workplace] with a carload of people, we go inside, we work together in a way that makes me remember how I love my work. Power Girl is there beside me, and Beautiful Girl, and Secret Scientist and Hairline Boy, and all of us are focused, intent, something larger than us is happening, something larger than can happen alone.

We share dinner together, passing back and forth to the salad bar, we cluster by the restrooms chatting in little groups. Zurich is heading out to meet a friend in the city, he hugs me, he leans in and whispers, “I’m not shooting myself in the foot am I? I’m not missing out on you-me time?” No, I tell him, this time, no time alone. Next week? Midwestern City? We make tentative plans.

I am ridiculously pleased.

Cheating 101

2008-01-12T23:12:00.000-06:00

Here’s the why. This is the how.

Husband and are coming up on fourteen years together, thirteen of them in a legal tax-sharing agreement recognized by our state and celebrated drunkenly by my dad, angrily by my mom, and privately by us in our home a month before the big day when, after the Reception Location Skirmish, the Battle of the Invitations and the Mother of the Bride’s Dress Melee, we realized that getting married and having a wedding are two only coincidently congruent events. I have cheated for at least ten of those years, maybe twelve, had permission to do so (of which I nonetheless violated both the spirit and the letter) for two, campaigned for that permission for six or seven years, and prior to that, just slept around.

He almost always knew. He almost always knows. I’m not that good a liar. But I’m a damn good cheater. Which brings us to our lesson for the day.

There’s no point in hiding your cheating if you want out – use it as an excuse, or better yet, pack your bags and leave the key behind. Sometimes cheating is an outlet, a vent, or a window through which to step back and view your full-time relationship. Ex-Lover was much kinder to his wife once he started sleeping with me. Their relationship got better. Better enough that he realized, even when it’s good, I don’t want to be here.

And your fulltime partner must want to keep you. It’s very, very easy to get caught, unless your partner has a vested interest in the status quo. When they want to believe you, to believe that things are okay, they will wrap their minds around excuses and alibis you wouldn’t buy from a class-cutting ninth-grader.

Yeah, people were running around with water balloons at the barbecue lunch today, James got me right in the head.

I got pulled over for not having a headlight, I think I should stay in Next State Over tonight and come back in the morning

I’m just a little edgy tonight, I’m gonna go for a drive.

Try to pick someone who has as much to lose as you do. At that early stage when you notice you really like them, that’s a good place to say to yourself, will this person lose their marriage, their job, their image, their security if they tell about me? If the answer is no, it’s worth turning your attentions elsewhere, filing them under Would’ve Been Nice.

Establish and maintain a reputation. I’m flaky about some things – I can leave the house for milk and come back three hours later with a new couch – and rock-solid on others. My friends all joke about how Husband and I talk on the phone nine times a day. Which means anyone I’m with has to be okay with me ducking into the bathroom, the other room, or the car to make call number eight. If I can’t take his calls because I’m fucking, I turn off the phone so I can claim bad reception later. Likewise, make your alibis realistic – if you’re in a restaurant, be in a restaurant. If you’re out of town, be in the same town you said you were. The easiest alibi is the whole truth minus your lover’s presence. And making your friends lie for you is hard to control, difficult to get the details straight, and rotten to your friends, who shouldn’t have that burden.

Lying to two people is hard, so don’t cheat with someone if you can’t tell them the truth. Why deal with angry vengefulness because you forgot to mention your fulltime partner? Why hurt someone who thinks you’re a potential permanent relationship if you don’t have to?

Finally, keep something sacred. Beyond health and safety (duh), if your partner is really worth keeping, it’s good to have something or things that keep you mindful. After our private wedding, Husband and I went for sushi, the food we love, the food we eat wherever we can. I do not eat sushi with lovers of any stripe – not takeout, not happens-to-be-at-the-Chinese-buffet, not one tuna roll from the grocery store. I have eaten sushi with ex-Lover once, before he was my lover. It was the night he became my friend.

It hurt me more when Husband took his girlfriend for sushi than that he had a girlfriend.

Ex-Lover still refuses to eat sushi with me.

Because.

2008-01-06T11:10:00.000-06:00

Because yesterday was my birthday, and the best present would have been a book or a ten-dollar itunes card and the second best present would have been a backrub and the third best present would have been him empty-handed before me like a man instead of needing me to console him for not remembering until the last minute and not having any money.

Because the long drive through Boring Southern State would be much less boring if I could lean over and unzip, wrap my mouth around his cock, maneuver awkwardly around the wheel and suck until he comes or we pull over or just until we’re both giggly and happy. Or lie back in my own seat, slide my hand inside my jeans, amuse him and the truckers both.

Because I want to wake up at 7 to his cock sliding into me because he just can’t wait, has to wake me, has to have me without warning or foreplay and then his hands on me, my hands on him, sleeping and waking, sleeping and waking in each others’ arms, admiring the way the sun looks on his skin.

Because fucking one a month mish and cowgirl while fighting hard so he doesn’t come until I do because the vibrator makes him nervous and uncomfortable, isn’t enough. Because of the blush and the change of subject when I talk about spanking, about hair-pulling, about control, about even a hint of dominance. Because if he’s submissive he hasn’t mentioned it or responded to hints in the past 14 years.

Because swearing and promising and vowing never to leave him is demeaning to both of us when it happens daily and on request.

Why don’t you leave? I like my house.

Why don’t you leave? We have cats.

Why don’t you leave? I like the trappings of the life I live. It makes me look more successful to have a husband, a house, a place to go in the off-season. It makes me feel like my wild nature, my travels, my risky job, my personal risk-taking, all have a safe place to return.

Why don’t you leave? I don’t know if I can find a person who satisfies me sexually and emotionally and intellectually and professionally, if there is such a person, so a man who tolerates my slutting around and supports my work and can deal with me being gone six months a year is worth keeping.

Why don’t you leave? I like working with him, on the increasingly rare occasions we work together. When he’s not so insecure that my time is spent reassuring him that he’s doing a good job.

Why don’t you leave? He’d die. I don’t think he could keep food on his own table, I don’t think he could take having been left.

Why don’t you leave? Because the slutting around is, in the end, what makes him so insecure, probably what makes him not fuck me, likely what makes him so needy. I made him, and now I am responsible for what he is.

A Gentle Reader writes:

[compliments] You seem to be in a happy marriage and I can't understand why you are doing what you do now. How do you get away from hubby not having any clue about it?

That’s why.

And how? That’s coming up next.

Sugasm #112

2008-01-04T09:06:00.000-06:00

Charlotte Stokely courtesy of Pornsaints.

The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #113? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form.

This Week’s Picks
If She Were Here
“I licked him behind his ear the way I know it drives him crazy.”

Quickie
“Their eyes locked for a full minute, with neither moving, nor speaking, and the lust flowing between almost tangible in its intensity.”

The Devastator
“She walked over to me, and pressed her warm mouth against mine.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
Orgasmic Childbirth

Editor’s Choice
Cause and Effect

More Sugasm
Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

Thoughts on Sex and Relationships
Defining NSA
New Girlfriend
Sleeping Naked III

Sex News & Reviews
The Business Side of Escorting II - JD Roberts
Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus. Lesbian Femdom With Audrey Hollander. (Bondage, Anal Fisting, Forced Orgasms)
Ring in the New Year with Jingle Jugs!
Taxing texas strip clubs

BDSM & Fetish
Body Betrayal, Part 1
Discovering The Secret to My Ejaculation
Half-Nekkid in a Black Corset
Planned Rape
Pose

Sex Advice
10 Steps to Great First-Time Anal Sex
Catalina says Give Great Head!

NSFW Pics & Videos
Pornsaint Charlotte Stokely
Sandy A
Tara Radovic, Celeste, Justine and Kyla Cole by Andrew Blake
Thirteen Images Of Women In Spectacular Lingerie In Film

Sex Work
Catalina loves Work
Embarrassing Moments on the Job
Reality Check: Working On Christmas

Erotic Writing and Experiences
The best ever evening, ever
The best laid plans.
Fourth Base
On Santa’s Lap
The Star of David
Steam
Wake Me Up (part 1)

Jealous

2008-01-03T11:30:00.000-06:00

(A Paean to Beautiful Girl)

This is the girl who loves me no matter what I do and she is beautiful. There is a
scarf wrapped three times around her neck – there is always a piece of silk or amber there, in case her voice is stolen from her by the kind of spirits that respect talismans like silk and amber. Beneath the scarf, her skin is pale, she’s a hats and sunscreen girl, you’d never know she works outdoors except for the length of her stride. She’s from Appalachia. She was unpopular in high school. She has lived in tents and vans and little trailers with the original brown paneling painted periwinkle and violet and magnetic poetry on the tiny oven in which she doesn’t bake.

She still checks her ex-boyfriend’s email, and has lately been amused to note that someone else is checking it, too. She’s tempted to send the other checker a message, “Hey, sweetie, still the same blue-eyeshadowed slut?” but she refrains by thinking of her current lover, who, although he sighs and protests, will sometimes throw his arms out to look like Jesus when she straddles him. He is the Penis Flytrap, he is unmotivated and owns a dog and smokes too much pot and reads her journal and lies to her about things that don’t matter, and yet she loves him anyway, fucks him joyfully, lies there afterwards with the tiny nibbling feeling in her hindbrain that she is already tired of him, but is too trapped in the inertia of sweaty joy to send him away, tell him to slink off with his dog behind him, tails—well, you know. It wouldn’t actually be leaving him. You have to be at a destination to leave it, and she’s not there. Not from the neck up, anyway. The Flytrap has covered her with sticky botanical mucus from the neck down, and her body is so dissolved by him that she wonders if partial digestion by vegetation is really such a bad thing.

She wants to live in a Japanese garden, white walls and white rocks and pale pine benches weathered to a gentle grey, so calm that the space between breaths becomes important. Instead, her tiny studio in Ugly Southern City is cousin to the kind of used bookstore with a big metaphysical section and a brisk trade in secondhand crystals and sacred objects, a tarot reader in the back on Tuesday afternoons, mugs by the sink so stained with tea they never bleach, and really, when all you drink is tea, who cares? I think of her doing yoga in the morning, rising around 11 from a pile of throws and toss pillows and a puffy duvet with a cover made by a friend from textiles brought back from India and a clinging smell of a hundred nights on the road without a pause, the rhythm of non-home settling into the pulse that’s the feeling of home. I think of her in her pajamas, shifting through the poses, advho mukha svanasana, urdvha mukha svanasana, chatauranga dandasana, eventually reaching savasana, the resting pose, corpse pose in the literal translation, her hair fanned out like underwater, eyes closed, in the state of awareness and withdrawal.

I don’t know if she does yoga in the morning. Or what her bed looks like now. But her pajamas are old friends, veterans of mornings and tea and trailers and new locations for five weeks at a time, and I can see her pale legs in the light from the probably too-small window, pants sliding up her shins as she sits cross-legged in the wreckage of the bed.

I have met the succession of her boyfriends, invariably gorgeous or burning with passionate intensity, in inverse proportions. I know they have lived with her, slept with her, played in her succession of soulfully-named folk bands, taken her to swingers’ clubs, pierced her above and below the waist, and yet she remains virgin, the hymen of her heart firmly intacta. They’ve been down and pitched their tents in the valleys of the country, embarked on expeditions well-fitted or poorly supplied, returned home resigned or discouraged or embittered or confused or bewildered or simply tired, but they and all their sherpas have not made the final climb.

Don’t get me wrong – she’s been fucked. In many and righteously shagarific ways, just as she wishes on me. But there’s a note on the back of an envelope that begins, “My darling daughter, you are now two weeks and two days old,” a note from the woman who every day took her into the room with the changing table, and in the reek of her baby sister’s shit, told her, “This is what marriage does. This is what men do. Do you want to be anyone? Do you want to do anything? Do you want to get out of the mountains and away from boys with clumsy hands and girls who whisper as you pass because you’ve committed the ultimate sin of Not Being Like Them?”

Yes, she does.

And her mother’s hands swiftly diapering the baby who will be her sister, “Never marry. Never let a man do this to you.”

She is, of course, in therapy. She is also in school, and in the pit that is Ugly Southern City, and in thrall to the Flytrap, whose name is Sam. Sam is also beautiful, with a grubbiness that keeps him from being effete, and he plays the guitar with whichever group needs a guitar, and records with her, and works just enough to keep himself in pot and gas and dog food, but not enough to stop his ceaseless whining about being broke. This whining drives her crazy and makes her disrespect him as much as she disrespects anyone who whines without trying even the tiniest method of solving their problem, probably more so because after all, she’s still with him, and the self-loathing amplifies the disrespect. And yet they are committed, she is committed, not so much to him as to the next six months of work, Florida, Georgia, Chicago, Missouri, because singing for your supper beats working for it any day of the week, whether your accompanist is a whiner or not. It’s fun, it’s easy, it’s uncomplicated, and if it weren’t for the nagging feeling that she could do better, it would be fine.

I am deeply jealous of Sam. Perhaps she is, too. After a day of Music Tech 385 and Arabic 110 and an hour at the Financial Aid Office trying to make sense of the forms that will not only allow her but pay her to go to Morocco where she will chant with dervishes and play her flute in dusty souks and sing with the voices of a hundred other travelers as filled with music as she is, her evening is unrestful still, her desire to burrow in the bed prevented by the pile of paper that must be attacked and subdued to feel like she is Getting Somewhere. And Sam? Sam on the floor with the dog is an indolent reminder of the ease of a life in which one cares much less. A life in which one’s beautiful, soulful, tender man does not look up and ask “why are you so tired?” at the end of the day.

But I am also jealous for another reason. I think she could do better. I think she could do me. Ridiculously, I think of playing Toklas to her Stein, or perhaps we’d take turns being the one who is merely ugly instead of jolie laide, the typist, the cook, the cleaner, the keeper. I think of sharing a house, on the outskirts of the funky, mostly-gay neighborhood in some mid-size city with a good Ph.D program. I think of sharing meals. I think – when I dare – of sharing her bed. I see us in the evenings, books open, or she with a instrument and I with a pen, and she plays me a verse, or I read her a passage, and she laughs, her hands slim in light of the death of the evening, her hands gentle in her lap, fingers strong on the strings, fingers strong or gentle in my hair. I see us in the train on the overland journey to Pamplona. I see her going to India, to Morocco, to Spain, to all the countries that grow oranges and hide women’s hair, free in her headscarf and long skirt, free of Sam, free of me. In the end, one of us would have to be the free spirit and one the anchor (or the brick, or the rock, or the leaden albatross around the other’s neck), one of us would have to be Sam.

I turn my face towards her as I read this at the sushi bar, she, and I, and the musician, and the girl from the Peace Corps who doesn’t quite understand what she’s in the middle of (but unlike us, willing to admit it), and I see her blushing, and smiling, and touched, and teary, and in the end, knowing me like I know her. And that is, and will never be, enough.

(written a few years ago)

Anniversary

2007-12-28T22:50:00.000-06:00

It’s been exactly a year since I began writing here.

In that time, I’ve discovered something about being a whore:

I’m not one.

Not to say that I’m stopping exchanging money for sex, when it really boils down to it. I have an assignation planned with Be-My-Real-Friend. I’m being sweetly and aggressively courted by a Mystery Man who has recently entered my professional sex life.

Not that I’m any less slutty. I’d like to see Fucked-Up Guy again when I get the chance, my path will be crossing quite soon with Secret Scientist and Zurich (in the same room, no less…what a shame they’re both solidly straight), Big City Lover has been back in touch, and I’m contemplating changing my social networking profile photo to decrease the frequent expressions of interest, so time-consuming to sort through (never know when you’ll find a pony).

