Adele - I Can't Make You Love Me (Live) Itunes Festival 2011 HD

Early reflections on NaNoWriMo

Day One! Actually will start writing at midnight, my witching hour, but will have to discipline myself to writing at 5 a.m. as it is the only time I have realistically in my life to work on it.

In one of the many tips I've been reading about writing, I keep seeing "don't forget to also make time to read". Which I find problematic for myself. When I write, I make very sure I do NOT read anyone's writing. My fear is that I will unwittingly and subconsciously begin to mimic that author's style or voice in my own writing. And one thing I've learned about the literary world, imitation is not sincerest flattery. A person can be accused of hack-writing or worse, plagiarism. So I avoid the whole trouble by putting my reading for pleasure on hold until whatever I am working on is finished. If afterward I still recognize some other admired author's voice I can say that I came by my influence honestly and change or edit if necessary.

Dredging up from the bottom of your being an original unique story, that is also universal (because all stories are human stories and therefore universal) is hard. It's all been done before, said before, and done better by better writers going back as far as the Greeks. This kind of thinking can stop a young amateur writer dead in her tracks and make you throw up your hands at the sheer futility of it all. Self doubt is self defeating. But the mantra of NaNoWriMo is "The World Needs Your Novel".  I have to remind myself of this as I struggle to bang out those 1700 words every day this November. And if not the world, then at the very least I need my novel. I need it out of me, out of my heart and soul and onto a page, in existence in some form outside of myself, if nothing else to remove the onerous weight on my existence. This novel is as much about me and my life as it will be about yours. The perspective is different, the experiences - some real and some fictionalized and fantastical - are also as much a part of me as it can be yours.

At least, that is my hope, and my drive.
Wish me luck! Wish me the ability to wake each morning at 5 a.m.! lol

Ranty rant... apropos of nothing really

I think my main issue with some poly people is that they think they are somehow a much more evolved sexual being than the rest of us mere monogamists, poor backward traditionalist-types,  unhappy face. They believe, and will tell you, ad naseum, that they have transcended the petty jealousy and illogical emotional responses to non-traditional relationships. they will quote at you the SCIENCE behind non-monogamy and how we have been tricked to accept patriarchy defined constructs of relationships. They not only have read ALL the literature regarding the subject, but LIVE it each and every single day. Their relationships are tight. Their communication skillz are so much better than my, yours or anyone else's communication skillz, yo.

To which I have only one response: Fuck you. 

If relationships were logical we’d all look like Mr. Spock. 

Excerpt

All she wanted to know with complete trust and absolute certainty was that, despite the terrible things she did to him, despite the tender atrocities he allowed her to inflict on his body and his spirit, that he still loved her, still desired her, still wanted to be with her. The truest definition of unconditional love she had never experienced.

She didn't want to explore how lustful he felt or how beautiful he thought he thought she was: those things were too facile, too trite. She wanted to examine how difficult it was, how filled with longing, pain, uncertainty and anguish but ultimately filled with peace and joy these moments between them could be. She wanted to test him, an irrational desire to see how far she could push him, or push him away. Would he stay? She was almost too afraid to find out. But the need to know, that certainty she craved, drove her.

"Come here Adam, " she whispered.

He left his place, seated on the floor by the bay window. He was watching the rain. He crawled on all fours toward her, head down and quickly yet smoothly as he had been taught. She watched the patterned muted light from the window cast shadows along the skin of his naked back, dappling on the muscles alive and moving. When he reached her he rubbed his face on her silk nylon sheathed crossed legs, without her permission, without asking. A small infraction this unexpected and ardent gesture of affection, it would serve to answer her questions today. He would have to be punished.

(c) 2015 from the forthcoming The Weft and the Weave

Beginning

"Do you trust me?" she asked. She paused, waiting, a heavy silence between them. The question was more than it seemed, carrying the weight of her life, and his; a burden almost too great for the four small words.

He thought for a long moment, she could see the workings of contemplation on his face, could swear she heard the grinding gears in his head as he imagined every possible reason, every pro and every con, every foreseeable circumstance to come that he would be called upon to trust her, and his reaction to her question every time.

Finally he answered: "I do". Simply, boldly, with a breathtaking strength punctuated with a heartbreaking meekness. He looked at her, into her eyes, waited.

She smiled, a bit forlornly. "You shouldn't." she replied.

(c) 2015 from the forthcoming The Weft and the Weave

So I've joined NaNoWriMo this year. Going to try and write 50,000 words towards my novel over the month of November, finally. Buddy me over at http://nanowrimo.org/participants/petitebete

Journal October 6, 2015

Perhaps I am just old fashioned.

I am theoretically and mentally perfectly fine and accepting , even an enthusiastic supporter and defender of the so-called poly amorous and ethically non-monogamous lifestyles. I understand it on a conceptual and empirical level, I know people who have made it work for them and I admire their openness and all the consistency of communication it takes to make the lifestyles work for them as well as it has.

