- I’ve never ridden a bike in my life. And the amount of miles I’ve driven a car is equal to or less than the number of years I’ve lived on this planet. Motion on wheels doesn’t make sense to me. Even riding shotgun or in the backseat of a car is enough to make me nervous.
- The number of sexual partners I’ve had can be counted on one hand with a finger to spare. It would have been two, but I am human and, therefore, am prone to make mistakes.
- My idea of a perfect date is staying at home with a good book and some distance between us. It’s not that I’m not interested in you. It’s not that I don’t want to know you. It’s just being around a person I like just leaves me thinking about all the ways I’ll inevitably screw this up. Because, you might say that you’ll take me as I am, but in truth you’ll take me as the illusion I’ve conjured up for you in the first place. Beneath this veneer, I’m more of a landfill than a mess that needs reordering. And while you’re writing out wedding vows in you head, I’m already signing the divorce papers in mine.
- If you ever see me reading this in front of a live audience, know that I’ve probably thrown up whatever was in my stomach in the restroom a few moments before signing up for the open mic. 12 years of public speaking has done nothing for my nerves. In fact, I am more nervous each time I stand in front of a microphone than the first time I stood on stage at the Nueva Ona Poet’s Cafe.
- I talk to my dead grandmother as one would talk to god. Usually when I’m asleep. Usually when my emotions aren’t in check.
- I started taking antidepressants a year ago after facing depression alone. A month’s worth left in my final refill, I haven’t taken a single one. And I’m not sure if that makes me stronger than I was before, or just more foolish.
- I am not currently seeing anyone. The you in #3 was a hypothetical, a royal you.
- These days I’m prone to fall into a quick, fickle sort of love for people who can hold my attention for more than ten minutes at a time. And those six hundred and fifty-nine seconds, I run the course of our relationship. What our children would look like. How the moments we’re alone would play out. A phone call from the grocery store to ask what we need and what we want for dinner. And most importantly, how and when it will end.
- I’m unsure if my jaded out look on romance is the byproduct of my parents’ divorce or my own shortcomings as an adult. Or if it’s because these days I put more importance in wondering about the next time I’ll get tacos rather than wondering when I’ll let myself fall in love again.
- If I were really honest with myself, I’d acknowledge the fact that I have fallen in love with someone. But she’s miles from me. And the love I have for her, this somewhat fashionista, is by far the most pure form of love I’ve ever held for a woman. And that is why she stands upon highest pedestal of my friendship.
- I have trouble looking into people’s eyes when I speak with them. Read several articles on why this happens, but nothing seems quite me. The closest reason is my fear of intimacy.
- Being a father scares me. This because every father figure I had left me before I came of age. My grandfathers died three years apart, and my father is more a stranger who just happens to own half of my genetic make up. While the fear can be deafening, I do my best. And each time my son’s eyes brighten up at the sight of me, I know I must be doing something right.
- I never hid my sexuality, nor have I ever been openly vocal about it. And while those close to me know of my affections, I’ve kept people at arm’s length while I told them only half the story.
- At the age of sixteen, I fell in love with a boy from Chicago. The emotion was both new and familiar. I never told him this.
- Most of the things I pass off as poems these days are better read while listening to the music I wrote them to. In this case, Mac DeMarco’s “My Kind of Woman.”
- There are moments I speak just to hear a familiar voice. What troubles about these moments is that the voice I hear doesn’t always sound like mine. It’s an echo from another time. Maybe a time that hasn’t happened yet. Maybe a time waiting in the corners.
- There’s only one time someone’s ever tried to set me up with a friend. It was a girl named Jade. Someone a friend of my was fucking between girlfriends. And she thought her friend would be perfect for me, but, and call me shallow, I have a type. The person must have read a number of books greater than the number of years they’ve existed. And these books must contain more than just required reading for schools. They must have a library card. And if not that, a Barnes & Noble membership. Or, better, be employed by Barnes & Noble. And when your name is Jade, chances are that your friends don’t meet a single one of my requirements. Also asking me when I’ll get back on the horse is equally as annoying as trying to set me up with someone. It demeans my decision of being single. And, yes, I understand that my confessions of crushes and having string of flings may confuse you. These things occur in order to remind myself that I am still human. That I still feel things. That I still have the capabilities to put myself out there event though I really don’t want to deal with the bullshit that occurs during courtship. Please understand that I’m not stranger to being alone.