And not that I’m resigning my role as muse. In the past two weeks, I’ve read quite a bit of poetry, part of a novel, consulted on an album or two and given writing assignments to some stuck writers.

But just as hourly dropped away as I discovered it felt icky, so, too, is whoring in general fading from my life. Case in point: Tourist has been texting me and leaving messages for months. Finally, I pick up the phone out of pity on Christmas Eve. I agree to meet for coffee, which suddenly becomes lunch and then how much would it be to eat your pussy in the car afterwards? I tell him I’ll email him. I mull it over, I use the calculator, I figure I’d ask $750-900 for the three hours of getting there, lunching, and, er, dining, a bargain considering his normal rate. And then I email him lies on Christmas Day: My mother has come in from out of town, don’t you hate surprises? I send him a naughty picture to “tide him over”. And I realize:

There is no amount of money worth feeling icky and bored with this man.

- Would you have sex with me for ten thousand dollars?
- Yes
- How about for fifty dollars?
- What do you think I am?
- We know what you are, now we’re just haggling over the price…

I don’t want to see any man whose only attraction is that he can afford me. I would see Be-My-Real-Friend for less. I talk to him on the phone because he’s the person I feel like talking to at the moment. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually fuck Mystery Man – I’m still waiting to see if I like him like that. I won’t see them for free, because I don’t have enough room in my life to add another thing to do without being compensated for my time (I don’t, in fact, want a social life and friends). Their gifts overcome my lack of time, not lack of desire. Am I burning with the need to fuck them? Not at this point. But they don’t have to buy their way past revulsion.

Oh, Grammar, How I Love Thee

2007-12-26T22:37:00.001-06:00

I receive a missive, from a non-friend whose profile picture depicts him clad in a shiny g-string and cape. For one quick moment I think it's Secret Scientist, whose name this person shares, and because Secret Scientist once appeared publicly in a shiny g-string, though I don't think there was a cape.

Myspacer writes:

hey u ever think about hookin up with a young stud

Mandy responds:

Not one who can't spell or punctuate properly, thanks.

Fourth Base

2007-12-25T21:16:00.000-06:00

The apartment is cold, I cradle the coffee cup in my hands, my girly mix of half milk and lots of sugar coursing through me while we make small talk about our job. He’s funny, he’s honest, he doesn’t have a deal with his on-again girlfriend and he makes sure I know that.

I like knowing where I stand.

And where I stand right now is on the brink. The Dread’s been coursing through me for some days now, I step to the edge of the dock and step back, step to the edge of the icy water and let it lap my toes. This is what I need.

He says, “So I was hoping maybe we could hook up.”

I say, “That’s why I’m here.”

“Come over here.”

I cross to the other couch, he kisses me, first with the firmness of a confident often-lover (though he’s not, this is the first time he hasn’t fucked it up, if he was more than ten minutes off the highway I’d have thought twice) then wrapping his arms around me and placing my body under him on the couch, kissing my face, my neck, my hair, sometimes my mouth, I use my hands in his hair and he groans and sweeps me up, standing, carrying me to the bedroom, so tall and strong and fit that for once I don’t care how much I weigh in his arms.

The bed is made. Points, I think, and then I’m on my back and he’s on me like a wolf, his hands on my neck, my back, my breasts, under my shirt, my shirt is off and his mouth is on my nipples, sucking hard, biting softly, his other hand squeezing not too hard and then he’s reaching for my zipper. Jeans off, he pauses for a moment to admire my panties (yes, chosen). “Nice,” and then they’re off and his mouth is on my pussy, his fingers fucking me hard in a way that walks up to the edge of pain and observes there, though he’s not trying to hurt me, not like…

And then his fingers are in my ass and this accelerates oral to a whole new place, a place where if I wasn’t shy with new people, wasn’t worried about taking too long, I could come. I nearly do. I can’t ask for more, I’m not in that place, and this is so overwhelming my senses almost shut down. He comes back to kiss me and that taste is me on his lips, so familiar and yet so foreign on a different mouth. His fingers are in me again and if this keeps up the pain will be the wrong pain, the wrong person, so I push him back and take off his shirt, take down his pants, and good grief, new record, his cock nearly as thick as my wrist rising from clean shaven skin, sweet-smelling, sweet-tasting, and I suck him with all my desire to please him. Tongue around the head, wet mouth around him, draw him into my mouth, my throat, only able to go halfway before I gag, draw back, force down again. He’s loud, he likes it, I slide one hand up and down his cock, gently pinch his scrotum, press into his perineum with the other. He pulls me off, rolls me over, slides into me I brought condoms, I’d really prefer… and fucks me hard, the feeling is not pain but intensity so hard tears well up, coming from release of tension, release of waiting, release of The Dread. His sweat drips onto my breasts, I’m loud, he’s loud, high and low-pitched grunts and moans, I can’t tell whose voice.

I roll him over and slow down a little, rubbing my clit on his body in the way that makes me come, knowing I have to come, and when I do – the slow build, the burning in my thighs, the burning in my belly, the burn that starts in the center and spreads out, pushing back for that little pain, forward for the drag of pleasure, back for stretching and spreading around his cock, forward to release a little, catching like a rachet, never slipping back completely – the tears flow down my face, I come hard, opening and burning, shaking and weeping.

He is not freaked out by this. Or at least does not tell me if he is.

We roll over again, back to mish, he pulls my legs over his shoulders and starts to fuck me so hard I know I can only take it for a little while, he’s too big for this to be easy. He comes in me, almost as loud as me, and we roll over and laugh, lie together, warm enough.

He says, “Your body is so young. So smooth and white. I feel like a teenager again.” I’m pleased to be thin and pale, pleased to not worry about a flattering angle when I get up and walk to the bathroom and back. I pinch his nipples, suck on one, move down to his cock and start again, feeling him harden in my mouth. He takes me from behind, first on hands and knees and then pushing me down into the pillows, my legs together, thrusting into me so hard my body checks out to observe for a moment, noting how intense this is, and yet it does not right now register as pain. He pulls out, he’s soft, it’s been awhile for him, too. He’s rueful, wants to fuck me with his fingers, but I’m fine, this is enough. We lie on the bed and tell each other one-liners. We talk about doing this again sometime. The phone rings, his son’s Christmas pageant starts in a few minutes, and I need to get back on the road. We shower. We dress. I am sore, I am content, I am Dread-free for a little while.

Home run, no. But a respectable fourth base.

Catching Up

2007-12-11T22:59:00.000-06:00

I've been buried in a huge work project this week, Gentle Readers, and I beg your indulgence...I'm also sick as a dog and waiting for it to pass. And while I know there's nothing sexier than snot sculpture in the morning and a hacking cough before bed, there's just not much happening around here, adventure-wise.

I will say that recently I have:

...decided that life is too short and forgiven ex-Lover (more later) while being somewhat mystified by where the new boundaries are...

...had many deep and lovely conversations with Beautiful Girl...

...attended another Meet-and-Greet where I still felt like meat but not nearly so much, and the quality of the conversation was much better...

...pondered how while I feel tremendously slutty, I have not actually managed to have any sex in several weeks, and in fact was totting up and realized that other than clients (who just don't count) I have only had four partners this year. I must be slipping.

I'll don my thinking cap tomorrow and see what I can devise for your amusement.

Unclear on the Concept

2007-12-09T11:51:00.000-06:00

I’ve been engaged in a minor email exchange for nearly a year with a non-potential client who found me through one of the whoreboards. It’s gone on for some months, and I keep thinking, maybe he’ll get the hint? But…

In February, Idiot Boy writes:
Hi. I am 37 MWM 6'1 185#. The post by [this client] inspired me to contact you. I would love to correspond by email more.

Said client posted that I was a nice person, prettier than my pictures, and following my stated plan of meeting gentlemen for coffee before committing to an appointment.

I respond, about a month later because I’m new to my anonymous email and have lost track of the emails lower on the page:

Yes, I'd love to correspond more by email - I'm not seeing very many people, and it is really important to me to get to know each other first :)

A little bit about me - I just finished my graduate degree in [Big City], in [my field], and am resting and recuperating in [Midwestern State] until I move out to [Another Big City], where I hope to live and work.

(This is my basic cover story, because it gives me a reason to stop returning their calls later.)

I've read a lot of books about this hobby, and it always seemed attractive to me, and this felt like my chance to try out something new in my life. I'm a bit of an internet junkie - I'm really getting into reading blogs - and I also love to read. I used to teach yoga and am kind of getting back into practicing it, but it's a physical rather than a philosophical pursuit (though it does make me calmer :)).

Physically, I'm a 33-y-o redhead, and I'd call my build athletic with curves - I'm not a hardbody, but I'm strong, fit and flexible. I have the little tummy that goes with having breasts (36C) and a round behind. I'm 5'8" and 130 pounds.

I was actually 155, but so many women lie about their weight that if you admit your actual weight, you sound like a cow, and if you drop off 20 pounds you look exactly as they expect. Now I'm 140 (thank you Break-Up Diet) so I should start saying I'm 125...

My only real taboo is that I don't speak Greek, so if that's a big one for you, don't let me disappoint you :) As far as the technical details go, I don't keep track of time - I prefer to just have a pleasant meeting and let it last as long as it feels right for both people. My student loan payment is $275,

Ah, my old rate…

and I know that the type of gentleman I'd like to spend time with will certainly take care of me if we do end up spending more than an unrushed hour and a half together.

I'd love to know more about you - what are your hobbies, what interests you about the world? Looking forward to chatting -

[Whorename]

There are 322 words in that email.

Idiot Boy responds, about a month later:
are you still in town?

I send back:
Yes, I am, but I'm involved in a work project and I’m not making any appointments this month :) I hope you're well!

He responds the *same day*:
wife is gone until tues and i am free anytime. would to love to see you?

And I figure he’s just stupid:
I'm sorry, I'm involved in a work project and not making any appointments this month. Thanks for your interest, though!

Nothing for awhile. Then this week:
Are you free this month?

And you know, I should just stop answering. Or tell him I never want to see him. But I was raised to never say no, so I think, perhaps this moron will get it:

Hi there - I'm flattered that you've stayed in touch, but I try to develop a more personal relationship with the very few people that I see. I'd love to know more about your interests and what we might have in common - you might scroll down to my original email to you and see if there's anything that strikes a chord. I generally don't see people who aren't interested in a closer connection, because there are so many wonderful ladies focusing on shorter appointments who do a much better job at that type of friendship!

Also, I no longer see people on an hourly basis - I prefer to spend time that feels more like a date with special private time, and that may not be what you're looking for.

I'd love to get to know you better and see if we might hit it off, but I understand if this is not your style.

Have a lovely day!

[Whorename]

Five dollars says I get another ten-word email in two weeks…

Strikeout

2007-12-07T23:01:00.000-06:00

This is the end of the story: I walk back to the hotel alone, the snow now a fine, driving crystalline miasma that pierces through my jeans, my leggings, hunches me down to the narrow vision of the sidewalk of the next six feet, the hurried glance at the crossing signal, the white man still flashing go-go-go as I cautiously run the last fifty yards, all grace gone in the effort to achieve, at least, the door.

***

Kieran is the most enthusiastic dancer in the room. His hands on my waist, on my ass, draw me into the leg-straddling grind that passes for dancing these days (old enough to say “these days,” old enough to not recognize most of the songs) but also twirl me in and out of his arms, speak to me with his fingers that sing along, mouthing money and booty and all my ho’s as well as I love you and you’re so fucking beautiful you’re so hot. He buys me a ginger ale, he asks me repeatedly if I’m a cop, because I don’t drink. He’s a Native, I am the only light-skinned, thin-featured, light-haired person in the room of “you wanna see some wagonburners?” asked the Iranian doorman as he ushered me past frisking and metal detectors and a $25 cover. Turns out it’s the after-party for the Pow-Wow Gathering, everyone here played lacrosse all day, shook their tailfeathers on the stadium floor, shared stories and beading techniques while I drove through snow to get to the Big City, checked in, went out, passing the first two clubs (long, huddled lines of thick coats over bare legs, the last smoke in line before getting in), thankful the hotel is only two blocks away. I followed the Power Girl list, I crunched and pushed up to all of Behind The Music: America’s Next Top Model until I glowed, I showered, I changed pants three times and settled on jeans, I bought my own first ginger ale, and I am going to get laid.

Kieran takes a break, joins his friends, dances with other girls, dances with me again after I dance alone and with another man, an ironworker who abandons me when it turns out I don’t smoke anything, either. I am beautiful tonight, I am wearing my favorite top (turns out there’s a hook that keeps it closed in front, didn’t find that out until I got back to the hotel), I have good hair, I am made up the right amount, and according to Kieran I am fucking sexy. If nothing else, I will have had two hours of cardio, interrupted only by a wait in the bathroom to take off the leggings beneath my jeans, I am finally warm enough.

We talk, as much as one can in a club. He says, You are so beautiful. I thank him. He says, Where are you staying? I tell him my hotel. I tell him, You should come home with me. He says, I would never let a girl like you slip through my fingers. He asks when I want to leave. Maybe half an hour? I say. He asks what I do. I tell him he won’t believe me, but he touches my arms, my waist, my thighs with both his hands, and believes me. Kieran kisses me, and his lips are as strong and soft as his hands on me, I cannot wait to have him in me and on me and under me, and then he asks,

How come a girl like you is single?

And that’s the part of the story where no matter how literary I can be with telling what may not have happened but is the truth, no matter how I can bend the world with words, fingerpaint the pretty picture from the primary details, I cannot fail to tell the fact.

I’m married. I’m in an open relationship.

And Kieran, who describes himself as a bad, bad boy, who claims to do bad things, turns out to have a strong moral conviction that it’s wrong to mess with another man’s wife.

********

The next morning, I lie in bed, waking after four hours of fitful sleep, waking again and again to check the clock, the phone, the clock again, make sure I have not missed the call from Fucked-Up Guy, my early breakfast date. Last night we would have met, but when you have custody, you’re subject to the vagaries of your sixteen-year-old sitter’s social life. After two weeks of Facebook poking and subtle messaging (does the girlfriend still have the passwords or doesn’t she?) we have finally made a date, which he breaks without calling.

The ex is still the last man I fucked. This is not OK.

This is not OK.

This is not OK.

2007-12-05T03:52:00.000-06:00

I keep feeling like maybe I'd have more good days if I could sleep...

Retreat

2007-12-03T11:37:00.000-06:00

I have left the big TO and am now happily ensconced at the home of a fellow writer and longtime friend, for our semi-annual writing retreat. Sounds a mite fancy, means we meet at one of our houses, curl up in a warm room, and write for three days. Blog posts will likely be part of this, but if there is a little silence, that's why.

For those of you interested in "Process" (a lofty title for the painfulpleasurework of writing), here's the morning's schedule:

- Slept until 10, lay on my back in bed thinking and noticing the grey quality of the light until 11, mentally planned the day's attack.
- Morning toothbrushing, etc.
- Wrote a few pages in my notebook about a realization I had, one that has been directly prompted by available mental space I've gained by honoring my promise to self and the Girls (Power and Beautiful) to stay back and not call, text, message or poke ex-Lover (not since Wednesday, and believe me, every day is a victory, not a little one, but a full scale lap-around-the-track, gilded laurel wreath, hoist-me-to-your-shoulders-boys-and-trot-me-round-the-goals triumph), pages that will end up refined and tightened and show up here later this week.
- Yoga with Fellow Writer.
- Yogurt, internet (have to ration it so it doesn't eat the writing time), posting here.

