From The Museum of Bad Advice to The Library of Love (And Knots.)

Before I head-argue with BetterHelp lady any more, I just want to stop and celebrate the creative surge and series of breakthroughs I’ve been experiencing during and following my Quarantine Crush adventure! I’m never sure if its super-ethical to consider people muses, (Past and present muses, feel free to weigh in! Not here because the comments are turned off.) but QC is a powerful one anyway. Since Zooming with his poetry reading, I’ve written poetry I’m excited about for the first time in years, revived an old poetry series, made however many drawings and paintings, tried new drawing styles, gotten a new perspective on my business life, and written like a jillion paragraphs here.

I even signed up to read from the Kitten Calendar at an old-fave local reading so I’d have a way to re-experience rope adventures!

Miracle of miracles, I’ve even learned to love dressing up for Zoom events, including pretty shoes for no reason!

Whether or not I can justify the tears to a narrow-minded therapist, crushes fucking WORK for me, and they often lead to more friendships as well! (Angel Face is still one of my main inspirations—he invited me to Online Goth Night on Friday and I am TOTALLY going!)

Romantic lovewise, though. I know I can’t control if I ever find the requited version again. If I don’t, I think I can probably handle it, because I almost always feel completely full of all the kinds of love in my life: friend-love, family-love, work-love, talking-about-Gilmore-Girls-love, art love, book love, nature love, and of course good old fashioned self-love. Actually, I think I’m pretty amazing at love, even as I’m still missing a person or people.

It has really struck me in the past few days how simple, how ordinary, my romantic wishes/fantasies/hopes are. I don’t think it’s crazy or demanding to hope that someday before too long a masculine person will be sending me songs for smitten reasons, not for just-friendly reasons like QC or for opportunistic predatory reasons like Bill. And maybe, just maybe, that song-sender will know all the knots.

Because of my age and other particulars, it’s easy to see my romantic hopes as lightning-strike bonkers. I sure thought of it that way while I was divorcing, but I had to make room for that imaginary guy anyway, I had to try. Such an ordinary wish, to be like-liked. It happens to people all the time. I know that I deserve it as much as anybody, that no amount of self-as-project can make it come along any faster or slower. It comes when it comes. Until I get there, I fall, I get giddy, I cry, I make art. It’s a pretty good plan.

I am WILDLY underemployed this summer, so I need some CDC-friendly adventures. I need to be always writing paragraphs. So!

1.      Learn one knot a week. Think about how much the Republicans would resent me using stimulus (ha) money on a new set of shiny peacock-blue ropes.

2.      High Fidelity without the visits. I feel pretty resolved about all of my past loves, but it would be fun to visit them in my mind and heart. Since I already lavishly paid tribute to The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, I’ll start with the guy after that. The guy who sang Rage Against the Machine on amusement park rides. The guy who looked like Eddie Vedder at just the right moment. The guy who was my first sex/love combination. Ohhhhh Full Name Guy, you’ll be a summer treat.

That way, until I find my next human true love(s) I’ll have all the rope-love and paragraph-love to keep me company. Thanks for reading, wish me luck!

Roadblock #2: Guys Might Be Ashamed of Me

***Friends, I’m having a very sad day for reasons that I’m not ready to write about yet. They’re only peripherally related to the topic of this post, but it’s hard right now to even feel confident enough to write about the things that keep me from being confident. Still, aside from putting the telephone down the garbage disposal, writing is the best thing I can think of to do. ***

About a year ago at a conference, I was sharing in some group or other and mentioned that I’m a sex blogger. An adorable teenage queer person came up to me after the group and asked “So, you write about fat culture?” I was mystified before I got furious—I rarely think of myself as a fat girl and certainly wouldn’t have thought to write about it. My response was cordial but indignant.

Back when I was dating (or whatevering) Bill, I wasn’t familiar with the norms of casual sex and kept trying to get him to go on real dates with me instead of just showing up in my living room weekly. He made every excuse. For a while I bought that he was too broke for dates but I knew he was going out with his friends, so I got it in my head that he didn’t want his friends to see me. When he finally and un-auspiciously announced that we were never going to goth night together (Goth night was kind of a stand-in for a playspace, before I knew about play parties.) I never had the courage to ask why but I took it to heart that he was ashamed of me and didn’t want his friends to see him with me. He’d made very minor (so minor as to have been possibly nonexistent) fat-themed comments, but I felt like what he was telling me in not wanting to date was that I was too fat and ugly for him, even as he was quite grizzled and (yummily) bear-shaped himself.

Maybe because it brought back the Bill feelings, but part of what made me cry on my date (again, or whatever) with Steampunk Guy was when he said (Citing time constraints) he wouldn’t go to the nude beach with me unless Steampunk Girl was there, or maybe the two of them would just run into us at one of the upcoming gatherings. He’s (understandably, maybe) hesitant about playing with me in public, too. There are many possible explanations, but a question bubbled up in the aftermath of that conversation, one that I’m really hesitant to type: “What if he’s embarrassed of me? What if I’m too fat?”

To ask that question in connection with the nude beach, where I always feel so happy and loved and perfectly myself, seems like a terrible sin but I have to confront it—do these guys only want casual sex because they see me as unattractive, or does casual sex just make me feel fat? Or both?

All the way down to my heart, I love my body. My hips and belly are all smushy and my ass is round and of documented spankability. My boobs are round and plush, my nipples are huge and pink and blessedly sensitive. As a series of vacation-day selfies proved to me last week, my pussy is adorable. My arms are long and toned in places and I easily get a golden tan. My eyes are big and blue and my smile is endless and sincere. On a good day, I know I am beautiful.

But I also know that a body like this wouldn’t make every guy proud. There’s absolutely nothing about me that is small or delicate, except for my adorable sneezes. I’m taller than most girls and I do wear size 18 jeans. While I don’t worry about my size on a day-to-day basis, I have resolved to lose the same 40 pounds for the past however many New Yearses. I have an ambivalent relationship with weight loss, complicated by a desire to be loved exactly as I am and a hedonistic resistance to not eating whatever the hell I want to.

A friend of mine recently dropped a whole bunch of pounds, but to me she was the same perfect little adorable angel before and after. I was hanging out with her a few nights ago when I guy came over to say “You look great before but you look so much healthier now.” His saying that to her made me want to a. Give up on men entirely and b. punch him in the face. How in the fucking world would he know whether she was healthier or not and who in the world was he to tell her she was better this way?

