The Floor. And What Now?

When I have nothing left in life, which happens every few years or so, revolution cycle occluded from my conscious periphery but ever in place, I walk.

I walk out of my way to pass the time and accumulate sun milk and asphalt pheromones and salute the neighborhood cats, just so I can stimulate the melatonin nestled in the nether folds of my brains, so I can sleep through the night.

A good night's sleep gives me the strength to try and tie again all the tiny, frayed strings that make up the foundation of a life livable. The strings meet in fragile knots that titter under the weight of EXPERIENCE.

It's been a long time since I've walked. Like, really walked. Like, walked to the precipice and stuck a nostril over and took a hard whiff. Every time I wandered out too far these last few months, my (now former) boyfriend would call me back. His deep, backthroat notes cut through the smog and to create an aural trail for me to retrace. Love is a ground, only when you look too close, you see the tiny threads it's thatched from.

Similarly, I haven't written in a long while, though I also write more than ever. As a reporter, I think in pricks and jabs – one sentence paragraphs trimmed of any winter weight. My words don't walk any more, they are hurled from one place to the next.

Hopefully, in the absence of a floor (love), I can learn to walk for length again. And my words can learn to wade. 

Or: per - I - pat(h)etic. 

  

Some Visiting Thoughts

Some visiting thoughts, slid off the brow. Autumn has come on -- I can hear the weary steps, echoing in sighs. Just sleep, sweet lids, let the Santa Anas sing you an arid lullaby.

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

It's just that funny way, when habit comes to preside wholly, laterally.

I've been lying down a long time now, watching the sun set through the window slats.

The world slides out like a silk sheet: royal purple and clotted brown, or something.

Sometimes I think about climbing to the top, collecting the material in a bundle under my arms,

Standing with chin up and chest out and a bundle of dust: the world.

But I open my eyes and it's morning and my morning is 2pm and that means my eyes close again.

I think: is love only a wool blanket? Is life only love?

When I stand up to consider this, the world goes fuzzy and gray.

My mind is fighting de-lateralization.

My sentences are fighting paragraph structures.

They all try to clamor for the punch. They all stride like tiny, proud swords.

I try to gather them in my arm and my bundle breaks loose, dust flowing windwards: the world gone west.

***

Now money comes in.

I write words and a man puts a check on my desk.

He places the paper invoice on my desk upside down so no one can see how many numbers are there.

Sufficient ones, I suppose. I don't really look.

Money subsists on time, I know clearly now. It must be fed like any other organism.

I am less free, which means I have to think less, which means I'm ultimately more content.

Thought feeds on uncertainty, skepticism.

Throw thought and money in the same cage and they will both die of starvation, unable to help one another.

***

Isabella was in the habit of wearing yellow.

At present, she wore her yellow in the kitchen, marble tops beaming at her beauty.

Her facial muscles taut, she looked down to consider her fingers.

The nails were painted the faintest shade of pink.

“Hmmm..” she said.

Everything was in place, like it would last that way for infinity to come.

Her black curls wound around her ears, whispering reassurances.

“You're beautiful,” the biggest ringlet said.

“Yessss, and pert as a bird!” Another added.

A small window gave guise to a small plot of grass, green as day.

As if enchanted, a white bunny hopped by. Clouds streaked slowly across the landscape.

The world had become a snow globe, protected by a thick layer of lucite.

Isabella opened a drawer and took out her pair of stainless steel kitchen scissors.

She slid her slight fingers into her black mass of curls and cut,

Shedding black snow across the marble table top.

We live our life as a one act,

Always the same backdrop,

Cardboard cutout trees and the like.

Well, it's our life and our love, ever fragile, lingers,

Like a styrofoam bird,

Perched on the rafters,

Chirping toxic sing-a-longs,

The audience sits rapt,

Transfixed by the anomaly, the unlikeliness, the absurdity,

“He with...?”

“And her... She...?

They paddle out phrases, ducks in a pond.

And we lay, still as landscapes.

Twisting out shirt tails around our fingers,

Letting our mind roll into knots.   

Poems From Uncomfortable Days

These poems are from the back-hands of days gone and good riddance. Let them steep, without names, in this inky landfill.

((It's just that gutless pang when love comes to visit

That feeling of petals and crocodile skin

When love stoops to whisper

That everything before was a whisper

That all those tender looks before were just the breath between scenes

“Look up,” it exhales into your ears.

Love is really a creeping thing

Moss behind the tree trunk's face

Shading shade like a mother's thigh

Pouring oil into a rosemary salve

Pouring oil across a bare chest

It isn't bricks or a scale off a butterfly's wing

It's a sticky flame that laps behind your lids

While you sleep and think of other things

Look up, and do it truly

To a different kind of condensation

Breathing through your heart)))

= = =

You can't hide in that flesh

Its moldy surface will give way

To the soft Kleenex underneath

It also happens to be my flesh.

Yes, that dirty old bath mat.

That threadbare, musty rug of skin

Can't wear it out,

Because, be honest --

What will the neighbors think?

Little white soft spots give way to bigger tears

Tears that turn to black, fuzzy tears.

Yes, you've tasted them.

On expired English muffins,

Between gymsweated toes.

And, yes, ever in circles on my back.

Growing outward to cave in.

That seems to be the typical pattern of decay:

False linear progression –

An up, up and away type of excitement,

Followed by a hollow inversion,

Feet above nose

Nose above God.

It's just a funny sort of cartwheel.

You must have seen time lapse videos

Of a deer or zebra carcass being consumed by bugs,

Insects and parasites and friends of sorts.

How the abdomen expands

Until it bursts in crescendo

Typical to the symphony at hand.

My deep red cherries,

Molded from without

My cherries,

Breathing plastic

Warm screams

Did you look though?

At all the papers

On the ground

Molded too

Wild memories

Strewn about

Photos and notebooks

Wild abandon

Leering

The past that forgets the past is happy

Or damned

Or nothing

Because the past dreams too

Of the days between

Of dust on the window sill

Of the time when you were very small

And action potential radiated from your fingers

There aren't any people anymore

There are only ways to avoid them

Back alleys and cherry pits

I have no direction anymore

I let the wind spin me until I'm dizzy

And then I walk forward

Cutting the breeze with no intention but my nose

Intentions dream of the past

But the past is sleeping

Intentions curl up in my abdomen

My adipose tissue blossoms into cherries

And: behold! A deep feast for deep mouths

Mouths dream of a dry place

A dry place dreams of making love

Love dreams of a way out

Even dreams dream, of fucking their mothers.

Happy Birthday to Me: An Exercise in Splosh Fiction

It wasn't my birthday. Or was it? It certainly felt like my birthday.

When I awoke, a slat of a sunbeam was shining through my window. It tickled my nose and pulled my irises east – to a bough speckled with festive birds, chirping and laughing. My alarm went off and I sprung out of bed and hopped downstairs, ready to embrace each and every forsaken soul. But first, I thought, I must check the mail.

Lo and behold: a yellow envelope. A letter from a friend bearing an embrace separated by a sea or so. I held the letter close to my breast and threw open my front door to inhale the nascent birthday morn'.

'Yes, it must be my birthday', I thought, perhaps aloud. Blueberry sunshine and nymph breath and iridescent particles. I was with the world and the world was with me. I was with the world and I closed my eyes and thought about poached eggs and fleece throws and other birthday thoughts.

A ring – the telephone.

“Yello?”

“Hello Steven, how are you?”