However, on an emotional level, the level I unfortunately or fortunately seem to operate the most from, I don't think it's for me. I used to think it was and I did try, but I can feel it in my gut and in that bit of battered muscle in my chest above that I'm just not cut out for it.

I am a monogamist traditionalist romantic at heart, and this it seems is a state almost vilified in the circles I now inhabit and roam. The newest and most counter-culture kink is wanting to be with only one man for the rest of my life. Yes, I can almost hear you shudder at the thought.

For me, and only for me I am not casting any judgements on anyone, I cannot engage in the intimate act of sex if I do not have any tender feeling for the person opposite me. No, that's not entirely true, I can, physically, and I have in the past and may do so again some desperate and achingly lonely day in the future. But merely engaging in the physical act is just not enough for me, or it comes with such a heavy cost of feelings of guilt, shame and lowered self-esteem to make it a wholly unappealing prospect. Again, only for me. If you have found the magic button that allows you to have all the sex all the time without regrets or philosophic nostalgic pondering then you ride 'em cowgirl! I envy you.

I know I should more firmly embrace the hard won feminist liberties of being able to enjoy my body and have sex as easily, readily, and frequently as I so choose without succumbing to the cultural baggage of guilt or slut-shame or any of the myriad other ways I self -sabotage my post-coital high. But I can't. I do give it the good old college try though, engaging in casual and "friends with benefits"  type relationships, but in the end I cannot help but feel somehow cheated. It is as though I realize, sometimes too late, that men invariably consider me good enough to fuck but not good enough to date, or to spend time with, or share interests with or introduce to friends or in any other way get to know me beyond the bedroom's four walls. I am never good enough it seems. And all I ever wanted was to be good enough to someone, other than myself of course.

I will admit to a bit of false advertising, of caving to the inevitable truths of the experience of a 40 plus woman dating in our world today - the "wants to date but nothing serious" tag or the "exploring non-monogamy" buzzwords sprinkled throughout my dating profiles. Why? Because dating in your 40s is fucking hard. I am not the young pretty and pretty dependent arm candy the men my own age, post-marriage and/or post-divorce, seem to desire and chase in an effort to feel themselves needed again. I am not the "cougar" looking for young men that will come to me to learn tips and techniques to make their same-aged future girlfriends moan, or to exchange their sexual stamina and vigour for a monthly allowance and/or for me paying for everything because I am "mature, and have your shit together". It reeks of mothering far too much for my liking. So labeling myself, or perhaps mislabeling, as "open-minded" and other quaint and culturally up-to -the-moment euphemisms for being just "down to fuck" is my leverage in an ever shrinking and shark-infested dating pool.

What gives me pause and pain are the occasional men who, being on the same wavelength as I , tell me that although what we engage in is casual for the moment, they are not averse to it developing into, possibly someday maybe, a Relationship. The dangling carrot in front of this romantic's nose. The carrot that makes me decide against better judgement to sleep with someone on the first date, to open myself up and make myself vulnerable when I am usually, perhaps to my detriment but mostly for my protection, very guarded and very cautious. The carrot that whispers to me "Can't you just see yourself with him in 5 years? Can't you just imagine spending Christmas with him, being introduced to his family?" and, against all internal warning systems, I can imagine it and I do. Yet these same carrot-dangling men invariably have sex with me once or twice, three times if it's a slow week and they haven't plans on book-ending weekends, and then slowly, or abruptly, disappear. Ghosting, in the modern day parlance. I am left to wonder what did I do or say that was wrong? What about me wasn't good enough? I'll never know.

It's not the sex that I take issue with, not the casual usage of my body, time, talents or affections for his or our mutual pleasure and reward, it's the intimacy taken for granted. I can have and have had in the past the rutting, usually at the local sex club or swinger party where I didn't even ask the man's name, my focus being purely physical and immediate. But if you and I have had 4-hour long phone conversations, shared ideas and beliefs and stories and the small vulnerabilities of our lives, if we`ve not only had the great sex  (in my home! a rarity in itself) but felt comfortable enough to sleep together (snoring and all), and my god if I`ve gone so far as to make you dinner or breakfast the next morning, when you suddenly and inexplicably lose interest in even texting me hello in the following next few days, I have to wonder was it all worth it? Was sacrificing intimacy at the altar of sex just for the chance of companionship worth it?

I am beginning to think it is not. I am beginning to think that I would much rather be alone and not risk my heart anymore and not risk repeatedly being made to feel, through omission or deed, that I am for whatever reason I cannot fathom (and I can fathom oh so many) not enough.

The desire to dominate

I want to see how far I can push myself and my capability to inflict pain. I want to see how far I can push my sub, how far he will let me go, how far he will trust me. Because trust is a frightening thing to me, it is so foreign. I trust no one. I want to look at trust and examine it up close and in its most extreme representation.

I think it is emotional intensity, intimacy and pure love hyper-condensed into a session or scene. What it takes most a lifetime to discover about themselves and their partner, a lifetime if at all to feel and reveal about ourselves, happens in a few hours for us.