A favorite aunt of mine used to tell me that fat is “jerk repellant” but it certainly hasn’t worked out that way for me. I’ve often wondered what makes people treat me with less respect than they do others, what makes guys forget I’m there or treat me as much less valuable that other partners or potential partners. I don’t want to think it comes down to how I look, but sometimes I wonder.

I wonder if, in some guys’ eyes, fat might mean I’m fuckable but not lovable, at least not take-outable. Even as I get in better shape, shrink down, and start wriggling into cute lingerie, size-ism (Or perceived size-ism) makes me hesitant to put myself out there, lest the body that I genuinely love (at any size) be mistreated and/or rejected. Whether it’s true or not it is certainly unhelpful, but hopefully naming the fear will take away some of its power. I want the confidence to know that I am beautiful and worthy and the self respect to just go ahead and reject anyone who doesn’t treat me that way.

Fantasies of Lesbian Monogamy, Dreams of Men

I’ve been thinking a lot about those Fatal Attraction references that The Man made about me. I’ve never seen the movie, but I think maybe I identify more with the Michael Douglas character than with Glenn Close. I remember from somewhere (probably from an old episode of Siskel and Ebert) that (after focus groups demanded it) the story ends with the married couple safely back in bed, having vanquished the hostile outside force. In other words, the movie is an advertisement for monogamy, a cautionary tale that only nightmares lay outside the marriage bed.

(As a side note, I think that a lot of the couple-centric problems that outside partners run into (wall-building, rule-making, hierarchy, and a general atmosphere of fear) stem from the fact that the bunny-boiler trope is so pervasive that even honest attempts at non-monogamy evoke traces of her.)

Now that The Man and the Scary Party are behind me, it’s very tempting to wish that I could use the scariness of the experience to fortify myself for a life of monogamy—after all, Sweetie has nearly all of the things that I need in a partner, plus so much more: she is chivalrous, brave, smart, deeply loving, and as the icing on the cake, fantastic with knots. For the foreseeable future, until I learn how to actually listen to my intuition and treat myself as somebody valuable even in the midst of man-smell, I am only with her.

And yet, every morning this week, I’ve had the same dream: kissing a man. A real one, not the goth-boys-who-did-not-grow-up-to-be-goth-men than I’ve been drawn to lately. He is decisive, clear, desirous, and hot. Maybe he’s my own animus, or maybe he is real. Or both.

Likewise, when I look up porn (at least there’s not so much anhedonia this time), it’s always of the many-men-one-woman variety. There is the simple fact that I lovelovelove penises, even if my relationship with those who have them tends to be fraught.

Before the now-long-past thing with Bill, I believed in something simple. I thought I could find someone, make out, synch our calendars, fall in love. I thought that if I was open enough, my missing person would appear. It never occurred to me that I would be asked and tempted to give up my autonomy, my dignity, my voice. I don’t know what to make of this year, how much of it I’ll keep and how much I’ll shed, easy as deleting my Fet profile.

I still don’t know if what I want (two real, deep relationships, one with Sweetie and one with a man) is a real possibility or a dream to be let go. My need to be loved by a man is so warped by compromise and taboo that it seems like just a huge risk, but a life without it seems very sad. There aren’t any answers for it now, just a quiet, simplified life and a hope that someday soon I’ll feel well enough to socialize, that someday soon I’ll be on solid ground.

Have to Celebrate Small Victories, I Guess

I must be getting stronger--this heartbreak time I didn't email (or even Google!) Bill! Go me?

Scene Failure and the Scary Party, Part Three: A Long Night and a Sweet Morning

This was the first time I saw the inside of their apartment, a cute homey place except for the racks and racks of horror movies everywhere. (Seriously, who wants to sleep next to more than one installment of Human Centipede?) I loved his cats instantly—he rivals the Mayor of Kittentown in terms of breakup pet-regret.

We tried to talk but we were both exhausted and not really getting anywhere. I said I was embarrassed about arguing loudly with Sadist Girl and he was all “Yeah, well, you’ll just have to mend some fences.”

“What? Mend some fences? After what she did?” I just couldn’t believe it. There was less hope of renewing trust with him with every word out of his mouth. I couldn’t believe that that’s what he was gleaning from the situation—a need for me to preserve some imagined friendship with someone who’d helped him completely screw me over. I just didn’t get why he was so desperate for me to connect completely and immediately with the women in his life, but, spoiler alert, that’s what he ended up calling the deal breaker.

Mending fences? Really? I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t mad at her when I was clearly so hurt. The more I type this story, the more I think maybe they planned it without me, that it was his idea all along.

Talking wasn’t working, so we went to bed. He and his wife have an agreement that others can sleep in their bed, they just can’t have sexytimes there. Even though I couldn’t feel safe with him, I still felt something like affection lying there in his arms, with the cats hovering around us, nuzzling and sweet. I really, really wanted this to be real, not just a hollow shell of a snuggle.

He fell asleep immediately, the blissful sleep of the not-panicking, and I lay there feeling trapped and sad and horny and broken. I woke him up a few times to try and get him to help me calm down. His face trying to stay awake was really sweet, but the conclusion was always the same. She was his friend, and of course he loved his venue, and there was nothing that could be done about it. I felt like he was choosing brutality over everything I’d had to offer, over the very, very much I’d already given. It didn’t make sense to me then, and it doesn’t make sense to me now.

Around 6 A.M, something piped up in my brain that told me I had to get myself home. I told him I was leaving and he offered little protest. He just said goodbye. I don’t think I could stand to know that he valued me so little, I felt like I had to stay and change his mind. I went back to bed and finally drifted off.

When he woke up (He kept mentioning a thousand times that he had to go and pick up his wife at a horror convention. He had, in fact, asked ME to go and pick her up, because he is man-with-no-boundaries. I’d declined.) Anyway, when we woke up, I told him to hold down my heart to keep it from breaking—he has these big, beautiful meaty hands, just like I always go for. I can’t believe I never got to write about those hands having happier times. Maybe I’ll come back to it. He held my heart down so hard that it pressed my neck and felt like choking-as I pushed his hand down, he felt exactly like Bill.

And yet the warmth from him still felt like love or like some kind of connection. I forget sometimes, I forget over and over that some things are just about sex, just animal attraction that I tend to give more meaning than it deserves. I just forget.

“Let’s go to the couch and make out,” I said. “It might be our last chance.”