A thousand tiny pink images flashed shiny in my mind. A call from Melissa. It absolutely truly must be my birthday.

“Oh, I'm grand, Melissa.” The images formed a point and pricked my coccyx. “It's my birthday.”

“Oh Steven! How wonderful! I always thought your birthday was in January!”

“For some reason, people always make that mistake.”

Melissa laughed a distinguished string of pearls into the receiver. “Oh Steven, please! You don't have to try to spare me from embarrassment – I am used to it. I am always thinking mixed things.

Well then, very much a happy birthday to you. We must celebrate”

“Thank you. But really, I'm not the celebrating kind.”

“We really must. We just must.”

“Well, the kettle is boiling.”

“Goodbye Steven. Ring me soon and let's celebrate in high style.”

“Of course, Melissa.”

The phone clicked and I clung to the tips of her straight black hair that I'm sure was crushed against the receiver. Then I turned my mind. The room was still glistening. There was only one thing to do – bake a cake.

Everything in the bowl and two yellow yolks smiling back at me. I was wearing trousers and a sports coat. Birthdays are fancy. I used my forearm to stir the mixture happy. It yellowed until it glowed in the absence of its egg eyes. Life is easier when you don't see things coming. I pulled up my sock. It was grey with a green stripe. Birthdays are times for unexpected socks. I took a pinch of cinnamon and spread it on my forearm. But it was Melissa's forearm. I was aroused and the head of my penis pressed against my zipper. For some reason I laughed. Birthdays make me giddy.

350 degrees kissed my brow as I put my cake in the oven to coagulate. In the meantime, I set to mixing up some caramel toffee frosting. Brown sugar and eggs and milk wept into a curdle; This was going to be a sticky affair.

As often happens on charmed days, days of grand beginnings and infinite action potential, things were falling into place like there was One Way. A Goofy Movie was practically fingering the DVD player. In it went. Onto to the plush recliner I went, toffee frosting in hand. Off of my body my pants were. My smile was, as it were, irrevocably wide and ever planted. If a few drops of sticky toffee gooey caramel sludge drippled on to my half-hard cock, who could fault me on this blessed day? The viscous substance inched too slowly around the circumference of my cock. So slow that it invited interruption –

A knock – a guest.

“Hello? Steven? Hellllo!” – Melissa.

My pants were up and at 'em. I felt the sweet goo spread against and into the cotton fiber of my underwear. As reliable as dawn itself, the first birthday mess.

“Steven? Helllo! You must be in there somewhere.”

“Yes, Melissa, I'm here. One moment.”

An open door – Melissa.

“Really, you shouldn't have come. I never celebrate –”

“Exactly. That's why I came. Because you wouldn't have.”

A ring – the timer.

Involuntarily – “My cake!”

“Oh, how nice.” She said, dark purple aura dripping, staining my carpet.

* * *

She set the table while I busied myself over the frosting. The back of my knife grazed the top of the cake – her inner thigh – and created a flat golden plane. My mother taught me how to bake. She raised me in the kitchen.

“It looks lovely, Steven, almost professional. Did you go to culinary school?”

“No, I had a mother.”

Melissa didn't laugh. She didn't even look like she thought about laughing out of courtesy.

“Steven?”

“Yes, Melissa?”

“Where is the restroom?”

“Just down the hall and to the left.”

“Thank you. Excuse me.” She eyed the cake, squinting into saccharine. “Exquisite.” And padded off to the bathroom to fix her lipstick.

It was done, in that birthday way. Two tiers and light brown, the cake shone like the birds on the morning bough. A man of my age can't dally in petit fours or sugar statue accoutrements. I edged the top and bottom circumferences with a modest white buttercream piping. Melissa was lingering in her gone. I wondered if she was contemplating the prospect of sleeping with me out of a mixture of pity and birthday-induced affection.

I put the cake on her seat. The impending moment was born the minute I opened my eye to the slanted radiance of false rebirth. I could see her dress billowing out as her pale buttocks made gentle contact with my cake. I could see it in perfect birthday clarity.

Melissa padded back, lips curled into cat whiskers. She didn't even look down, She looked up at me with down eyelids as she bent her body and descended in a formal pivot. Then her eyes widened into a scream and I felt the sticky frosting insinuate itself into all of her feminine crevices, catching black hairs and moist. I felt my cock harden and my hand felt my cock harden. Watching spongy chunks fly laterally like a symphony, I came hard in sympathetic crescendo.

“Happy birthday to me.” I whispered.    

My Friend, Tony

Tony lives in a tree top, surrounded by old movie posters. They are tacked to the leaves with vinyl adhesive. They shine like Pyrite.

From up there it's hard to tell he's so short. 5'2 but square and sturdy. It always looks like he's about to spring up and take your nose between his forefinger and middle finger. Of course he would never do that – Tony's a nice guy.

Tony's the perfect wash-up. He transitioned from bit actor to experimental film maker to video clerk to my new best friend. In other words, from glitter to stone to corner to turquoise.

We are sitting in his living room, getting high: he on the weed, me on the sauce. He's mostly quiet and I fill the gaping silences with chatter. The room becomes me as I talk about me. Sometimes he talks about himself, but the room is still me, my conversation 10 minutes ago.

“I'm going to fuck you,” he says, clear blue eyes eyes lowered. “You don't think so. I know it. That's what the other girls said; but you will.”

Tony and I walk, while I talk. The street becomes me as the familiars give me their regards.

“I fucked that guy.” I say.

“Who?” Tony asks, eyes lowered again.

“The valet guy. The Afghani guy, I fucked him. It was just a one-time thing. I used to bike by all of the time and he would chat with me. I knew from the first few meetings or so that we were going to fuck. He kept asking me to come over and one day I said yes. On the car ride over he told me about his two kids.”

“You're so fucking dirty,” he says. Eyes as low as ever.

We walk and I talk and we laugh. I like that he thinks he's going to fuck me. It makes me feel sexy even though I know I won't do it. He's short and a stoner and 46 – all of the things that don't get my socks around my ankles, if you know what I mean.

“You know, all of this talk... about this shit. Fucking that guy. The fetish, the BDS stuff. It just turns me on more. The more you talk about it, the more turned on I get.”

Tony blinks a lot. He blinks hard, and lets blue crystals flash for seconds at a time.

In a parallel universe, I might fuck Tony. I might have fucked him in this universe, but now I can't. Now that he put a bounty on my cunt.

                                                                                  * * *

We are swinging from the tree tops but really we are both sinking into the couch. The Twilight Zone plays in the background while he talks about his bout with cancer and I talk about the STDs I've had and dodged. I eat his crackers, while he hits his pipe every 20 minutes or so – as if I'm the stoned one. He lowers his eyes at me – as if I'm the only freak in the room.   

My Valentine's Day: I Fucked My Bitch on the Kitchen Floor of the Dungeon and Then I Ate an Omelette.

I feel like the title pretty much says it all, but I'll expound for my own rumination's sake. Nobody asked me out on Valentine's Day. I waited and waited for my main squeeze-of-the-moment-- lo and behold, an ex-client from the dungeon-- to muster the guff to suggest something or other. But, nothing. Hung up, but held at bay by excessive pride, I wanted to work and spend the day fabricating meaning with the sick, sad souls of the BDSM romantixx. My boss sent word about a noon-time session with one of my regulars: I willed the work and there it was.

