This is one of the times when I am writing here not because I have a lot of steamy details to relate, but because what I'm feeling is generally inappropriate for public consumption. I am in a highly emotional state that keeps wandering all around the landscape of possibility. I am also totally neglecting work in order to write.
I'm practicing my Nonviolent Communication technique (NVC). (For more info about NVC, see http://www.cnvc.org/Training/nvc-chapter-1)
So here's my little four-part NVC expression of my current scenario:
1. When I think about work right now,
2. I feel apathetic
3. Because I need the clarity that I find in self-expression, and work is not providing that for me right now.
4. So, work, could you just hang on a minute while I take care of my needs? Thanks.
This has clearly created a monster, but I love it. Here we go with a few epistolary NVC expressions:
---------------------------
Dear James,
When you come into the tutoring lab and sit for hours without talking to me, I feel...
- Ashamed because I need to feel like I matter to people, especially ones I have cared about.
- Resentful because I need integrity from my friends.
- Helpless because I need mutuality.
So, could you please stop ignoring me and initiate some honest conversation?
---------------------------
Dear Elena,
When you don't make an effort to see me (and then speak to me in a bored tone of voice when we do speak), I feel....
- Dejected because I need companionship.
- Disappointed because I need consistency and consideration.
- Wary because I need to trust you after the last time I was hurt because we did not talk for months.
- Mistrustful because I need respect.
So, could you please make some plans with me, act like you actually want to see me, and then stick to the plans? If not, then please clearly communicate your unwillingness to do anything to maintain a friendship so that I can start processing that reality?
---------------------------
Dear Simon,
When you use childish expressions and tones of voice to demand certain types of attention from me, I feel irritated and disgusted because I need respect for my personal space and a sense of competence from my partner. So, could you try to articulate your needs to me in a normal, adult tone of voice?
When we discuss the topic of rules and boundaries in our relationship, I often feel hurt and exasperated because I need trust and understanding. So, could you try to frame more of these discussions in positive, affirmative, can-do terms? Also, could you acknowledge my negative feelings along with your own?
When you make those crumpled, drawn, frowning faces and start a lot of sentences with negative assertions during a conversation about polyamory, I feel frustrated because I need mutuality and harmony from you. So, could you try to focus on making our conversations more productive?
--------------------------
Dear Dad,
When you use a condescending tone of voice to question my life choices, I feel disheartened because I need love and support. I don't want to tell you things about my life if you are going to criticize them. So, could you please offer me more unconditional approval?
--------------------------
So deliciously self-oriented! I love it. I want to train myself to be able to articulate myself this way whenever it seems useful.
Furthermore, I am hoping that the heightened communication skills NVC offers can help us to navigate the new poly waters.
Did I even mention that Simon and I are in the midst of the mono-poly transition?
Whew. Yeah. Last night was a big milestone in that process for me because we actually had the opportunity to discuss poly stuff with someone who has experience--a sweet, mild-mannered Couchsurfer who I plan to hang out with again soon. I hadn't realized how much I needed a sense of community and understanding from a real person who could talk to me live and in the flesh. Online forums are great and all, but they are no substitute for real people, and this guy--we'll call him Michael--is certainly real, and kind, and interested, and generous with his knowledge.
Signing off for now.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
In Which Simon Initiates, Carnita Sees a Ghost, and Something's Rotten in the State
As I was leaving my favorite breakfast biscuit joint this morning, Anthony, one of my deliciously gorgeous martial arts instructors, pulled up beside me in the parking lot.
Now, lately this wonderful thing has begun to happen with him. On the one hand, the fact that he always takes at least a moment to make eye contact and greet me in particular whenever I come to the dojang presents a clear message: we are beginning recognize each other as humans over and above the generic culture of the school. (It turns out, however, that it is easy to find yourself unaccountably attracted to people who you train with like that.) The opening of connections between myself and others is a beautiful thing in life that I totally live for, regardless of the circumstance.
On the other hand, I just can't help by being especially charmed and intrigued because of how amazingly attractive this guy is. A broad-shouldered handsome Italian with curly, bronzy-brown hair, a sexy voice, and a body that is beautiful and powerful as a predatory cat. I would be happy to watch him do forms all day.
I can't tell if I am imagining a more doting tone in his glance. Probably not; most women can tell these things, read these looks on men's faces. But it doesn't matter in the slightest, except as fun fantasy material. We are both happily married, and he has a couple of kids. Neither of us would go there. Nevertheless, I can't help indulging the part of me that wonders what the hell he is thinking.