There are four projects on my plate for this three-day span. Finishing the first draft of a medium-length project in another genre; writing out from my scribbled notes in the margins of the map balanced precariously on the wheel and with the occasional accidental honk (but I can't pull over because forward motion lets the words come), a poem that came to me last night on the dark, rainy drive here, radio alternating between Philip Glass and new Canadian pop/rock I've never heard, thank you Canadian Content; a very short piece in still another genre; and sitting with the printed out pages of How About Now? and organizing them in a few ways - likely, chronology, topic, ?? - and seeing where additional material needs to be written to answer questions, clarify, fill in backstory, make it flow like a book and not a diary. I'm planning to start with the poem, because it will hopefully be something I can knock out reasonably quickly and feel accomplished. (And hey, this post counts, too, because I say so).

A side note: Thank you, very, very much, Gentle Readers who have contributed to my Amazon Honor System box (to your right). I randomly checked it this morning and my contributions have tripled since last week. So thank you, not only for thinking of me during the holiday season, but for letting me know that you like and appreciate my work, and value it as something that adds to your life and is worth paying for. I've also had several recent emails from people saying they enjoyed reading, and that means a great deal to me, too. Both of these gestures are truly helpful to me as I work on rebuilding my self-worth lately, and I thank you so very much for visting that construction site. Hard hats required. And of course, this offer (see section marked 'Gratification') is still open - perhaps a little holiday pressie to yourself?

Now I'm off to the warm room...

Power Girl's Guide to Getting Free* Drinks

2007-11-30T22:21:00.000-06:00

*so long as you are a fairly attractive girl with good fashion sense and a sparkling conversationalist.

*******

Yes, Gentle Readers, it's time to kick off your weekend with How About Now?'s first-ever post from a guest writer. Power Girl speaks, as it were, and hopefully you will be the beneficiaries. And yes, this does work better for women, but if there are any brave Gentle Male Readers out there, I'd be curious to know what happens if you give these (ahem)well-researched techniques a shot. I turn the floor to her:

*******
POWER GIRL'S GUIDE TO GETTING FREE* DRINKS: TIPS

TRAINING
Have yourself a merry little workout at the gym, (the kind that leaves you with more energy vs. snoring on the beer-spilled table, and not so strenuous that you can’t move the next morning should you need to make a quick panty-grab-power-walk of shame,) then make plans to go out with your fave gal pal. The pump-up from the gym should give you a general glow that carries with you throughout the night. Make sure to shower part of that glow off before going out.

Gal Pal: Choosing the right friend is important; the dynamic between you and gal pal must be such that you can carry an intelligent conversation about nothing for several hours at a time and with ease; you don’t want to have to try too hard.

The magic number is two. You and gal pal. No dudes, no tag-a-longs. Three is intimidating, and most guys only fly with one wingman. Also, most men are TERRIFIED of women. Recent discussions with male friends and strangers have revealed that the male gender is threatened by the female gender on the basis that women have the ability to hurt men, and men are terrified by the prospect of getting their delicate little hearts broken. This had never occurred to me before, partly because I’m uber considerate of my significant others feelings and wants and desires and would never do anything ever in the world to hurt them (read: doormat), and partly because I lack general common sense. I’ve lacked it so you don’t have to. One lady is desperate, two chicks = safe and inviting, and three is a girls night out. Want drinks? Two chicks.

Physically you and gal pal should both be incredibly attractive and fulfill two different types, i.e. boobs vs. long and leggy. Great smiles and warm laughs a must. Also points if your hair is drastically a different color, so long as it’s not red. Redheads buy their own drinks. Unless they are being paid for their time (read: sex). Then they better damn well be having-their-drinks-bought-for-them-you-cheap-bastards. If you are a civilian red, grab a bottle of peroxide, stat. Blondes have more fun.

Don’t bring your Mom. She does not qualify as your gal pal, no matter how much you love her (read: no matter how much liquor she’ll pay for), and it will only lead to cock blocking later.

WARM UP
At home getting ready: while gal pal rants once again on speakerphone how she needs to just casually date someone to take her mind off ‘the one’ (you know, ‘the one’ who screws her over time and time again, when will my bitches ever learn?), pop two slices of leftover Hot-n-Ready pizza in the microwave and start the bath water so it will be scorching when you hop in. Rummage through your closet and select no less than five complete outfits, and remember to throw a timely “Yeah!” and “Uh huh.” and “He’s such a douche-bag.” to gal pal so she doesn’t catch on that you’re totally fazing her out. Don’t feel too bad about this. Hang up and hop in the shower. As you rub-a-dub your body and face, visualize the no-less-than five outfits and create quick hair and makeup schemes for each. When thoughts of your recently failed relationship creep in the shower with you, and the ghost of him haunts you about how you really blew something beautiful and true, kick it all out ASAP. While you’re at it, purge your soul of all deep thought. Let it wash down the hair-clogged drain. Tonight is about being a vapid, fun-loving hottie, and there is not enough room for you and sentimentality in your tiny, time-efficient bathroom (you know, the kind where you can BM and wash your hair at the same time). Don’t bother washing your hair; it will only smell like smoke when you get home at 4 in the morning.

A quick towel dry and you’re ready for your fashion parade. Try on several of the outfits before realizing that all of them look like you’re trying too hard, especially the almost-too-short skirt. ‘Tis the season. So DO NOT WEAR: Tank tops, halters, tube tops (never, never wear tube tops), shirts with glitter or sparkly sequins (unless a retro piece, and then you better have removed the shoulder pads), things that show too much cleavage, shirts that show midriff/midback. These fashion faux pas all scream cheap trash and date rape, and if you’ve gathered anything from Mandy’s blog, I hope it’s a sense of self-worth. You are probably worth more than the clearance rack at DEB. Remember, you don’t want to look like you’re TRYING too hard. These girls are ALWAYS trying too hard.

Dig through your recently dirty clothes and find that new top you just bought and only wore once. Give it a smell test. When it passes, grab another funky shirt and go for a trendy layering look. Change your pants. Change them back. Just wear jeans. You don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard. Mascara, liner, shadow, designer boots (minimal, if any, heel), and, the finishing touch...

The MAGIC hat: Wear a hat. But first, rules: One and ONLY one of you should be wearing an hat on any given outing otherwise it will look like you and gal pal are exactly the same and you coordinated what you were wearing to match and that is totally trying too hard. Also, it helps if the less sparkling of the two conversationalists adorns the headpiece; don’t let ego get in the way here. The hat gets the notice, the head keeps them buying. Wearing a hat can even hide the fact that you aren’t as clever. It’s a mask, a shield, bright red wool shrouding you with mystery and rendering you all the more desirable. Trust me, trust me, trust me, I don’t know WHY the hat works, but it does. If you aren’t getting at least five “nice hat!”-s a night, you need a new hat. I recommend something brightly colored that doesn’t blend into your dark surroundings. Nothing with twinkles or jewels. Vintage ok but don’t take it too seriously. Don’t match your shirt; you don’t want to blend into yourself. I usually go for red (don’t wear purple).

The entire process, from the moment you enter your apartment to the second you leave, should take no more than 25 minutes. Any longer and it will APPEAR like you’re trying too hard.

PREGAME
Race out to gal pal’s neck of the city and rescue her from some drab engagement: bland family dinner, bad first coffee date, baby-loving-conservative-band audition hell… It’s good if your friend has a prior engagement. Creates a sense of urgency and excitement for the rest of the evening– oh, the getaway!

Go into the first dive-bar that’s open on a Monday night. Realize it isn’t as dodgy as you had hoped, and note the general lack of clientele. The fat chick and her lax beau playing KENO aren’t likely to ask what you’re drinking. It’s your turn to buy the first round. Ask gal pal what she wants, knowing you’ll end up with 2 of what you want anyway. Paying with a credit card? Close it out immediately. You’ll be on your way to somewhere else as soon as the last swig is swallowed.

When a gaggling group of already-wasted-at-9-and-a-half-pm girls comes in (most of them will be overweight and wearing ill-fitting clothes that show too much skin, all of their shirts sparkle in some way, and they are trying way, way too hard), switch tables. Do not feel bad about this; their squealing is irritating and damaging your important (read: pretentious) convo with gal pal, and their aura of desperation might be contagious.

When the first drunk man of the evening (there will be several) trips and lands at your feet, and you debate whether or not to help him back up, and he looks up and says, “Wow! What a great hat!” and you think, “Wow, what a great …straggly patch of chest hair,” actually say, in an exuberant voice to match his, “Wow! Thanks!” No sense in being ungracious. Chug the last of your brews with gal pal and hightail it out of loser central. Never stay in the first bar. It shows you settle too easy, lack taste, and have nowhere better to be.

PLAY BALL:
Drive to the new indie bar with the open mic night in the outskirts of town. Pray there isn’t a cover. Wonder why you feel a bit woozy after one beer, then remember the pizza you left in the microwave. Grab some popcorn and a table near the back. Not the very back, that’s reserved for skanks who are so drunk they make out with you AT the bar. You don’t want to try that hard. Your friend’s round, she’ll come back with the microbrew special.

Bait, set, trap. You have: No mothers, one hat, two hot chicks that are obviously having a marvelous time, and a table for four with two empty chairs in a really happening joint.

Remember, you are not looking for a good time; you’re already having a good time. Occasional eye contact/smile/nod with potential drink buyers is always encouraged, but your table, and your conversation with gal pal, is THE place to be, and THE thing to do. If you have followed these tips carefully, the rest will take care of itself, and you and gal pal will be drinking a la free the rest of the night.

The secret is in the set up; the game is gravy. Relax with your gal pal, don’t get caught trying too hard, and you’re in like Flynn. He’d buy you drinks too.

Sugasm 107

2007-11-30T19:18:00.000-06:00

The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #108? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form.

This Week’s Picks
Half-Nekkid Blow Job
” We could hear people walking past and talking so they’d be able to hear us as well.”

Masturbation on a Memory
“I let the first time I had sex with your flash back though my mind.”

Reality Check: Handling Long Calls
“While I get my share of quick cummer calls I have several clients that like to talk for hours.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
Christian Friis

Editor’s Choice
A Non-Monogamy Lexicon

More Sugasm
Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

Erotic Writing and Experiences
Bad Girl
The Driving Lesson
The First Date part one
Flirt
Late Meeting
Night Call
Over the tub
Saturday night special
Sweet Dreams

Sex Advice
Bringing It Up Gracefully
I Don’t Need Porn, I Get Real Sex!
Prince Albert for thanksgiving

NSFW Pics & Videos
Aria Giovanni sexy video
Catalina loves her New Black Silk Corset and Boots
Pornsaint Popwhore
WebMistress Feature Gallery: Flirting with the Camera

BDSM & Fetish
Big Fun in a Small Space
Double Dip Part 2
I don’t chase
Ideas of my own.
My Reformatory Birching
The Perfect Implement of Pain
Rope as a tool for Intimacy
She Came In Wearing A Corset, Stockings, And A Smile
YouPorn, MePorn

Sex News & Reviews
Fetish Film - Julie Simone’s Diary Of A Submissive (Bondage, Spanking, Femdom)
Five Sips of Darkness
Special Discount for Our Naughty Friends!

Sex Poetry
Tulips… His lips… Her lips…

Thoughts on Sex and Relationships
Me and My Vagina
Oh..oh…oh! My orgasm- A User’s Guide.
On Self Image and Confidence
An orgasm faker wannabe
Relationship Rules
Retail Therapy

Sex Humor
Decoding A Dominant Personal Ad
Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, Hey... Plus, Coffee?

2007-11-29T16:11:00.001-06:00

Just realized, after going to sleep weeping, waking up weeping, and weeping all over Husband in the kitchen, that perhaps some of this is due to coming to the end of the tiny blue pills...PMS doesn't usually get me this bad, but there are extenuating circumstances, and it's the first really cold, dark week here in Midwestern State, too. So, Gentle Readers, I promise you five more posts before the next traumatic and bitter one. Maybe I'll even get lucky and get on a roll.

Also - I will be in the lovely and damn cold city of Toronto this weekend - if you'd like to meet up for coffee Saturday or Sunday, drop me a line.

And since a number of you have asked, "HNT" is "Half-Nekkid Thursday". Sponsored at Osbasso's blog, about a hundred people each week post nifty half-nekkid pics of themselves and their loved ones - some of them are porn, some are art, many are amazingly creative. If that's what you've dropped by for, scroll down to the next post and there I am. I've always loved the thing Lewis Grizzard said about the meaning of "nekkid": "'Naked', that means, 'Got no clothes on.' 'Nekkid' means 'Got no clothes on and up to somethin'".

Bits and Pieces

2007-11-28T16:59:00.000-06:00

Today’s Bits and Pieces brought to you by “Writing Because I Can’t Breathe When I See Her Name, Thank God for Friend Delete.”

…Just saw a locally-made-video-commercial for a strip bar, with a lady in evening dress dancing on a stage for a group of businessmen who are earnestly conferring over the paperwork on their table. She finishes and they all look up and clap appreciatively. Of course, the local beer-and-pussy bar is where I have all *my* business lunches…

...A friend asked, a few weeks ago, if I could give him some guidance on finding a girl, natural redhead, breasts like melons, creamy skin, professional. I'm just now wondering if there was a hint in there. (It's not natural, they're more like small grapefruits, I'm not that pale)...

…Still collecting names/pseudonyms and mailing addresses/secret drop locations for the Mix CD present to Gentle Readers. Note that you do not have to have been a longtime reader or a longtime commenter or even resident in North America to claim yours! As my sister-in-law said when I asked if my mother had pressured her to have me as a bridesmaid when she barely knew me, “Later, we’ll know each other better, and then we’ll be glad we did.” Could be widely-applicable advice, don’t you think?...

…I’ve finally found a legit reason to despise Cute Girl. OK, OK, I hear you all. The relationship overlap was neither her choice nor her fault. BUT (and it’s a big but), it was indeed her choice to hear my anguish from my mouth, and then 48 hours later spread her fun new thing all over Facebook and Myspace and LiveJournal where she knew I’d see it and be hurt by it. So, Cute Girl, props to you for pissing on him to establish ownership as soon as you could, because it certainly was touch and go and now he’ll be embarrassed to back out any time soon, and fuck you, I no longer have to pretend I still think you're cool. Incidentally, when you’ve broken up (and you will), I’ll be telling you exactly what ex-Lover's wager was in the pool your acquaintances have started about how long this will last. We’re all the betting type…

More Precious Than Flattery

2007-11-27T22:16:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I don’t write because I’m busy. Because I’m lazy. Because I have nothing to say. Sometimes I don’t write because I am afraid of what I will say, or what I must say, and what I must think and know and feel to be able to say.

I call ex-Lover. Against all counsel, against my own will, I can’t maintain the wall any longer. I am calling to say we can’t be friends, he has texted me that he blames me for a prank someone pulled on Cute Girl, how can we possibly be friends if it’s me versus her in his head? He says it’s easier to hate me, that believing I did something awful is one way to do it. This takes down a fence rail barring my way out, he’s not my champion any more. I wouldn’t prank her via computer, I don’t know enough to make it clean and cruel and untraceable. A weapon you don’t know how to use belongs to your enemy.

My weapon is words. I can shape the world, history, memory with words.

Ex-Lover says through the phone that our relationship was staggering from disaster to catastrophe. I don’t say what I wanted was you, what I wanted to give you was me, even negative attention is attention.

He says we were already breaking up for more than a year. I don’t say every time I made a scene, every time I hurt you, every time I walked away it was in fear that I would never be able to walk away, too deep, no turning back.

He says, as I head into the produce section to get a smoothie, the only thing I can keep down, “I had hoped this would bring you closer with your husband.”

I say, “It did. It’s not enough. It will never be enough. I knew that when I married him.”