On the off-chance a sexy encounter emerged from the ether, I made sure to dress for sex. Thigh-high lace tights and one green velvet dress later, I was out the door and cruising south down the metro towards Hollywood. My session went as well as possible-- we watched Brazilian scat videos, he dressed up in a slinky black dress, and I fucked him with my massive black strap-on. Whilst soulfully pegging him, my dear slave looked lovingly up at me: “You look so cute while you're fucking.” I've never felt so emasculated.

Afterwards, I walked about town and contemplated my solitary situation. Up to Whole Foods and down to Starbucks, I thought about the meaning of initiative and monolithic commercialism. After all, I am a Starbucks to the dear slaves who curl up at my calves. A house of unshakeable bigness, security, and consistent quality to the littleons looking for a vinyl teet and a violent caress. My boss warned me that in order to get an inch with a truly submissive man, I would have to use that oft-occluded power of Female initiative. A force frequently regarded as the pathetic wile of weathered cougars. No matter; I gave in. The truth was, I was at the dungeon, and my slave lives but a few blocks away. In the name of proximal bitches and the power to enact, I summoned him.

And come he did. While I was lounging on a leather divan, drinking too much cheap wine and trying to read Marquis De Sade, but only stringing together one sentence per minute. I had willed work and now I had willed this amorous gallivant; I finally understood the real ire of manhood, the nature of conquest over the cagey and effervescent. His self-imposed restraint had been driving me mad for weeks, keeping me up at night, making me touch myself at the idea of overpowering and penetrating the dusk that shrouded him. And then suddenly he was there, ready and willing to unfurl.

In order to mitigate my fury at being cornered into initiative (though I was deep in it and enjoying it), I made plans to go out with some friends in the evening and leave only a small window for condensed romance, or whatever one would call this insanity. We chatted, and I chattered inanities as I tend to do when I really feel electrified by another. Somehow we drifted to the kitchen, still exchanging pure emptiness while positioned close, traction ensured by the red, unimaginably sullied shag carpet under our feet. I distinctly remembered thinking, as I reached over to press play on the CD player, that the soft granite wall I erected around out intimacy would not be broken tonight. But then I was on the carpet, under a body much longer than mine, and surrounded by the ghosts of all the souls I had beat mercilessly right where I lay.

It was simple, as sex tends to be. Even all dressed up in latex and Japanese candle wax, intercourse is a rather frank act. One minute we had never had sex, and, several minutes later, we had. I could already feel all of the pent up madness I had born for the last few weeks ebb and subside. The saga of us isn't over, but my conquest had been fulfilled. Running an hour late for my other evening plans, I cuddled on the quick and hustled him out.

When I was driving towards Mel's Diner in search of the cheesiest, meanest omelette I could find-- to replenish my pallor from fucking my bitch-- I realized that I hadn't witnessed Valentine's Day in LA for about 5 years. A strange palpable passion hung muskily over the streets; drama haunted every corner. I saw people crying, embracing more tightly than normal. Bitches were snapping their fingers (presumably at the rude idea of love). At Mel's a big, ugly Latino man was draped on a gaunt blonde: love was in their eyes. In fact, for the first time ever, love was laying heavy in Los Angeles.

I made it home at 3:30am, feeling glutted and victorious. The omelette wasn't amazing, but it was mean. I couldn't say my bitch was securely in my pocket, but I could say that I had wanted something and taken it-- roughly. When I opened my computer, one of my Indian employers (I've been doing some content writing, yee haw!) immediately g chatted me:

“happy vday dear”

“happy valentine's day to you, too”

“can you write about cheap car insurance”

“sure thing. It's 4am here but i'll get on it first thing tomorrow”

“yeah, u are up very early. do you have an exam or something?”

“something like that”

“can we skype dear? I want to see ur face. ur very prety mam. ”

And that's how my night ended, with $15 more in my Paypal account and a creepy transcontinental cyber chat invitation. I politely declined the latter.   

The Sessions, a Review: Optometrist Recommended, FDR Approved.

Most of my optometrists have been somber folk, wizened over time, I assume, by traumatic exposure to eye goop, cornea tears, and severe tear duct malfunctions. Dr. Wax was different.

After arriving late to my original appointment, I was given to Dr. Wax. Dr. Wax was a different sort, of man and of optometrist. His voice was full of wonder, he "waxed" on about pop findings that affected him, like a recent History channel special about how state borders are decreed.

He asked, "I mean, do you have any idea how state borders are decided??"

I wanted to engage with Dr. Wax, with his overflowing earnestness, "By natural geological formations?"

"Wow. You have no idea how these borders are formed. Just fascinating! You have to watch this show!"

Then the conversation turned; it became more personal.

"So, what are you doing with your life? Do you work? Do you study? Do you study and wish you worked?" He asked, while shining a thin beam of light over the curvature of my lens. The questions and the light penetrated beyond the retinal ganglion.

"I'm studying for my GREs. For, uh, psychology. Yes, for psychology. I want to do clinical work."

"Ahhhh!" A chord in Dr. Wax's harp-strung soul was struck. "Psychology is a most magnificent field! Have you seen The Sessions?"

I hadn't.

"Oh, you really must see it! I just read an article about the woman they interviewed for the movie-- a sex.. surrogate-- who they based Helen Hunt's character on. You know, to figure out how the character really ticks."

Anyways, a long conversation about The Sessions, sex surrogates, and various strings of letters in different sizes ensued. I wanted a piece of his wonder because I'm tired of my own tired wonder. So I dragged my jaded-on-recent-movies ass to the theatre, alone on a Friday night, RE The Lovelessness of my previous entry, and watched The Sessions with no context (no trailer, plot summary, review, etc.), save the awe of Dr. Wax.

The good news is that my eyes improved, from -2.50 to -2.25! Oh, and The Sessions was a brilliant film.

***

Well, while I can imagine some of my friends criticizing the movie for its many uber dramatic plot developments-- it is a movie about a Devout Catholic cripple trying to lose his virginity to a sex surrogate/therapist (Helen Hunt), after all. Yet, I felt I wasn't crying enough for the first half of the movie, given the melodramatic premise. And that I was laughing far too much. Yes, laughing aloud and alone with free abandon!

But, oh mama, the tears eventually did come, and, so I left overwhelmingly satisfied (agenda fulfilled**). Logically, the waterworks started later in the movie, when the characters had been developed and I had grown fond of their company. The Sessions really is a movie of excellent development, artful crescendo, and masterful acting.

The flick opens with an odd scene, where the protagonist, Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes) graduates from Berkeley in (I think) the late 70's. The only thing is, O'Brien is confined to a gurney, and glides across the graduation stage with ghostlike expediency, draped in a black gown. His cap is hanging off the post of his reclining motorized hospital bed. It is like the worst David Foster Wallace nightmare coming true, and I grimaced imagining impending sexual scenes that would involve this pancake of a man.

Boy did I misjudge the sexy-potential of an iron-lung lifer, albeit played by a Hollywood actor! When we get to know O'Brien, a poet and journalist by trade, he is charming and shameless in just that way that people who have lived lives like A Series of Unfortunate Events seem to often adopt. The Sessions deserves a watch just for the jarring realism of O'Brien's performance, who kind of reminded me of a Catholic Woody Allen. Of course, I must also tip my hat to Ben Lewin (writer/director), who was able to capture the voice of the real Mark O'Brien (whose life the movie is based on) and his written words, without creating an insufferable pretentious atmosphere that is so common in movies created under the guise of an author's work.  

And, of course, O'Brien's mild kinkiness also helped endear the movie to me ;) Although, for being a movie framed entirely by The Catholic Church, represented rather one-dimensionally by Father Brendan (William H. Macy), there is little to do about Jesus-related sex hang ups.

