The Naked Truth

Stuck

2008-06-14T21:21:00.002+02:00

I feel a weird ambivalence about posting what I've been writing, recently. SOme of it is not intended to be read by anyone else, some of it is just a prolonged whine, and some... I don't know. I feel reluctant to share, and an irrational resentment about doing so. It's probably due to work, which is stressful and incessantly populated - there seem to be people in my room from the minute I get in till the minute I leave - and money, the lack of, which is beyond stressful. All of this makes me crabby and overprotective of my privacy, which is somewhat counterproductive to blogging. In a small bid for freedom I threw off all the several administrators at the current Naked Truth because although I have appreciated their help, and the fact that they have ironed out the bugs, and posted for me when I was internetless, I somehow felt that I needed to get inside my little blog-house and close the door. And although all today I have been a writing fool, I still feel as though I'm having to force myself to open the door a crack.

Men & Women

2008-06-08T12:34:00.001+02:00

I was told I fuck like a man. The implication being, I guess, that I don’t necessarily fuck like a nice, sensitive, caring about other people’s pleasure man, but more of an “OK, I’ve finished, now I’ll roll over and fall asleep” kind of unreconstructed caveman. But apparently it’s not only because of my very, very, occasional habit of doing that - “You fuck like a man because you want to fuck, and because you like it, and when you don't want to fuck, you don't.”

I’m wary of generalizations regarding men and women’s attitudes to sex: it’s far too easy to say that men fuck out of biological necessity, and women from emotional need, and I can immediately think of all the reasons why that isn’t true, and cite a thousand examples. But it’s not the first time I’ve heard the fuck like a man thing it from a man (I think I’ve heard it from almost every men I’ve fucked), and when I talk to my female friends, I sometimes realize we’re on completely different chapters, rather than pages, when it comes to our attitudes to sex. This has nothing to do with the way that I physically behave in bed: I’m pretty damn girly about the whole thing there, and I don’t suddenly go through a personality change when I’m naked, and switch to proactive from reactive (OK, I do change to a certain extent – I’m markedly less bossy and judgmental).

I think the common perception is that women attach more emotional significance to sex in general than men, or maybe they have more emotional expectations of it. Most of the women I know are looking for relationships, and once the preliminaries have been gone through, sex is somehow seen as part of the pact – which is not to say that it isn’t ardently desired in its own right – when the clothes come off, it is, or should be, an acknowledgement that they are wanted for more than their bodies. It’s a dangerous way of thinking: if the relationship is not forthcoming, or not in the form they hoped it would be, then the women quite often inflict upon themselves the double-pronged attack of doubting their sexual desirability, and their worth as a person (I know men feel this too. It’s just a bit more rampant in women). Girls are brought up to feel that their sexuality is a special gift to be conferred upon the right person, who will in turn confer on them the respect they deserve. The implications are that to “give it away” with no expectation denotes lack of self-respect. It’s a hard notion to shake, and I am forever grateful that it obviously passed straight over my head, but it is at the root of the whole slut/stud double standard.

It’s probably easier now than it used to be for a young woman to admit to enjoying sex for the sake of it, and to not want to necessarily marry and reproduce with every man she goes to bed with, and yet it sometimes seems that the media persists in believing that women are all emotional predators, and men are their poor hapless prey – no, sorry, men are all emotional bastards. It could well be that I spend too much time sitting in airports reading women’s magazines, and an inordinate time at work reading the fluffier parts of the papers online, but I do sometimes feel that journalists should get out a bit more: if I read one more article about this weird new species of single women who are quite happy being single (subtext: for now… don’t they protest a little too much? Aren’t they a little defensive? Maybe they just can’t find a man, poor things), I shall – well, I shall probably read it and fume, as usual. Of course lots - most, even – women want to have a meaningful relationship, but it’s not that most men are averse to the idea, either. Perhaps if people were actually honest about what they wanted, there would be less whining from women who thought that just because they wanted a relationship and thought that sex would seal the deal, the man would go along with them. And then there might be less whining from men who thought they were just getting an uncomplicated fuck from someone they fancied, rather than then feeling that all women are just after their half of the mortgage and their sperm. People aren’t intrinsically callous and unfeeling just because they don’t invest every act of copulation with buckets of emotional blood, or even if they do come up with the emotional blood, but still don’t see a zimmer-framed future beckoning.

Hot

2008-05-27T17:57:00.001+02:00

It’s far too hot. Last night I slept 11 hours, and I could have done it all over again when I woke up.

I drowned in negativity until it was swept away with thoughts of other things. My potential sex life is so much more exciting than my real one: I could have been fucked in Scandinavia last week and Africa next week, but you can’t book a ticket on the same day, and you can’t go abroad without a passport, so I’ll remain unfucked (by him) until he’s here. And really, I’d rather have him in my own bed, with the open window above us, and something stubborn in me holds out for that.

Playing Games

2008-05-25T19:21:00.002+02:00

This is what men I’ve been involved with will tell you about me: I know what I want, and I don’t play games (They’ll tell you other things too, but this isn’t a post about how fabulous I am, or how annoying, it’s about how confused I am).

I smile graciously when this is said to me, (by a variety of people, over a variety of years) and commend myself for my strong-mindedness. I can tell it’s a compliment, so I’m flattered. But one day it gets to me.

“OK, so what are these games I don’t play?” “Oh, you know. The games other women play before you can get them into bed”. “Um… like what?” By the end of the conversation, things aren’t all that much clearer to me. “So what you’re saying is that you don’t have to buy me dinner before you fuck me?” “Well, no, that’s not really it. Though I didn’t. But I did offer”. “And you don’t have to tell me how wonderful and special I am all the time?” “Well…” “Because don’t think you can drop all that now”. “But I don’t HAVE to tell you, I tell you because you ARE wonderful and special. And have an amazing brain. And a gorgeous body”. “Yes… go on…” “Oh, for God’s sake!” “And if I know what I want, why are you always going on about how indecisive I am?” “Wanna fuck?” “Yes, please”. “See? You aren’t indecisive about the big things”.