He does not say that he, too, hates not being enough. That when I slept with someone else, it was nails through his palms as well as fodder for his fantasy. He says, he was crushed by what I wrote about Folk Rocker, about wanting, about needing to be wanted.

I say, that feeling? When I wrote you I was with someone else? This is like that, except there is no happy ending where I come home to you and you beat bruises into my ass, my thighs, my pussy, fuck me until you own me again. This is every day a new chapter of pain and there is no end in sight. You have taught me to welcome pain from you, to beg for it, to wish for more, to love your hand, the belt, the chain. Now I have no choice but to seek it out, to wait for more. I do not say, nothing like putting your finger in the ass of a crying woman, remember? And the weeks you kept yourself from fucking me because you had hurt me so badly, instead pulling on the belt around my neck while I came, you coming later in your hand, smearing the semen across my breasts in the strange and creaky-floored hotel? I say, at the very least, you could have waited, you and she could have kept things quiet for a week or two instead of rubbing your new relationship in my face.

When you have been with a lover for some time, the only way to surprise your lover is to hurt them.

He is shocked by my response to the breakup, he doesn’t get why this is so hard for me. I say, “I love(d) you,” with the 'd' so soft neither of us can hear it.

I say, “Remember the staircase at the farmhouse?”

I don’t say the place we played house in the fields for nearly a week, the place you first learned how much you loved to fuck me while I lay still, the place where we cooked together and then I leaned over the top of the stairs, looked down at you looking up, your face against the blond wood everything there was in the world to me and I told you in someone else’s words how much I loved you though we did not (then) allow ourselves to say I love you, told you deny thy father and refuse thy name or if thou wilt not be but sworn to me—

He says yes, he remembers.

I say, “That’s how I felt all the time.”

Sweet. And Uncomplicated. And Pirates.

2007-11-24T20:57:00.000-06:00

Sweet and uncomplicated. That’s all I need. No owning, no taking, no teasing, no hurting. Just sweet. And uncomplicated.

I go to a party. Flat-iron my hair, new black top in which my breasts look smashing (thanks again, Be-My-Real-Friend), the one pair of jeans I own ($10, resale store, Yonge Street, 10 years ago), black spike heel boots, pretty bra and panties just in case. Power Girl is my wingman. She will keep me from choices of desperation. I have consulted her, I have consulted Beautiful Girl, what I need is “something sweet and uncomplicated” (and oh god the terror, what I need is a man who will not want to touch me there, so that I do not have to text or worse call Lover and ask, may I? because the answer may be no, or worse, yes, or worst, it’s not my decision to make).

It is a pirate party.

There are skulls and glow necklaces and black flags and hats with plumes and for some reason, plastic Viking hats. There is a pirate trivia contest and games involving whoever has an animal on their drink bottle or is holding a face card or is wearing something red. There is, of course, booty. And an hors d’ouevres table with grown-up pate and salmon mousse and tiny circles of ham with Dijon and my favorite, devilled eggs. It is dork-tastic. Geek-a-licious. Spectacu-nerd. And it is sweet and uncomplicated. The hostess is incredibly nice. The host is an ex-lover (and then I walked away from the club where we all shot pool and you had to walk the other way with your friends who didn’t know and I ended up on my knees for the man now hosting, in the alcove of a public building, within sight of the window where Husband awaited my return and never looked out, and oh how you held my throat with your hands while I told you how I spent that time kneeling). I tell the host that, were it not for his obviously happy relationship, I would be making a play, and he concurs. Sweet and uncomplicated.

I talk to an engineer. I make him tell Power Girl the story of the iron ring that engineers wear, made first from the Twin Rivers Bridge and then from the Mauritania and now from stainless steel, the ring that rubs against the paper on the working hand and reminds them all that human lives depend on doing the job well. The engineer is cute, talkative, nervously dorky, fun. Sweet. Uncomplicated. While he talks I scan the room, Attached, Attached, NotGoingToBeGame, NotMyType, Attached, AlrightGoodEnough is standing in front of me finishing the story of the ring.

I don’t win the trivia contest. But Good Enough and I flirt throughout, sharing answers (I’m still competitive enough to start hiding my paper when the questions get tougher), moving towards and away. I catch him eyeing my cleavage, and I stand too close to write my name on my quiz paper while holding it against his chest. He plops a plastic Viking helmet on my head and I warble a few bars of "spear and magic helmet!". I'm pretty sure that counts as a pass.

At midnight, lasagna comes out, and there is a renewed rush to the buffet. I talk to a girl who lost her beloved pet rat. She has a tattoo of the rat, she was born in the year of the rat, twelve years before me. I don’t have the heart to tell her that as a February baby, she was probably born in the previous (Chinese) year, rather than the one she thinks. Later I’ll look it up for my own curiosity, and in the meantime, she is happy. I drift by Power Girl, who is trapped between two Francophones who haven’t showered. She gives me the eye, I give her the eyebrow, she gives me the shrug, might as well, nothing better and he’s clean and cute and a not-stupid. Good Enough turns into a pumpkin, and when he hugs me goodbye, I whisper in his ear, “any chance of a shag?” He asks me to call him next time I’m in town. I know it’s over, but I give him my card anyway.

When Power Girl and I head downstairs, he is waiting in the lobby. I know he is waiting for me, so we drive him home. Two streetwalkers cross in front of the car, and I observe that this part of town is full-service girls, short skirts and no tights. The ones further down are head and handjobs, and they wear leggings and high boots. Good Enough says he doesn’t connect with it, and I ask, paying or selling? Neither. He has friends who are “polyamorous,” and he doesn’t think he’d ever be able to do that, either. I feel Power Girl’s psychic signals in my head: don’t tell don’t tell and are you really sure you want to do this babe in the woods? She's pled sick, we drop her at the hotel, I already know it’s not going to happen, that the level of honest I have to be I can’t not be will cause him to run screaming, possibly literally, now I’m only deciding whether to bother enlarging his world.

I stop at his corner, he tells me he’d like to get to know me better, he’s ruined two relationships in a row by moving too fast. I think:

I cost $1500 and you could have had me for free.

There are a dozen people at least who’d love to see my face, let alone fuck me.

I can give pleasure like you wouldn’t believe possible, even without the extra whore/porn touches I often throw in.

He says: “Thanks for the ride.”

I say:

“I’m married.

I’m polyamorous, though I hate that word and wouldn’t choose it.

There’s a reason for the “one” in “one-night-stand.”

You’re welcome. Sleep well.”

Merry Christmas!

2007-11-23T01:00:00.000-06:00

Ahh, Gentle Readers, you suspect that Mandy has, in the post-prandial haze of the Big Day, gotten lost in the calendar. True, there was a longish celebration, starting with the pre-holiday kitchen scrub (this is the time of year when I take everything off of the shelves and out of the cupboards so as to start clean, bless my mother for taking off the back of the fridge and vaccuuming that part you're supposed to vaccuum but never do), moving through cranberry sauce, stuffing and apple pies, culminating in broccoli, roast asparagus with parmesan, mushrooms sauteed in merlot, root vegetable salad, vegetarian stuffing (yes, it can be done), mincemeat pie, a vat of gravy and a 22 pound bird, because Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. All the fun and none of the stress and disappointment of That Other Winter Holiday. Plus, since we typically spend it alone, Husband and I view it as our anniversary and Valentine’s Day wrapped into one. This year there were guests, so I wore a dress with the pearls, heels, and pink gingham apron.

But on to Christmas. Or Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, La Posadas, O-Shogatsu, St. Lucia Day, Eid al-Fitr, Yule, whatever you celebrate. Probably not appropriate for Ramadan. The last time I offered a prize it went over so well that I’d like to up the ante a little and send out some holiday gifts. It's also a bit of a commemoration, given that I started writing here on Christmas Day last year...

Inside the gold-wrapped box that doesn’t rattle, light enough to hide in the branches of the tree…the Muse Mix CD. Nifty songs that inspire me, some of which have been quoted or referred to here. Some you will have heard, others will be obscure, some unreleased. There *may* be music from ex-Lover, Folk Rocker, Beautiful Girl, Famous, Man Who Loves Stars, Secret Scientist and/or Hairline Boy (I’ll never tell, you’ll have to guess). Some will make you laugh, others will make you thoughtful, one makes me cry.

Tell us, Mandy, how do we obtain such a prize? And without compromising our privacy?

Email me (see box at right. Your right. The left hand makes an L.) with an address at which you can receive your pressie. Some ideas:

1) I don’t care, send it to my real name at my real address.

2) I’m a little cagy. Send it to a fake name at my real address, or my initials at a friend’s address, or my first initial and last name or vice versa.

3) I’m willing to put in some effort. Send it to General Delivery at the big post office in my city. I’ll either give enough of my real name to show ID when I get it, or I’ll take my chances that they’ll give it to me without ID, especially if Mandy writes on it, “please, no ID needed for pickup”.

4) I’m willing to put in some effort and spend some cash. Send it to a PO Box, or a business like Mail Boxes Etc where I’ve made a deal to get one piece of mail and vanish into the night.

5) I have a better idea. And I’m mentioning it in the comments so that other people can use it, too.

I will, of course, be sending them from a city in which I do not live. Or even live near. Which means the deadline for you to get it in time for the holidays is December 5th. Requests received later will not be honored until January, in which case you may celebrate by opening your trinket on Twelfth Night.

I’m a little uncertain that there may yet be some huge snag I haven’t anticipated, or that Gentle Readers will not want to be contacted in any real way, but hey, it’s worth a shot. No-one has to play unless they want to.

Best wishes and Happy Holidays.

Oh, and around the dinner table? Somehow, “by the way, I’m a whore” never really came up…

Sugasm 106

2007-11-22T22:23:00.000-06:00

Sanctum courtesy of Erotic Garden.

Congratulations to Tom and C from Polyamorously Perverse on getting back into the Top 3! Tom's been writing some very thoughtful posts on the evolution of their relationship and where they are now. If you haven't stopped by lately, I recommend it. Also - The Provocateur doesn't usually submit to Sugasm, but there is currently a lovely amd heart-wrenching story, Emily, up there right now that I liked a lot. Stop on by.

The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #107? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form.

This Week’s Picks
5 Advanced Deep Throat Techniques
“Suck your man’s penis into your throat, and, while it is deep in, start to hum.”

MILF = Men I’d Like to Fuck
“He knows my body p e r f e c t l y and knows exactly how to make me squirm with pleasure and always knows the right thing to say.”

Reconciling Desire & Reality (part 2)
“The excitement of sharing her, the excitement of my arousal THEORETICALLY should mean a heightening of our own sex life.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
Our fearless leader tells me he’s crazy busy so I’m presenting one from the vaults.
The Six Types of Porn Movie (and How To Get Into Them)

Editor’s Choice
Primed

More Sugasm
Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

Sex News & Reviews
The End of the Mile-High Club
Fetish Film - Squealer (BSDM, Master, Shibari)
My controversial, nipple-baring Dirty Girls book cover
NEW Culture Shocking Designs!
Sex Toy Review: Mini Bullet One Touch Vibrator

Thoughts on Sex and Relationships
Am I born as a Whore?
Floral HNT
He’s Horny and She’s Easy
The Humble Handjob
I’ll assume i’m on the naughty list
Minus One
Obsessive Compulsive Slut
Re-discovering myself
So, doc, when can we…
Virgin Extraordinaire

Sex Poetry
Now and Zen

BDSM & Fetish
The **** machine
Erotica: Mind Games
Generic Pussy?
Get the contract signed- part two: vital lessons
Just a Few Naked Pics of Amy’s Perfect Body
Naked Service
What a Saturday
What is a Daddy Dom? Pt. 2

Sex Advice
Six ways from Sunday - Cowgirl (reversed or otherwise)

Erotic Writing and Experiences
Bad Girl
Betrayal
Dark Cold Moons
Dichotomy
Halloween
Icing on the Cake
Like Me
The Main Course
Multi-tasking
Second Time Around
Sex Party in the Hood
Stressed Wanking

Sex Humor
Fuck’n Fun
Untitled No. 1

Sex Work
Reality Check: Eating Food

NSFW Pics & Videos
Day trip to porno town
Hannah Hilton Sexy Bikini pics
Lisa wants a spanking
Sanctum
Self-portrait in Boots
A Hot Femdom / Slave Boy Strap-On Scene

Retail Therapy

2007-11-20T12:53:00.000-06:00

Power Girl and I have a Theory of Retail Therapy. Not to be confused with “shopping.” Or “browsing.” Or even “hanging out at the mall.” Retail Therapy is when the list is not the point, the looking is not the point, even, to some extent, the hanging out with your dear friend who knows almost everything about you, tucks away in her own small heart the whoring and the slutting around and the desperate insecurity, is not the point. Retail Therapy is when your dog dies, your cancer comes back, your relationship is over and you’re reduced, physically and/or emotionally, to frantic dry heaving before every meal. Retail Therapy is about regaining control. Being in charge of your own life despite the forces of death, love and metastasization.

The Theory: If it is perfect, it is worth any price. If it is imperfect, it is to be instantly forgotten.

Shopping in this way, purchasing in this way, is intensely powerful. Meeting the saleslady’s eyes over your armful of potential, knowing that if the item is right, you will make her day, if the item is wrong, there will be no regrets.

Expedition One: An exclusive (how exclusive can it be when Banana Republic is there? We think it actually means “no food court”) mall on the East Coast. A grey, rainy day. Power Girl and I plunge into Bloomingdales and try on perhaps forty formal and cocktail gowns with two specific occasions in mind. Our saleslady is a treasure, one who has the guts to say, “No, that’s not you,” rather than shark us. We have her hold five dresses and head to Bebe, where we are requested to leave our clutch purses at the counter. Next! A small boutique of many designers. One dress is great, but not exactly what I need. Next! Another is smashing, but not special enough for $800 (I think I can get something similar for under $500). Next! Coffee break. Power Girl has chai and an almond cranberry pastry, I have warm milk with a splash of coffee (my new indulgence) and an orange and chocolate croissant. Ladies who lunch are lunching around us, petit fours on tiny china plates, incongruous plastic spoons. We return to Bloomingdales and end up with seven dresses. Damage: $1500, including clearances, bonus markdowns from the saleslady, and a 10% thank-you-for-opening-an-account-with-Bloomingdales discount. Not too bad considering the biggest chunk was a $785 floor-length formal, fine-pleated navy chiffon, Grecian, stunning. It’s my first formal that looks nothing like any prom from any era. Mary Pickford would have worn this before shedding it in a heap on the floor to frolic in the indoor pool, Douglas Fairbanks a slick baby seal by her side.

Power Girl hunts fruitlessly through the rest of Bloomies, Coach and Banana for a bag (we eventually find it at Target for $5 on last-chance clearance), I pick up a little red ipod and accessories, we head to Chinatown, park in the first spot we see, enter the first restaurant by the car, and plunge down rickety stairs to a room in which we are the only non-Chinese. Metaphorical chopsticks drop to the tables before the room resumes chatting among themselves in Cantonese. Jackpot! Even the college students who drift in cross the language barrier at the door, sound-sound-sound-“computer lab”-sound-sound-long syllable-“research paper”. We invite a lady waiting for her party (there’s no wait-seating) to sit with us, and she teaches us about vinegar in the soup, gives us her card, invites us to call next time we are in town. It is the best Chinese I’ve ever eaten.

Damage for the day, including parking, lunch, dinner and the airport tolls from picking up another friend and Secret Scientist who squeezed next to me in the backseat with the bags and softly held my hand the whole way home: $2135.