I want again that out-of-body experience, the mild fugue state that I felt the first time I whipped someone. It is delirious intoxication, the mix of power, sexual stimulation, and psychic release. To feel the dissipation of a lifetime of moral code imbedded in me evaporating off my skin. To be all instinct, no clear or rational thought, no guilt; giving way to only endorphins and emotions. I want to be the cause of someone’s pain and sexual gratification, irrevocably twisted and twined together, and of their freedom. To be breathlessly thanked for helping this person on their silken path to transcendence.

I want to be the reason a sub cries, or cries out. To make tears fall then lick them off the face, the sweet salt sting on my tongue, and then to comfort. To feel the strange combination of extreme revulsion at the sub’s weakness and the absolute tenderness of affection in that moment for this human crumbled at my feet. To destroy him utterly, then carefully and lovingly put him back together again. To be that necessary, that needed, like air which we do not notice until it is gone. To cause the suffering, then remove it, assuage and comfort, then give him great pleasure. Because despite my ability to demonstrate extreme cruelty I am also capable of extreme tenderness. That is the dichotomy I live.

Because I love this person I will give him his fondest wish, his deepest darkest most unspeakable desire. Because I love this person nothing he desires is strange or abhorrent to me. And because he is willing to suffer for all this makes him beautiful to me. Because I love him I want to own him, to be mine and mine alone, and give him all my attention, all my effort, all my care.

I want to be the only one who makes him scream, cry, cum. I want him to close his eyes and see my face, feel and smell my skin. Whenever you feel arousal it should be because of me. Whenever you feel pain it should be because of me. When you cum it should be because of me. I want to be the only one that twists together your pain and your pleasure, woven and knotted together.

But you must first earn it. You must prove yourself and be made worthy. Is my great love not worth a little suffering, a little pain?

The Argentine

Erotica (c)2010

“The one who loves you will make you weep.” – Argentine Proverb

The rope is soft and though it is tight it does not cut my skin. I can feel the blood pounding in my fingertips; it’s rhythm like a metronome as the seconds tick by. The knots are firm and true; I imagine they were learned in your years on the ranches on the Pampas herding cattle. I won’t test their strength, I trust them. My bound hands lie palm-side up casually across my bare back as I am curled on the floor into what my yoga teacher would call Child’s Pose. My forehead rests on the carpet, its hand-knotted pattern easing a tattoo impression on the skin there and on my knees. My breathing is slow, trance-like, the barest filling and emptying of lungs. I can smell the dry wool of the carpet, the years of dirt imbedded there. I hear your steps coming closer walking across the hardwood floor and I shut my eyes tightly. I breathe in your scent, a mix of chicory-heavy coffee, your beloved Palomino and your favourite cigars.

I feel you walk behind me and gently readjust my hips, lightly pressing warm fingers to skin to lift and angle them higher. I silently chastise myself for not automatically positioning myself this way, but how could I have known? Still, I relish the brief touch, the tiniest tenderness. You ease the tip of your black leather Italian-made shoes between my knees signaling me to space them wider, wider still. And though the muscles in my thighs begin to burn in this uncomfortable stance, the dull ache is forgotten when I feel the smooth leather of your shoe caress my inner thighs. Satisfied with the position I am now in you move away, displaced by air and emptiness.

A cool draught in the room licks at the growing humidity between my legs. It makes me shiver. Absentmindedly I hope I do not wet your expensive Persian carpet. I hear the muffled click of a latch on a case opening. Somewhere, perhaps in another room, perhaps for other ears, Debussy’s Clair de Lune plays. You click the case closed and step back to me kneeled and curled in the centre of the room. Silent as nightfall I feel you standing near me, looking at me, observing; I can feel a slight shimmer of heat coming from your body. You stand so quiet and motionless, the calm centre of this tempest in which I have placed myself.

You touch my shoulder with the tip of your riding crop, the one your father gave to you after you had successfully broken your first wild horse at the age of fourteen. It is old yet sturdy, the leather tip soft as a smooth fingertip travelling my skin. Down to lower back, across my arms twined there, to the trembling curve of my hip. The expectation is almost more painful than the blow. Almost.

I hear the sharp slap a second before I feel the sting. The suddenness forces the breath out of me in a rushing gasping exhale. I barely have time to register the sensation, quantify it and record it in memory when it is followed by another, then another and more in quick and fluid succession. My body jolts with every strike. My forehead rubbed raw, chaffing against the textured carpet. The skin on my buttocks and thighs is alight, and I am trembling uncontrollably; mewling, moaning and undulating like a cat in heat or a felled jaguar dying in the rainforest. I have forgotten my language and can merely grunt and gasp softly. I wouldn’t know how to beg for reprieve in Spanish even if I wanted it.