- I can’t eat pineapple.
Tag: Sex
Girls with Tattoos
Things bore me. I pick up a book—an interesting book with lots of fucking at the beginning—put it down, and start another with less fucking and less descriptions of the female form. I begin a short story—or a post, or a poem—just to save the draft and forget about it. This listless ennui disheartens its prey so that it just sits and waits, never making a move and it is never taken.
And people bore me, too. As a youth, I jumped from crush to crush. When I felt that pang of nostalgia, I returned to an earlier fantasy girl and indulged myself. Maybe I’m just bored of myself.
This morning, Katie sent me a text message. She feels alone in this world, reaching out for some comfort. I replied, “Me, too. But probably not the in the same way.” My aloneness involves the need to wrap my hand in her (the royal her, not subjective her) hair and pull with just the right amount of force as I’m entering her from behind. The sudden urge for semi-violent sex—no, let’s call this what it is, fucking, because even sex is sweet with a hint of romance, even though it’s illusion—has filled my head. And while I do have my preference, I’m willing to sacrifice the want for the need of fulfilling these sexual urges.
Early into my adolescence, the pages of Playboy provided the entire erotic experience necessary to ease my imbalanced hormones. Later Penthouse and sexually explicit films that I obtained through various sources, could only get me off. Still, the sex in the films were rather vanilla. And the women were cut from the same fabric, pulled from the same mold. Plastic and silicone and saline. When I came (no pun intended) across Suicide Girls, it was a welcoming gateway into “alt porn.” It’s just like porn, only alternative. The girls here were a little more natural, though still very airbrushed. In my mid to late twenties, the works of Eon McKai enraptured my attention. Porn stars like Sasha Grey, Stoya, Lexi Belle—those willing to up the ante, as it were—became subjects of my fantasies, which I wrote down throughout my days of writing porn for a year.
The world fell into a crudely explicit scenario for me in which I began to question the kinks of those around me. The younger me might have masturbated until he is red and raw had he known what was going through the mind of my adult self. Not to mention shocked by the fact that what I once considered a turn off has become the focal point of my lusts. Girls with tattoos spread across large areas of their bodies, girls with nipple and facial rings, girls who aren’t socially accepted as beautiful. And the violence. Oh the violence.
Not abuse. Not rape. Nothing that isn’t consensual, but the roughness of fucking. The hair pulling. The choking. The pushing up against the wall, while letting our lusts take our respective pilot seat. The devouring of each others sins. The perfect marriage of things both beautiful and depraved.
Word Sex
“The men in the room are all bent into interesting positions. A big blond stands on his hands, balanced and unmoving. Another dangles from rings. A third is leaning over a polished leather horse. Hadley McCarthy watches the men as she moves passed them–imagining that they have been put there for her pleasure, fantasizing that they will never move. Hold still. Stay that way,” begins Alison Tyler‘s novella, Tied up and Twisted (Harlequin Spice). In summation of the story is, Hadley – a domme turned sub – sets her sights on a trainer – “Trainer. In another world, in her other world, the word means something else. There, he’d be Dom. Here, he is Coach.” – while her former sub attempts to win her back. It’s a role reversal I haven’t read before. At least nothing that I found worth retaining. No matter what, a dominate never subs and a sub rarely knows how to dominate.
I could be wrong, though. I’ve only lived vicariously through stories by Alison Tyler (the writer, not the porn star) and anthologies complied by Rachel Kramer Bussel. I, however, never lived vicariously in anything written by E.L. James. Her writing is just terrible. English majors around the world wept with the first pages alone. And I think that’s the subject of this post – it’s surely not about that weird sex dream I had about an older woman I don’t believe really exists (hence the photo of The Burning Lotus [NSFW]). What?! You haven’t heard about her? Either you’re highly religious or dead (and I consider them same thing), but dude. Yeah. Check that out.
ANYWAY. I like erotica. No. Scratch that. I love erotica. Classy erotica – Anaïs Nin – and the current writers. There’s also the guilty pleasure of poorly written fantasies found on blogs and Literotica rip-off sites. Thanks to the ever evolving technology of the day, writers everywhere (good and bad) are publishing works. Thankfully, a nice percentage of these writers offer freebies and I download for my Kindle. Not all of them are good, mind you. And somehow Fifty Shades of Grey managed to slip by caused such a stir that I’m still recovering from the shock.