Cheryl, the sex surrogate/therapist at one point makes an audio note that O'Brien has masochistic fantasies, probably related to his strong faith, and guilt stemming from the negative effect of his disabled condition on others. Fair. But this brief audio note is really all we hear or see pertaining to these masochistic fantasies. O'Brien's enthusiasm and insistence that Cheryl achieve orgasm during their therapy sessions seems to stem from his sensitivity rather than suppressed submissive side.

At one point, O'Brien describes part of a session with Cheryl to Father Brendan, his main confidante, loosely along these lines, "She either forgot to close the door or didn't care to. The sound of urine and ripping of toilet paper was so arousing. It was so intimate. By the time she came back to bed, my penis was so hard." However, it is clear that O'Brien isn't lusting after a golden shower, he just really can and does appreciate the closeness of cohabitation that most people, people who have seen many women come and go from their lavatories, take for granted.

So, where's the kink? you ask. Well, besides the fact that one of the last scenes does feature O'Brien offhandedly relating his slightly off-center sexual relations with his latest and last love and lover, Susan (Robin Weigert) to Father Brendan, "Oh yeah, she adores me. Let's me do anything I want, and I can get kinda kinky", the real kink is the sexualization of O'Brien himself.

O'Brien/Hawkes' body is startlingly erotic. All of the women in the movie (except maybe his first love interest, Amanda) seem genuinely emotionally and sexually attracted to him. It would be easy to attribute this to the fact that John Hawkes is just a studly, limbful guy playing a gimp, but I don't think that's it. In fact, I don't even really think Hakwes is all that objectively hawt. There is something about the fearless sexuality of O'Brien's character, his fixation on women and love, despite (Note to self: reviewing The Sessions requires a lot of italics) his physical lot, that kind of turned me on.

Supine on a gurney, sucking air periodically from a portable tank, hands contorted, and sporting a paisley button-down, it is hard to initially consider O'Brien a sex object. And yet, throughout the movie, he becomes one. By the end of the film, when he's hitting on Susan, a volunteer at a hospital he is taken to after a near-death experience, he's almost a ladies man. She asks him if he wants her to come visit him, to which he snarkily replies, "Do you have a boyfriend? Do you have a husband? Do you have a significant other whom you are devoted to?" When she answers in the negative to all, he completes his suave play, "Then please come visit me as much as you can."

I don't think the positive sexualization of handicapped people was intentional (or maybe it was?), but it certainly made me question my own sexual attitude toward the disabled. Before last night, my only interaction with the idea of crippled sex was making fun of paraplegic porn. In fact, right before the movie I was texting with a friend about the existence of dating sites for gimps. Looking at the way Cheryl looked at O'Brien-- and I know it's just a movie-- made me wonder if I could get off on someone who couldn't get up (but could get it up :) ) I found myself uncontrollably intrigued by the deep curve of O'Brien/Hawkes' rip cage...

Anyway, this is leading into my final point. The true triumph of The Sessions, in my opinion, is that it allows a handicapped protagonist to live with love as his primary motivation, rather than running a marathon or saving the world. Many marginalized groups have had their sexual/romantic rights vindicated in films, but I have yet to see a good portrayal of such for the severely disabled.

It has always seemed to me that there is an expectation of the disabled, particularly physically disabled/mentally sound, like O'Brien, to operate entirely altruistically. In The Sessions, it is all about O'Brien (even though he is sexually attuned to his lovers' needs). He is a bit self-centered, needy, demanding-- all of his conversations with Father Brendan are about him and his sexual quest-- and I think that's pretty cool.

FDR would be proud.


**(((I should add that, in addition to fulfilling the will of Dr. Wax, I had my own agenda. Unlike many movie-goers who trot on to the theaters to laugh off the gray dust they accumulated on their shoulders and souls during the week, I go to the movies to cry. Seriously, to shed tears, not just "feel emotional".


My working theory is that because I graduated with honors from The School of Hard Knocks, I've learned to take things in stride; I very rarely lose control of my emotions in the midst of a real-life situations. Cinema is my locus for catharsis, where I let all my stifled "FUCKKKKS!!" seep out, liquified and compartmentalized in the womb of the theatre. But only when I'm alone. In company, my back stays straight and the "FUCKKKKS!!" remained broiled in my gut.

With my menstrual cycle in full swing and my mind consumed by worry over applications and job interviews, my agenda was bolded. In fact, I pretearjaculated during a terrible-looking preview for a movie from the makers of The Pursuit of Happyness. So, the fact that The Sessions is so emotional and heart felt works in its favor for the likes of me, while it might turn off mushier, diasffected folk. Okokokikowtimeforthereview)))

Nuthin for Nobodys and Pron for Homebodys

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This is not about kink. This is about hillbillies.

The San Fernando Hillbillies live a rollicking life, full of things. The perimeter of the 'billy plot in the heart of North hollywood is littered with derelict cabinet drawers, arthritic bicycles, chicken feathers, unidentified feathers, and children. The corn grows high in the summer, providing sanctuary for the resident Polish chicken and fluffed-up pussy cat. The corn grows high when the days linger long.

When we moved to North Hollywood, the hillbillies had already been subsisting in their little corner of the frying pan. The hillbillies were here before us, just like cockroaches predated Homosapiens. And gawd-- who knows quite how long they've been beening. They certainly know how to live: their kin, kind, and kinder mull around their dusty backyard, smiling, kicking-back, and hacking up wooden furniture into kindling.

On the curb, just beyond the grip of their trolling weeds' grasp, is a trailer, perennially parked. That's where the outlaws (outdoor in-laws) live. Usually the door to the RV is open, connecting the threshold to the greater hillbilly haven. I can't see past the doorway though, it is always consumed by a midday shadow. Sometimes new relatives will show up and expand the hillbilly's modest municipality-- I can tell because of the consistent facial features and sweat stains on their shirts.

When I moved here, and the hillbillies were still a veritable novelty, I remember thinking, "Wow, a movie about displaced hillbillies in LA would be genius." 10 minutes later, my head was lolling in shame; the Beverly Hills Hillbillies theme song wafted tauntingly between my cochlea.

My mom often comments on the Noho Hillbillies: she is envious. "They really live the good life..."

And it's true, their house is much bigger than ours. Their faces are weathered but contented. My mom is unrelenting in her praise.

"But really, they really do live good."

"Look how much fun they're having. Really."

"Have you ever heard of a Polish chicken??"

My mom wants to sit on a dusty lawn chair, day in and day out, as the children grow wild like weeds and the main event of the day is taking a dip in your above-ground deluxe kiddie pool. My mom dreams of the day when she too can snooze in the sun, playing refractor to the sunlight and pillow to the gaggle of cats. We drive by the Hillbilly fiefdom together in our beaten down Toyota, and our eyes remain fixed on the tall grass even when we have driven far away.        

Bar Sin, Fuer Immer & Ever

This weekend burned to blazes. So goes my heart and health. Embers of the former wholes burn like eyes in the immortal river Lethe. But that's neither here nor there: let's talk about Hallowienerschnitzel. 

* * *

Every time (or rather: all of the two times) I go to Bar Sinister in Hollywood, I get dressed up in something black or other and run to the door and then: stop: three steps back: this is Hollywood: drinks cost your future baby's future virginity: go to the kitchen: down as many shots of whiskey as possible before my ride gets antsy: good: fast forward: bound out the door and into the darkness. Let that river of consciousness serve as a disclaimer for ye-- that's how both my experiences were prefaced. And, for the record, the procedure works rather well every time. 