I realize the taste of blood in my mouth and believe I have bitten through my lip. The blows continue in staccato, measured and precise, yet I am unable to predict neither their intensity nor their placement on my body. Far, far away Clair de Lune continues softly, gently. When my tears come and my breathing is ragged and burning in my throat, you stop. My entire body trembles like little earthquakes. My tears puddle on the carpet beneath my face. Through the haze I can feel your deft fingers untying the rope around my wrists, the knots unfurling and sliding easy as whispers. My hands slide and fall limply to the floor on either side of me, nearly numb and useless. Yet it is when I try to raise myself, to make the small movements to get up, that you grasp my hips from behind and plunge into me, grinding your still-trousered thighs against my red and tender ones. I know you want me to scream, to cry out, but I have no sounds left, no protestations; this last cruelty seems the natural end to my torment this night. Each thrust reminds me where I am marked by you and I welcome it, savour it like remembered sweetness. For this how I know you love me, reaching down and slipping down into the dark with me.

After you cum, you pull down a rough saddle blanket from the nearby couch and wrap me in it, tenderly tucking the fabric around me, the prickling wool around my chin. You lay next to me on the carpet, holding me, your fingers brush away the last vestiges of tears from my face. “Querida,” you say, your first words to me all evening. “Muy buen.” You lightly kiss my eyelids, I feel your smile stretch against my cheek and I know you are pleased.

Watching You

(C)2014

The first time I saw her I was absentmindedly staring out my office window trying and failing to pay attention to the conference call from Chicago. I caught a glimpse of her in the office window across the street, walking across the room and untying the black trench coat slowly with every step, letting it slip to the floor once she reached the desk. Even at a distance I could tell she was beautiful, exotic, and her body in the black lace lingerie she was wearing underneath the discarded coat was amazing; perfect full breasts, soft curves and valleys. I was instantly hard. I got up from my desk and went to my window hoping to get a better look. After all, this sort of thing doesn't happen everyday and I had a perfect view. I saw her approach the window behind the guy at the desk and slowly close the blinds, but not before she noticed me staring and, I could have sworn, smiled at me.

"Jack? Jack you there?" I distantly heard the nasally voice of my VP on the phone from Chicago through the thudding in my head. Shit, what the hell was he talking about?

"Yeah, yeah I'm just looking for some paperwork on that, umm...thing." I shuffled some papers while my mind raced to remember what we were discussing, but I couldn't get the image of that woman out of mind. And that delicious smile just before she shut the blinds. That lucky bastard, I though, wish I was there instead of here.

I thought about her on and off for the rest of the week, imagining what happened after she shut the blinds. I imagined how she kissed him and how she tasted, how she touched him; wondering if she knelt before him and took him into her soft wet mouth. Every night when I got home after work I was always so hard I had to jerk off a couple of times before being able to sleep. And yet I still dreamed about her; those eyes, that mouth, dreamt of her coming to my office in the middle of the day, touching me, licking me...she was a ghost I looked forward to being haunted by every night.

A few weeks passed before I saw her in the other man's office again. I quickly called my secretary and told her to hold all my calls and that I didn't want to be disturbed. I went to the window and watched, hoping against logic that maybe this time she would forget to close the blinds. As she crossed the room to approach his desk she untied the belt on her trench coat and let it fall to the floor. This time she was wearing a soft baby pink bra and panties with pale pink stockings trimmed with large black bows at the tops of the thighs, like a present I wanted to tear into. She stood before the man, casually resting her weight on one leg while her hand trailed up her thigh, tracing the edge of the panties at her hip, then across her stomach and softly slowly tracing the skin between her breasts. I was breathing heavy and my cock was straining against my pants. Meanwhile the man just sat there. How could he just sit there?! If it were me I would have grabbed her and thrown her across the desk by now, I thought to myself. She crossed behind his chair toward the window and I realized with a dull ache of disappointment in my chest that she was going to close the blinds.

But she didn't.

She looked at me across the way and smiled slyly then cocked her head to the side as if to say "you like to watch?" I nodded and rubbed the bulging crotch of my pants, not caring if anyone was watching me watching her. She walked back in front of the man in the chair, keeping her eyes locked on mine for a few seconds before grasping the man's head with both hands and bending down to kiss him deeply. His hands grasped at and squeezed her breasts, then wrapped around her waist and down her lower back, grabbing a squeezing her firm round ass, pressing her pelvis down toward his lap. I was in hell, wanting her in my lap, the jealously ripping through me at the same time as the uncontrollable desire to keep watching her with the other man. She straddled his lap and began swirling her hips, grinding on him, brushing her breasts against his chest, the tops of her breasts across his face, and he buried his mouth in the pink flesh, licking and biting gently. When he started to undo the clasp of her bra, she twisted her head my way and smiled again, licked her lips, winked and blew me a kiss. God, I thought, I have to meet this woman.

Just then the man noticed the blinds were not closed and made a move to close them. I quickly swiveled in my chair turning my back to the window as though I had been sitting that way all along, hoping he hadn't seen me. After a few moments had passed I turned my head and sure enough the blinds were now securely shut. Cursing the bastard in the other office I grabbed some tissues and finished myself off under my desk so that I could finally get some work done. But I resolved to find out where the bastard worked and to steal that woman for myself someday.