I climbed on top of him and ground myself against him, that teenage dry-humping thing I always miss when there are no guys around. (Although, teenagers probably don't really do that anymore, now that I think about it.) No way in this world was I going to let him inside me, but I loved feeling his (admittedly insubstantial) stuff against mine. We kissed and kissed and he played with my nipples just as much as he possibly could.

He said “Tell me the things you want to tell me. Get the anger out.”

“Well, you are just gonna have to get it together. I have 23 first graders and I don’t need one more. In fact, I don’t need a whole venue full of first graders who can’t keep their hands to themselves. Be my hero and clean up your fucking mess. Rise to the fucking occasion.”

“What else?”

“No matter who else you belong to, no matter who else you LOVE, when we are together, you are MINE. These lips are mine, these ears are mine, this dick is mine. MINE.”

“Okay.”

After I said that I felt a lot of the tension drain away. The feeling of wanting to claim him was deep and scary—I’m still very scared of it, but I am also glad I acknowledged it.

“Unless (the wife) is there.”

Ugh. Goddammit that wasn’t what I was talking about. But also, I totally can belong to somebody else if my wife is there. I think we’ve reached the actual problem, or one of them.

We kept kissing for as long as we could, and I made myself come with him on top of me.

Then we talked, and in a way it felt like the first real talking we’d done. He told me all about his family and his background, and how he’d joined the military because they called the day his mom died. I was uncomfortable with the whole ex-military aspect of him, but that was such a sad and broken fact, it endeared him to me, and when he asked me if I wanted to see photo albums, I was so touched and said maybe next time. This is what made it seem worthwhile, what made me want to give him every possible chance.

We agreed that we would talk a whole lot, do lots of vanilla things for a long while before we ever set foot back in a dungeon again. We made plans for a long walk the following weekend, assuming I decided to continue things. We were gonna give things a few days to simmer down and then talk.

Then he told me to bring a toothbrush next time, but to make sure not to leave it at their place. I need someone who wants me to leave a toothbrush. Yet another time when I should have just broken it off right then.

But all morning he’d told me that he was going to get better for me, stronger and more courageous, that he was going to be the man I deserved, and that, as an added bonus, he’d work out until he could lift me over his head. He said that I deserved everything I’d been asking for.

“And you tell that girl what my REAL NAME IS.”

I was supposed to meet Sweetie downtown for the flower show—it was our big date. I parked pretty far away and walked toward where she got off the bus, feeling disoriented and young, the way I’d felt when I first lived here in 1994—lost, unformed. We never made it to the flower show because I couldn’t stop crying, and that is what I regret the very most.

Thanks, Nice Readers! and a One-Word Resolution

A year ago today, I was broken, hollow eyed, feeling nearly soul-dead. I’d spent a while trying to figure out what magic words to say to win a quasi-Dom’s affection and failing every time. My arm was covered in semi-consensual bruises (still not sure, sorry) and so was my heart. If you’d asked me last New Years where I’d be tonight, I never would’ve guessed “Clothing Optional New Years Party”—I could never have predicted the magic that was this year.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ve changed me. You’ve helped me to root around inside myself and start finding the confidence I need to find. My goal was to learn to love myself and though I am not quite there, I am certainly much closer. Looking back at that last Bill day, I feel like I’ve risen above it. I feel nothing but affection, hope, and gratitude to that fuckwad for helping to send me down this path.

But you, the reader, deserve much more gratitude. By giving me a safe place to be my slutty self, you’ve made that self more authentic and beautiful. By making room for heartbreak and mess and fun, you’ve helped me to make more room in myself. This year has been like one of those dreams where you keep discovering new rooms in familiar houses. I know this is just the beginning; there are many more doors to open.

If you’d told me a year ago that Sweetie would be ready to ATTEND a clothing optional party (albeit planning to keep her soft pants on!) and would, if fact, be studying her Two Knotty Boys (talk about people who contributed a lot!!) to find suitably festive knots, I wouldn’t have even known how to picture it. She has been such an adventurer this year—I cannot believe the deep courage of her love, her willingness to push and work and grow for me. I only hope I can learn to offer her the same.

This was the year of the body, and it gave me so, so much, but I see where I want the next part of the story to go. I have a one-word New Year’s Resolution: Connect. This year was about experiences, and I love them all (even the upsetting ones) so much, but I want 2013 to be about relationships—to Sweetie, to dates, to friends and dungeon mates, to fellow writers and kinksters and sex geeks. I look forward to following the opportunities to connect where they take me. Happy New Year, loves. Thank you for your strength and heart.

As I finished typing, this is the song that came on. Fitting.

Oh, It's You. Must Be the Daylight Savings...

Last night while I was enjoying some quality time with the Big Purple Thing, who should happen through my imagination but Bill. He doesn't come out  of my Spank Bank very often, so I was surprised to see him storming around my fantasy, giving me the what-for again.

It might be because the first time I wrote to him, it was the beginning of Daylight Savings Time last year. Yes, it is weird that I remember this.

A Dream, a Song

I was just thinking last night about how I was in a pretty unsentimental place right now when it comes to male partners, and then I had a dream wherein:

1. I was getting to be real friends with Bill.
and
2. I said the following to MKT's son: "Say hi to your dad for me, and tell him I'm sorry I missed the movie."

My waking life may be focused on other things, but my dreamlife is still emo.

Love Letter for This Time Last Year

Student teaching is really taking it out of me, friends. To the point where I don’t know how to find myself at all some days.

Loneliness, fatigue, and a way-too-early Christmas commercial have been making me a little pine-y for this time last year, when I met both the Mayor of Kittentown and Bill within the span of a few weeks. Though I really value everything that’s happened since then, they were something really special and I miss them every day. There’s a little piece of me always whispering come back to them. Not out loud, that would be creepy, just around the edges of my consciousness when I’m falling asleep at night or hitting the snooze in the morning. It’s a dusky feeling, a curl-up-by-the-door-and-wait.

For those few months that I had them, it was my first glimpse of what a real bisexual life could be like. It was what I told myself my whole life that I couldn’t have. I was getting along mostly with Sweetie, getting excellent vanilla satisfaction from MKT, and collecting consensual bruises from Bill.

After all those years without the welcome weight of a man on me, I finally had it, and though the transition was sometimes terrible between me and Sweetie (There were a series of couch-themed fights, and the phrase “go suck some dicks” often came into play…) (Don’t mind if I DO, btw.) but for the most part my mood and our sex life improved.