So when Anthony pulled his big black work truck up next to me, I immediately recognized the vehicle and waved. He had seen me too. He got out of the truck abruptly and came to my window.
"Coming or going?" he aks with little crooked half-smile. We're beyond pleasantries, are we?
"Going. I have to go find parking at the college. It's difficult at the beginning of the semester."
"I see." That was almost all, except for his obvious disappointment that we wouldn't be having breakfast together. I wish I could have stayed.
In other adventures, two weeks ago, Simon and I had sex with a woman together for the first time. It was fun for me, but completely unexpected and at a less-than ideal time. I was exhausted and it was at least 3:00 am before this even got started. I was so tired that my memory is a bit fuzzy. I can't remember how my cunt got literally sliced open; there was a little bleeding cut on the inside that hurt and kept me from having sex for days. I can't remember when Simon would have acquired an enormous, dark hickey, either--that's not really my style, so it had to have been Gina. I'm thinking my cut must have come from her fingernails.
In retrospect, the most significant thing about the whole scene was the fact that Simon initiated it without my help or knowledge. I didn't even intuit that any electricity was passing between the two of them until it was already happening. Not only that, but he had a lot of real, hard, intense vaginal intercourse with Gina. (I never had vaginal intercourse with James.) This, coming from the guy who is always saying that he is "naturally monogamous," that he "never knows when girls are hitting on him," and that the goal of experimenting with other people is mostly to connect more with me. Ha! The stories we tell ourselves...
He assures me that this does not mean that the rules have changed, or are on the way to changing, or anything of the sort. = /
The thing that bothered me about the Gina episode after the fact was my realization that if the reverse occurred--if I started making out with another guy when Simon was fairly close by in hopes that we could both get it on with guy #2--then by our current rules, it is highly unlikely that I would get what I wanted out of the situation. In fact, it would likely be so obvious that this is somehow "not the same," meaning that the prospects for group sex with a man actually happening are so low--and everyone knows it!--that Simon might feel offended or jealous because he thinks I must be up to something that is against the rules. Maybe that's not exactly how it would go down, but several other likely alternatives are equally shitty. For example: Guy #2 freaks out when I suggest that we sleep with my husband, thinks horrible things about me/us, and never wants to speak to me/us again. In my opinion and experience, this is a more probable outcome than the three of us actually ending up sleeping together.
Just look at what happened the only time we've been there, with James: he freaked out, couldn't handle what he had done, regretted entangling himself, had anxious doubts about his sexuality, and is now not speaking to us at all. Although he didn't have reservations before it happened and everything was entirely consensual, having sex with us destabilized his (albeit weak) sense of self-identity...and I would really, really prefer for these adventures of ours not to result in our sexual partners feeling worse off the morning after than they were if they had never met us!
On the other hand, Gina and I have hung out amicably since we got naked together, and everything is fine. We talked about that night, and we talked more about completely unrelated topics. I have a feeling that this is more likely to continue to be the case with female group sex partners.
The problem is that I prefer to sleep with men.
I'd like to say more about the social circumstances that create this unequal dynamic. Generally speaking, men who consider themselves to be mostly heterosexual seem to have to cling harder to and more fiercely patrol their sexual identities to feel "right" than women do. Men are less often interested in sharing even a mostly-hetero oriented sexual experience with another man, for fear of the "ick factor" (which is of course just a social construction of heterosexuality and homophobia enforcing itself through them). There are way, way more women who would be game to sleep with a man and a woman at the same time than there are men who would willingly get intimate with both. Of course this circumstance pisses me off. Regardless, it may continue to negatively affect the satisfaction I get out of my sex life for...well, my whole life.
I guess that's a major downer, huh? Am I worrying too much here? Am I setting myself up to manifest problems rather than the sensual delights I want? Perhaps. But I doubt anyone could argue with me about the core issue of how male homophobia affects the probability that "straight" men will consider group sexual interaction alongside another man. Le sigh.
Seeing James didn't help my generally addled mood last week. He is apparently attending classes at the college where I teach. He sat about thirty feet from me across the tutoring lab for over an hour and a half. I walked right by him at least five times, and he would not even so much as look at me. I was furious for a little while after that, and then I was just unspeakably sad for a long while.