At least now I know there apparently are games I could have been playing, but I’m still pretty vague about what they are, and meanwhile have rather deflated the image of myself nobly eschewing them:
it never crossed my mind they were there to play. There’s always playing hard to get, I suppose, but what’s the point? If someone ever played hard to get with me, I’d never know: I’d have given up long before. It’s fairly simple, as far as I’m concerned: if you aren’t my type, there’s no way in hell you’ve got a chance, and if you are my type, then why are we wasting time hanging around? This is provided you play the telling me how wonderful and special I am game, though, and I’m very strict about the rules. None of that sycophantic ass-licking, no generic compliments. I want specifics, and I want authenticity. I completely believe the man who told me there are no better fucks than me, not so much because of my overweening ego, but because he then tactlessly added that there may well be better cocksuckers.

But yes, there are things I know that I want and don’t want, and I don’t mind stating them. And I can see how that can be refreshing… until it’s annoying. There’s something unforgiving about my unwillingness to change, something mean about my controlled emotions. My much admired strength seems coldly unyielding, and my tender underbelly, pressed firmly to the floor, looks more alluringly soft than anything else on offer.

Here’s the thing though: I’m still not playing games. I still haven’t worked what the fucking games are, far less all the rules and regulations. There’s no point in prodding me with a stick to get a reaction, because if i do react it’ll be somewhere inside my head. You can hurt me, but you won’t see the wound until I’ve licked it better. I don’t withold my emotions, I just keep them close to me. This is the way I work, and it’s what gives me my strength, and why I don’t know how to play games. The time I spend in my head has taught me what I want, as has all the time I spent finding it out through trial and error. I’m not being mean, I’m being me.

Rewind

2008-05-25T18:51:00.000+02:00

Apparently there are still subscribers to this blog. I was going to let it die, but I've changed my mind. It'll just be my other place. Like writing in the dark.

Ennui

2008-04-25T20:22:00.000+02:00

Oh, ennui. What a crashing bore you are.

I’m too fat for my clothes (I’m not too fat. But my clothes were bought when I was thinner, and I don’t fit them anymore) (and I wrote cloche instead of clothes. I’d like to state right now that I do not own a cloche. But maybe it’s a manifestation of my bluestocking fantasies. Either that or I am slightly deranged by no carbs and a surfeit of tuna salad).

Job… boring me. It’s not the job’s fault. But seven years doing the same thing, seeing the same people… yeah, all getting to me, much as I love them all. And the blogosphere was beginning to seem like work. Check in, smile and wave, slack off.

It’s weird thing, writing about intimacy, once you feel as though you’re sitting in a spotlight doing it. A self-inflicted spotlight, let’s not fool ourselves. Not one of those here-I-am-sitting-in-the-dark-just-doing-my-thing and all of a sudden someone comes along and notices me spotlights, but an I’ll-just-sit-here-under-this-nice-bright-shiny-spotlight spotlights. But the thing is, I lead from the back. I don’t like being up at the front, and when I am my instinct is to back off. And OK, I may be getting a little carried away here – it’s not as though the entire internetted world is sitting gazing anxiously at their screens waiting for me to utter. And yes, it pisses me off that more is known about me than I would choose to divulge, but when I look at my stats, the proportion of people who know anything at all is pretty miniscule. But it still feels like too many.
I’m very private. I state this frequently, publicly. But it’s a fact. I expertly straddle extreme reserve and total straightforwardness. Ask me a question, and I’ll answer it immediately – but think twice if you want to ask another. Unless I’m drunk, of course, in which case I’m pretty much convinced that you should and must hear my innermost secrets. Having a blog has been a bit like being on a year-long drunk, and maybe the hangover is beginning to kick in, and now I need to sleep it off for a while.

So there we are. And I’m still bored at work, and Jesus Christ, I’m hungry.

Cuckoos

2007-08-27T15:02:00.002+02:00

Muse:.... so he's going to come and live with us.
Muse's Mother: Oh, OK. You'll both have to pay rent then.
Muse: How can we pay RENT*? If we could pay rent we'd get a place of our own. I'm STUDYING! You WANT me to study! I can't study and WORK!
MM: How is it that you had to inherit my lack of work ethic, and not my antisocial leanings and nice placid temperament?
Muse: Why didn't I get the blue eyes? WHY?? I'll never forgive you for not giving me blue eyes. It's so unfair.
MM: You got a waist instead. Much healthier. But anyway: no rent, no moving in**.
Muse: But he HAS to. He can't live at home. His mother is being UNBEARABLE. And why do you need rent? You never pay bills or the mortgage anyway.
MM: Well, that's true. But I do have to every so often, or they cut everything off, and they'll take the apartment. This is why I feebly suggest you should get a job every so often, my petal.
Muse: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Say yes, though. I'll keep the house clean.
MM: Will you darling? Why don't you start with a practice run, and see if you can find where I hide the vacuum?
Muse: Don't be silly, you'd have to do it first. And you can't walk around with your boobs falling out of that nightdress when he moves in. Or your ass falling out of those jeans. You'll have to stop being so vulgar all the time. And we'd have to have actual food in the house. That you'd have to cook. You know, at mealtimes.
MM: Why, sweetie?
Muse: BecAUSE. You. Are. The MothAIR. That's what you're supposed to do.
MM: Mmmm. Right.
Muse: Everyone else's mother does those things. AND the laundry. And they clean the house.
MM: Wow. Really?
Muse: Yes! Every single mother of every single person I know behaves like a proper mother.
MM: Including the steady stream of them who have taken up residence with us over the years?
Muse: Yes, of course.
MM: OK, so everyone you know has these paragons for mothers, and yet they're all desperate to leave home and move in here. And you have your vulgar slatternly mother who is slowly starving you to death, and not only do you refuse to move out of home, but everyone else wants to move in here?
Muse: Er... yes.
MM: Where the fuck did I go wrong? What's wrong with you? Haven't you grasped the concept of benign neglect yet? Why don't you want to move out? What else can I do to make things more uncomfortable? I might as well go back to cooking and cleaning and doing your laundry for all the good living in squalor is doing me!
Muse: Yes, I wondered when you'd work that one out. And please stop fucking swearing all the time when he moves in.
MM: (lots of swear words as she realizes yet again that she is NEVER going to have to face up to the longed-for empty nest syndrome, and may have also tacitly agreed to do some housekeeping).