They were never going to be long term—besides being monogamous, they both had a deep lack of chivalry—but I still wishwishwish I could have kept them. It feels unlikely that I’ll ever settle into a man again the way that I settled into them. I would love to jump in the sex-TARDIS and go back to being curled up with MKT and his cats watching Mystery Science Theater, or underneath Bill as his eyes bored into me, as he marked me too much with his teeth. As MKT kissed the bruises without asking why they were there.

Of course, I’ve moved forward, had adventures that neither one of them was equipped for, but together, they showed me what it could be like, all the different things to want, how to be a woman who is wanted by men.

It all seems so far away now. I have plenty of offers for friendly and no doubt expert floggings, but the dream of romance (or even the approximation of romance) seems so far away.

I don’t know if I’ll find love like that again, if I’ll ever check my inbox again to find the perfect song. Sometimes this year has an air of finality, a midlife crisis I made the most of and now have to leave. Those two might not have been right, might not have been mine, but they were close, and I let them be close. So, even if I can’t really mean it, come back.

My Crackpot Heart Wants Kryptonite and Other Dumb Mistakes

I keep trying to write around what’s bugging me this week, but it isn’t working. For the most part, it’s been a good couple of weeks. I had such a great birthday and my first few weeks of student teaching have been stressful and busy but very gratifying.

But when it comes to this project, I am lost. Mister Hazel Eyes's disappearance hit me harder than it should’ve, and I’m feeling kind of slutty/rejected because Mr. Popular hasn’t been in touch either. Neither should be such a big deal, but I just can’t get over the never-seeing-someone-again aspect of dating. Things just go by too fast. Since last year, six guys who really meant something to me have come (well, most of them came, anyway) and gone—I am grateful for the experiences and fun that they all brought me, but it all went by so fast that it’s hard not to feel like I’m extra-rejectable, like I’m a failure, like I’m in for a lot more loss.

It seems that whenever I am heartbroken over a toplike person, I get the insane urge to process it with Bill. I guess the heartbreak neural pathways just have his name on them. When I let myself think about it, I feel so unresolved about him, a deep dark, creepy, suitable-for-David-Lynch sadness that he persists in not being around. So I did something foolish that usually works: I wrote him a love letter. I find that sometimes if I write out all of my lovey dovey feelings, thank someone for his contribution, and apologize for my half of things, people can start to feel less haunty. In this case, more haunty. He said, thanks, he’s glad I’m not mad, but that I ruined a perfectly good exit.

I’ve always wanted to show this blog off to him (to show EVERYTHING off to him, really) so I friended him on the fb. It was fine at first, a little inspiring push—it made me feel brazen and hot just to think that he might see some of my smutty details. But after a few days, it felt just like it did last December, like I wanted so badly to be near him but didn’t know how, like I would do absolutely anything to get his attention. And that’s without much clicking—just the tiny bit of not-really-a-connection from facebook was enough for him to start sucking the life out of me, to open up that awful, starving well of want. I took him off, of course, I said goodbye again, exit-spoiler that I am.

Sometimes I really do worry that I’m broken, that the ten years that I spent trying not to be bi have left me too desperate and urgent to be able to make a real connection with a man. I am deeply ashamed of the attachment that I still feel to Bill after all this time—I feel like I’m breaking some rule of adultness that I just don’t let go of things in any kind of normal way. I should be bouncing back faster from Mister Hazel Eyes as well, but it’s hard to get past the hurt of someone not even wanting to say goodbye. I am a good student in everything but this, and I absolutely HATE to have a failing grade on the record, but I suppose there’s no magical sex-TARDIS that would allow me to go back and somehow make it work out—it just didn’t.

I really hope that I’m not broken. I hope that neither my half-closet years nor my mistakes this year have cause irreparable damage. I don’t know what the darkness is that I keep wanting to go back to, but I know that it’s closer to addiction than it is to love, and I know that it is the opposite of joy.

I’d rather follow joy. There’s a lot of good stuff on the horizon, and I thought it might be helpful to articulate this sticky tar pit stuff before it seeps back down into my subconscious. I need some courage, friends, I need to follow the part of myself that knows what it’s doing, my inner Bettie Page, not the glassy-eyed December-girl who’s still worrying how to please someone who has been gone for a very long time.

My Ass Is Smitten With Mister Hazel Eyes, Part One: Spanked in a Stairwell

I feel really vulnerable writing this. Though it may not seem so from the title, last night was the first non-Sweetie date of my poly career that was truly romantic. I bonded with him. I felt cathexis. I got attached, and with that attachment comes a terrible, sad fear that he’ll go away now. (Which, okay, is made worse because I just watched the Gilmore Girls episode where Luke and Lorelai break up.) Liking him makes me feel like I’ve got to be ready to let him go, which is one of my central issues to overcome. So here goes.

Mister Hazel Eyes surprised me with tickets to see Jane’s Addiction and Die Antwoord. He bought the tickets before I’d even said I would go, which really knocked my socks off. Also, because he is sweet in a rather odd way, he asked if I would rather take the tickets and go with Sweetie: awww. But of course I was over the moon to go with him. Jane’s Addiction was my favorite band when I was a teenager, and I’d never gotten to see them. So it was a pretty big deal.

He wanted to meet him at his work, in one of the skyscrapers downtown. I stood in the fancy grey-marble lobby looking decidedly unbusinesslike in my black dress and sneakers, pigtails and spiked collar. I felt a little hookerish waiting there for him, but not unpleasantly so. When he came down, he said I looked great, and so did he, in the standard rock-boy bowling shirt and boots. He presented me with the tickets and I said “That right there? That’s some second base for you.” and he smiled.

He said he had to grab something from his car before we went to dinner, but I’m pretty sure he just wanted to spend some quality makeout time with me in the parking garage elevator. As soon as the doors closed, he crushed me against the wall and kissed me, yanking my pigtails and running his hands lightly over the front of my dress. I was more than happy to let him. I was so ready for him to be there. I’d been fantasizing pretty much non-stop about him feeling me up. (Also about bearing myself to him, ohboy, but we haven’t made it there yet…) I wish there’d have been hands inside my bra, but what can you do. Eventually he had to stop pushing buttons and get out.

On the way back down there were people in the elevator, so we took the stairs. In the stairwell, he kissed me some more, and when I was sure no one was coming I said “Okay, let’s see what you’ve got.” and bent over. My feet were on the landing, my ass was stuck out towards him, my arms draped up the metal railing. If it hadn’t been that-time-of-the-month, I would have pulled the back of my skirt up, too.