As soon as I left the lab, I sent him a very short text message that received the most predictable reply possible:
Me: "Chickenshit."
James: "Who is this???"
Signing off,
Girl Whose Number He Deleted
Now, lately this wonderful thing has begun to happen with him. On the one hand, the fact that he always takes at least a moment to make eye contact and greet me in particular whenever I come to the dojang presents a clear message: we are beginning recognize each other as humans over and above the generic culture of the school. (It turns out, however, that it is easy to find yourself unaccountably attracted to people who you train with like that.) The opening of connections between myself and others is a beautiful thing in life that I totally live for, regardless of the circumstance.
On the other hand, I just can't help by being especially charmed and intrigued because of how amazingly attractive this guy is. A broad-shouldered handsome Italian with curly, bronzy-brown hair, a sexy voice, and a body that is beautiful and powerful as a predatory cat. I would be happy to watch him do forms all day.
I can't tell if I am imagining a more doting tone in his glance. Probably not; most women can tell these things, read these looks on men's faces. But it doesn't matter in the slightest, except as fun fantasy material. We are both happily married, and he has a couple of kids. Neither of us would go there. Nevertheless, I can't help indulging the part of me that wonders what the hell he is thinking.
So when Anthony pulled his big black work truck up next to me, I immediately recognized the vehicle and waved. He had seen me too. He got out of the truck abruptly and came to my window.
"Coming or going?" he aks with little crooked half-smile. We're beyond pleasantries, are we?
"Going. I have to go find parking at the college. It's difficult at the beginning of the semester."
"I see." That was almost all, except for his obvious disappointment that we wouldn't be having breakfast together. I wish I could have stayed.
In other adventures, two weeks ago, Simon and I had sex with a woman together for the first time. It was fun for me, but completely unexpected and at a less-than ideal time. I was exhausted and it was at least 3:00 am before this even got started. I was so tired that my memory is a bit fuzzy. I can't remember how my cunt got literally sliced open; there was a little bleeding cut on the inside that hurt and kept me from having sex for days. I can't remember when Simon would have acquired an enormous, dark hickey, either--that's not really my style, so it had to have been Gina. I'm thinking my cut must have come from her fingernails.
In retrospect, the most significant thing about the whole scene was the fact that Simon initiated it without my help or knowledge. I didn't even intuit that any electricity was passing between the two of them until it was already happening. Not only that, but he had a lot of real, hard, intense vaginal intercourse with Gina. (I never had vaginal intercourse with James.) This, coming from the guy who is always saying that he is "naturally monogamous," that he "never knows when girls are hitting on him," and that the goal of experimenting with other people is mostly to connect more with me. Ha! The stories we tell ourselves...
He assures me that this does not mean that the rules have changed, or are on the way to changing, or anything of the sort. = /
The thing that bothered me about the Gina episode after the fact was my realization that if the reverse occurred--if I started making out with another guy when Simon was fairly close by in hopes that we could both get it on with guy #2--then by our current rules, it is highly unlikely that I would get what I wanted out of the situation. In fact, it would likely be so obvious that this is somehow "not the same," meaning that the prospects for group sex with a man actually happening are so low--and everyone knows it!--that Simon might feel offended or jealous because he thinks I must be up to something that is against the rules. Maybe that's not exactly how it would go down, but several other likely alternatives are equally shitty. For example: Guy #2 freaks out when I suggest that we sleep with my husband, thinks horrible things about me/us, and never wants to speak to me/us again. In my opinion and experience, this is a more probable outcome than the three of us actually ending up sleeping together.
Just look at what happened the only time we've been there, with James: he freaked out, couldn't handle what he had done, regretted entangling himself, had anxious doubts about his sexuality, and is now not speaking to us at all. Although he didn't have reservations before it happened and everything was entirely consensual, having sex with us destabilized his (albeit weak) sense of self-identity...and I would really, really prefer for these adventures of ours not to result in our sexual partners feeling worse off the morning after than they were if they had never met us!
On the other hand, Gina and I have hung out amicably since we got naked together, and everything is fine. We talked about that night, and we talked more about completely unrelated topics. I have a feeling that this is more likely to continue to be the case with female group sex partners.
The problem is that I prefer to sleep with men.