I took the next day off work and camped out most of the early morning in the lobby of the building across the street. Peering from behind a newspaper I watched countless people come in until I finally saw him. Keeping a safe distance in case he recognized me as well I followed him up in the elevator and made a mental note of the floor number he pressed and pressed the floor number just above his. When he got out I cautiously peered out after him heard him greet the receptionist and heard her say "good morning Mr. Parkman" before the elevator doors shut. Parkman. I rode the elevator all the way up and back down to the lobby again. I pieced together a plausible story to use when I would finally go to his office, a reason at the very least to be waiting outside his office, waiting for her to come out the next time she visited him.

Agonizing weeks passed, weeks of watching Parkman's office everyday like a starving hawk, hoping she would come. Finally on a crisp autumn morning I saw his office door open and she was standing there wearing the coat, some knee-length black leather heeled boots and matching leather gloves. I grabbed my jacket and bolted out of my office blurting something about an emergency to my secretary, and ran for the elevator. I sprinted across the street and took the elevator up to Parkman's floor. I tried to slow my breathing on the ride up and to remember the story I had come up with to tell Parkman's secretary. I realized though that I hadn't thought of what I was going to say to the woman when she left Parkman's office, all I could think about was what she may have been doing right at that moment.

To my surprise Parkman's secretary was not at her desk. I crept across the floor to plant my ear on Parkman's door. Sure enough I could hear very faintly the sounds of masculine moans and feminine whimpers of pleasure. I tried to keep an eye on the hallways to see if Parkman's secretary would return while straining to listen for more. But the secretary never came. Smart girl, she knew the drill. Inside the office I heard, finally, the climaxing Parkman and the sigh of the woman. I wished more then anything I had ever wished for in my life to be Parkman right at that moment. I then heard shuffling and some incoherent talking, but just before I left my place at the door I heard Parkman ask her plaintively "When will I see you again?"

She merely replied: "Soon, baby. Soon."

The words hung in the air like a promise or a threat. For what was 'soon'? A week? A month? My gut wrenched at the idea that I wouldn't see her again for yet another few weeks or even months. I had to make my move now. When I heard her approach the door saying her goodbyes I scrambled to the seating area and sat in the chair furthest from the door, pretending to be engrossed in an article in some year-old corporate magazine. As she emerged alone (Parkman couldn't even be bothered to walk her out, the ass) and walked past me I could smell her, the sweet smoky scent, an intoxication mixture of sex, sweat and vanilla. And then she stopped and turned right in front of me.

"Hello," she purred and smiled that wicked knowing grin I had been dreaming about for weeks. She knew perfectly well who I was and what I was doing there.

"Hello," I finally managed to stutter.

"So we should go get a coffee and have a chat, yes?" she said and winked.

Her voice was like honey and whiskey, wrapping me in sweet burning warmth. I was dumbfounded. Was it really going to be this easy? Was my ghost finally going become warm quivering flesh in my arms? She held out her hand, the fingertips painted the same pink shade as her lingerie she wore the last time I saw her through the window, waiting for my handshake. I took her hand, got up and followed her. I would have followed her anywhere.

We were alone on the elevator ride down and she took advantage of this to press herself against me, sighing. I was getting drunk on her smell and pressing myself back on her. I wanted to tear the coat off her right there, pick her up and wrap her legs around me, but could only rub her back discretely. In a small movement she brushed her hand against my crotch, lingered there, and rubbed my hard-on gingerly, driving me crazy. She tilted her heart-shaped face up towards mine and not so much kissed me as stole a breath from me, lips just barely touching mine, her warm peppermint-flavored breath lingering on my lips. The elevator doors opened and, dazed, I stumbled after her as her heels clicked across the marble tiles of the lobby floor and out the door into the cool autumn afternoon.

I took her to lunch at the best restaurant in the neighborhood. She ate her angel-hair pasta and scallops heartily; I suppose she had worked up an appetite that morning after all. I loved watching her twirl her pasta like a born and bred Italian and wrap her pink lips and tongue around every forkful, licking sauce from her lips and savoring it all, gulping rich mouthfuls of red wine. Knowing that under her trench coat (that she firmly refused to give over to both the confused coat-check girl and waiter when she sat down) she was most likely wearing the loveliest laciest lingerie, or possibly nothing at all, kept me from eating. I couldn't concentrate on anything but watching her and hoping for a glimpse of whatever was beneath her coat. After lunch we stepped outside and I handed her my business card, after scrawling my home number and address on the back. She smiled as she took the card from me, slipped it into her pocket, stood up on her toes and kissed me pertly. She waved down a cab but before she got in I asked when I would see her again.

"Soon baby. Soon." She replied and the cab drove off down the busy street.