So, by the time I got to the little lair on Saturday night, nestled into the ass crack of a Hollywood Blvd. side street, my peripheral vision already had the consistency of cotton candy. On Saturday, as on the Friday prior, I felt exhilarated by the initial atmosphere. Waiting in line in front of me, there was a charming little wheel-chair bound goth-- or maybe he was dressed up as Marilyn Manson (the resemblance was frightening)-- I clasped my fist to my breast: "Oh, how darling!".

I dressed up tastefully, as an SS-officer, complete with leather bra, iron cross necklace, and military pants sheared to short-shorts. I donned a heavy German accent as well (as the night wore on, and the libations flowed..) and introduced myself as Ilse. Only upon waking did I realize how truly horrifying the idea of a German emigreé dressing up as Nazi truly was. 

I'm not sure whether the tolerance towards my character was due to the coddling fetish-club womb or the sun-baked blas L.é. attitude, but, anyhow, nobody gave me a hard time. Some people tried to give me their hard ons. Some people tried to get me to rough up their girlfriends. But everybody believed me. And, I think, the general consensus was that it was hot... One guy who I befriended told me, "My lady friend really wants to play more with you, but she's afraid that the language barrier between us might result in some unfortunate misunderstanding/dismissal of an English safeword." It kinda made my night. So, ya hurd it hurr ferst: there is indeed a host of Nazi sympathizers/moaners roaming the chalky streets of Hollywood.   

Ok, enough about mich. 

I mean, Bar Sinister, in isolation, is not an extraordinary scene; but, compared to the other sullen alternatives (Sanctuary, Threshold), it is a whole lotta fun. Sooooo, it doesn't really have a good play space, and the duder man in charge of the meager supplies (suspended cuffs, two whips maybe) was a total jerkoffface. He was all like "I'm not gonna judge you on your accent, but you seem a little intoxicated, and we only allow perfect execution of flogging skills". Something like that, but much less articulate. It's a fucking fetish club for fuck's sake! That's when I knew I had to return to the Mutterland, where the cocktail of torture and ethanol is widely encouraged. 

BUT, DICKWAD DUNGEON MASTER NOTWITHSTANDING, I still think Bar Sinister is a neat little spot, if only because of its liveliness-- there are people there! So many people, that you might even have to nudge them aside periodically to resume your intended trajectory! I have spent so many minutes thinking to myself, "Where do the young, beautiful kinksters in LA play? Well, Bar Sinister is definitely one of probably many more loci I am not aware of. 

So, for me, Bar Sinister is more like a munch where you get to dress up all cray and ogle the go-go dancer in the goat head. 

Although, funny enough, the only guy I ever reconnected with outside of the bar turned out to be vanilla. 

I told him, "I'm not really so much in the scene" on our first and last date.

"The scene? What is 'the scene'?" He replied. 

Ahem. 

How can I explain how absolutely heartbreaking and beautiful the last metro car of the night really is?

In the burrow. Im büro.

Kafka sings them into a single metallic tune.

In German, but evident even in a shoddy translation.

In the burrow, Kafka crouches like a field mouse,

Furtive eyes a-glow,

Watching a little,

But mostly feeling the vibrations,

The reverberations of a thousand overlapping, shuffling gaits:

The heartbeat of the underground.

Kafka clings to the walls, and licks a heart clean through the grime.

He can't see it, but the whole frequency of the hovel/tunnel changes,

He feels it in his toes:

Paws a-tremoring, flippers a-dragging, heads a-lolling.

All under neon mosaics made by eight year olds in an inner city school.

The floor lurches and bodies slump. 

Kafka presses his face to the metro walls--

He finds them unexpectedly supple and buries his sunken cheeks even deeper into the soft.

Vagrants gawk and sway (on gentle ripples of intoxication)

But: hark! Kafka feels the steel INTRUDER hurtling

From rattling into sound.

The floor lurches and bodies slump.

Appendages bear adipose deposits across the threshold.

Into: Flash!

Kafka cries, "A reference point!".

But all the shuffling toes were long born away.

Gone and deaf to boot. 

They THRIVE on NEGLECT

No no, not me-- Birds of Paradise. You know, those chunky blue-accented orange flowers that look like exotic bird heads? Well, that's what one of my substitute teachers in middle school said, sort of inscrutably and menacingly-- that "they thrive on neglect". But not me. And not my blog neither. This ol' stone tablet is withering like a Bird of Paradise after getting snuggled closely by a hummingbird from its lack of exercise.

Things have certainly been happening. Apparently, there's some kind of presidential race going on. Apparently, there's some kind of unfriendly altercation going on in Syria. I know this because I watched 25 minutes of the news today, whilst running on the treadmill in LA Fitness.

I'm so horny right now; I totally want to jerk my clit right now. But I feel I have a moral obligation to this blog of immorality: so I gotta direct all my tuckered out synapses to this little missive. For you. For you don't thrive on neglect. No, you love stimulation, excitation, variety, profundity, dinner specials for two (special dinners for you).

Ja, das ist wahr.

Alright, I'm pittering out, like milk from a congested spigot (ur mom).      

Weds//

Watched presidential debates with my 21 year old boy thang. I had noticed an interesting pattern developing: the young little thang hated to be 'on top' in the boudoir. For everybody else, that would probably connotate a preference. For me, it sufficed as a sign. I turned to him, my hand tucked under my chin, completely unnaturally,

"Do you think you may just have like 1-4% kink in you?"

"Well, sometimes I think about being used... and using..."

???????!!!!!!!!????????!!!!!!!!!????????!!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!!!???????!!!!!!!!!???????!!!!!!!!!?????????!!

So much for being 100% vanilla, my sweet tea cake!

I took off my tights, straddled the young one while he sat upright on the couch, and used my removed tights to tie his hands above his head-- I should teach an 'improvised kink' class, right? Then I bunched up my shirt and used it as a makeshift blindfold. Then I fucked him. My young one doesn't buck or bray, he just concentrates and comes. And that was it-- so simple. A simple, I hope, beginning. Today I bought a feather tickler at the Pleasure Chest for phase II-- a miniature one at that, to ensure micro baby steps in the kink direction.

I wish I could say that everything in my life was progressing, but it's really not. It's hovering. Everybody oscillates gently, in abeyance, at a fixed point in my orbit, and I watch and chart. Like a young and buxom Galileo.

I talked everything over with Officer Cowboy, over tea and crops.

"Well, it sounds like you have everything under control. You just need a German to pee on you. Do you think you could tell the young one that?"

Ende //

Dr. Oz Dr. Oz. Dr. Oz Dr. Oz Dr. Oz Dr. Oz Dr. Oz Dr. Oz

I mean, is he a fucking elf? A fucking pedophilic elf-hybrid who's come to enforce Smallism on the American public? Behind those beady eyes lies a roaring fire, which only jelly rolls and spare tires can simultaneously stoke and contain.

An average-looking MILF sat beside him a few weeks ago. She was getting interviewed for her not-so-average secret: the flabby canvas of a corpus contained 9 nipples.  Not a g-thang, she said. She loves them all like little angel babies. 

"I mean, it makes me feel special" 

"I've heard one of them lactates." Dr. Oz sputters out anxiously, already at half mast (if you know what I mean).

"Yes, the one near my armpit, sometimes." MILF beams, proud. "Let's see if it works this time."