Expedition Two: I have measured my finances (I’m saving up for either new windows or a trip to Europe as a present for Husband, not sure if warm toes and a lower gas bill or the alleys of Amsterdam are a better birthday surprise) and decided that I will blow all of my last present/fee/ill-gotten-gains from Be-My-Real-Friend on happy shopping. I count the already-therapeutic ipod in this. Power Girl has decided her latest bonus is meant to be perfect boots and some new clothes. We head to Toronto, land of shopping, though the dollar right now is hurting rather than helping us. Screw it. It’s time to pay any price for perfection.

Esprit: t-shirts from clearance.
Roberto Couture: boots for Power Girl. More than she has ever spent on shoes.
Some Sort of Older Woman Store I Normally Wouldn’t Shop In But That Turns Out to Have Amazing, Sexy-Classy Shirts and Blouses: two blouses and a skirt. More than I would normally pay, but two weeks later I’m still getting great feedback on the shirts.
Food Court: Bagel sandwich for Power Girl, spicy tuna roll for me.
My Favorite Lingerie Store Ever (Tacky Name, Ugly Lighting, and the Greatest Bra Saleslady in the World): Four bras of a brand I love that is about to be discontinued, and cutie panties for Power Girl. The saleslady here is another wonderful woman, she adjusts everything “Put it on the second hook for trying on! Always the second hook! OK, I am sorry about my cold fingers but let me just pull you out a little here, and tuck you in a little there…good fit, but not your color, take that off and put this on” and will not let us buy a bra that doesn’t fit. Not that we want to this time.
Godiva: Chocolates for sustenance. I have a cappuccino truffle. Power Girl has dark chocolate raspberry.
H&M: The mother lode. Skirts, dresses, shirts, accessories, and finally the purse I’ve been looking for. We call to each other in the dressing rooms – “do I like this?” “God, yes.” “Hell, no.” "It's cute but not perfect." Lover calls in the middle of trying on and I am flustered enough to pick up a pair of formal shorts. The Fug Girls would be gripped by seizures, but they’ll be cute with tights and boots.

All day long, we do not agonize. We do not question our finances, worry if something truly matches, mess around to see if we can fit in the wrong size. If it is perfect, we buy it. If it is not, we hand it back without a second glance. There is no “Gee, maybe it will work if I…” If there is no medium in the back, we’re outta there. As a side effect, the money from my client transforms into a present from my friend, the means to have a good day at a time when I desperately need one, a happiness that he has made possible, a gift certificate for self-medication. Suddenly, I realize, it’s not about the money, if I can make it not about the money, if I can make it about spending time with Be-My-Real-Friend, treating him like I’m not a sure thing, letting go of the crushing sense of obligation for him to have a good time and let him treat me like a girl, it’s actually pretty fun. It’s not that a sure thing costs, it’s a fair trade – pleasure for pleasure, with the bonus of enjoying the time when I can calm my ass down and enjoy the time. Where else is there a man who is happy to talk to me, asks very little, cares what I think of him, listens to me whine and gives me a big cash present every time we meet?

Damage: under $1000. It’s a small price to pay for the perfect happiness of being better dressed, in control, and carrying four bags filled with potential. We cab back to the hotel, we try things on again, we rest. I silently thank Be-My-Real-Friend, then just go ahead and call him. For once, it’s good to be a whore.

Update

2007-11-19T22:54:00.000-06:00

I managed to stay off the internet all weekend, with the help of Power Girl, expensive cheapskate hotel (why is it that the Super 8 can give me free internet and not the Hilton? I know, I know, most people expense it so they can. I still hate it), and a fun city to be in. But I did write in my notebook the whole time, so stories to come, Gentle Readers...

Reaching Towards Relief

2007-11-16T00:00:00.000-06:00

I've been wending my way through a book, Tomcat In Love by Tim O'Brien, recommended by Brit Boy. The epigraph is the last sentence of this poem, which I had read before in a class, but hadn't really noted. Now I'm noting. I hope you'll enjoy it - I think it's now one of my top five.

(The other four would be Aristotle by Billy Collins, "You want a social life, with friends" by Kenneth Koch, TS Eliot's Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, and The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes, because my mother used to read it to me.)

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

-- Elizabeth Bishop

Gaaah.

2007-11-15T10:04:00.000-06:00

"I couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong - a wrong to someone else"
Edith Wharton,The Age of Innocence

***

I'm not entirely sure how this works, but...

Lover tells me that he has always felt guilty about cheating on his wife. Fair enough.

He has decided that if he can be faithful to Cute Girl, it will somehow expiate that sin. Second chances and all that.

So...cheating on wife with Mandy, Mandy = tarnished garbage that contaminates him.

Cheating on Mandy with Cute Girl, Cute girl = virgin who will redeem him.

Um, yeah...that's a totally fresh start!

Meanwhile, Cute Girl (who knows about me, we talked) is disturbed that Lover felt what to her looked like no shame for cheating on said wife. Hello, pot?

My last conversation with her indicated that we would stay friends. I'm a little bemused - friends don't usually take up with each other's ex-lovers immediately (in fact, I can't imagine Power Girl or Beautiful Girl ever even dating an ex-lover of mine, let alone one with a relationship this deep and serious, nor would I with their past boyfriends), so I'm curious what her standard of friendship is.

So, Gentle Readers. How much do I owe her civility and kindness on the grounds that when she first fell for Lover she didn't know? They decided to continue their relationship a week after I told Lover we were through, and less than 48 hours after I told her what had been going on from my perspective. Is this merely fortunes of war, may the best woman, etc?

Is this OK behavior from a friend?

Sugasm 105

2007-11-14T22:02:00.000-06:00

So when the Sugasm links are compiled, everyone in it is supposed to read them and vote for the top three.

Here's what sucks: it's a good Sugasm this week.

Here's why that sucks: more than half of the posts, my first instinct was
a) Wow, that's hot, I should share that with L...oh;
b) God, that reminds me of the time Lover and I...oh;
c) That would be so much fun to try with...oh
or, d) all of the above.

Enjoy.

The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #106? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form.

This Week’s Picks
Bonbon
“I feel him start; then he groans into my mouth, a deep helpless sound, and I know I’ve got him.”

Domme virginity lost
I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. You know that, don’t you, sweet boy?”

Reality Check: Lessons Learned From Clients
“From my conversations I’ve learned a number of things that have helped me, educated me and surprised me.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
Belladonna Likes Heroin

Editor’s Choice
Each Mirror has two sides

More Sugasm
Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

NSFW Pics & Videos
Anetta Keys - Mischief In Mind
Carmella Bing - Keeping It Hardcore
Erica Campbell nude by Andrew Blake
The Hottest Babes… Right Here, Right Now
How to behave after sex
Jade | Mirage

Sex News, Reviews & Advice
At least he’s not going blind!
Lust, Caution review
NEW Gender Bending Designs
Orgasm - Do You Fake It?
Pierced for Play
Pjur Eros BodyGlide Original Silicone Lubricant Review
Top 7 Horror Porns

Erotic Writing and Experiences
At Your Service
Boy
Catalina loves (Polyamorous) Fantasies - Part II
Confessions: Babysitter
Encounter 2, Part II: All About Jane
Having her cake
How zep got me my first feel of tit
“I’m not having sex with you in here.”
A Letter…
Sexual Initiation
Splick
Symplexity Presents: The Friendly Skies
An Unexpected Opportunity

Sex Work
In the Heart of Real America: How Porn Made Me a Patriot

BDSM & Fetish
About last night…
Beat Me Baby: A Step in Submission!
Bitch in heat
Dirty, Filthy, Nasty Instructions
Feeling a Twitch
Goofiness
I Will So Whip Your Ass
A Little Fantasy I Wrote For The Mrs.
Masturbation Fantasies
Men are dogs: a fantasy
On Hands and Knees
Re-Education Part 2: A Fantasy
Revisiting the piss slit
Shame, Shame, Shame; Shame of Fools
Whippings in the eighteenth century

Sex Poetry & Recipes
Cooking With Mandy: Get Your Ass In the Kitchen Slut and Spend Some Quality Time With Your Husband Pasta with Shrimp
Friday Poem: Hot Boobs and Spam
Then

Thoughts on Sex and Relationships
“As Long As Your Vagina Looks Good…”
Ethical Adultery
Femme vs. Feminine
The Full Body Project, or Fat Can be Sexy, Part 2
Need, Want, Love
Return to sender
Sleepy HNT
Today is “Mom the Minx(’s)” Birthday
You Are So Sexy

Betrayal

2007-11-12T02:51:00.000-06:00

Cartoon from Gaping Void.

You know a guy likes you when he also sends flowers to the three other girls in your working social group so no-one will notice that he likes you…or at least, that’s how things work in Lying Cheating Slut – I mean “Open Relationship” Land. Deutschefuck. Yemeneverywhere. Ivory and Lots of Other Colors Coast. Secret Scientist tells me later that he felt his original impulse to send me flowers would be noticed. I did, in fact, notice the subterfuge, and was stroked that he effectively bought me some damn expensive roses.

It’s the last night he’s along on our sort-of-tour, and for the past three nights I’ve been sleeping in his bed, nothing dirty or even naughty, no touching of bits, waking to his gentle hands smoothing my hair away from my face, sneaking back to my own room past The Gossip’s room between us. The lack of solid sleep – every rollover is a new surprise, there’s a man next to me? where am I? I didn’t pick these awful sheets did I? – is a trade off. Back on the other side of the hall, the spider crack in the ceiling mocks me until exhaustion claims me as a bedfellow, sleep mask tight across my eyes to keep from waking at first light, generally unsuccessfully. At least in bed with Secret Scientist, I can sleep by two, wake at six, and avoid both calling ex-Lover and agonizing over whether to call him.

Group dinner tonight, a nice local place, local specialties, local waitress waiting past kitchen close and waiting again as we sort out a seven hundred dollar check between three cashes and five cards. Sometimes sharing a table with rock stars is more trouble than the comps are worth. We go home. We narrowly evade a game of Never-Have-I-Ever that starts with “Never have I ever had a (slang for member of my work team) in my bed,” and go for a walk on the shore. A pang – ex-Lover’s probably doing the same five hundred miles away, bet he’s not alone either. Another pang – I’m still in my best suede boots and I’m not sure wet sand is doing them any good.

Secret Scientist tells me how he ended up here, the journey from a European sport to sociological research to music. (No, Tom, he does not play the guitar. It’s a bass.) We admire the moon on the water, we comment on the stars and light pollution and projects our respective teams should work on together. And then we go home.

I’ve told him I want to feel his skin on mine, no tshirt and shorts between us. When I come to his room (my roommate finally snoring) his dark skin glows in the low light, the curve of his ass into the lines of his thighs a sculpture for my patronage. I have condoms in my pillowcase. He comes to me and gently takes off my shirt, drawing it over my head, kissing my bare breasts. His hands on my back pull me towards his mouth, warm and wet, his lips firm on my nipples. He slides his fingers into my waistband, taking down the thin jersey of my jammie pants, and as I step out of them, he gathers me in his arms, sets me on the bed. It’s cold, and that focuses my attention on his mouth on my pussy, his tongue broad and flat and taking me back to a moment in line at the theatre bar I want to lick your pussy until you scream…. He must remember, too, and his hand slides up my body to cover my mouth. There is wet and heat and soft tongue pushing slightly too far while my body catches up and my brain checks out. I don’t come, I rarely come from oral, but I come damn close, mouth open under his hand, the taste of his fingers in my mouth.

I pull his face to mine and lick his mouth, tasting myself and him on his lips, sucking me off his tongue. He kneels close to my side and I see his cock in the dim light, thick and black and long enough that at dinner one of my workmates looked down at his jeans with no underwear and said half-shocked-half-amazed, “Well! There it is!” I cannot take him fully in my mouth, I lick and suck the head, no taste but clean skin and salty arousal. I wrap my hand around the base and urge him further into my mouth, pulsing my tongue along the bottom, feeling him lean into me, his cock in my throat, gagging me as he gently thrusts. “Sorry, carried away,” he says into my ear, and I take him from my lips long enough to tell him, “Fuck my mouth.”

My hands cup his ass as he leans over me, twisting his hips as he slides in and out, over my tongue, back in my throat, me sucking as best I can while he takes my mouth. He pulls my hair harder than he means but not as hard as I like, pulls me off him so as not to come yet. There’s more he wants, more I want. I roll the condom on him, it’s from my whorebag, I’m thankful to always buy extra-large, the clients like it. He’s over me and though I seldom come from mish, I want this, I want to look into his eyes, watch his face watch mine as he slides in. He is the second-biggest cock I’ve ever felt, and when the head is in me it’s already pushing me apart. He gently swivels, opening me, making room for him, and with each turn he thrusts gently a little deeper, pain following pleasure following pain following pleasure, and when he’s nearly halfway in I grab his hips and thrust onto him, feeling his skin catch mine on the way in, feeling the rawness of having come, having closed up again, the delicious forcing of the gates. The size of him pushes against my cervix I’ll be bruised there tomorrow, but right now that tiny trigger of pain is enough to bring me to the edge again. I am open and raw and needy and vulnerable and it is easy for him, even unknowing, to touch the right place to make it happen, hard and often.

He slides in and out, we watch each other’s eyes, I recall holding off on missionary with ex-Lover, too intimate, too personal, wait and see. But now that part of me has been split open and I think, once a cheater always a cheater, how’s this for cheating now? Each time he thrusts I feel my cervix yield, my insides lengthen to hold him, push my clit against his body until I have to hold him to me, circle on him, rub and rub and rub until I come, the warmth rising through the little pain, my head arching back then forward to put my lips on his, murmuring into his mouth, so good, so very good..

He hasn’t come yet, and he eases out and rolls me over. I come halfway to my knees, lift my pussy for him, feel him part my flesh and bring his mouth to my rear end. He kisses me there, on each cheek, then brings his mouth to my ass. Panic shoots through me, this is cheating and then I think of what ex-Lover is probably doing now and still the urgent voice that tells me, “this isn’t yours to give.” It is now. Secret Scientist licks my ass, probes his tongue around and around and then inside, licks his own finger and presses gently. I press back, push, push out to let him in, feel the gentle suction draw his finger forward. A second finger slides into my pussy and there is that feeling of full, doubled, pinched, possessed. He takes the finger from my pussy and adds it to my ass, my own wetness easing him in. Do I want this? Perhaps, perhaps, and then the third finger slides into me and makes the answer yes.

Secret Scientist and I have talked about anal, he knows I love it, he knows it’s not been mine to give before. Maybe he also knows more than I do about what I need right now. This flashes through my brain and at the end of thought there is the tip of his cock against my pussy, pushing into me again as his fingers still stretch my ass. For a few thrusts, I am full to oblivion, unable to do anything more than try not to cry out, wake the house with this sharp joy. And then I’m empty, disappointment succeeded in an instant by the feeling of his cock gently set against my ass. I reach my hand back, pull my ass open for him. His hand on my wrist, he leans over my body and whispers in my ear, “Are you sure?” I do not say yes, I only push back on him, trying to make an involuntary muscle draw him in by choice. The tip passes into me, that first gasp of what am I doing? This doesn’t go here! and then he slides and swivels, slides and swivels and I am more full than I have ever felt, his cock so large inside me that all the pain is pushed away with pain and there is no room for ex-Lover in this inn. He can’t fuck me quickly here, there is barely enough room for him to be there at all, and I pull his hand to my head to push my face into the pillow so I do not scream. Six long slow thrusts, every one a sacrifice I never thought I’d make to another, and then I feel him shudder, silently, and the condom fills.