He hesitated for a moment but then started stroking my ass gently and thoughtfully. Then he pulled his hand back and smacked, full and strong, pushing the breath out of my lungs and into a laugh that echoed up and down the stairs. I looked down at the stairs spiraling down four levels and ooof, oh my goodness, he spanked me a few more times, and I laughed and blushed and signed.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been spanked by some experts, but boy does his guy have a talent.

I stood to face him again and he pulled my face into a kiss. With no warning, he grabbed both my nipples and squeezed, just like he owned the place. I have already revisited that moment a few times during personal time. Fucking swoon, sheesh. Nonetheless, I pulled his hands down to my waist and said “Um, tickets…”

We dawdled around making out and getting dinner. Over Chinese, we made some more plans. (He likes eluding to the fact that plan-making turns me on. He gets the Good Listener badge.) We’re going to go to the next rope party, and he assures me he’ll take a crack at learning the knots. (!) The only part of the conversation that worried me is that he says that he doesn’t feel jealous of me being with Sweetie, he would feel jealous of another guy. Seems like there might have to be a little negotiation there. Jealousy won’t bother me, unless it translates to him going away like it did with Bill.

For someone to be close to me, they have to be good at concerts, and MHE totally is. He was even thoughtful enough to pick up some pastries and water in case we got hungry after the show. I think this was the first time I’ve had actual seats to a show, so that I didn’t have to get there early and jockey for general admission space. Which is a good thing, because there were certainly some car-shenanigans to be had.

If you’re thinking that I have a strange definition of romance, you’re right, but it’s coming, I promise.

Next: Getting spanked in another parking lot.

New Heart Goal: Less Calendar Fuss

Resolved: I am going to welcome opportunities to be more flexible with my time.

I loooove to schedule things, both from the necessity of, like everyone else, having a million things going on, and as a way of staving off insecurity, especially when I really like someone. It’s as if I think that writing someone’s name on the calendar means they’ll automatically like me and stick around.

Last week, after Mr. Hazel Eyes texted on Friday to see if we could hang out Saturday, (Um, alas? Sweetie and I already had awesome beach plans.) I started to examine the anxiety that I have about spontaneity. It seems that in the course of my life, all kinds of sexist, sex-negative, pop-psychology nonsense snuck its way into my brain. There’s a cultural norm against being too available if you’re a lady—I did get worried that he was into more of a booty call thing than a..something else, but he was kind enough to reassure me that it wasn’t. (He earned major cuddle-points for that.) (Also, booty call? Thank goodness I did not use that actual term when asking him.) (And! Points to me for asking!)

Back in my early twenties I read The Rules more out of curiosity than for actual advice, but somehow that “make him really ask you out or he won’t want you” thing really stuck. Ten years later I learned that “If he’s not asking you out, he’s just not that into you.” I’m not sure why asking-out only counts if there’s advance notice, but one thing’s for sure: I’ve got to stay away from those dating-advice books. Even if I’m just reading them ironically, they seem to have power.

Bill and I had a real tug of war about the calendar. He kept asking me “Why do you always have to know what’s going to happen?” and I never had a good answer. My now-self is like, “Um, because I have a life?!” He made such a point of dragging his feet about day-choosing, and it was just one of the things he did that made me feel like he didn’t care. He’s a pretty bad example, and probably the source of some of the anxiety. Everyone else I’ve dated and/or played with has been great with planning, so I have no reason to feel self-conscious about preferring it.

I remember hearing somewhere that submissives like to be very oriented, and that is certainly the case with me. I like to be able to picture the time in front of me, to have some idea of what it looks like. It makes things seem more manageable, less hectic. Plus, over the course of this Poly 101 kind of year, the importance of calendars has been emphasized by absolutely every advice-giver, to the point where it’s maybe a little over emphasized in my head. Trying to be a good student as always, I guess.

MHE’s spontaneity triggered an embarrassing fear. For whatever reason, part of me believes that if I let men into my life, it will somehow become unmanageable, that I’ll suddenly be less smart, capable, organized because there’s a dude around. New relationship energy does make me a little scattered and distractible (just ask the midterm I’m glacially writing…) and it makes me feel like I’m going wildly out of control.

It’s time to let go of that control a little. though I am comfortable with preferring to plan, I really need to make room for spontaneity. After all, it’s the dream to have somebody to just be with, without having to plan anything, so, yeah, a little playing it by ear seems like just the thing.

MHE had minor surgery this week and I’m in the middle of packing up the apartment and eventually writing a midterm and going on some tour dates, so I’m not sure when I’ll see him again. I don’t feel too anxious—I think the liking-each-other thing will keep if it’s meant to. Meanwhile, I’m having fun making (and flexibly changing) plans with other nice guys, too. But jeez, I really do want to snuggle him

Rejection is Not an Assessment or a Humiliation…Right?

As a poet, I should be better-prepared to be rejected. Over the years, I have received hundreds of rejection slips for hundreds of poems, manuscripts, etc, and only very rarely did I feel that they had any bearing on the quality of my work. If only I could have that same confidence about myself!

Though it’s been mostly a very happy week over here, I’ve been laying awake with very jealous, hurty feelings about the Mayor of Kittentown. It’s isn’t so much that he belongs to her now; it’s that he officially no longer belongs to me. I’m bothered by the difference between being able to belong to multiple people and only belonging to one—instead of just having a different heart, I worry that I might have a deficient one. I think childlike thoughts like “How could he just throw me away?” in spite of the fact that I broke up with him about two and a half times. I knew we weren’t going to fall in love, I always encouraged him to keep looking (which looks, in retrospect, like its own kind of cruelty…) but the loss of our physical friendship is hitting me hard, it’s breaking my heart, making me feel a little bit dismantled.

Rejection bogs me down. For whatever reason, his rejection seems to negate everything good that he made me believe about myself: that I could trust a man, that I could have a happy bisexual life, that I’m can be beautiful and sexy to men. Somehow it feels like he took those things away just by not wanting me anymore, that I need him (and Bill, and Fireguy) just to have those hot feeling back, but I understand intellectually that that’s just not true.

These men so far, things have gone so wrong with them that I feel as if I have failed a series of entrance exams, that I failed to qualify for their gender. Losing each of them has been so exquisitely painful that it’s hard to feel connected to the good things that have happened, to all the real progress that I’ve made.

I tend to mistake rejection for facts: Bill said he couldn’t have a serious relationship with a poly woman, so I felt unlovable. Fireguy didn’t like being written about, so I thought the project itself made me unlovable. MKT’s simpler (?) idea of love makes me feel like I’m too hopelessly, messily complicated for men.