* Yes, she does talk in capital letters all the time. In two languages. All the time.
** As far as I was aware he'd moved in months ago. If it's not him I have no idea who the boxer shorts in the laundry basket belong to.

A Continuum in Notebooks

2007-08-26T20:29:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I bought two new, very beautiful, properly bound notebooks because the two I was using are full (always two – one for home and one in my bag). I love that feeling of opening a new notebook, with its pristine pages full of anticipation, and dread writing the first word in it – the bursting of the bubble of illusion (delusion?) that this notebook will have nothing but deep thoughts and deathless prose in it (so that it will be the one in the museum, obviously - every page filled with heart-rending beauty and harsh reality, all transcribed in my best handwriting. That'll be after I've written my magnum opus and all its minors, which will be just as soon as I've managed to come up with the plot I've been seeking for most of my life, and can manage to write more than a maximum of 500 words at a time. I'll probably have got hold of a bit of self-discipline by then, too (don't hold your breath, in other words)).

The notebooks have a pocket in the back. I transferred from one of the old ones to one of the new ones a poem I was sent not long after I started this blog: Bukowski’s so you want to be a writer? I take it out and read it at odd moments, and tell myself to abandon whatever I’m writing that doesn’t want to come out, or to excuse things that appear to want to be written down despite having no apparent merit.

The new notebooks made me remember an old one, dropped down the back of my radiator years ago. It’s a small Moleskine with a purple silk cover; smaller than I find comfortable to write in, but I used it partly as a journal for a while. I fished it out from its dusty hiding place, repatriating generations of dust bunnies in the process, and read it for the first time in years.

I started it in October 2002, and the last entry is March 2003. Reading about the two men I was emotionally involved with then is strange. Of the one of whom I said: “…but I also see that he uses what he knows of me to manipulate me. He can be a bastard… but not in other ways. He’s got a loving soul. Maybe that’s what redeems him”, I also said “It’s not as though it’s going to be a long-term thing, and then I suppose we’ll just go back to being friends”. Of the other one I said: “Can’t really work out where it’s going. Don’t know if it is all less thrilling now, or if it’s just settling down into a normal rhythm. Hate the lack of control, tired of feeling alternately neglected and euphoric, with hardly any time lapse in between”, and later: “I don’t know if I miss him, or the whole thing, or if it’s just that it’s unfinished business”.

I’ve learnt patience in the past five years. I’ve learnt that there are some uncertainties I can bear, and that there are some that torment me. I’ve learnt not to think about where anything is going, or to need to see any direction at all. I’ve learnt that a loving soul trumps much else, and that euphoria is better served by happiness. I've learnt that long-term is relative, and unfinished business can be a beginning. And that the next two notebooks will probably be as full of analysis and random thoughts about the same two men as the last ones were, and the ones before that.

Tough Enough

2007-08-25T22:04:00.002+02:00

The miner says: “Why would a pretty girl like you want to look such a fucking mess?” and “You think you’re really tough, don’t you?” and “Buy the lady a fucking drink when she asks you to”, though he doesn’t say that to me, but to the man I used to live with, who thinks he should pay me the money he owes me in drinks, but only when he’s good and ready. The man I used to live with slams my drinks in front of me, and tries to elbow me in the ribs, and hisses in my ear that he’s sick of me getting people to threaten him, even though I didn’t. I think some of them have just been waiting for an excuse, and I’m gratified and grateful that they’re taking it.

Last time I gave in to the urge to punch a man I got a black eye in return, so I smile nicely, and tell the miner I’m not so pretty when I’m not a fucking mess, and yes, I do think I’m really tough - though I don’t tell him the feeling I get in the pit of my stomach when I see the man I used to live with sometimes makes me doubt it. I thank the miner for the drinks, even the ones he didn’t pay for, and we find common ground in hating the government and the country where I grew up and he once worked.

We end up outside before closing time when the pub is raided by the police. The miner asks where I live, and says he’ll walk me home. Two of his friends move closer and I see people watching me. The miners come to town once a month when they get paid, and drink their wages in a weekend, before they rape and pillage, and leave the burning ruins of the town behind them when they return to the mines on Monday. Or something along those lines, at least. Tonight we thrill with dread, because those of us not convinced we’re really tough dearly love our heroes and villians, and to be terrified with the excitement of incipient violence.

The man I used to live with is yelling at me from the doorway of the pub now that the police have left, but I’m telling the miner I can make my own way home, and stepping back from the looming presence of the others, moving closer. I look at the miner, and he tells them he’ll take me home, and the landlord of the pub shouts my name, in a voice that makes me start instinctively towards them, even though I should know better.

The door slams behing me as soon as I’m in, and he’s yelling at me, about what a fool I am, how I could have been raped, how lucky I am to have him looking out for me. But he’s yelling it in my face with his hand twisted in my hair, and I’d rather be outside, taking my chances with the devil I don’t know. The landlord tells him to let go of me, and me that he’s right, but he opens the door when I start yelling back.

Outside the pub further down the road, where neither the police nor the miners like to venture, my ex-boyfriend's psychotic brother, is sitting outside. I get inside before the man I used to live with catches up with me, but as soon as he does he has me by the wrist, pulling me back into the wood partition. He’ll take me home, he’ll take care of me. It’s obvious I can’t take of myself. The partition thumps on either side of me as my ex boyfriend and his best friend flank us. How am I? Where have I been? Am I OK? Am I sure about that? They address me and look at him, and he releases the hold he has on my arm twisted behind my back. They move away when he leaves, and I stand where I am and think about the miner. I doubt he’d have wanted to rape me. He probably would have wanted to fuck me. I didn’t want to fuck him, but I wouldn’t have put up much of a fight. If you can’t take care of yourself, the best you can do is cause yourself the least damage possible.

Apparently I put that thought out of my mind when I decide that if I need protection I’ll choose my own. I walk out of the pub and stand in front of my ex-boyfriend’s brother until he raises his mad eyes to mine. I think I think, in my own mad way, that the best way to prove myself is to pit myself against the scariest fucker any of us know. “Take me home,” I tell him, and I tell myself I know what I'm doing.