I never know when she will appear at my office door. Sometimes a whole month goes by and I can sense a dull ache growing in me as the days pass. I drive myself crazy wondering if she visits other offices, fucks other men with the blinds purposely left open, inviting. And just as I am near a crazed jealous rage she appears in my doorway wearing her trench coat and a smile that speaks more than we ever do. She wears new lingerie every time, sometimes something sweet and demure in white or pink or pale blue with lace or frothy chiffon. Sometimes she wears something black or red or purple in leather with straps, buckles and studs that poke and pierce me, not unpleasantly, when we fuck. I drink her smell, lick her skin, grasp at her body and mold her curves with my hands, coax the wetness between her legs with frenzied fingers, moves that leave us gasping and spent, moments that seem to last a lifetime but somehow take less time than my secretary's lunch break. Sometimes she just slips in while I am on the phone, slips off the trench coat, kneels down in front of me and takes me into her mouth. Of course she always closes the blinds.

Erotica (C)2014

I'm reading back all my introductory sent messages on dating sites I belong to, crafted and finely honed initial messages to men I found interesting or cute enough to contact. Normally I play coy and wait for them to notice I noticed them and wait for their message to me. But to be more proactive I read their profiles and glean something, some kernel of fun or funny or interesting information with which to contact them. My messages remain largely unread or not responded to, and I realize now in hindsight they read like bad comedy bits...

"Sorry I totally misread your profile and thought you had said "mud wrestling in Germany" and not Mud Wrestling and Germany as interests. I started to wonder if that was really a thing, and if it coincides with Oktoberfest, and then I wondered how much plane tickets to Germany are these days..."

"I liked your pictures, well everyone except the one with you and the snake. A pet? Though I'm sure I'll eventually learn to love your snake. Wait are we still talking about the reptile?"

"Sounds like you are looking for a Bonnie to your Clyde, or a Jeckyl to your Hyde."

"I know that place you mentioned in your profile! Wanda's Pie in the Sky! sorry I get excited about pie."

"I don't think occasionally eating chicken kabobs makes you a bad vegetarian. But from now on when eating anything I enjoy I am going to say I ate with "joyous carnal abandon" in honour of you, it's my new favourite thing to say so thank you."


This was a sampling of messages I've sent only in this past week.

Oh god. I'm going to be alone forever.

MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS | "I'M A RUIN" OFFICIAL VIDEO

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Brand


(c) 2015

"What are you doing down there?" I asked aloud in the eerie stillness of the room. We lay across the bed like discarded dolls after some little girl had finished undressing us and playing, all disjointed limbs, shallow breathing, spent. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon near the end of summer, and a persistent rain hissed just beyond the large bay window of my apartment. His head was between my legs and I toyed with and wrapped my fingers in his jet-black hair. I loved touching his hair, it reminded me of the soft feathery breasts of doves, a ruffle causing a cascading shudder.

He raised his head to look up at me, grinning. "I'm picking a spot." He replied, and lowered his head again to continue his task of kissing, biting and licking my inner thigh, pausing only occasionally in his endeavour to wipe at my increasing wetness with a quick darting tongue.

"What spot?" I asked between gasps.

"The spot for the tattoo," came his reply, muffled against the soft flesh around my hipbone.

I jerked myself upright suddenly, staring at him with wide unbelieving eyes. I wanted to pull the sheets up around me, to protect myself, but realized we had long discarded them to the floor.

"Don't worry," he murmured soothingly as he crawled up towards me, "it will be very small, just our initials twisted together in thorns, and it will be somewhere no one will ever see it. Except for me." His blue eyes locked on mine, I felt like he had me under a spell, and his words started to make such perfect beautiful sense. Of course, logically, a tattoo.

"Why?" I managed to ask meekly, my resistance slipping away like steam rising from my skin. "Because," he breathed against the shivering skin between my breasts, "I want to mark you. I want to think of you with that little sign on the most secret part of you, and be the only one who knows it's there, and why it's there." Again he lifted his face to mine and stared into my eyes. His crystalline eyes that always made me thirsty because they always reminded me of ice. I could barely breathe. "And," he said as he continued to dig into my mind through my eyes, slicing his way with those shards of ice, "I want to be able to put my hands on your legs...like this...force open your thighs...like this, and find it there. My brand. A little piece of me on the most delicious and tender part of you...forever." And saying so, he once again laid his head between my thighs, now trembling beyond control, and dropped a soft and gentle kiss on the spot he had at last chosen.