He pulls out, unwraps, and we lie together, his hand on my breast, his arm around me, his other shoulder under the pillow and under my neck in the way I always worry makes their arm fall asleep. He kisses my hair, my ear, my cheek, and I think about what we might have done, what I imagine we did instead of his voice in my ear, “I’m not ready.” Well, I am ready. Ready for his mouth on me, his hands on me, his cock in any part of me he wants to take. But he is right, that is wrong, and too big a burden for any man, even one whose lineage was bred to bear.

I call him the next week. “Thank you. I know it’s hard to turn down a naked girl. I wasn’t offended.”

“Yeah, I was hoping I wouldn’t upset you.”

“You were right. We’re not ready, and I wasn’t in a good place to make that choice. It was wonderful just sleeping naked together. Thank you for being my friend first.”

“I’m glad it’s ok.”

“We’ll get there someday.”

“Yes.”

Yes.

***
Photo from Hectik.com.

Bits and Pieces

2007-11-10T02:17:00.000-06:00

...I've just been interviewed by my lovely namesake Mandy Hardy, over at Sexy Blog Reviews. If you'd like to check it out (and see a fun picture that hasn't been posted here) it's here...

...San Francisco is lovely - a bit dark early for my taste, but the architecture is like nothing I've ever seen before and the activities I'm here for are challenging and fun. I'm debating whether a one night stand with some cute local boy might cure the last of my broken heart...

...I text Tourist that I'm thinking of him. He texts back, "What made you think of me?" Since "I thought of another client and that made me remember you, too, since I'll be in your state soon and I'd like to score an appointment with you, O deep-pocketed-but-boring-one," is not really the best answer, I respond with "I saw some super-high sexy heels in a shop window!" He texts back, "can i see a pic?" Fortunately, I took a photo of some shoes a few weeks ago for the boy-who-was-Lover's approval...

2007-11-09T00:02:00.000-06:00

Art by Jenny Holzer

For four years he has been refuge and that is what I miss. Not the romance, not the two best dates ever (Bouley/Avenue Q was one), not the sex, the thrills, the submission, not the semi-lucid dream state fucking over the hotel bathroom counter in Columbus watching my own face and his over my shoulder in the mirror, kneeling in the doorway in Tampa while he fucks my mouth, curling in a dim dorm room at the scholarly conference with his fingers in my ass, calling him texting him later I’m still bleeding...but refuge.

I am Husband’s refuge, and now my own shelter is filled, rain running down my collar as I’m edged out by someone else cuter, smaller, the new baby the new kitten able by birth or design to be more helpless, more in need, a greater claim. If I turn there now, try to make a place a little further from the fire, it’s whining, crowding, no longer a safe place once they don’t love you any more. I wake in the night, I would call him, I would text him, but that’s her place now, be soothed by his sleepy voice in the dark.

Before dawn, earlier still for him in another time, I text: So difficult to know when to call and when not…you are still partly filed under ‘refuge’.

His reply: Have a safe flight!

By the time Do you need refuge? comes through, I have already observed the fasten seatbelts sign and all electronic devices are turned off and stowed. By the time I read it, I am again sane enough to call, in quick succession, Beautiful Girl, Secret Scientist, Be-My-Real-Friend (try replacing your habit with another, less harmful behavior). I have just enough brain, enough self-respect left to not text back, yes.

Cooking With Mandy: Get Your Ass In the Kitchen Slut and Spend Some Quality Time With Your Husband Pasta with Shrimp

2007-11-07T23:53:00.000-06:00

I know, the name is cumbersome but I find it effective.

You need:

The Killers: Sam’s Town
Sweet onion the size of your fist or bigger
Box of baby or cut-up portobello mushrooms
Bag of baby spinach
Box of angel hair pasta (I like Barilla because the box is pretty)
Pint of whipping cream
Olive oil
1 pound of uncooked shrimp
A small block of really good Parmesan cheese, don’t skimp here!
Whatever leftover white wine is lying on the bottom shelf of your fridge since you only know one person who drinks white and they’re out of town and by the time you have another party it will be – does wine get stale?
Large pot
Large sauté pan with lid – not just a frying pan, because the deeper sides of a sauté pan will later be helpful
Sharp knife
Pasta drainer
Cheese grater
Slotted pasta scooping spoon
Sauté-ing implement of choice – I use whatever flattish utensil is in the big jar on the counter

Put on The Killers and wash your hands. I actually plugged my little ipod into the dock of one of those dock-your-ipod boomboxes and hit shuffle, but while I was peeling the shrimp, songs kept playing that reminded me of Lover (Vindicated, Suerte, Scusami, Jesus Christ why did we listen to so much music?) and it was a pain in the ass to keep washing my hands to press skip. So just go with The Killers. It’ll still remind me of Lover but you probably don’t have the same associations.

Fill the pot with water and put it on to boil.

Put the sauté pan on low heat and pour in a little olive oil.

Cut the onion in half and then cut it up in thin wedges. Break up the pieces and throw them into the sauté pan. Leave them alone and don’t stir – I’ll tell you when!

Start peeling the shrimp, unless you were smarter than me and bought them already peeled. Muse how there’s nothing like the texture of the female parts, except maybe a fresh fig, and that’s really more of a metaphor.

When the onion sounds “sizzle-y”, give it one quick stir, just to change sides.

Sing along to “When everybody else refrained, My Uncle Johnny did cocaine,” and speculate on whether it would in fact take away your pain, and if so, how much it would actually cost to stay high until the end of the month when maybe you wouldn’t care anymore. Imagine what you’d wear at Studio 54. It probably involves lamé.

Keep peeling shrimp. Call your significant other to help, which will be a lovely shared moment and get your mind off the cocaine. Imagine them at Studio 54, and do a little disco together in the kitchen. Then stir the onions again.

When the water boils, throw in the angel hair pasta and time it for one song or four minutes.

When the onions are brown around the edges, add the mushrooms, wait a minute, and stir.

Take the pasta out of the water with the pasta spoon and drop it into the drainer, leaving the pasta water in the pot. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, like not constantly checking Myspace to find out when you get moved out of the number one friend slot, but trust me, it will pay off with a similar lack of heartache. If you can manage it. Which I can with the pasta but the Myspace thing already stung me in the lip.

Add a little tiny bit of olive oil to the pasta and stir it around to keep it from getting sticky. Then add some hot water to the pasta water and put it back on the heat – voila! You’ve saved waiting for that sucker to boil from nothing again. Insert your choice of metaphor here.

Give the onions and mushrooms another stir, then add the whole bag of spinach on top. Pour in about a cup of wine and put the lid on the sauté pan.

Toss the shrimp into the boiling water for as long as it takes to pour something to drink and set the table for two.

Toss the pasta into the sauté pan and mix it all around. Drain the shrimp in the pasta drainer (you can dump the water this time).

Pour the whipping cream over the pasta-veg mix and salt and pepper to taste. Add the shrimp and ménage everything.

Dish out pasta. Top each serving with a generous grating of Parmesan. See if you can stay focused on the person you’re with for the duration of dinner. Bon attention!

Coffee, Gentle Readers?

2007-11-06T11:23:00.000-06:00

I will be in San Francisco this weekend. If you would like to meet for coffee, drop a line.

A note to those who care (thank you) - right now, the blog is about four days behind my actual life. This is a good morning, this is a good day - I can't swear there won't be another abyss (or at least a small fissure) but I have come through to the other side and things are much, much better. One more already-written bitter post to go, and then we'll all step forward together into the lovely fun world again.

I'll be holding my hand back for you still finding your own way.

Flashes

2007-11-05T09:53:00.000-06:00

So I get these…flashes. Call it too many years of paying attention. As a 15-16-17-year-old I told fortunes on the street, it was my self-created summer job, between selling shoes and the accessories store. And yeah, half of that, 70 percent of that, 90 percent of that is crap. It doesn’t take a genius to look at another teenage girl and say, “Your parents don’t understand you.” “Ohmigod! Becki! She’s so right!”

But every now and then, something happens.

Last year, prior to his departure, I told a friend about getting ripped off on his travels, that he would have it happen twice, once small, once large. Two months later I spent ten days strongly suggesting he put his cash into travelers’ checks, and when his hostel roommate got his PDA, phone, porn, new jeans, and 1500 euros on Day Eleven, I did not say “I told you so.” The guy was pretty slick – even took the respective chargers, leaving behind the cord for the phone that was being carried by my friend.

I’ve come bolt awake, shaking, before dawn three mornings in a row. No light coming in the windows, not hungry (still), don’t have to pee. Just – present. I see Lover’s next trip. I see his thing with Cute Girl. I see dead people, yeah, whatever.

Are they earthshaking? Maybe not. One thought would be nice to know for his trip, maybe save some frustration, but it wouldn’t kill him. But the other – I could be way off base, or it could be a huge thing forestalled by some simple precautions. Or maybe my subconscious is just trying to make trouble.

So the question becomes, where is my moral obligation? Is this – I hesitate to call it sight, it comes in words, in the form of a question phrased in the affirmative, answered, why, yes - truly something vital? Or merely my brain’s frantic, jealous attempt to connect? If I say nothing, and something happens, have I hurt someone through non-action?

- - -

In older times, and sometimes still, mad people were sedated in a “wet pack.” Nurses and orderlies used strips of linen to bind the struggling, thrashing patient to a board, then mummify them in wet sheets, stop the jerking, the running, the flailing. If you got a little better, sometimes they would let you have your arms free.

Maybe that would stop the shaking.

Mandy's Mailbag

2007-11-04T22:25:00.000-06:00

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: ZurichDate: 02/11/2007

I've had a beer.

Im at [place I work].

Just saw your new photos and wonder what I DONT have to be invited along…

and I want to fuck you lots.

ok?

--Z

This one’s easy.

--------------------Reply------------------------------
From: Mandy
Date: 02/11/2007

I've had a Nyquil. It's numbing the pain.

I'm in [my town].

You weren't female or possessed of [unique skill]. But there will be good jobs coming up.

I'm in too much pain right now to return the last sentiment wholeheartedly, but trust me, it's in there somewhere. I'll check back in a couple of weeks...

Loved the last pic you sent!

Mandy

--- Original Message ---
From: Circus Guy
Date: 23/10/2007

Hello [Whorename]! How have you been. I haven't heard a peep from you in a long while. How's the [realjob] world?? Have you been in my area lately? Would be nice to see you again you don't have to put me down so. I haven't been doing much lately just working hard, i could really use a vacation. Send me a line or two from time to time and let me know if you are in my area so i can come and see ya.
Hope your well
Circus Guy

Ooooo! Subtext! My favorite! Let’s see…ummm…he wants to fuck me. Just a guess.

--------------------Reply------------------------------
From: Mandy
Date: 2/11/2007

Hi Circus Guy! Nice to hear from you :)

(clearly, my plan of ignoring your emails has only stirred your ardor)

I got to see the circus when I was in [City]

(WITH ANOTHER CLIENT WHO DOESN’T TRY TO MAKE ME FEEL GREEDY FOR EXPECTING MY AGREED-UPON FEE),

which was neat - they are a small, one-ring show, but very good. I have been gone for a few months and just got back - I'd love to see you sometime later in November maybe?

(Like if I happen to be passing through your city and have two hours to kill at my old rate?)

I'm not really doing a whole lot in that line anymore

(I don’t do hourly, but hey, neither do you, Mr. Overstay),

and what I am doing is on a bit of a different scale

(I cost five times as much as the price you bitched about),

but I'd love to see you at our previous arrangement if that is workable for you

(You will pay my full rate and you will pay the hotel, mofo).

Hope to see you sometime soon :)

(And teach you to distinguish between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’, after all, cunnilingus only gets a man so far in life!)

[Whorename]

-----------------------------------------

Meanwhile, Brit Boy has contacted me, out of the blue. We dated circa 3 B.H. (Before Husband), meeting in the passport line at the Hoek van Holland/Harwich Ferry, in the days when sleeping on the boat was better than paying a night’s lodging. Lounging uncomfortably in the reclining chairs in the sleeping room, he passed me a card, having written, come here and kiss me, Holly Golightly… I did… Now he’s agonizing about his latest affair, and thinks I’m the one to ask for advice:

…here's what you introduced me to (the non-rude stuff obviously): New York, Bagels with Cream cheese for breakfast, lapdancing (bit rude), guns in shops (your dad had one!), Janes Addiction, US Road Trips, sex in swimming pools (v rude - and slippery as I recall) and Lincoln Town Cars. And flower deliveries!

And total admiration for someone who just got on with things. Just like that. "Here's the problem; here's what I need to do; here's how I do it. Now. Done it!"

Prevarication [nickname only my father, brother and special lovers may use], still my middle name!

X Brit Boy

It’s a lot to live up to.

(Nyquil photo from Everything That Remains).

OK...

2007-11-02T20:34:00.000-06:00

...we're gonna try for daily again. Or at least several times a week. It's a cheat, but here are some recommendations of things I've read lately.

Compartments is back! With a new focus (she's assembling a book) and some new stories. Always a little on the dark side, she's not shying away from the unpleasant bits, just as before. I know a lot of Gentle Readers found me through her list of Prostitution Blogs Worth Reading. That page has been updated, so maybe there's someone new you'd like to discover?

This week there is a rather intense story, The Wounded, at The Provocateur, which resonated a lot with me. I'm not kidding about intense.

I'm not normally a video porn girl, but Tom Paine's got a fun, fun short clip of cowgirl that is really sexy. Very NSFW.

Enjoy, and see you tomorrow...

(Cool calendar from a group of artists honoring the work of filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai.)

Live Through This

2007-11-02T16:35:00.000-06:00

And this is the flip side, the sitting at the computer knowing that hey, if you can just write some porn it will all be ok, the readers will stop deserting you for newer, fresher content and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that someone likes you, someone still wanks to you, but all you can do is try to make the solitaire game come out right, over and over again. Because the thing that stops me from being a really good whore is the truth, and the thing that stops me from writing you, Gentle Readers, some damn good porn, submit to Sugasm, make it all glossy and fun, is the truth.

And the truth is, I want to die.

Monday, I wake, weeping. Husband cradles me, wants to know what’s wrong. And so I finally tell him – I broke up with someone. I worry that I’ll never be their friend again. And Husband, the strongest man I know, soothes me and holds me and tells me that it will all be ok, it’s just my pride. We go out together instead of alone, and spend time, spend money. It’s lovely. I decide, midway through Target, I Am Over It, which is what I text to Lover. Beautiful Girl reminds me in a long chat, don’t give up your power, don’t let him be your equal, this has been coming for a long time.

Tuesday, Lover texts me, Will It Make It Any Better to Know That Cute Girl and I Have Imploded? This makes me happy, of course. They have finished because she logged on to Facebook at 8:39, saw all the public flirting with Yet Another Girl, and finished him at 8:51.

Tuesday night, I unavoidably see Lover. I resolve to treat it as a first date, and I am not impressed. I’ve dressed, new shoes, new top, taken pains to look like Not From the Discard Pile. The way he speaks of women does not impress me. He is slightly unkempt, not on time, takes the last bite of asparagus. We are cordial. My allegiance shifts slightly, how dare he pick Cute Girl over Yet Another Girl because the plane ticket costs less? Do I want to even be friends with someone who plays the game this way? Our ability to be polite is hopeful.

Wednesday, Cute Girl learns through a complicated and high-school-reminiscent system of Facebook, Myspace, and LiveJournal comments that I have been her lover’s lover. She and I talk. I make it clear I’m not mad at her.

Thursday Lover calls me, wistful. We again discuss a week in winter in Foreign City. He reminds me of special times we’ve shared in the place he is now, texts me about songs on the radio that have to do with the Us That Was, laaaahh da da da daaaahhhh…

Friday, when I have been sick all week through all of this – truly, snottily, nastily sick, not just heart-sick – Lover rings again to see if I will mind his seriously dating Cute Girl.