The Ghost of Sex

2007-08-24T22:38:00.002+02:00

When you and I undress each other, our ghosts stand by, already naked, stripped to their gleaming bones. The skeleton ghost is the blueprint we bring to the bed, or bend over the table, the faint inked plan of whatever edifice we construct to interpret it, casting its shadow where our bodies meet.

It’s not the fucking our bodies do that defines us, but how much ghost bone we reveal, or glimpse unshown. The responses we have learnt, the party tricks we have been taught, the things we are driven to do in order to feel – they all adjust minutely to what we sense, and recreate themselves in familiar phrases formed with a new vocabulary. There are responses and initiatives your body dictates to mine, that your mind intructs mine in; ways in which your mind alone can seduce my body, and that my body can lure your mind. This is the flesh on the bones of my skeleton sex, and what other men have given and taken away is what I clothe them in.

These pristine ghosts don’t bear the scar tissue we do, they have not been twisted and molded by experience the way we have. They have no memory of all the other bodies that taught us what we crave and what we fear. Your cock, my cunt, your balls, my breasts, have left their imprint in liquid DNA on others’skin, but not enough to mark these invisible bones, or dent the rattling chains that can bind us or unlock us.

You kiss me, turn me over and fuck me, with all the skill you've learned, and all my words you've heard, and everything my body tells you in the way it answers all you ask of it. I fuck you back, fighting through all I know for the taste of your replies to me. In the dark my skeletal ghost sex kisses yours, and learns the shape its flesh must take, and how to dress to please you.

X Marks the Spot

2007-08-23T14:57:00.002+02:00

The waters all are charted, where I am is clearly marked. There is no map. I never said there was one, just that I'd land you on the shore. It's simple, but I never said it was easy. You're on your own, here, though I'll keep you company. Count on nothing, and obey your instincts.

There's always buried treasure here, but it may not be where you think it is, and it may not be what you think it is; it might be yours, not mine. I don't even know if it's where I believe it to be, or if I'll recognize it if you don't find it. Under the surface there's seismic movement; what looks safe may be quicksand, and what appears most delicate could be iron to the core. I couldn't tell you if you can divine it, or if it will follow your magnetic progress, serpentine and invisible behind the miraged facade.

You have to read what's in front of you, feel your way with your fingertips, detect the shift in scent and taste. You have to hack away the obstacles, smooth the rough, dig deeper, and don't discount the obvious. You have to listen for the faintest change, and sound me out for warmth and chill.

Don't rely on footprints, trails of crumbs or planted flags. Those were left by others, and what they found is taken, or misplaced, or broken and discarded, though it might be repaired, and some of it is simply moved.

I brought you here, but you chose to come. I wouldn't keep you against your will, and I have to trust you to not break what you might find. You have to make your own deductions, and make no assumptions, however familiar the terrain. I'll watch you drown if I have to, but you can make me want to keep you safe.

This is only the promised land if that's what you need to believe it to be; I make no promises.

Slow Burn

2007-08-23T00:43:00.002+02:00

Uncurl my sleep-packed limbs, wake them slowly with one tiny little pinpoint of sensation that flushes through my blood. Add another, and another, placed delicately on the scales to keep them on the edge of nearly enough but not quite, not yet; a tracery of pleasure on my skin. Blur the boundaries between deliberate and accidental fuel for the fire, while the flames lick slowly, gradually taking hold.

My mind anticipates and my cool skin responds, warming from the glowing core, and the heated circle turns, slowly tightening with pleasure both vicarious and felt. Let me think I follow my own dictates, while every muscle stretches and flexes, and second-guess me with pure mindlessness; provoke the animal response with perfectly measured pressure that wipes out conscious thought.

Closer to the tipping edge it all slows, pared down and reduced to its essence, and all the excess falls away. And then stripped of the superfluous, of everything beyond my body now, there is nothing to impede the last fast licking flame, nothing to hold me back or block my way, and I can only let it consume me.

I long for you. When I'm falling asleep and when I wake up, and when I least expect it.

The Spinning Circle

2007-08-20T14:32:00.002+02:00

Clearing out my inbox, and various chats and conversations, I came across one from the Lover in Chief in which he claimed (not entirely seriously)that he was submissive to me. Because I’ve been pondering the nature of D/s relationships, in an attempt to understand them better, and to get a grip on what bothers me about them, (not in the abstract, but as related to me! me! me!), and also because of a comment Dee made on a post of mine recently (not one about the LiC), and one he made to me privately about a post written about him a while ago (in which he objected that I had made him appear too dominant), I’ve also been pondering spin in how I present what I write about.

I’ve long found Richard and Amy’s blog about their relationship to be illuminating - particularly the posts where they both write about the same experience from their different points of view, and right now I’m finding Eileen and Maymay’s blogs to be equally enlightening from the opposite side of the D/s fence (I found them through the brilliant Bitchy Jones – as an aside, why is it, in general, that female Ds and male ss seem to manage to write so much more entertainingly and self-analytically and so less smugly than the other way round (with a few honorable exceptions)? There is a great deal to say about the marginalisation of some types of sexuality but probably here isn’t the place to say it)*.

As for spin, it’s not conscious, but it’s undeniably there - spin is in the details that are omitted. “He threw me across the bed but that was OK because it was as per our agreement and then he yanked my legs open, while still retaining utmost respect for my mind. "Shut up," he growled, fully cognisant of the fact that if he had said that in a non-consensual sexual setting I'd have had him strung up by the balls in no short order...” Um, yeah. It may be accurate, but loses something in, you know, sexiness, I suspect.

I could write about sex with the Lover in Chief in such a way that it would undoubtedly prove that he was submissive to me. To an extent, my sexuality dictates our sexual relationship; I could quote him, and I could describe what he does in bed, and I could ennumerate concessions he makes to me, and he would definitely come across as my submissive pleasure slave. By the same token, I could write about the same instance in ways that would make it very clear that I was his submissive little fucktoy. Both would have equal truth, and be equally innaccurate.