She takes two expert fingers and squishes the 9th nipple-- which looks more like a birthmark-- and THANKGOD BECAUSE EVERYONE IS WATCHING, a little dribble of milkish fluid drips down her creased pit. 

OHYAHHH! OHHOOYAA!

Infantile joy floods the room. Hearts open like the gates of heaven. But Dr. Oz grows serious.

"The only problem, insert MILFY name, is that the more breast tissue you have, the more at risk you are for cancer. So it's good you're comfortable with your body, but beware of the dangers."

The woman smiles, eyes blank and black as coals. She nods affirmatively. Dr. Oz signals for a commercial break and runs to his dressing room where he drops his scrubs to his scrawny ankles and comes onto his evening-wear crocs.  

REPENTANCE

Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year.

I am, by a funny turn of historical events, a Jew.

(Yes, spare me the waggling finger. I understand the irony of my prevailing German fetish).

On Yom Kippur, an observant Jew is supposed to fast for one day and attend services so as to expunge his sins for the previous year; to be born anew.

I fasted with pleasure, avoided synagogue with finesse, and thought naught about no sins.

Instead, I made some bills.

I made some bills doing The Most Horrible And Dirty Things. But my conspirator was a Jewish slave, so I think that makes it OK or less not-OK. I filled an entire wine bottle with my urine (muddled with the dregs of wine) and allowed my slave to imbibe the solemn beverage in full.

I broke fast with a cliff bar and a bowl of cherrios. Then I drank two beers and called it a day.

THE SLATE IS CLEAN. MY SOUL IS IVORY.

An Ode to the Emperor (or Shall I compare You to the Parthenon

So, I've casually embarked on two separate, often overlapping quests of inquiry: 1) to define my own submission by experimenting with different Doms, and 2) to insinuate myself into-- or at least observe, in some capacity-- the LA kink scene. Last Friday, I decided a jaunt to Threshold in North Hollywood  with the clean-cut older Dom from the Gloryhole shindig would afford that sweet avian culinary & spiritual delight, Two Birds with One Stone. But first, we met at a nearby 50's revival tiki bar to talk about the weather.

(((((((Now that I'm a little older I can say that I'm amazed that (some) people's ability to socialize does not necessarily improve with age. I meet and fraternize with so many older (than me) folks (around 30-45) that seem plagued with some kind of interaction anxiety. I see this on the street, when I bike behind someone and whistle at them to get their attention; they tense up, begin to apologize profusely, and shuffle quietly to the side.)))))))

 Immediately upon arriving at the location, let's call him Officer Cowboy-- named for the plastic cap gun and badge that he genuinely used to "threaten" me-- began, at 200 words per minute, apologizing for everything and anything and the world and my sweaty brow and so forth, A gentleman is one thing-- I enjoy a gentleman Dom, who takes me out to lavish dinners, presents me with expensive gifts, and treats me (at least outside the bedroom) like a princess; but his niceties became ingratiating. He was so wrought up about me biking a few miles to our rendezvous that I became to feel embarrassed for myself, as if my indifference about making the dimunitive trek made me pathetic or too accommodating. Meanwhile, my German Dom was a little miffed when I told him that biking 14 miles to his place at 8pm might not be feasible for me.. There must be a happy medium..??

Before we even entered the bar, he looked at me, touching my forearm lightly,
"This is great. Yeah, this is great because nothing is going to happen between us because I'm 43, and I'm old enough to be your father and that's a problem and that's great because there's no pressure because you're so young andandandandandyeahyeahyeahuhyeahADINFINITUM."

I think, "That's a problem..?" But I say, "My father is 72." Granted, it wasn't a very witty reply.

His facial expression freezes-- a thought. "Well, (beat), yeah. Yeah, but I could still be your father if I was like 20 when...".

We were carded upon entering the bar. After, Officer Cowboy gave me a serious look, "I'm kinda glad he did that."

"What?"

"Carded you. I mean, just in case you're like 19 or something. I mean, riding your bike. Living at home. It's kinda teenagery, don't you think?"

It was already grossly apparent to me that our sexual interests did not coexist on the same tectonic plate.

****

But he was just such a sweetheart, and so submissive, and doting-- something about his persona was so juvenile, that I found myself deeply mentally enthralled by the possibility of what I could only imagine what an impossibility: that Officer Cowboy, a died-in-the-wool-cuffs sub, called himself a Master.

So, after a lovely conversation about film and kink and writing and crazy ex-wives and past lives, he suggested we play at Threshold and I agreed.

****

Both of us fully clothed, me between his knees, on my knees: I, in jest, told him I was 18. He became very alarmed and asked me in a nervous voice if that was true and that he would need to look at my ID. I confessed that, unfortunately, I was past my tender teenage years. But, if I was 18-- and I might be-- it would still be perfectly legal. He sighed, relieved that I was not that young. "You're right," he exhaled, "it would be legal."

Later, he chained me to something that functioned as a St. Andrew's cross, but looked like a prop from a low budget vampire flick: a big iron "web" of sorts. I guess that made me the helpless moth. While I was subjected to "torture", like swats on the nipple, and violent verbal abuse, like "You're mine!", Officer Cowboy decided he would exploit me not for my young pussy, but for my literary talent.

"The Emperor demands a poem. And it must rhyme. Otherwise you will pay heavy penalties."

Between swats, tweaks, and flicks to my exposed sateen flesh, I babbled about how Officer Cowboy rendered the feats of Augustus, Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon totally worthless.  When I returned home in the wee hours I reworked it a bit...


Shall I compare you to the Parthenon?

Or the endless Aegean sea?

You, my gilded Emperor, my hero--

With all of your tics and trimmings,

Seem as loaded on arsenic as Nero.

Like Orestes to Athena, arms outstretched suppliant

Something soft sleeps between your thighs,

Your will feels just as pliant.

****

Anyways, the evening was efficacious. First off, Officer Cowboy and I remained good friends and writing buddies (besides our parallel kinks, we get along just dandy). Second off, I had a stark moment of revelation where I understood my fantasies are often considered distasteful, extreme, even within the kink community. All throughout my night at Threshold, I kept trying to classify my seemingly disparate, embarrassing fantasies, that have years laid unverbalized in my lizard brain... Somehow the umbrella term "humiliation" just seems lacking, limited...

((((((Officer Cowboy read my last post and immediately texted me, "I read your last post about German kink. NOW I agree with you. I could not do the things he can do to you. I'm not a spit or a fluids guys as you can tell by the large bottle of a sanitizer in my car lol. Honestly, I couldn't even spit on you. I could, but it would not feel good for me."))))))

My revelation drove me to a frenzy--- the minute I got home, I joined the

I Have Sick, Disgusting, Sometimes Violent, Incest, Rape, and Molestation Fantasies

[[I Have Sick, Disgusting, Sometime Violent, Incest, Rape, and Molestation Fantasies]]

group on Fetlife.

Thinking, I had finally found my place in the >sun<.

An evening of German kink/ eine Nacht der deutschen Kink

I bike over to my German's haus;

Natürlich: modern art on the walls, bier on the table.

We watch the German news and drink Stellas.

I slyly angle my feet under his thighs.


He quizzes me on German phrases in the textbook I checked out from my local library:

Sehr gut! Ausgezeichnet! Furchtbar! Nein!

When my garbled approximations don't match the typed words--

Ach! He twists my nipple until I scream, "bitte!" or "danke!"--

Sufficient enthusiasm is the key.

When I recite in proper Hochdeutsch, I am rewarded with a little spit.