And I AM complicated, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a guy who’ll love me for it—I believe those are called, uh,  polyamorous guys—who’ll be willing to share his life with me. Two of the men in the previous paragraph identified as monogamous, and the other was a heartbroken mess, so I don’t think I can make any generalizations about them, other than 1. Duh, date poly guys and 2. Don’t be a rebound redhead.

I would love to have back all of the good physical lessons I got from them, to not have the hot self-discoveries cancelled out by the fact that they’re gone. Not too long ago, in a Poly Weekly episode about minimizing scene drama, either Minx or her guest said something like “Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t make you less awesome.” I would LIKE to think that just because someone doesn’t want to fuck me and/or fall in love with me doesn’t make me any less lovable and/or hot.” No one can turn back time and take away those experiences—no one can take any of it away.

Of course this goes back to the heart of this project—learning to approve of myself so that I don’t have to wear myself down trying to gain approval from others, except in fun ways, of course. I started this quest for my inner Bettie Page because I wanted her confidence, the way the looks boldly into the camera, the way she returns the gaze. She is not going to shrink timidly into nothingness when the lens turns away from her, and neither am I.

Dear Divine Whatever,

Please help me to collect and feel whatever good they’ve all given me so far, to take it in as fuel to bravely move forward, believing in every glance and touch and step, having faith in whatever radiates out of me at my proudest, most joyful moments.

(To which I can imagine the Divine Whatever saying: “Good girl. So pretty.”)

Cuddle Party Part Three: A Very Chaste Threesome

Writing about this particular adventure made me notice a contradiction I’ve got going—how does my desire for lots of respectful elbow-room jibe with my desire to be mauled and ravished? In the years where I thought about men but didn’t do anything about it, my fantasy was always to have a guy who’d push me, take me, ravish me, to not be able to put up all the barriers I am usually inclined to put up. (but all in the spirit of friendship and fun) I’ll probably always love Bill for fulfilling most of that fantasy, but I didn’t realize until later just how dangerous it had been.

But still, there was a daredevil purity to what he and I were doing—no negotiating, very few spoken limits, often getting pushed past no—it felt good, it was a relief at first, to be free of the way I’ve mostly held passion at arm’s length. Even after all these months I still can’t square the gleeful, nasty pleasure of that relationship with the way that it plunged me into blackness, made me totally hate myself. Part of it was that every time I truly go into sub-space, it dredges up issues from my subconscious, but I know that darkness came from actual real-time him as well.

I’ll never get to be devoured like that again, because I’ll always have to take care to have a voice, to communicate. There’s no such thing as just being able to abdicate all of my power to someone, and I am honestly a little disappointed about that. But to really love and be loved (and ravish and be ravished) I have to create some inner structural integrity, a fidelity to myself. So that’s what we’re working on here.

When it came to the part of the welcome circle where we were to join two other people and negotiate a cuddle, I was delighted with who I got triaded up with—just the two that I would have chosen: The Lady of the House and Massage Therapist Man. Two of the prettiest people in the room. We had eight minutes to both negotiate and cuddle. First, we had to take turns saying what we wanted. They looked at me to go first (I like to go first, it helps me listen better) but I was suddenly speechless. I didn’t have the words for what I wanted to ask for. The LOTH said that she wanted to be hugged and held, and MSM said that he wanted to make a “heart circle.” I had to ask what that means and he said that’s when you put your hands on each others’ hearts and run energy between them. That sounded nice. I still equivocated and couldn’t quite get to what I wanted—“smushed” was the closest I could get. I said that I usually want to be rougher than seems appropriate for a cuddle party, and thus the phrase “rough cuddling” was born.

LOTH said that the heart thing sounded best to her, and I agreed, so that’s what we started with. I welcomed the chance to physically experience loving male and female energy at the same time—that’s a goal I’ve been inching glacially towards for a long time.

It takes a lot of trust to put your hand on a near-stranger’s heart. For each stage of the hand-placing, we had to ask “”May I put my hand on your heart?” “May I put my hand on your hand?” and so on. We sat like that and breathed and sort of circle-swayed, MTM making breathy yummy noises. I didn’t feel any jolt of energy running through us, but sitting with them that way felt so soothing. I was I was able to lose myself a little in the circuit of us, until time was called. Then it was time for free cuddling.

Next Time: A Foot Rub, Some nice Reiki, and! Wrestling!

Stuuuuck! But, Cuddle Party Tomorrow!

I took a few weeks away from The Kitten Calendar to let some healing happen and get caught up on my mountain of school work. During that time, a lot of parts of my life have really been coming together—I was placed at the school of my choice for student teaching, I’m finishing up two years at a wonderfully productive job, and my first full-length collection of poetry just went on sale for preorder—there’s even a person WHO IS NOT ME in charge of promoting it—as a poet, I find this incredible. I’m in school this summer, but I also scheduled enough poetry teaching to keep myself inspired and entertained.

So my life is coming together, all except the dating/adventuring part. That part feels stuck and very lonely. There isn’t even the suggestion of a possible masculine person on the horizon, and I’m beginning to lose faith that I’ll be attracted to a non-Sweetie person again. I’m still (ack) sort of pining for Bill and I’m still seething at Fireguy and co. Those things are just not getting better fast enough. I still get scared, attacked feelings when I think of going out into the BDSM world—there’s nothing like that on the calendar. Maybe I should just put it on there and get on with my life.

One bright spot on the body front has been that I’ve gone to a couple of Tantric poetry workshops. I’ve gotten over the idea that the Tantra folks’ll think I have bad energy; at least I have made that kind of progress. The Sensual Poetry teacher combines movement with writing in a way that tries to let the body have a voice—I really appreciate that.  She has us write letters from our body to our mind, from our mind to our body, and so on. Once, she assigned us to write a letter from our genitals to our brain, and my poem amounted to my vagina yelling at my head a bunch for taking all the penises away. Yep, my head does do that. My brain wrote a letter apologizing, but my body is still pissed. More than a decade was way to long to make it wait, and my body’s afraid that it’s settling in for another guy-free decade. Oh body, I really am supersorry.

I intellectually know that Bill was far from the best I can do, and even if he HAD been the best, he didn’t end up wanting me. I know that Fireguy’s shenanigans don’t necessarily exemplify all of BDSM. I know that if I went to a BDSM event, I would not be in danger. It would be more like a safe little bubble, with DMs there to help me if I called red. But right now, I’m facing a wall of fear about it. I’ll get back there some day, hopefully sooner than later.