I don’t actually believe that there is any D/s element in this this particular relationship, sexual or otherwise, but sexually there is a strong element of control. Non-sexually, there is no power exchange outside of the one dictated by circumstance: he’s a bossy bastard, and I’m a bossy bitch, and we’re well-matched. Sexually, out of bed I’m winning on points on the I-don’t-really-want-to-do-that-but-I’ll-do-it-for-you scale. In bed, he’s the top and I’m the bottom: the control element has evolved naturally, and is at a level that both parties are comfortable with – and he has it. When the bedroom door shuts, he sets the pace and he calls the shots; he decides when and how we fuck, and when and how I come; he likes to tease and I like to be teased, and he is far more patient than me (plus, he has a delayed gratification kink, and I have a masochistic streak).

In any relationship, there is an exchange of power, whether it’s recognised or not. I could argue that the power exchange in a vanilla relationship is exactly the same as that in a D/s one – it’s just that the ratio of power exchanged is different. And there’s a difference between power and control. I'm naturally reactive, not proactive, and I'm more than happy for my body to be worshiped, but I don't give up control that easily. I've been with too many men who have interpreted my non-proactiveness as an invitation to fling me over their shoulder and charge across the finishing line of my limits, so I have learnt to keep a close eye on anyone attempting to step over the line. Giving up control is liberating, but it's scary at the same time, and I have tended not to do it because there's such a fine line between relinquishing it and having it taken away from you. There's a difference between having your limits tested, and having them ignored.

He and I have found a balance between what he's comfortable with taking, and what I'm comfortable with giving up. I can let him have control without feeling either powerless or submissive, neither of which I am remotely OK with. It works for me because I have the luxury of knowing I will get what I want, but not when I'm going to get it (and knowing it'll all be good), so I can just let myself go into this haze of sensuality that is utter, utter bliss (it is possibly, in some ways, the closest to submission I will get, and it isn't necessarily what makes the relationship or the sex great, or necessarily what I need or want in other relationships: it's just part of the dynamic of this one). He may be getting off on turning me into a screaming, quivering, pool of come because of all the pleasure he is selflessly giving me, but he's also getting off big-time on his own power trip; and I think he's more consciously aware of the power he has over me than I am of any I have over him. Even the agreement to do what one partner wants and the other doesn't (and there are, obviously, limits to that as well) isn't a case of suffering for the sake of someone else's kink, because it is part of the whole delicately balanced spinning circle of mutual arousal, where what is initially unappealing becomes appealing in the context of a relationship and the gratification of the other's sexual gratification.

And it is that balance, at the root of any relationship, that really fascinates me, whether it's reading about how it is handled in other people's relationships, or exploring it in my own.

*Name checking some other blogs that have made me think, and examine my own preconceptions, lately: Elizabeth, Calico, and Tom Allen.

Body Mutination

2007-08-19T12:51:00.002+02:00

Wake up after a couple of hours sleep feeling vaguely disgruntled. I need a cup of coffee and an orgasm, I decide, and not necessarily in that order. Not all of me agrees, however.

Me: OK, I think I'd feel better if I had an orgasm.
Mind: Fine. Go ahead, and let me go back to sleep.
Pussy: What are you DOING? Leave me alone, I'm tired.
Me: Please wake up, both of you. I'm getting urgent messages from my central nervous system that we need some action here.
Mind: OK, I'll try to come up with something... nope, sorry. Try again later.
Pussy: You're annoying me. Go away.
Me: Oh, come on, girls, this won't take long. Just play along, pleeease? Fine. Desperate measures are called for.
Mind: Yeah, whatever. You're still not going to be able to manage it without me, and I am a perfect blank.
Pussy: Oh for God's SAKE! Why are you pointing that buzzy thing at me? Go AWAY.

Deep breaths. Time to regroup.

Me: Get a fucking GRIP! I'M the boss around here! We're going to have a fucking orgasm whether you like it or not.
Mind: But it's not a fucking orgasm, is it? I wouldn't have any problem with a fucking orgasm. You seem to be forgetting a vital ingredient here, and quite frankly you're going to have to provide better quality coffee if you want any input from me.
Pussy: Was that little temper tantrum supposed to turn me on? Because it didn't, you know. You have to have a penis before you can turn me on with a show of strength, and oops! that's what you seem to be missing right now, isn't it?

***

Me: There. That's better. Now I can go back to sleep. Don't try that again, please.
Mind: Go to sleep?? What are you, stupid? I'm all awake and perky now!
Pussy: Jesus Christ, you're so MEAN. There was no need to be so rough. But yeah, I've woken up a bit now.
Me: Stop it! I AM THE BOSS OF YOU! Don't make me have to prove it again. Go to sleep, my bitches. Now.

God, it's tiring keeping myself in line, sometimes.

Alpha Gold Standard

2007-08-18T14:32:00.002+02:00

I need to keep my brain sharp as a knife, or its bluntness will be drawn to my attention. I can't make excuses, but I can offer explanations, so long as I accept that they will be methodically rejected until they are as clear and precise and honed as close to the bone as I can make them. If I disagree, I had better make sure I can back it up with evidence, if I pick holes, I had better have good reasons, and when an impasse is reached I'd better be able to hurl an insult with equal speed and accuracy.

What is strongest in me (but not necessarily what is best) is valued: my toughness, my ability to withstand whatever is thrown at me, my mean killer instinct, my viciousness, my male brain. I can be fluffy because that's endearing, but I'd better make sure that if my wit's not showing then something else is. I can be weak if it's brief, acknowledged, presented coherently and amusingly, and snapped out of almost as soon as it's expressed. I can criticize, I can carp, I can pick a rib to sharpen my stiletto on, because I've proved I can stand firm against the same treatment.

I can charm, I can cajole, and I can get in close, so long as I can recognize when to step back. I can not know, so long as I'm prepared to take instruction. I can advise and if I pick my moment I can issue orders, but only if the ground I stand on is rock solid. I must pay for every tat with tit, and earn respect with the quickness of my wits.

He keeps my mind pared down to a lean, meanness, and likes to watch it fight, and lets me wrap it in affection. I rarely ask, because when I do, I always get. I prove my worth in loyalty, and see it measured back to me.