There are many words contained in the viscous string that I don't understand:

A fluid continuum of English and Deutsch,

They churn frothy in my mouth.

 It ends in me.


After, we talk about my day-- always about me & ending in me.

My, i, ich, sick, ugh, ach, me.

Like, today I beat my submissive's ass until it burned blue (true story).

All the while, we sit feet to feet on the couch and I lick his sole between words.

Heel to toe; toe to toe; toe crest to toe trough.

He rated my performance a 2 out of 10.


[[German kink is embedded in the language. It is essential:

Never capitalize I (ich), always capitalize you (Sie).]]


I have to go-- I have 13 more miles to ride until I'm home.

If I make it that far.

"You are lucky today", he says. "I have to pee and you will get a little bit."

I think,  "I can't", but I know I will.

Prostrate on white tile, I attempt to elicit pity, "ein bisschen...bitte"

I drink some until I can't. Then I drink a little more.

Until my head bows to the open white plain.

"Dankeshön".

He makes fun of my heavy, neon pink back pack,

"Du bist siebsehn."

He walks me to my bike, and makes fun of my viel heavy steel frame.

He makes fun of me for riding a bike at all.

He kisses me goodbye, and I start on my 18th mile.


The day after, I sit at a cafe reading a novel, underlining words in black ink:

It's not my pen; it's his.

The top is chewed and I chew on top of the chew.

A warm feeling spreads across my groin.

I return to reading, chewing, lining.

* * *

The Implied Slave

Ok, I just want to preface this post-lett with a disclaimer: as thoroughly kinked out as my brain might be, I did not sojourn to the theatre to see P. T. Anderson's latest flick, The Master, due to an unconscious affinity for its aggressive title. Nor, after having seen said flick, would I ever make the claim that P. T. was angling for some tongue-in-cheek BDSM subtext. BUT, I will say that I found that there was much to-do and explicit meditation on the Master-slave dynamic AND that the lessons gleaned from Anderson's live-action thought experiment (brought to the flesh by Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd and Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell) are applicable to D/s lifestyle.

Like I said, an expectation of kink-relevance was far from my mind last night at the Arclight. I don't even think I once thought about the suggestive, provocative title: and it certainly didn't make me wet! Perhaps this avoidance of the elephant was reinforced by A. O. Scott's review of the film for the NY Times, which I read before I watched the movie myself. Scott says a lotta wacky things, and describes the dynamic between Dodd and Quell as almost every fathomable permutation except master and slave: "They are father and son, guru and disciple, passionate friends and bitter competitors locked in a relationship whose sexual undercurrents are as palpable and mysterious as the motion of water under the surface of the ocean." And later in the review,"Each is, in turn, hero and villain, master and disciple, con man and patsy." 

And yet, Dodd's repeated sobriquet, "The Master", implies a complete dominion over someone or somebodies. Cue Freddie Quell: half-witted, slack-lipped, and hunch-backed, who performs menial tasks for Dodd (it is athletic Freddie who carries back the buried trunk of Dodd's unpublished treasure) and performs tricks at his behest (running from wall to window, while mush-minded minions gawk): Freddie is the implied slave and yang to Dodd's Master and Yin. While this visceral dynamic was either over-looked or decidedly too tension-fraught for Scott to mention in his piece, it really defines the entire film. 

If you are hesitant to agree, recall one of the final scenes, where Quell sits before his one-time Master, Dodd, and finally shatters the unspoken manacles lovingly fastened by the latter. Dodd asks Freddie something along the lines of (the verbatim quote escapes me), "If you can find a way through life without a Master-- any Master-- let me know". The Master/slave relationship is acknowledged explicitly in the film, even if the title "slave" is omitted, while I found that the homosexual overtones delineated by Scott were at most ghostly-- now matter how badly I wish they were there :))         

Anywayssss, my main point is that Freddie is a contented slave, if not happy, while he serves Dodd. Sure, he eventually outgrows and sheds his bondage, but that does not negate the positive growth that he makes while in servitude. Truly loyal like a pedigree Doberman Pinscher, Quell repeatedly physically attacks revilers of the Word-of-Dodd. Every hiatus in their friendship ends with a heart warming embrace (and sometimes a butt slap or a rolling bout on the grass). In other words, it is love (of the not-necessarily-romantic variety). 

The characters are not healthy, mentally or physically, but their relationship is. Dodd and Quell reach a mutually beneficial symbiosis through mutually consenting roles of Dominance and submission, respectively. And they achieve it with the natural finesse that I find so hard to accomplish in my own boudoir and beyond... Sure, the journey of their relationship is studded with its share of tragedy, disagreements, and stumbling blocks, but what relationship is not? I also acknowledge that neither Dodd nor Quell is as simple as Black/Master or white/slave (Quell is no bashful lackey when it comes to pressing a lady he fancies...), but it seems difficult to deny that those are the most salient characteristics they exhibit.     

So, I'm not at all trying to argue that this is The Theme of the movie-- there's a whole hootenanny about cults and stuff-- but it is A Theme that needs to be reckoned with if the film is to be understood. And, like, it's so cool to see a confident, affirmative depiction of consensual inequality/power imbalance! Right? Right! Cool.  

Looking into the Hole of Glory

Gloryhole @ the Pleasure Chest in West Hollywood 9/13/2012

I walked up to a wall of white fur, dotted with circular puncture wounds-- holes, some might call them. Other party-goers at the Pleasure Chest event were pressing their eye sockets to the wound-holes and sedately buzzing about something. So I followed suit-- these were people 'on a list' after all, so I figured their actions were worth an act of mimicry. I a-pressed and found myself staring into a life-size diorama of a dingy bathroom, complete with lewd slang, like "i'm banksy" scrawled on the dirt streaked walls. But, apart from the faraway suggestion that this was the collective conscious rendering of A Raunchy Sex Place, there wasn't anything actually going on beyond the fuzzy firmament. As in, no fucking.

I turned towards my friend's (the one who put me "on the guest list") boyfriend and tried to formulate my impressions. All the sudden it was clear, "Wait, that's not what a glory hole is... A glory hole is where you stick your cock, not your socket: eye, electrical, or otherwise". I could hear other people musing about the same apparent misunderstanding/disappointment. Of course, I'm sure something did happen behind the furry curtain eventually, but I was only able to party it up for an hour, and never did return to seek the glory of the white hole.

Anyway, that moment was kinda the microcosmic event that summed up the whole shebang. It wasn't a traditional gloryhole; no cocks came to greet my retina. But it did relay a poignant truth: sometimes there is nothing behind the alluring partition, no matter how downy its backside. Sometimes there ain't even hot-monkey shenanigans in the shit-streaked gas-station bathroom in West Hollywood. Well, at least not at the exact moment you decide to peer into a Shakespearian chink while holding your wienerschitzel. The Gloryhole party was real talk.

People mulled about, chipper but contained. The atmosphere was rife with lots of good feelings and relatively low-key costumes. Sure, there were lady-girls speaking in falsettos, donning full leather corsets (and stilettos, for the rhyme), but nobody's garb really stood out to me. There is a possibility that after 5 years of working in a dungeon I have become desensitized to such things, but I imagine most people in that scene have also seen their share of the dark arts. When a guy in a conservative suit and a I-might-try-to-sell-you-something tie chatted me up, I indulged myself and easily answered his query about how I paid/made my way, "I'm a professional dominatrix".