Well, let’s see.

What he can do:

- Date my friend/co-worker without any social disapproval, since we have been secret and must remain so.

- Suck her in deep before she even knows she’s screwing me over.

- Continue to flirt with lots and lots of other girls in a way that I will have to be aware of, that will be unacceptable to Cute Girl, and that I can’t pass on to her because 1) I will look like a jealous bitch (which I am) and 2) she’s a big girl.

- Force me to continue being “friends” with him so there won’t be talk.

- Force me to continue working with her so there won’t be talk.

What I can do:

- Nothing.

And thank God for writing, thank God for words, thank God for the few, the brave Gentle Readers sticking it out through what by now looks like the cover of Hole’s first post-Cobain album, because as I write the urge to count out the number of NyQuils it would take onto the counter fades and in comes righteous anger. Thank you Cyndi Lauper, thank you Dresden Dolls, thank you PowerGirl and Beautiful Girl and Secret Scientist who are there and Computer Girl who would be there if I called. Thank you Husband, for telling me it’s not OK to bring this into our home, but loving me anyway while I can’t stop crying, can’t get out of bed. Thank you Lover’s Ex-Wife, because this is what your end was like and I was part of that. Thank you Be-My-Real-Friend, because Just Clients don’t listen to me whine like this. Thank you patient S and D from GC, thank you G, whose emails haven’t yet been answered, who send hugs, who trust anyway. Thank you words like bricks, building the wall, the shelter, put up the yellow triangle on the door because this relationship is now radioactive and while half my heart (ok, more than half) wants to take pity, let him in, it’s only until the world ends, there is no room, no room, I only have enough left for me and anger.

Whore Sex Vs. Not Whore Sex, Episode 3

2007-10-28T08:28:00.000-06:00

Art by Yummei

(before the breakup)

All of the political world has descended, so instead of the funky boutique hotel I want, I get the Embassy Suites. It’s fine, it’s Hotwire, the linens are nice, but it’s not as special as I want it to be and so I already feel guilty going in. Last night I lay with Lover, just lying there together, because when you’re booked, the merch has to stay in good shape. I told him I was conflicted, that had Be-My-Real-Friend not given me a deposit, I might have continued to delay, defer, not go through with it. The money is yet unspent in the zippy pocket of my red suitcase.

Give the money back, says Lover. It would be a great ending for the book.

Something in me knows it’s not that easy. The whore wants the money. The writer wants a better climax before the denouement. And the selfish, selfish girl inside me, the one who knows she thinks only of herself, of what’s easy, convenient, wants to show her dad she can so think of other people. Be-My-Real-Friend has laid an alibi, arranged time off. It would be selfish to waste it, and waste is bad, let alone selfishness.

Lover sleeps and I lie awake and stare at the too-close ceiling. I don’t know how I’ll fill the hours tomorrow, what to talk about, how to be with my real friend. A cold is creeping into my throat, up the back of my neck, and Lover has been handing me glasses of Emergen-C morning and night for two days.

The next morning, an idea comes, and I book tickets to – of course – the circus. I debate a limo there and back as well, but it’s more than I expect, and ya gotta watch the net. Be-My-Real-Friend meets me at the hotel, 23 floors up around the noisy atrium, a banquet of black professionals trickling in through the revolving doors. There is less constraint this time, we’ve had lunch last week, we’ve spoken on the phone. We kiss, he undresses me, I undress him, marveling as always that there is a whole class of people for whom undershirts are a way of life. He goes down on me, it’s pleasant but not as dreamy-dreamy as the last time – of course, it is only three in the afternoon. I go down on him, and then we fuck. With me on top, he reaches around to touch my ass and I shoo his hand away.

“I thought you liked buttplay.”

“I do, but it’s one of my few areas of fidelity.” This is saved for Lover, and I feel badly denying Be-My-Real-Friend his desire to please me, make it good for me, make it real. I come for real, solid but muted, and marvel over the careful balance of letting go into the personal and staying present in this moment. I err on the side of personal to make up for the rebuff. He comes, too. We go again. We dress, depart, and sit in traffic for awhile. This is a surprise for him, I hope he likes it, I’m nervous, it’s taking longer than I thought to get there, I am wasting valuable horizontal time.

We arrive as some acrobats are moving into their finale. There is a hula-hooper, in white harem garb. Her body is beautiful, elegant, hard. Clowns, some actually funny. The first half finishes with a juggler who is so good, so classy and sharp and self-deprecating that I mentally compose a fan letter offering him a freebie. (Turns out he’s married to the hula-hooper. Perhaps just a nice note.) All the while, my attention is divided, wanting him to enjoy it, lose track of time, lose track of being in public. I think I’ve made a mistake, it’s too public, it’s too much time out of the date. We leave at intermission and suffer the drive back to the city. When we reach the hotel room, he has to go home. I am a terrible whore, I think. And this is it, this is why I can’t be his Real Friend. Because in the end, he’s paying me for sex. He’s there for that reason, and no matter how much we enjoy chatting on subjects of mutual interest and musing on the stupidity of elected others, there is one thing that must happen, that must be the focus of our time. Real means the possibility of dislike, unfriend, differed tastes in time-spending.

Lover comes with more Emergen-C. I feel unethical about even letting him into the room. But the bitter, grainy tea calms my throat enough to make tomorrow morning a possibility rather than an obligation. We sit and watch TV while I drink tea, not touching, not talking much, just being. In less than an hour, I’m alone.

Be-My-Real-Friend returns the next morning, and we have a lovely romp, but three more goes and I’m terribly sore. I want to make him come with my mouth, but it doesn’t always happen, for him, for many men. Once more he slides into me, I change positions to rub less on the soreness of my pussy. I’ve been up for awhile - have to rise, change into cute jammies, brush my hair and teeth, put on just enough makeup to look like I wake up beautiful, and move into the other bed before the phone rings to say he’s on his way up. I realize before he gets there that there’s an envelope on the TV, I hadn’t even noticed the night before. I don’t touch it yet, not before, not while he’s there, he may yet want it back, it can’t be mine until I did a good job.

When he departs, I am sorry. Sorry to have wasted some of his time, to have been unable to receive, less than perfect. There is then a hot shower, last minute internet, the claiming of the car from the valet, and the hope to do better, to be worth it, unwasteful, unselfish.

If I Was Smarter...

2007-10-19T23:02:00.000-06:00

...I wouldn't call after midnight to say goodnight when I realized at 10:52 that he was going to stay the night with her. Heck, if I was really smart, I probably wouldn't call at all.

(I don't know how I know. But that's when the psychic alarm went off.)

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Broken-Up

2007-10-19T00:40:00.000-06:00

…It’s true what they say – eat less and exercise! I’ve only been on the Break-Up Diet for four days and the pounds are melting away! Follow the simple, three-step plan of food that tastes like cardboard, long city walks alone through the streets you once shared, and just plain ol’ not remembering to eat, and you, too, can lose five pounds in four days. He-llooooo, cheekbones!

…Why not take this time to reconnect with other loved ones? Four years is finally enough distance to phone Writer, the long-term boy prior to this one, and give best wishes to him and his lovely post-me wife! And when I’m in need of human contact at Oh-God-Thirty in the morning so that I won’t dial Lover’s number that one more time that mentally dons rappelling gear atop the Cliffs of Insanity, it reminds me that Secret Scientist is just finishing his Starbucks run and ready for my call. Thanks, friends!

…How about taking up a new hobby in your now-copious free time? Drive to a distant city and explore documentary photography at 3AM in the Meatpacking District! Jog moonlit paths in Central Park! And hey, did anyone say “post more often to your damn blog, you lazy bitch?”

…Learn more about grammar by replaying all your recent conversations in your head and analyzing the exact degree of offended, bitter, jealous or lonely you should be! By listening carefully to old voice mails, timing phone calls for when you’re sure he’s out with that adorable ‘other woman’, and reading old love letters stained with his semen, you can derive hours of misery from just a few pages of material!

…If you’re having trouble staying with the plan, try enlisting a buddy to be your coach! Ask them to make you a CD of “bestrongstaybrokenup songs”, or call them every time you feel the urge to dial your ex's number. Whenever my phone rings, Power Girl takes it firmly away from me and tells me not to answer or she’ll rip my fingers off – she’s such a tease! Eventually, she’s going to find me texting in the closet, but for now, Gentle Readers, that’s our little secret…

(he still wants to be friends)

Check, Please

2007-10-16T08:40:00.000-06:00

This is your first night with her,
your first night without her.
This is the first part
where the wheels begin to turn,
where the elevator begins its ascent,
before the doors lurch apart.
- Billy Collins

Yet Another Big City. Yet another hotel. As I cross the lobby, a woman rushes me, “Are you with the band?” “No,” is the easiest answer to this question.

In the room, with others. I bend my head to a menial task that won’t do itself. I make conversation with Cute Girl. I ask what she’s been up to, whether the guy she’d gone out with a couple of times had turned into a date. It takes her a minute to remember, “Oh,” she says, “I’d forgotten about him. I started dating Lover.”

Here is what I am prepared for: First Aid, Choking, Lost Children, Wardrobe Malfunctions, Dietary Needs, Late Planes, Missed Rides, Malfunctioning Electronic Equipment, Rabid Fans, Surly Security, Anxious Clients.

This does not fall into any of those categories.

I am hot and then I am cold and my hands are shaking enough to trouble the task. The Mandy Brain takes over, the Writer Mandy not the Whore Mandy, and like my ideal mother figure takes my hand, turn away, that’s nasty, don’t look, come over here and we’ll sing a song together, play a game, and that’s the part that’s sane enough to catalog reaction, note the increased pulse, the urge to vomit, the mindless chatter.

“When did that happen?” I ask in my lightest, cheeriest, teasing girls-together voice. Apparently, it’s recent. I know that already, last week Lover rang me as I boarded a plane and asked me to text him when I landed instead of calling because he would be on a date with Cute Girl. Given that he had left my bed not three hours previously, I told him I didn’t necessarily need all those details at this time. I called anyway, pretending the conversation had never happened, figuring that if he’d grown any class during my flight, his ringer would be off. Cute Girl sketches the bits I’ve missed, catching me up like those Soap Digest summaries, dinner three nights in a row, long walks, developments to come. In my heart, I already knew about the second night when he didn’t tell me he was alone or specify whom he was with when we spoke later that same night. Sometimes I wish I was a lot fucking dumber.

The other people in the room and I express how pleased we are for her, for him. Cute Girl says, “He’s so romantic,” and ducks her head from my gaze, that glance saying everything I say here by not writing about Husband, it’s too precious, it’s mine, it would diminish it to share it with you.

Mandy Brain slaps me, soothes me, bites my tongue, trots out the metaphor parade, starts analyzing the sentence structure and corralling this moment into this post. Mandy Brain says, do not be afraid to be alone, there are others, there is enough, there is Husband to love you, there are boys to flirt with and fuck with and just because you have spent four years with the second-most-important bond of your life does not mean that there should be even one minute more. Mandy Brain rummages through the files and chooses the poem to quote, the past incidents to mention, the parallels to draw. But underneath the poem and the past and the parallels, my blood is one long icy scream and my hands are still shaking and even when the others have gone and only Power Girl is left to hide my feelings from, I am cold enough even under blankets to turn on the heat.

It doesn’t matter that Lover and I walked through the seaside town and talked rationally about him dating, that I of course cannot be full time, that as long as he lets me know if there’s someone serious before it gets too far, so I can bow out, or better yet when he realizes he’s ready to look for someone serious, let me know then, that sometime, in the future, he would of course be dating more than casually. It doesn’t matter that I said, yeah, you should take out Cute Girl, she’s really smart and quality. What matters is the duck of her head when she breaks my gaze, the look on her face when she talks about him. We’re girls. I cannot see her like him like that and have this particular secret from her, not when I know her, not when I like her. I’m a girl. It doesn’t turn me on to hear how he walked on the beach with her, too, the way it turns him on to hear the story of how I got fucked, carried home the details in my mouth, tidbits given back up for his masturbation.

I can’t be too. Or also. I am neither like nor as.

I have changed Lover’s name in my phone to DO NOT ANSWER. I am not going to Foreign City for a week in winter with him. I am not meeting him halfway in Midwestern Town for a day out of time. The dealer has clapped his hands, the faux-leather folder is on the table, the runners have broken the tape, we are all processing from the church in a shower of environmentally-sound birdseed, sticky with sweat from our grasping hands.

Keywords

2007-09-29T22:29:00.001-06:00

Remember when I wrote about rape fantasies? Well, "rape fantasies" is the number one search term for finding this blog. Beating out "sex" by a factor of five to one.

Evidently, it's a more common interest than I suspected...

Zurich (now the words)

2007-09-26T08:37:00.000-06:00

Zurich (now the words)

In the car, on the way to Decaying Midwestern City (aren’t they all?), I say, “It’s nice to get to know you better.” I have cancelled a business meeting that would require taking my own car for exactly that reason. He says, hand on the wheel, jeans, black t-shirt over the shape of his working arms, his chest that looks as though he makes his living in a way that muscles his chest (he does), “There are a lot of things I’m protective of.”

“There are banks in Zurich less protective than you,” I say, and smiling, move my hand above his knee.

Two years ago, we knew each other casually. He invited me to a private place at his work, kissed me, lay me down in a hot, dim space, pulled my soft shorts to one side and went down on me. He wasn’t dressed in a way I could return the favor. Later that night, I met him in his hotel room, breaking my not-in-my-hometown rule, the sex was fantastic, our manner to each other stiff, neither wanting to commit to the first “I like you” words, both wary of giving away too much to our new, meanly witty acquaintance.

What I remember: the room was a handicapped room. I had met Lover in the same room two weeks before, the vagaries of coincidence. Zurich fucked me for a long time, mish, cowgirl, from behind with his cock big enough that I cried out and pulled away, puzzling him when I asked for more. We sat in each other’s laps, face to face, inside and wrapped around each other, his favorite, intimate and apart at the same time.

Zurich sends me a Myspace survey, the e-equivalent of the note in sixth grade, Do you like me? Check YES or NO. I answer the questions, delighted that someone’s interested, filling in the cute, the silly, the sexy, the banal.

1) Your Name: Mandy

3) Single or Taken: N/A

4) Favorite Movie: Run Lola Run

6) Favorite Music: Crappy pop on the radio, stuff Power Girl plays in the car, Peggy Lee

7) What word or phrase would you say best describes you? Right now I'm really referencing "thou shalt not bind the mouths of the kine that tread the corn" a lot.

9) Rate yourself out of 10 as a person and explain why? 7. Smarter, prettier and more talented than average, but with a slight egotism, deceitfulness and selfishness problem.

11) Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you: Won fifth grade spelling bee. Has secret recipe for pork chops.

12) First impression of me? Asshole. But really attractive.

16) Would you feel comfortable sleeping next to me? You're a little warm, but overall, yes.

17) Would you let me bake you a pie? Strawberry-rhubarb, please.

19) If you had 1 day to spend with me before I died, what would you want to do? Practice [job-related skill] and fuck.

I Myspace him back. He answers as fast as I did.

1) Your Name: Zurich

3) Single or Taken: I am my own man

4) Favorite Movie: Robocop

6) What word or phrase would you say best describes you? Bitter acerbic wit

7) Tattoos and/or Piercings: none

8) Why did you add me? Trying to get my round 2 with Mandy

9) Rate yourself out of 10 as a person and explain why? I am a 6...I was much higher once...but I am not the man I used to be...

10) Tell me one memory we have shared together: Overly warm dark place... and I kissed you and gave you oral sex...and you said "thanks"... I thought that was cool.