Reconstruction

2007-08-17T18:53:00.002+02:00

There is no new land to build on here; what has lain fallow for centuries is still halted for excavations as soon as the first spade goes in. Progress is slowed by dead forgotten subterranean towns, and all our cities rest on the bones of the past.

Forgiveness, redemption, absolution. None of them can wipe the slate clean. I don't regret my deeds; I wish I had caused no harm. Catharsis serves its purpose but it leaves scattered corpse-thoughts in its wake, and we must wait for them to crumble away, and be ground down into the dust.

What seems ruined can be rebuilt, and be raised higher on the collapsed remnants of what went before. When we dig the holes for new foundations we can block them in with past expectations and all they brought with them: anger and frustration and resentment; what could be remorse and regret if I examine it too closely, which I won't.

I crave your touch, because that's the only proof there's treasure buried here, and makes the stories we tell each other true. Smooth the words away with your hands, because for all our articulacy, we only dig pitfalls with what they say; but uncover the ones that are underneath, the ones that endure and keep coming back. Actions, in our case, speak louder than words, and their tone is so much lighter. Jump through hoops for me, and listen to my body.

Pile high the good stuff. Pile high how much I want you, how I need to absorb you through my skin, how, in the end, I can forgive you anything. Layer upon layer of everything you pull up to my surface, the cream that floats above the darker depths. Reconstruct the new on the pillars of the old, and over the top sprinkle this: that I love you, and nothing, it seems, can make me stop.

Between Baths

2007-08-15T17:33:00.002+02:00

While I'm filling in time, I have a bath at J's house. She lights candles, and pours me a glass of wine, and lays out fluffy towels, and I lie back in the perfumed water and can't concentrate on having this bath because I'm thinking about the next one. I'm hoping the next one will be full of man, not plastic Spongebob figures, though.

The journey is endless: first there are no taxis, and then there is traffic. The taxi driver tries to make conversation, and the voice on my phone wants to know why I'm not there yet, and every second is torment, because I'm sitting cleanly in a taxi when I should be getting dirty in a hotel room.

And then I'm there, and the door has been opened, and I've been pulled inside, bag dropped at my feet, coat slithering to the floor. I'm here, being kissed, my face in his hands, his skin under my hands, his erection pressing against me, the heated steam from the ritual bath scenting the air. Barely time to register anything about the room before I'm backed into the bed, dropped smoothly down into it, and wrapped around him: arms, legs, mind.

There are kisses you could die in, with no regrets, because they make you feel as though you've been searching all your life for the perfect mouth, and now you've found it. But at some point although your brain may believe that your mouths are having sex, other parts of your anatomy remember that they aren't. While our tongues fuck, my hand slides down over the short fur of his hair, the roughness of his stubble, warm skin and hair, hard little nipples, and then hard cock, patiently waiting to fill my hand, leaking under my touch. His hands slide up, instead of down, from my calf slowly up my leg to my thigh, the way he does when we fuck, but now instead of bare skin his fingers brush over the suede of my boot, over nylon until they encounter skin, and then pause, right at the edge of my lace-clad pussy, before brushing past it, under my dress, over my tummy, up to my breast.

He breaks the kiss and pulls the low neck of my dress down. "Lace. Very pretty", he says. "Gorgeous", as he kisses the top of my breasts. His hand under my dress is finding its way down again. "Panties?" He feels about for a bit. "Ah. No." I squirm as he squeezes the bare cheeks of my ass, and then moves down my body, flipping the skirt of my dress up. "Oh, they match! Beautiful." I feel his hot breath against the skin at the inside of my thigh, and then hear him moan as he inhales me, and then the wet warmth of his tongue as he touches it to my skin. He pays extravagant compliments to my underwear, and his mouth and his hands tease and promise but don't deliver, until I'm moaning with frustration, and telling him to please shut up.

His tongue licks along the edge of my thong and then slips underneath, and then he pulls the material aside so he can get to me. I lie like a rag doll and wait, until I feel my blood race faster, and my muscles begin to gather themselves beneath my skin, as it feels as though my whole body is disappearing, sliding down the bed to gather in my pussy, sucked into his mouth, flicked in with his tongue.

He raises his head, and kisses me on the thigh. "Did you want to have that bath now?" he asks, disingenuously innocent. "No! I just want to be fucked!" My voice is deeper and more ragged and desperate than I expected it to be. His is very calm as he smiles at me and says: "Too bad", and returns to what he was doing.

My brain has melted by now; I leave it up to him. I know less from my body how close I'm getting than from his hands: how they hold me open, pin me to the bed, grip my ass. I've dissolved to nothing but nerve endings and boiling blood and helplesness, and I just have to wait until he decides I'm ready and pulls me over the edge. He pulls me near it, and my back raises off the bed, my bootheels digging into the bedcover, his hand under my dress again closing tight round my tit. I have a moment of panic, when I remember him saying: "Maybe I won't let you come, next time," but it seems he's forgotten it, or he's reconsidered it, because I wait, poised on the edge, and then I fall, dragged over by his mouth.

He lies with his face against me to feel every last tremor, until I get my shuddering breath back, and then he asks me about the bath again, and I say yes, that would lovely, thanks.

Lingerie

2007-08-14T21:41:00.002+02:00

The strike has been called off, he says. He'll be here. Hurrah, I say, then I did not buy new underwear in vain. Why bother with new underwear? he replies, sounding slightly confused - who is going to be looking at my underwear? He is, I tell him. No, he says, he doesn't think so; he's more interested in what is beneath the underwear. He will be looking at the fucking underwear, I tell him, possibly with a slight edge in my voice; I have told him about it, so he will bloody well notice it.

He notices it, waxes lyrical about it, and I get to have an orgasm in it (AND my boots).

However, by the next time he has apparently forgotten that he is supposed to play the lingerie-appreciation game, and just looks puzzled and wonders why I still have so many clothes on.

Sleepdaze

2007-08-13T10:02:00.002+02:00

In my dream, which is probably more half-awake doze than sleep, you're here in my bed. We're talking, lying huddled in the warm dark, and whatever we're talking about is half-informed by an erotic charge. There's a sense that sex is either side of it, though I don't know which is nearer.