That night as I lay tightly wrapped in his arms, the whir of the fan droning and lulling me to sleep, I dreamt again of our first meeting. I was riding in the elevator of my building up from the underground parking garage to the thirtieth floor to my office early that morning hoping to avoid the crowds of the nine a.m. rush. I was mentally reviewing my to-do list and considering inviting one of the accountants in on the teleconference I had scheduled for later that afternoon. He slipped into the elevator almost unnoticed d on the third floor and punched the button for the twenty-fifth. His heavily tattooed arm as he reached for the elevator console distracted me from the swirling hurricane in my head. I couldn't help myself. I stared uncontrollably at the figures on his arm, my gaze traveling up his arm and across the sculpted expanse of muscle of his shoulder impressing itself under his t-shirt. My gaze rested on the Chinese character on his neck, wondering what it meant, wondering what it had felt like when he got it done, what it tasted like, this permanent ink on the soft skin, the vein gently thrumming just beneath it. "It means Warrior," he had said, seeming to read my mind, but he had noticed I was staring. I remember I blushed furiously, caught. "It's lovely...I was curious..." I stammered, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to stare." I felt the burning flush traveling from my breastbone to hairline. "It's alright," he assured me, smiling warmly, expansively. "People are always curious." I remember I had smiled back. "I've always wanted one, but never went through with it." I volunteered, laughing nervously. I glanced at his other markings, whatever I could see on any exposed skin not covered by his tight grey t-shirt. He had a moon and stars, dice and gothic lettering I could not quite read on his left forearm and a woman's beautiful face on his right arm. Above the face the edges of a Maori tribal design peeked out from just under the edge of the sleeve of his shirt. I was overcome with the sudden impulse to trace the design and before I knew it I was, my finger lightly tracing the dark black ink, pushing under the sleeve to reach for more as if in a daze. And then he looked at me with the bluest clearest eyes I had ever seen and seemed to smile with only half his mouth, the other half in a lascivious sneer. I woke from that memory dream several times, and each time went back to it when I was able finally to fall back to sleep.

The next evening after I finished work we walked in measured silence from the bright steel and glass of the office buildings I knew to the dark and crumbling part of the city I knew about but had never seen, nor ever before had reason to see. It made me sad, and a bit fearful, seeing the graffiti, the hopeless faces, the stench of desperation in the area of the city where people came to get lost in anonymity, to stain themselves with spreading darkening designs as beautiful and gruesome as the ink on the walls of the abandoned and derelict storefronts. By the time we reached his shop, it was dark and late; he unlocked the bolted door with a hard sound like a muffled gunshot and I nearly jumped. He pressed his hand to the curve of my back to gently guide me inside, and once inside he flicked on the switch to the lights that flooded the room in almost painful fluorescent brightness. Every square inch of the walls bore the elaborate draughtsmanship of his trade. As I walked further into the shop I stared at the pictures, both tiny and intricate and massive and garish, while he sat at a small desk and sketched his idea for my mark on a piece of transfer paper. Once he was satisfied with his design he instructed me to sit into what looked like an antique dentist's chair with stirrups swung out on the sides, to slide my Laboutin-heeled shoes into the stirrups and to spread my legs. He picked up and placed the desk chair on the floor in the space between my legs and settled himself in.

"I'm afraid." I whispered. I don't where my voice came from, it's hoarse and breathless sound was surprising to me, as if someone else had said the words, but he smiled up at me tenderly.

"I promise it won't hurt...much." He joked. But seeing the real terror in my face he made me an offer. "What if I blindfold you? You won't expect the pain, which in itself is half the pain, really?" Before I could rationalize his words, he pulled and tied a bandana across my eyes, plunging me into suspenseful darkness.

I strained to hear every single sound. I heard the slight tinker of stainless steel tools as he calibrated his instruments, the crinkle of plastic wrap as he opened packages of sterilized needles. I heard him hum softly along with the music he had selected playing in the background, Nine Inch Nails, his favourite. I winced at the jarring scrape of his steel chair on the ancient floor and nearly jumped at the sudden insect-like whir of the start of the tattooing machine.

"Ready?" he asked, and I could feel the breath that carried the word softly against the skin of my thigh. I swallowed dryly and nodded. He dropped one last kiss on my inside of my knee and placed the vibrating needle to my skin.

I jerked a bit at the initial touch, so foreign, yet strangely familiar. It felt at times like the soft caress of a butterfly wing, and other times like the sharp sting of an angry and vengeful wasp. He frequently wiped at the etching with a cloth or paper towel, then immediately rubbed something slick I believed to be lotion or petroleum jelly before applying the needle again and again. As the time passed, the real pain came from the uncomfortable position I was in more than the actual tattooing. I tried to shift slightly to reposition myself and ease the ache in my extended hips, and I heard him click his tongue in impatient irritation.

"Stop that," he scolded me, "or else." I felt a hot creeping embarrassment at being scolded like an errant child. But something in that moment made me also feel brazen; whether it was the tone he used with me, as though I were little girl, or the transgression of getting a tattoo to begin with, or the semi-lewd position I was in, or even the idea that we were essentially alone and no one would be able to hear us, but I mustered a touch of rebellious courage and asked quite flirtatiously: "Or else what?"

I heard him click off the machine and push his chair away in an irritating screech. In my blindfolded darkness, I struggled to place him in the room based solely on sound, but I heard nothing. Minutes passed and I started to feel an icy finger of terror along my spine. Then I heard footsteps, and the rooting through a desk drawer. It never occurred to me to remove the blindfold, my hand were not tied to the goddamn chair after all. I felt rather than heard him return to his place, and I was quietly relieved. "You are being very unfocussed here, I'll have to help you with that," he said and I felt him pull at the crotch of my panties and cut through them with, I realized, the scissor he had found in the desk. He then turned the machine back on again and continued to work on the tattoo.