12) First impression of me? In a hurry...trying to impress...think she might be attracted to me or very chatty...hard to tell.

14) If you didn't know me, & you saw me in the street - What would your first thought be?
Great smile.... even upsidedown

19) If you had 1 day to spend with me before I died, what would you want to do? Skip the [job-related skill] swim and fuck...

A few months ago, he catches me at a bad time. More recently, he stalks more cautiously, makes me feel wanted and not just demanded. We have a business reason to get together. Phone calls are brief and in company. I text him:

Sorry to be distracted, underslept. I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing you.

He texts back, me too possible naked time! and follows it up with that was supposed to be a question.

I watch him work. He is authoritative and solicitous, a good combination. We’re reserved, polite, professional.

Today, I turn up at his hotel, as invited. He greets me at the door in a shirt and towel. I step out of my shoes and his hands are on my back, his mouth on my mouth. A teen comedy plays on the TV, an idiot blonde drama queen wreaking havoc all around her while the men in her life scheme to calm her down. Zurich is on me, in me, around me, his cock as long as Lover’s and hard, hard, hard, widening at the base and leaving me sore inside and out. The feeling of mild pain as he presses into the back wall of my pussy is what pushes me over the edge. He comes silently, and immediately gets up, flushes the condom, puts on his pants – he hates being naked, I don’t know why, he’s beautiful. I do know why, he’s recently not fat anymore.

We drive. We talk, more in this 90 minute drive than ever in our cumulative time together. It’s not deep, just personal. Which, for him, is the Marinas Trench. Which, for me, lets me lower the wall of don’t-let-him-see-you-be-weak-he’ll-stab-you-and-laugh. Which is probably what he’s afraid of, too.

“I’m all go,” he tells me. He’s not the type to flirt, to take turns in the game, he’s the type to take you up on a mild offer, the casual bait for a long play snapped up and there’s Zurich in your boat, holding you in your own net. Quick like a bandaid, pain or pleasure and at least it’s done, at least you know.

The hotel at the other end of the trip is a marble-lobby throwback to the days when commercial travelers stayed here for weeks at a time. Our room is grandly called a suite, the air conditioner is a wall unit mounted at floor level and cools only the space between the bed and the window. It’s hot even by the open window. The fetish club is in the basement, at the bottom of a dizzyingly fast elevator ride. He has changed into another black shirt, this time with collar, black jeans, boots. I have agonized over the Suitcase of Potential I brought with me, finally deciding, you can never go wrong with schoolgirl.

In the club, the ceiling is barely above our reach, the dance floor lightly thronged with hot goth girls in outrageous outfits. I hadn’t known what to expect, it is the Midwest after all, and I’m surprised at the range of clothing choices – there are the goth girls, a large contingent of black trench coats, a medium-sized schoolgirl quotient (at least I guessed the dress code right), and a group of what look like older frat boys in shorts and t-shirts. I’m bemused that there’s apparently no dress code. When the DJ announces that the participants in the fetish show should go backstage, all the hot goth girls leave the dance floor, thus solving the disconnect.

We watch the fetish show. There’s a scene with anime girls frolicking and then being attacked by a giant scrotum monster (there’s a fuzzy grey suit and two guys with one penis-shaped arm each involved), at which point they reveal themselves as Sailor Moon and one girl scares off the monster with a metal-bikini grinder act (she uses a grinder to shoot sparks from her steel bra). There’s a threesome where the two guys hook up while drunk and carry off the girl to parts unknown, via the one foot of wing space at the side of the stage. There’s a fire-eater who blows fireballs under the scary low ceiling and does body lights off a “slave girl”. There’s some sort of whipping act that I turn away from. In between, the slave girl crawls across the stage floor with scene title cards in her teeth. It’s interesting, and parts of it are amusing and even entertaining, but it’s not sexy. It’s not just the legal distance between groins and mouths, or the lack of connection between the “slaves” and the “dominants,” it’s the disconnect between reality and play-acting.

When I turn away from the whipping scene, I see a couple leaning against a square concrete pillar under the low ceiling. One of them is a young man, college-age, stocky and gentle-faced. One of them is either a boyish young woman, or a girlish young man in drag. (S)he’s in a tank top, a knee-length cotton madras skirt, flat sandals. He’s in the ubiquitous black jeans and black t-shirt. Her back is against the pillar, he leans into her, kisses her hair, her ears, her neck. Her face is sweetly upturned, her eyes closed, and there is the look I know, I remember, the look that says, you like me. I like that you like me. I’m not a little girl anymore. It’s the sexiest thing I see all night.

Le Roi Est Mort

2007-09-24T11:55:00.000-06:00

Last night:

"Sorry, I’m just tired."

"You know, it wouldn’t be a big deal except that for nearly four years, ‘never too tired, middle of the night, God I didn’t think I had it in me,’ has been perhaps the defining characteristic of our relationship."

This morning:

"I love you so much."

"If that was enough, I wouldn’t be sleeping around on my husband."

The only question remaining is what, if anything, will arise from the ashes.

Bits and Pieces

2007-09-23T06:15:00.000-06:00

…Here’s how I know I am not jaded beyond repair. Power Girl and I spend the night in a Ritz-Carlton, and the first fifteen minutes is just us squealing over the toiletries. “Oooh! Shower gel!” “Look, the blow dryer has it’s own little bag!” “The bathroom is huge! You take a shower and I’ll take a bath at the same time! ”…

…Driving in a new city, where things are a bit more aggressive. My friend says, “Remember, when you change lanes, your blinker is not asking permission, it’s signaling intent.” It works…

…At a get-reacquainted lunch with Be-My-Real-Friend, he indicates that he’d like to make an appointment, and to that end, would like to give me a deposit. I, still unsure if I still even want to be doing this whoring thing, ask if he wants to put the money on the prepaid Visa he got me. He whips out cash. I think, gee, you’re awfully certain, and then realize umm, Mandy? You are a sure thing. That’s what being a whore is…

Breadcrumbs...

2007-09-13T19:17:00.001-06:00

Into the city, towers, lights, trailers for a movie production, the pit that used to be the World Trade Center, and the convergence of the universe continues when the really nice guy who saw me struggling to park paid for the garage.

I leave these clues in case I do not return...yeah, melodrama. But as I head inward, it comes to me, how much should it be work and how much should be magic? Lover has been very, very good to me. Dinners and adoration. Shows and support. And now, we're both finding that it's effort to want the other. My bitchiness overwhelms my prettiness. His quirkiness threatens to subsume his power over me.

I've lost a pet - stay with me on this - and it's the only pure grief I've known. I've been lucky that no-one close to me has (knock wood) been taken away (yet). The decision to end my cat's life rather than watch him suffer was wrenching. Last week, Powergirl came home, put her suitcases in my living room, walked across the street, broke up, and returned fifteen minutes later. Quick, like a bandaid. In that way, she's tougher than I am, not knowing whether to fight and work and struggle, or to say, this is a side relationship. This is not meant to be fought for, it's meant to happen beautifully like the blooming of a flower, and then when it's done, it's done. We broke up once before, in the morning, on an island, and circumstances led us to be in each other's company for the entire day afterwards. It was that same wrenching grief.

This morning, before I left my other life, I recut all the stems of the roses in the dining room vase. So little effort for a few more days of pleasant loveliness.

Headed East

2007-08-31T08:25:00.000-06:00

Towards...

Man Who Loves Stars
Be-My-Real-Friend
Secret Scientist and his sidekick Hairline Boy
Fucked-Up Guy
Another one I haven't named or talked about yet

and

Lover.

Away from...

Tourist, looking forward to a fly-in.

Power Girl, in the aftermath of the world's fastest breakup, still kind enough to describe the difficulty as "a mutual lack of compromise" instead of "no matter how many days I go to church with you I won't be a housewife or move to the political right."

Beautiful Girl, once again in thrall to a Penis Flytrap.

Husband, whom I am very, very sorry to leave. He's made me a mix CD. I'll probably cry.

Fragment

2007-08-28T10:44:00.000-06:00

Eleven of us. Two on this bed, two on that, several sprawling on the floor, the suitcase bench, the armchair, lounging against the doorway to the bath. The jacketed waiter has brought glasses on a linen-draped tray and the new guitar shimmers, pickups gleaming and the body gently aglow. We turn down the ipod and the amp, he plays unplugged - "Dark Lady, hellish angel," "out of time..." The lyrics fade out the open window, his cellphone glows as he resurrects the words.

Later there is the story of the man we all know who climbed out the window and then, locked out, emerged from the fire escape into another room, padding past sleeping guests through to the hall, the elevator, security later arriving at his room to see him in his hotel robe, covered in fire escape grime and leaves, 'can't imagine who that could have been, don't you chaps havce decent security?'

At two we turn to pumpkins, sleepy hugs goodbye, sleeping on the short drive, leaving, having left.

Sugasm #92 (picked pic)

2007-08-27T22:30:00.000-06:00

Mon 13th Aug, 07

The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #93? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form.

This Week’s Picks
Do one thing every day that scares you…
“What I didn’t know-that it would turn me on as much as it hurt me.”

Interview With Deborah Jeane Palfrey, AKA The DC Madam
“I wanted to see coverage treating sex workers as just that-workers.”

Rough Sex - with pictures
“She bites, she writhes, she moans, she claws- none of which she can remember after.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
Keep Britain Tidy, Gimp

Editor’s Choice
In Her Mind, the Pigeons Were Always Fucking

More Sugasm
Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

Thoughts on Sex and Relationships
Bear
Homosexual myths
Sexual powerlessness
That Thorny Bisexual Thing….
Weird things happen every day

BDSM & Fetish
Asking For A Caning
Bully (working title)
The Challenge, part 1
Command
Every blog should have a slave…
Half-Nekkid Tattoo 2
Happy HNT - Tit flash in a boat
Heel!
Overpower, part 2
Request, granted

Sex Poetry
Heaven is a place
Tonight I’m going to
Vodka Confessions

Sex Audio & Podcasts
Musical Intro #2: sexual nostalgia (Mixed Media.)
Nobilis Erotica 29 — Someone New

Erotic Writing and Experiences
Catalina loves Penelope and Odysseus
Devil’s Last Dance (PJ story)
The Dream
Film
I’m A Woman Man: Episode 5 - Hands
The Most Famous Cock in the World
My slum goddess
Vignette: 3 #2

Sex News
The Birth of The Eye of Venus
Errotica archives
Which One of My subs Is This???

Sex Humor
Kink In The Mainstream - Family Guy In Texas

NSFW Pics, Videos & Audio
Black
Britney Caught topless with a Stranger in Hotel Pool
Half-Nekkid and Proud to Be Me
Half-Nekkid Thursday: Begging to Be Spanked
Red Handed Porn
Zurich (nsfw)

Sexy Mandy courtesy of How About Now?

Today I Am...

2007-08-24T00:41:00.000-06:00

1) Crushing hard on a Kiwi who plays the ukelele.

2) Bitter that I'm not better at my job.

3) In another time zone.

4) Out of love.

5) Totally thwarted in #1.

6) Wearing a totally ridiculous outfit...

7) ...that I am paid to wear.

8) (Not like that)

9) Alternately loving and hating my hair.

10) On the edge of tears.

11) Behind on a big project.

12) Transported by said Kiwi playing "Sweet Child Of Mine" on said ukelele

13) (Including the guitar riff)

14) to another girl.

15) (Context is important)

16) Contemplating starting a Facebook.

17) Definitely out of love

18) and calling on Beautiful Girl

19) to help me stick to #17.

20) Because if he puts his hand on the back of my neck, it's all over.

21) Craving Thai salad rolls

22) which will be made for me by a tiny Laotian woman

23) whom I think understands how much I love them.

Bulletin from the West

2007-08-18T17:01:00.001-06:00

Gentle Readers, I have not forgotten you...there is lack of privacy but many new adventures. Stay tuned...

New Blog Collection

2007-08-15T14:04:00.001-06:00

I've added a link at right to Eye of Venus, a new blog directory that seems to be pretty nifty - they are focusing on actual blogs (both literary and visual) instead of the psuedo-blog porn sites with all that crappy commercial content.

Check 'em out.

Tourism, Wrapping Up

2007-08-11T01:08:00.000-06:00

Part One is here.
Part Two is here.

Tourist, freed from his gentle bonds (just in case you need to know, even stockings loosely tied around wrists eventually start to hurt), goes down on me for...well...eternity. It’s actually about 45 minutes, during which I plan and furnish a Mandy Dream House in my head. Like a Barbie Dream House – cute well-endowed girl, no visible means of support, boyfriend who isn’t around a lot – only not pink and with a bathroom. Picturing a stone Japanese soaking tub on a slate floor with runnels between 12-inch square tiles so that the bath overflows on purpose and a separate shower with rain faucet and body spray jets makes me put a little more heart into my faux moans. I calculate: 4 hours down, only a few more to go... I don’t technically keep track of time, but he must depart by 8 as the business reception alibi-ing him will be done by then.

I’m still hoping that tease and denial will be enough, but we do end up adjourning to the bed. I spend a long time with oral, licking the head of his cock, sucking up and down the shaft, running my hands over his thighs, rubbing his cock on my breasts, every minute or so looking up and ordering him not to come. He has silent, shaking, come-less orgasms three or four times, each time is still not much less startling. This is a fetish slave – to what fetish, I don’t know yet – waiting to happen. It’s a damn shame this man is only at 50 discovering what he likes.

I suit him up and he asks for me on top. I’m able to come, which he likes, and it’s a midlevel orgasm, and I allow myself to be as vocally free as I can. Not the best ever, but again, Auntie Mame is in the house, apparently. I ask him to beg to come, and he does, very sweetly, so I let him know it’s ok to go ahead. Epilepsy’s got nothing on Tourist when he finally lets go. He nearly squirms out from under me while slamming his head repeatedly into the pillow.

There is a nap. Paid to sleep, that’s a new one…

There is one more go.

And then Tourist takes his leave. He ruefully refuses my panties, which might get him caught, and gives me a fat envelope. Over the course of 8 hours, this man has gone from “I have to be honest, when you told me your fee, I gasped” to “Is this enough?” From the hotel room window I watch him walk, still a little shaky, to his car, and then I count his money.

Not bad. A little boring, but not actively icky. Worth $2000? I’ll try to be...

Bits and Pieces

2007-08-09T23:14:00.000-06:00

...At Walmart, the cashier examines a box belonging (upon payment) to the young half-Asian man in front of me. “What is this?” she asks. He spends the next five minutes explaining, with my help, what couscous is and how one eats it. At least she’s curious enough to ask. I find it more astonishing that one can now purchase couscous in a box at Walmart...

...At a gas station, filled with bikers on their way to a rally – a lady in chaps and a black leather bikini with studs unconcernedly chats on her cell while male bikers snap her picture from behind. The fellow on the other side of the gas pump island is so riveted he overfills his tank, gas streaming down the sides of his new vintage-look Harley. Finally the shouts of the people at the other pump alert him. The puddle is four feet across. I pray no-one lights up a smoke...

...I recommend the video for Pink’s latest, U+URHand. I adore how it celebrates girls, role-playing and dressing up. When I was a dancer, I would have (perversely) used it as a song every set (I knew it was time to stop dancing when I kept using Phil Collins’ “I Don’t Care Anymore”)...

...I missed two days of posting (but not writing) due to two all-night drives (they don't have wireless at Customs), but I needed to get this one up, because I read my favorite blogs by clicking over from my links list, and I like to do this while in bed with Husband. (Open Relationship=Mostly OK; Rubbing His Nose In It=Not Cool). So I need to get the photos of me SUCKING SOMEONE ELSE’S COCK off the front page...