The words floated gently on his ears. The reaction was mild-- inside the corral of the Gloryhole, kink was the reigning stasis. For those folks who predominantly congregate with kinky coevals for this feeling of acceptance, this probably seemed like no big G-thang. But for a girl who hasn't learned her lesson, and frequently finds herself chasing the shirt-tails of vanillas, this was an incredibly calming experience. Our conversation continued in this vein, as he expounded on his proclivities and travails-of-late. It turned out that this guy (who I had quickly and incorrectly pegged a "normal") and I actually had quite a bit to talk about. Now we're real-life Fetlife friends! Again, in the parallel universe of the Glorified Hole, one's deviancy was the conversational equivalent of talking about the weather.

My bout of Glasnost (openness), in conjunction with the free champagne being proffered by circulating womanfolk, was making me giddy. I started prancing around in a Hunter S. Thompson-type gallivant. In a corner, there was a small spanking demonstration (act?) where 2 pretty ladies were stacked on top of one another and leaning on a black Prop. The uppermost pretty ass was being spanked by a pretty hand connected to a pretty lady. I rubbed my hands, licked my lips, and ventured to the outdoor section.  I saw a man chewing his gum like cud, getting tied up by the hired professional bondageur. He looked too dumb to be sassy, but still appeared to be thinking something vaguely ironic, like, "I bet Cheryl's gonna get a kick outta this one". I was getting the fear.

I ran towards the throbbing music emanating from the taco stand area. My feet started kicking up to the beat but my eyes wandered, longing, taco-ward. And then: strike of luck! My friend and her boyfriend were eating tacos but a few feet from my gyrations.  I greeted them and crooned my neck to perv on the asada, "You want one?" The Taco Man asked. "Oh. Oh yes." He waved my money a way. I can always tell when I'm in my element by the amount of free food that materializes. When I turned around, smiling wildly with asada excitement, an older man tapped me on the shoulder and asked me, "Who are you?" as if I was really a somebody. I replied, "My name is Nobody", trying to make an out-of-context Odyssey reference and feeling very clever. He didn't get it, but we chatted and talked shop and I made another Fetlife friend.

DING DING DING!

The clock struck 9:30 and it was already time for me to leave-- lest I be transformed back into a kinkster living behind murky curtains. Me and and my uneaten taco rushed to the dungeon to pick up heels and then to Torrance (I.e., the end of the earth) to do a session that would turn out to be my most lucrative one to date. I walked in and my client was raving drunk, watching TCM: "I just love Laurel and Hardy", he gurgled. I would not emerge until 5 hours later...

* * *

And so, my experience at the Hole was curtailed but enjoyable. The night left a strong impression on my psyche, not because of its intensity or outlandishness-- I found it to be utterly neither of those things-- but because of the comfort it engendered. It offered a fun, frisky, safe place for me (I'm hoping others, too) to let my two discreet lives blur together for an hour and a half. Honestly, I probably just need to start hanging with a kinkier crowd.

I probably shouldn't write posts from 5-7 in the morning...

Somehow I managed to narrativize and sentimentalize my truly hedonistic travails. Balance and rhythm have never been intuitive to me... just ask my ukulele teacher (har har...sigh).

Anywho, I must really be in full-fledged sub-space because all of the sudden Doms have been sidling out of the woodwork and trying to snatch me up. whereas for YEARS I was totally dessicated & Domless. It frightens me terribly to think of what actual qualitative aspects of my "subby aura" are that these dinosaurs are sniffing out.

EXHIBIT A: THE GURU

The other day I biked over to the local library to check out some German language textbooks (to please Mein Kommisar) and locked my 'cycle to the little curvy hoobly outside. This dark-skinned guy with sunglasses casually commented, in a strong Indian accent, on the aesthetic niceties of my bike. Anyways, for some reason I felt an immediate compulsion to befriend the fellow. So, after I did my book borrowing, I skulked around the foyer until he approached me.

Within minutes, he began describing his aberrational sexuality-- "a desire for SLAVE-ish woman", he said, "even though it has been a long time." Of course, he told me he clarified further for Jesus, "I tell Jesus my kinks do not affect my love for him.."

Our attraction to one another seemed genuinely a-sexual/friendly; we exchanged numbers and decided to be in touch. He was busy for a few days, he told me, but maybe we could hang out sometime next week and do some yoga. See, I didn't title this THE GURU because I'm a racist bitch (although I swear all Indians do possess a special veracity), but because he really was in touch with the forces of kink and human kind, por la general.

His last text confirmed it, "My gut feeling is that u have had dark desires since very long probably when u were a little girl ur number is that of saturn the most evil planet hehe".

:)))))))))))))))))))))))))))
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***Ok, I'm going to the Pleasure Chest party tonight-- "Gloryhole"-- and a shpankin new write up uf the affair will be forthcoming. Be sure to hold dem panties up! Ladies! Boys! Lady-boys!***

What, you don't like German kink??

Well hallo hello. I've re-entered the land of the eating-- it turns out it takes sustenance to fuel one's lascivious dealings, with the devil and otherwise.

It's 5:14 am and I just returned home (both my parents were up and about) after sleeping, for the first time, with the current object of my spring (the one to which I am sprung...). A precocious, scrawny 21 year old doctoral student, with a whole lotta of wit and a lot to learn. Of course, being 21 and tender, I cannot divulge the depths of my debauched wiles and desires to him. We had long, sweat-entrenched sex, which I had hoped would be more emotional & vulnerable, even though our dynamic is almost entirely light and comedic in nature. Maybe it is for that reason that I want to know him all the way, from the outside to the in, from the beginning to the distant branches.

When I came for the second time during our micro-marathon, I came to the memory of the recent experience I had at the dungeon, with my (potentially) new German Dom. He had been sending me messages on OKC for weeks, with body messages like, "I am kinky also. What is your number?"; "I like it rough and fast and I like dominate."; The best one, sent after I didn't respond for a quite a bit, "What, you don't like German kink??" Finally, I relented and we met for drinks. There is no use being coy at this point: persistence is a sure way into my pants.

After downing a few drinks and chatting through our respective language barriers, I realized I actually really really like German kink-- the accent, the coarse attitude, the love of high-performance automobiles. I think I finally had an experience akin to what my subs with Asian fetishes experience when they interact with a woman of that ethnic persuasion. I didn't care what he said, what he did for a living, or even exactly what he looked liked... I mostly just wanted to hear him speak in broken-ish English. Anyways, I checked out a few German language textbooks to pursue my newfound fetish.

While we were sitting at the bar, he asked me if anyone had ever spit in my mouth, and I answered, truthfully, that one person had. After some time passed and conversation evolved he looked at me, told me to open my mouth, and spit in my mouth in the middle of the packed lounge. I'm honestly not terribly aroused by public play, but my interest was piqued so I invited him to a tour of the dungeon-- I didn't even conceal the fact that I was a Dom (in the daytime c: ). Well, I won't get into graphic detail, but a little romp in the dungeon ensued... It was really fascinating to be "on the other end of the spectrum" of a real D/s session: I felt as if I had already been there because, I think, of the empathy I share with my slaves. So, I didn't feel terribly shocked at what transpired, despite the fact I had never been heavily humiliated before.

And, so, the sum total? Nothing. This is just a little snapshot of the week in sexual stills, c/o Ms. Carrion. Both of these bonds are nascent and therefore necessarily unstable, unpredictable: I am not sure what shape they will assume even a week hence. Truly, though life is never so benevolent, I could really dig on the balance created by the stark contrast of these two lovers, Degradation and Young Romance.