Am I glad Erotica is getting noticed? Yes. But it’s never been greatly ignored. The only reason this genre is getting so big is the technology. Trust me, it’s the technology, not because the book is a masterpiece.
I work in the Children’s department of a library. I can’t just carry around a book with a semi-naughty cover and read it during my downtime. Brows will lift.
DAMNIT, I’ve gone off topic again. As I was saying, I love erotica. And I’m glad that it’s in the public view (whether that’s because technology or not, should be saved for another post). However, it’s depressing that something so poorly written is the reason, when writers – real writers who believe in editing and revision – are ignored.
Example, when I first picked up Fifty Shades of Grey – before I quickly put it down again – I commented that I can’t see how this is the book that set off the spark. My co-worker turned and replied, “Have you ever read anything else from the genre? It’s pretty much the same.”
Oh. No. You. Didn’t.
Romance and Erotica might be sister genres, but they are not “pretty much the same.” While publishers like Harlequin are publishing both, I can’t see the where the confusion comes from. But Romance is sex word fodder. Erotica is word sex.
Gonna end this post because I’ve gone off topic. I’ll talk about the other thing later. A compare and contrast. Think of this as a rough draft. And the next post a revision.
Related articles
- The Difference Between Men’s Erotica and Women’s Erotica (drlauraberman.com)
- Why I Write Erotica (agoodwomansdirtymind.wordpress.com)
- Sex With The Ex (coffurge.wordpress.com)
- Writers, The Best Erotica Is Not About Sex At All (pittsburghflashfictiongazette.com)
I was a teenage mascara boy
It’s a nickname – a moniker, if you will – given to me by an ex-girlfriend’s older sister. I don’t know where it came from. As memory serves me, I never once wore mascara. I wore eyeliner on occasion – mostly for Halloween. The habit of having Miranda dress me up like her masochistic Barbie doll played a role, maybe. It’s nothing to think about, just something that popped into my mind.
[There is a message here, but the signal’s breaking up]
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This disease eats people from the outside in. That way, their souls are the last to go. Some travel to Shangri-La for cures, only to find the land barren – a waste zone of decay and boredom.
For centuries we looked to the skies in hopes to find our significance. When nothing happened, we started making up gods and fictions to explain our higher reason. To mark our dominance over the terrain and fauna. Created rules. Social norms bestowed upon the people.
We covered our histories in myths. Fabricated our origins. Created messiahs. Sacrificed them to feel closer to our fictional creators. Then huffed the opium in.
Sexuality
“C’mon, you telling me you’re asexual?”
“No. I just don’t prescribe to sexuality.”
“Which means, you’re asexual. No?”
“No. I like sex. I don’t like to limit myself.”
“So you’re bisexual?”
“No.”
Once I might have labeled myself. I suppose we all do at one time or another. If you deny this, you’re a bold-faced liar. Truth is, sexuality isn’t black, white or gray. It’s really not existent. It’s something we created.
I’m not sexually attracted to men. I’m not sexually attracted to women. I’m sexually attracted to humans, their minds. Their emotions.
Tonight
Please don’t make me drink it. The force of the syrup slips through my lips, fills my mouth and slithers down my throat. I’m intoxicated by the flavor. I’ve been off the junk for weeks. Months. It’s hard to remember. The days here just bleed into the next. The clocks on the wall are all broken. They’re all stuck on the sixth hour. Lined up in a roll like that. They say that it’s a fiction here. We come here to forget. Some of us don’t even remember why we came.
My memories aren’t so erased. Not yet. The junk spews from every faucet, on every street. A buck fifty will get you the better shit. You thinking that things like this ain’t a big deal.
At the disco, forty-year-old men consort with the eighteen-year-old dancers looking for a good time. Their money isn’t worth shit here. They’ll suck out their souls, leaving behind the husks they’ve allowed themselves to become.
In the corner, the redhead tosses her head back in laughter. She’s seducing. She’s venom. She’s the moon. She’s the sun. She’s young and fishing. I knock back my drink and leave, escaping to the streets. Feeling nothing for the others. Emotions aren’t here. They don’t exist. There is no guilt. Fuck it.
A couple of days longer and this will all be over, anyway. I won’t remember. I’ll be back on the train out of here. Memories erased.
Another Version of the Truth
Here I am. And yet, I’m not.
Chapin City Blues 