Sometimes (not often, but lately) the frustration even keeps me from enjoying Sweetie. I get worried that if I settle in too much now, if I get too happy with her, before I know it another decade really will have gone by, and I will be even more of a bundle of repressed penis-craving nerves. I’m doing my best to fight all these fears, to pay attention to Sweetie and all of the other things in my life that are working, but jeez, dudes, where are you? Technically, I can probably wait forever, but I don’t think it’s such a good idea.

Tomorrow, I’ll be returning to my body adventures project by attending a cuddle party. I’d love to get past some of the barriers I’ve set up for myself and just play with trust and contact a little bit—I would love to spend at least a little time cuddling a guy, feeling that trust, smelling that guy-smell, it would be really nice. Cuddling seems a lot more intimate, more personal, than spanking, so we’ll see if I feel comfortable enough to try.

I guess what I realize after slogging though this litany of fears is that part of this is a project, yes, but some of it can’t be. The love part, much as I hate to let it go, has to be left up to fate. Fate’s who I’ve got to submit to, do you think I can do it?

Not Sweetie’s Favorite Thing: Ropes and Tears

So many posts lately have tears in them. I’m hoping I get to the other end of the tears soon, to some more good things.

Last Sunday at home, we wanted to play with the ropes some more, so I could have a picture and Sweetie could practice her knots. I got home from church and was ready, if a little sleepy still from the night before. I stripped down and stood in the middle of our bedroom, hands-to-elbows behind my back, but a few minutes into her harness work, I said “I’m having some not-hot thoughts…”

In fact, they were fairly hot, just also sad. She stopped working for a second, gave me the rope to hold behind me and asked what was wrong.

“It’s just reminding me of Fireguy. The moment when he took off the ropes and I was free and playful. I loved that so much and I never got to write about it.”

In fact, I think I did write about it, but I never really got to honor him, that friendship, those genuine moments I liked so much, the way that I wanted to because I was so angry and scared. I had to cut off the connection to make his betrayal less painful, but just like with Bill, Fireguy’s jackassery didn’t make my affection for him (or maybe even his affection for me) any less real.

I started to cry and Sweetie said “What do I do? Do I take it off you?”

“No, leave it on.” She put her arms around me as tight as the ropes were and I cried, feeling pink and naked and beautiful and loved and sad and real, still holding the rope behind me. Her shirt grazed my nipples, still standing alert from my flushed skin. After a few minutes of me standing there pinkly sobbing, she got some tissues and dried my eyes, but I drew the line at letting her blow my nose.

The moment I was crying about was this: back in Fireguy’s basement, I’d been laying with him on a futon on the floor, laying back on my tied arms, blindfolded. He said, “Come on, I turn over, I need your arms.” I was about to be spanked for something, and I felt so adored—it was moment of pure play and friendship. My shoulders ached and he said he wouldn’t make me lay on my arms next time, but I said I didn’t mind the hurt. We were like puppies, we were like kids, we were like friends. It was a moment of my guy-dreams coming true and I was crying because I’d lost it. Crying for all of the fleeting moments of connection that get buried under avalanches of fear and anger and shame. For the ways I can’t connect and all the miracle ways that I do. For the times that I just. Stop. fighting. They’re beautiful, and those were beautiful tears.

Sweetie took off the ropes and I cried some more. She stakes such good care of me at times like this. Sure, I would rather have had sex that afternoon, but letting my heart bubble over was almost just as good.

A Vivid Dream

“Or perhaps the dream is highlighting how you have already incorporated the certain aspects or qualities of the people in your dream reunion.” –Dream Dictionary

As much fun as I’ve been having with Sweetie, for the past few weeks I  have been vexed by a lack of new characters in this story. Apparently, my subconscious has some things it isn’t through going over, because my dreams have been on the theme of reunion lately. I know that reading about other peoples’ dreams is not the most riveting thing in the world, but the one I had this morning was so vivid and gave me such a feeling of groundedness while I was in it that I think it might be important here.

In the dream, my entire family had stopped by Bill’s house around Christmastime. It wasn’t decorated or anything, I just knew that’s when it was. In real life, I’ve never even seen a picture of Bill’s apartment—I asked for a picture of his and his parents’ Christmas tree and he didn’t send one. So being able to actually be in his apartment felt good.  His hands were the most vivid part of the dream, those fat hands that I loved. He was sitting down next to me on the couch, and I took his hand. He stood up and I introduced him to my family. EVERYBODY in my generation and my niece and nephews’ generation was there, even my sister’s friends and their kids. I introduced him to them one by one.

We weren’t together in the dream, it was just a visit. He was waiting to hear from someone on the computer, she could’ve been a professional contact or a friend or sweetie, I didn’t know. There were babies EVERYWHERE. I picked one up and cuddled him, wondered if it would make me more appealing, then remembered this wasn’t a connection anymore. (Since I don’t want kids, I always assume that babies in my dreams symbolize less um, biological projects.)

What strikes me about this dream is how solid I felt in it—much more grounded and centered than I generally do. It felt good to be in three dimensions with him. The dream left me with a hopeful feeling that doesn’t really add up, considering that he’s long gone.

Maybe it does mean that I’ve incorporated aspects of him into myself and into what I’m looking for.

And maybe it also means it’s time to finish coming out as poly to my immediate family. I’m pretty sure they know, I don’t really keep it a secret, but I’ve been putting off having the actual conversations. I told my dad back in January, and that went okay, but maybe it’s time to tell my mom and sister and brother. I’m not sure I really want their input on the matter, but it might be the right next step.

Being a Little Bit of a Teenager, Still

“My friends are all adults; I’m still a teenage girl.”--The Echo Friendly

We’re still on Bill, I’m afraid. Even though I haven’t been in touch with him, and after however many paragraphs, it still feels like there’s an invisible ribbon connecting me to him.

Just like Hannah’s Adam on Girls, the addictive thing about Bill (aside from the delicious way he could fling me around the room) was the way that little glimmers of affection/happiness would somehow work their way out of him. On the rare occasions that he smiled, it was like a shooting star, magical but burning out quickly. Genuine moments of tenderness (or what I perceived as genuine moments of tenderness) punctuated the callousness, the dismissiveness, the occasional gentle choking. I guess I can admit now that I am every cliché girl with daddy issues, and those brief flickers of attention hit a nerve so deep that I couldn’t help but crave more. That’s what makes men so dangerous for me.