I desperately tried to remember if there was a window facing onto the street from where I was sitting. I felt a crimson flush of humiliation creep along my body, emanating from between my legs right up to my tingling scalp. I could feel the occasional brush of his arm against my pubic hair, or his breath cooling a patch of warm wet skin. I struggled to even out my ragged breathing, but the combination of arousal and indignation made me gasp for air. And tremble. "Please stop shaking," he said casually, almost clinically. I whimpered softly and bit my lip. Waves of shame and excitement stung stronger than the mechanized pin-pricking ever could. He shut off the machine again, and I waited, agitated, wet and pulsing. I felt him gently trace over his work with one finger, slowly, caressing the new scar sensually. I heard a plastic crinkle, and the stripping of tape, then felt a bandage placed over the area still freshly burning. "There," his voice wavered somewhere above me, "not so bad, was it?"

I raised my hands to my face to remove the blindfold, but before I could answer he suddenly grasped my wrists and wrenched them above my head with one hand then pushed his other hand deep into me. The sudden violent motion made me want to scream, but he silenced me with his crushing mouth and tongue. I tried to move my mouth away from his, to try to scream, but he kept the pressure on my mouth, teeth and tongue holding mine in a vice-like grip. I felt his fingers enter me, tearing in, relentless and frenzied. I could feel the rough fabric of his jeans against my thigh, the pressure and scrape agonizing against the fresh scar of the tattoo. I couldn't decide which was worse: the pain of the inflamed and stinging wound or the pain of his fingers pushing mercilessly into me. He pushed two fingers, then three, and when I thought he could not do any worse, he slipped all his fingers in, and his thumb circled and rubbed at my clitoris. But it was too painful to be pleasurable, too raw, brutal. I was in pain, my body fighting against the intrusion, and I was terrified of this sudden unforeseen cruelty. My tears soaked the blindfold, cheeks no doubt as wet as his fingers.

Suddenly I was sickened by a thought: what if it wasn't him? The roughness of the touch, the brutality of the kiss was so foreign. I wanted to scream, but the tongue in my mouth was gagging me, stealing my breath. Was he capable of such a thing, to switch with another tattooist, to watch from the sidelines, detached, unfeeling? I struggled to remember the telltale signs that would assure me this man forcing his way into me was my lover...but realized I knew so little of him, so short was our relationship thus far that I had not yet memorized his scent, his taste or his touch that could have easily identified him to me, even in the dark, even in the unlikeliest situation. I could only lay pinned and stretched, in a cold sweat, horrified.

The hand that pinned me by the wrists slowly moved down my arm and toward my face, fingertips rubbing the planes and contours like a blind man trying to recognize me, the other hand still plummeting and sliding in and out of me. He lifted his mouth and sighed deeply, and I gasped a ragged desperate breath. I started to collect my senses and breathe more evenly, preparing to scream even though I knew no one would hear me and, worse still, no one would care. He removed the blindfold in a single quick movement. I screwed shut my eyes, I didn't want my worst fears confirmed, but then his familiar voice whispered in my ear "Open your eyes, baby. Open them."

I let out a strangled sob when I saw those perfect blue eyes above me. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry though I felt the hot tears seep and fall from my eyes down my temples and wet my hair. His fingers slowed their movement, to a more gentle and purposed slither, and he licked at the tears on my face. I could feel myself ease, opening for him, breath and heart quickening. I dug my fingers through his hair and scraped at his scalp and finally climaxed, shuddering against him. Once my body had stilled, once my eyes had adjusted to the unforgiving light and I knew it was only he and I and the four ink-stained brick walls, I gently pushed at his chest and made a motion to get up. But when he helped me to my unsteady feet, I managed to whisper levelly in the coldest, hardest voice I had ever heard of myself: "Never do that again."

In the following weeks once the bandage came off, he would bathe the area and apply the lotion to heal the inevitable scarring and sloughing off of skin. The familiar gentleness had returned, but I could always feel the savagery just under the surface, a quieted gnawing and clawing to come out. He spoke softly to me, fed me and dressed me, applied the healing salve to the tattoo every morning before I left for work and every evening before we went to bed. What had I become? His possession? His property? The mark so hidden that even I occasionally forgot about its existence, had conferred on him some kind of ownership of me, not just of my body which already and not reluctantly was more than his. Sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night to the sensation of soft furling, a tiny licking at that mark on my inner thigh. I would wake to discover him there, lips and tongue pressed to the eternal brand, barely whispering over and over, "Mine....Mine...Mine."

(c) 2015

This DVD is waiting for me at home. Can hardly wait.

Note to Self When Viewing Any Article about Body Positivity on Yahoo News:

Never never never read the comments.Form your own opinion on the article and be done. Remember these trolls commenting have nothing better to do with their little lives than sit in their mother's basements in their Cheeto-stained Spiderman underroos using the internet their parents pay for to try and watch free porn clips and/or feel like they matter in the small universe of the Internet. Why waste your time reading whatever their opinion is? It is always awful, always misinformed and without fail always grossly misspelled.