Did we just fuck? Are we lying here after, beyond the gasped collapse, still with the last fading spasms of physical exertion, feeling rather pleased with each other? Or is this that conversation that disguises the physical tease, that revels in the knowledge that at any minute it can be brought to an abrupt halt and sent spiraling off-course by a touch or a breath or just a distracted pause? Maybe it's the last stand before sleep, before the voices slow and the bodies fold up tight.

In my half-sleep there is the luxury of time; a lack of urgency to use up the minutes in nothing but physicality, and the comfort of knowing that there is space in this bed for everything we need.

In the Park at Midnight

2007-08-13T08:41:00.002+02:00

The women sit lined up along the concrete step, backs against the metal fence. Smoke from our cigarettes drifts, as intermittent as our voices, discussing men, and kids, and who is cold and who mosquito-bitten. The boys do their boy thing, shrieking headfirst and shoeless down the slide, the younger girls try to out-swing each other and then suddenly leap off and mimic us, sitting on the steps on the other side, lost in intense conversation.

Fifteen years between youngest and oldest offspring, seventeen years between youngest and oldest adult until my daughter appears and widens it to twenty-four, closing the gap between oldest offspring and youngest non-offspringed adult to seven years. Seven years between the two oldest offspring: the years between thirteen and twenty that are a gulf. Thirteen is too far apart from the younger ones to want to join in with them, and still needs to be shielded from what we talk about; twenty already carries a small weight of experience and knowledge and pain.

It's cold sitting still, but no one wants to move, all of us still full of food and wine and shared confidences when the children could be distracted by late-night ice creams, and the talk could move from veiled references to the explicit. Now the thirteen year old shifts irritably when the references are veiled again, and an obscure remark sends a wave of muffled laughter down the line. She thinks she's on the cusp between child and adult, and has no idea how long and difficult the trek across that cusp will be, or how tricky the terrain is. Our laughter isn't provoked by the same joyful impulse that the younger girls' is, their voices suddenly carrying across the playground, hysterical with tiredness and ridiculous punchlines. Ours comes from somewhere darker - an instinctive response to the feeling that if you can't laugh, if you can't clutch at the twigs of joy rushing by, life could quite easily drown you, and only happiness and some blind faith in the future can keep you afloat.

Belt Buckle

2007-08-11T04:13:00.002+02:00

He kneels back on his heels, shins across my thighs, and looks at me thoughtfully.

"I think you should be tied up." I don't think I should, but when I tell him he flips me effortlessly onto my stomach and pulls my arms behind my back, holding my wrists in one hand. I squirm, and he laughs. I can't pull out from under him without dislocating my shoulders, and he's almost doing that for me as he leans over the bed to shake his belt loose from his jeans.

"I don't want to be tied up," I say, and he says, in a very reasonable tone of voice, that he wants to tie me up. It takes a while to get the belt tied round my wrists; I try to wriggle free, and have to be pinched on the inside of the thigh before I'll lie still again. I feel one of his legs relax its pressure on mine, and twist violently to pull myself free, almost turning onto my side before he pins me back in place again.

When he's satisfied my wrists are secure he releases my legs, and pulls my ass up, his thighs spreading mine.

I say: "I'm not-" and he says, "Yes, you are", and I am. I push back onto him, moaning, and he holds me by the wrists for leverage with one hand and reaches underneath me to dig his fingers into my tit, hard. He fucks me with my ass in the air and my face in the pillow for a while, and then turns me over onto my back, and lets me bite his mouth while he slides back in.

The belt buckle presses into the small of my back, and it hurts; it really hurts. Every time he thrusts into me and the weight of his body pushes me down into the bed, I feel myself flinching away. I try to keep my hips lifted above it, but he's too heavy. It's really annoying me now. It hurts, and not so good, either, and I can't see the point of being restrained by someone who can restrain me effortlessly with one hand. We both already know he's bigger and stronger than me, and I don't know why I should have a metal belt buckle drill a hole in my back to prove a point. I can't concentrate on the fuck anymore; resentful irritation isn't my idea of turned on. I let my body go limp and he stops.

"This isn't working", he says. "I know!" I hiss. He pulls back onto his haunches, bringing me with him. I stare into his face as he loosens the belt, and takes my wrists in both of his hands. He shoves me back onto the bed, arms pinned above my head.

"It's no fun if you can't fight back". He smiles, and kisses me,violently. "Fight me back, you little bitch." He releases my wrists and my whole body convulses around him, tearing at his skin, biting at his flesh, hearing him groan with pleasure at the pain I inflict, fucking back at him with all the passion that had been wrapped up and subdued by the belt.

Blind

2007-08-10T13:57:00.002+02:00

He's my blind spot, my achilles heel, the only man who has made me cry.

Is it worth it? I don't remember.

Is he worth it? Yes.

If This Ain't Love

2007-08-09T13:21:00.002+02:00

I’m sitting in the pub coughing. This is such a regular occurrence that there’s no reaction now. Everyone’s used to hearing me hack my lungs up. Tonight it’s no good though, I can feel that it’s not going to stop, however much I battle for control of it, however much I drink to try to soothe my throat. I push my way out from behind the table and tell them I’m going home.

Outside I lean against the wall and cough again, then zip up my leather jacket and button my coat over it. I walk home huddled up against the cold, and don’t look round when I hear footsteps behind me.

It’s Mick, and I haven’t got anything to say to him. I don’t know why Kate won’t talk to him. I don’t know why she won’t sleep with him. I say it all anyway as we walk home, let ourselves into the kitchen with the key that everyone knows is kept under the brick by the back doorstep, and make tea. The gas fire in the living room, the only heating in the house, is stuck on high, and I start coughing again. I tell Mick I have to go to bed, and he leaves, still as confused about the machinations of Kate’s mind as everybody else.

In my bedroom I pull the curtains against the street. Once, when this was just a normal, generously sized terraced house, this room was the front room, with the front door opening on to the street. I throw my clothes off and crawl under the covers. The house is silent and empty.