One such flicker of tenderness happened one morning while I was cooking Bill breakfast. The very sad Nineties song I’d named myself after (not “Pretty Ribbons”—my everyday name is made up too.) shuffled on and I said “Sheesh, what a song to name myself after. Good job, seventeen-year-old me.”

He smiled one of those rare smiles, looked happy and satisfied down to his core, took my face in his hands and kissed me, like seventeen-year-old-me was the most precious thing in the whole world. I’d certainly never seen her that way, it was wonderful to feel recognized and loved for a part of myself I’ve fought all this time.

The next song to come on was Violet by Hole. “At least I didn’t name myself after this one.” I said, “Though I would have been cute as a Violet.”

Again, the smile. He gathered me up protectively and gave me another perfect kiss. Whenever I hear either of those songs, I remember what it felt like when he saw that part of me and liked it.

Who knows what he really meant by it—probably he meant “I like kissing.” But to feel like someone loved the part of me I hated, it hit me so deep and it’s hard to get past it.

In the six months since I started dating guys, I’ve often felt like a teenager—naïve, curious, volatile, needy, horny and scared. Getting all grossed out because I didn’t know it was common to put condoms on sex toys, being all teary-obsessed before I really know someone, feeling like I have to fight for my body to be my own territory, wanting to jump up and down and say “Sex is a big deal, people!” when most people just take it in stride, none of those things feel like being an adult. It feels a lot of the time like being a lost, hurt kid, craving connection and wanting to experience springtime properly, but wandering into pitfalls and getting stuck.

Part of the reason I’m stuck there, is because I want to save that person, fix the traumas, not just the big, scary ones, but the everyday indignities of being a teen girl who doesn’t like herself. I feel like I’m a little bit of a perfectionist this time around, because my real first times were so depressing.

I don’t know where I got this idea, but when I was fourteen, I knew I was so ugly that no one would ever want me. So when Rob Kilgore (I’m sorry, but that’s really his name, and it’s too illustrative not to use.) said that if someone didn’t fuck with him, he would jump in the river and drown, I volunteered. My first kiss was mere moments before my first sex, and I have to say the former was more impressive than the latter. It took all of probably five minutes. My best friend Sherri was making out with her boyfriend in the next room. One of the following songs was playing:

Afterwards, when I was sitting in Sherri’s kitchen bleeding and reading the funnies, I read a horoscope that said my life had changed for the better, and I hoped that much was true.

Stupid as it sounds, I thought Rob Kilgore and I would have a special connection after that, and that things would change for me in recognition of my new found womanhood—I thought I would somehow be more acceptable to people. What did happen is that his girlfriend, Lisa (in my memory, all of the blondes in acid washed jeans from the late Eighties are called Lisa) quietly called me a freak and told me to stay away from him. But I would always hope for recognition. The following Friday, I wore the same shirt I’d worn that night, a T-shirt I’d designed with an intricate puff-paint pattern of hearts, ankhs, peace-signs. I walked past the high school (I was still in middle school) hoping he would see me, and he did, but he was never more that cordial.

Whenever he was at the youth center, I was always aware of him, and always aware when whatever-song-it-had-been came on. I thought he might notice and catch my eye, but of course he never did.

A while later, maybe a year or so later, I ended up over at the Kilgore house. His bedroom was in an unfinished basement; his bed was a waterbed on a raised platform. I’d worn my favorite underwear, shiny white satin with a bright paisley print. I’m sorry but I have to tell you about the picture he had pinned to the wall: a vivid, comic-like illustration in mostly reds and greens of a very busty woman with her arm getting ripped (Chainsawed? Gnawed off by an alien?) off, bleeding all over the place. It didn’t occur to me then that that was going to look at during. He told me to turn around, bent me over and almost had it in before his dad came home. He and his brother were clearly scared of their dad, they hustled me out of the house. I enjoyed mourning the loss of the underwear for weeks, imagined them tacked up next to the armless lady, another thing to look at.

I don’t know why I didn’t expect more for myself, why I didn’t think I could be part of the world of dating and kissing  and whatever else. I don’t know why, but I counted myself out of the emotional aspects of sex. It was a way to both deny and fulfill my needs at once. Erica Jong would be proud of the ziplessness of the fucks that got me through most of high school. I don’t remember any of them ever wanting to look at my face, but I don’t remember all of their faces either. Maybe that’s where my silly urge to feel beautiful comes from.

I do know that the times I have felt beautiful in front of a man these past six months have been either hard to believe in (as in my very nice relationship with MKT) or have felt like the recognition was shining right through to the center of me (like the first fire kiss)—these moments are very hard to let go of, and I guess I don’t have to. I’d like to have a little bit more perspective, though, so that I wouldn’t have to cling so hard that things get devastating.

My senior year of high school when I came out as bi, I thought that it would protect me from feeling so deeply needy towards men. I did have a few good relationships with guys, but mostly, fighting and denying the need for them all these years made it stronger, warped the need into a genuine scary neurosis. If I embrace it, if I let the need in, do you think it might stop hurting me? Let’s try it.

Song of the Week: Same Mistakes

"I'm still a teenage girl. I haven't changed a bit. I'm still not over it."

Like nearly every yammerer on every pop-culture podcast, I'm enjoying Girls. Hannah's relationship with the emotionally distant and only-charming-to-her Adam helps me understand (and be more sympathetic to) myself in my adventures with Bill.

A Little Email Adventure: Bill's Here to Help

I’ll write about beginning rope class (FTW) soon enough, but first I just wanted to give away a little secret: I emailed Bill last week. The heading said “Way, Way After Aftercare,” and I just asked him to do sort of a postmortem on our shenanigans, especially since I couldn’t get over the fear that doms would always want me to be a doll the way he did.

 I couldn’t believe he wrote back, but he did, and said he’d be happy to help. He also said he never wanted me to be a doll, which kind of revolutionized my idea of what happened.

 Of course I couldn’t go through with the call; it would’ve been a one-way ticket back to smittentown. But the fact that he’d have been willing to help was kind of comforting—maybe my taste in men isn’t as completely fucked as I thought it was?

 Anyway, I told him I still wish I could have seen him as just a playpal, because jeez, we could have come up with some stuff. I think I’ve been nostalgic for him this week because I’ve been reminded that “brat” > “good girl”—I always want to remember to fight back a little. I took “Yes, Sir” off my list of fetishes today.

 Also, that situation may have been screwy, but it was perfect in its own way and really belonged to me, as opposed to being borrowed from another redhead. Here’s hoping smittentown will come along again before too long, with someone emotionally available.