I'd like to say more about the social circumstances that create this unequal dynamic. Generally speaking, men who consider themselves to be mostly heterosexual seem to have to cling harder to and more fiercely patrol their sexual identities to feel "right" than women do. Men are less often interested in sharing even a mostly-hetero oriented sexual experience with another man, for fear of the "ick factor" (which is of course just a social construction of heterosexuality and homophobia enforcing itself through them). There are way, way more women who would be game to sleep with a man and a woman at the same time than there are men who would willingly get intimate with both. Of course this circumstance pisses me off. Regardless, it may continue to negatively affect the satisfaction I get out of my sex life for...well, my whole life.
I guess that's a major downer, huh? Am I worrying too much here? Am I setting myself up to manifest problems rather than the sensual delights I want? Perhaps. But I doubt anyone could argue with me about the core issue of how male homophobia affects the probability that "straight" men will consider group sexual interaction alongside another man. Le sigh.
Seeing James didn't help my generally addled mood last week. He is apparently attending classes at the college where I teach. He sat about thirty feet from me across the tutoring lab for over an hour and a half. I walked right by him at least five times, and he would not even so much as look at me. I was furious for a little while after that, and then I was just unspeakably sad for a long while.
As soon as I left the lab, I sent him a very short text message that received the most predictable reply possible:
Me: "Chickenshit."
James: "Who is this???"
Signing off,
Girl Whose Number He Deleted
Monday, January 3, 2011
The Journal of Scott LaDouche, Entry #1
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Introducing Guest Blogger Scott LaDouche!
I am pleased to introduce Scott LaDouche, a blossoming young writer who occasionally indulges his kinky side. With a little luck, I will be able to convince him to continue writing down all his dirty little confessions and sending them along to carnal porridge. The post following this one is the first of what I hope will become a series. Later, if we see more of Mr. LaDouche, you will be able to find his posts by clicking his tag in the navigation sidebar.
Scott and I have known each other since high school, when we briefly dated--very briefly, even for a high school affair. Making out was, for us, an entree to friendship, rather than the other way around. It couldn't have been more than a few weeks, right Scott?
Anyhow, until very recently, we had alternated between little to no contact since he left our home town and joined the Navy. A few weeks ago, I was reminded of his refreshingly raw brand of wit--some might call it a penchant for shocking the faint of heart, a habit of which I am also often accused--by a facebook comment in which he called someone or other a "PC liberal faggot junkie." Somehow this started an exchange that resulted in discovering our common interest in erotica or porn or whatever we're doing here. Scott sent me a manuscript and kindly allowed me to take and lightly edit the bits I wanted to put up on the blog.
So, without further ado, please welcome Mr. Scott LaDouche to carnal porridge.
Scott and I have known each other since high school, when we briefly dated--very briefly, even for a high school affair. Making out was, for us, an entree to friendship, rather than the other way around. It couldn't have been more than a few weeks, right Scott?
Anyhow, until very recently, we had alternated between little to no contact since he left our home town and joined the Navy. A few weeks ago, I was reminded of his refreshingly raw brand of wit--some might call it a penchant for shocking the faint of heart, a habit of which I am also often accused--by a facebook comment in which he called someone or other a "PC liberal faggot junkie." Somehow this started an exchange that resulted in discovering our common interest in erotica or porn or whatever we're doing here. Scott sent me a manuscript and kindly allowed me to take and lightly edit the bits I wanted to put up on the blog.
So, without further ado, please welcome Mr. Scott LaDouche to carnal porridge.
Monday, December 27, 2010
In Which the Similarities Between a Hairbrush and a Handcuff Are Estabished
Now it's time I told you about Lucas, the man who engineered my most positive and beautiful early sexual experiences.
I met Lucas through the group of friends I ran with for a few years in junior high and early high school. I have no memory of my first impression except for this: I thought that his face was both grotesque and irresistible. I could not stop looking at him. In fact, Lucas' physicality has made such a lasting impression on me that I think the half-conscious memory of him may have contributed to why I allowed myself to fall so quickly into bed with Damon. But that is a different tale.
Lucas had an enormous mouth with a tongue as long as Gene Simmons'; he seemed almost to navigate the whole world by the use of his mouth, shaping each word he spoke with relish, tasting every person and situation he encountered, listening for his own amusement to the echoes off the walls of the great cave in his head. His laugh was impossibly loud, huge booming reverberations that seemed to come from everywhere at the same time. I loved his laugh, though, and his monstrously wide grin. I loved his long hair that was always dyed too black and the way it would fall over the prominent ridge of his eyebrows, which he kept immaculately waxed. This always made me giggle--that such a terrifyingly formidable hunk of man flesh would be so vain.