This is the first time for months I have been alone. I lie in the dark and wonder who I am. There’s no one around to define me: “She’s so… she always… she likes to…she's such a...” Who the fuck am I? And even scarier than that, how the hell did this happen? When did I stop craving time alone, when did I lose sight of myself so that I only recognise a distorted caricature of myself seen through other people’s eyes? I don’t know whether I’m more scared of being alone or not wanting to be alone. I’m lying curled up in a tight ball when someone starts banging on the front door, yelling my name.

I pull it open with difficulty: it probably hasn’t been opened for a year. X falls through it into the room, ranting incoherently. He hates them all, fuckers, bastards. He’s gone off and left them and no one knows where he is. He lies down on the bed next to me and lets me stroke his face and the sides of his shaved head. He says: “I don’t have anyone, none of those fuckers gives a shit”. “They do, X. They all look up to you”. He’s calmed down now, so when I say “You know I love you”, he says “You stupid fucked-up cunt”, but he smiles and turns his face to kiss me, and tells me he loves me too. His breath smells of snakebite. He says: “Let me stay here”, and puts his arms round me. His eyes close, and I think of the first time I saw him in the pub, playing cards, transfixed by the tattoos on his arms and the holes in his ears, his battered nose and shaved head. I lie quietly beside him while he snores, lying on top of the covers with his studded jacket still zipped up and his 12 hole DMs still on. He's wrong though: nobody's waiting for him to crash and burn. They all need a hero, and they'd follow him to the gates of hell. All the boys want to be X, and all the girls want to have X; everyone loves X except X.

There are voices from outside, then the sound of the door opening, and suddenly the house is full of people. It’s Saturday night and the pubs are out. The door to my room flies open and I remember who I am again: Kate yelling at me about Mick leaving the pub with me; Tom settling down on the floor by the side of my bed eating cold baked beans out of the tin; my housemate and her weaselly boyfriend, who says: “I admire you, I really do. You’ll fuck anyone, won’t you? Even your best friend’s boyfriend”, until he sees X and shuts up. Mick and Ro come in, hysterical with relief at having found him; Alex appears and glowers at them all; Joe and all the pretty boys, overcome with excitement at being in the same place as the big boys; two of my friends from college, who had apparently told me they were staying the night here. X has got up by now, and one of the pretty boys runs in to say that Alex is choking on a chicken bone and blood is coming out his mouth. Someone runs out to phone for an ambulance. By the timethe ambulance comes Alex has recovered, and is leaning against the wall watching me with his black eyes like slits, X has left, Ro is sitting on the end of my bed and Tom is lying on the floor apparently unconscious. The ambulance men try to take him with them, but are eventually convinced that this is his normal sleep pattern, and he is dragged off to sleep it off on the living room floor. Someone has turned on the tape recorder and hillbilly punk is blasting the roof off. Everyone is standing around in my bedroom waiting to see what happens next. I’ve remembered who I am now: I’m the calm at the centre of the storm – or maybe just a wordless extra in everyone else’s drama.

Ro says: “l want to go bed now”, and everyone fades away. Alex glares at me and Joe asks me sulkily for a cover, but they’re not about to challenge Ro. One of my college friends says crossly: “I suppose we’ll just sleep in the living room then”, but she doesn’t want to challenge him either and I wouldn’t dream of it. Ro pulls off his clothes and pushes me over in the bed and I kick him and say “Fuck off, you bastard”, and he says “Come on, you know he’ll never stay with you if I’m here”. And if Ro knows that X’s with me, he’ll turn up, and I’ll just let X go. It’s happened enough times for it to be a habit. “I really love X”, I wail, and he says “I know, so do I”.

The door opens again and Mick comes in dragging a sleeping bag and announces that he’s sleeping in my room because the living room is full of feminists and half-witted seventeen year olds. He lies down on the floor and closes his eyes, then sits up and says: “Don’t keep me awake. Fuck quietly”. But we don’t, apparently, because he complains at length about it to the pub at large the next day.

Everyday Gorgeous

2007-08-08T21:05:00.002+02:00

Walking across the courtyard I see a car parked outside the gate leading to my apartment building. There is a young couple inside the car, and I find myself struck by what a gorgeous pair they are. Both abstracted from the outside world by their absorption in their conversation, they have a delicate featured dark intensity about them that makes them look like two versions of the same idea: not as though they were related, but as though two different artists had been given the same brief, and told to make one male and one female. Their individual handsomeness is doubled by proximity to the other, the perfect foil.

They look up as I open the gate. One smiles, the other looks guilty because she's forgotten the milk. They are suddenly just themselves again, and all my stranger's perspective has vanished. The same faces that I saw in the car look back, but overlying that are all the other images of them: their sleep-smudged vacancy when they first wake up, their stoned vacuousness annoyingly often, the set jaws and drawn-together brows that presage door slamming and thrown objects, his usual calmness, her habitual animation. They aren't, I assume, any less good-looking than they were before my brain registered that I knew them, but that's not what I'm reading their faces for now: now I'm noticing all the tiny tensions, good and bad, in their relationship with each other, and with me; hers tempered by his presence.

After I've greeted them and turned away, I turn back. But it's just them, sitting in the car; a beautiful pair, to be sure, but impossible for me to see objectively from the outside again.

Babel

2007-08-07T12:32:00.002+02:00

Changing the sheets on my bed, I have a sudden flashback to you, in it. In place of the empty crumpled sheets and the open window letting in the summer brightness, I see you, lying back against the pillows, smiling at me as you stroke yourself, waiting for me to take over. The windows are closed, because it's winter, and cold, and the light is harsh from the thin winter sun, but you glow golden-skinned in the smoky haze that counts the times my body gave in to yours.

The common languages we share just serve to underline the infinite ways we can misunderstand and misinterpret each other. Without body language all too often you and I hang by a thread, but with it there is nothing that cannot be translated into pleasure.

I miss you, and I'm tired saying it. I'm tired saying it to you, and I'm tired thinking it. I'm tired of us swimming past each other when we're so much better in our human, corporeal form pressed close together. If I had you here now, I could make you understand the things you won't see, and I wouldn't care about the things that tire me now. I want your face in my hands, I want your cock in my cunt, I want your breath in my mouth, and to speak the language we both understand.