He had other charming incongruities, as well. For instance, he loved horses, and he kept several in a field behind his house. The rapturous attention he paid to them was as tender and startlingly private as a lover's. He would all but disappear into the depth of his affection for one of his horses, his hands finding every contour of her neck and face, his lips moving along her skin whispering his worship, and seem to forget I was there. I have never forgotten the image of him, a tattooed, pierced, black-maned goth boy leading his horse towards me down the crape myrtle-lined path on a late summer afternoon.
He had acquired a reputation as a talented lover, and we all pitied the foolish girls who attempted to possess him because every woman knew--or should have known--that he had been created as a gift to all of us, even men. (I am fairly certain that he even served as a male escort for a period of time.) His body was our temple.
After a while, his piercing habit got fairly intense. That muscular expanse of flesh in his mouth started to collect decorations (or perhaps they are best thought of as tools) until he had five--count, FIVE--bars through his tongue. At the time when we were close, he only had one or two through the tongue, but he already had many other parts pierced: his septum, his cheeks, his le bret, his nipples, his scrotum, and his perineum. He also had surface piercings through the skin on the back of his neck and a ladder of four bars through the top of his shaft. Occasionally he would pierce himself on the surface somewhere random and then take it out a few weeks later, just for kicks. I know. Woah, right?
As much room in his psyche as I knew there was for the love of pain, rough dominance play, and humiliation in sex, he was always incredibly gentle and tender with me. He seemed to be motivated almost entirely by the desire to help me develop into a healthier young woman, and if he wasn't, then that was certainly a happy unintended outcome. He never once tried to penetrate me, and even gently refused to do so when I thought I wanted it. His project seemed to be making sure that I knew my body, knew what I wanted, and knew how men should be expected to behave in bed with me. Maybe I am completely wrong about this, but I am incredibly thankful for the memories and the personal growth he so kindly and selflessly brought into my life. He set the bar high--I still sometimes find myself comparing men to him--and equipped me with new self-respect.
You ask if I want to listen to music and I tell you of course because I know that it is your way of gauging what sort of mood I am in and I would like to tell you that I am never not in that mood when you are near but I don't want to make you worry that I am falling in love with you or anything even though I do love you so very much and thank you for making me shut up with that kiss.
And I loved him, and I still love him, but everything was always very clear. It was the weirdest thing. It's not like he was the wrong kind of guy for me to fall for, and it's not like all the ingredients weren't there. I had it all with him: love, mutual respect, sweet sweet lust, and lots to talk about. But I just couldn't bring myself to desire to possess him. I knew that none of the women who thought they owned him actually did, and I wished that they would see it the way I did: Lucas was serving his best and highest purpose when he was allowed to remain a communal resource. He lived to give of himself, and he had cured so many women (and men?) of their hangups, and there was plenty of him to go around. He was the true Love Doctor in the flesh.
Of all the naked fun we had together over those few years, the instance that I remember in the most vivid, panty-creaming detail occurred when we were both fully clothed. It is still one of the most terrifically, head-swimmingly intimate events of my life.
A bit of background and setting: One of our friends was the son of a very wealthy doctor. We usually ended up picking his house as our hangout spot because his parents left us alone to do as we wished in their enormous game room. Lucas, three or four other friends, and I were there on a weekend. I must have been about fourteen, and I still had impossibly thick hair that fell well past my breasts. I could wrap almost my entire torso with it.
I still felt very shy anytime I hung around these kids because I feared upsetting whatever magic made them accept me. I was two to five years younger than everyone in the group, and we had only recently begun to spend time together, so I kept my mouth shut most of the time. I had never had a serious conversation with Lucas before, only stared out at him from that deeply confused, impenetrable interior space that adolescence introduces to the psyche.
Ken had just turned on some music. The girls were distracted, chatting at the corner table with Tobias. I was reading something on the couch when I felt eyes on me, so I turned to meet them. Lucas had a musing expression on his face, and one corner of his broad mouth curled up in a devious little smile as he pulled himself up from his chair and began to walk toward me.
Towering over me, he extended his hand in a frank and commanding gesture that might have been translated: "You. Woman. Come." It was the sort of thing that I daydream about men being able to pull off. So simple, so complete. These days, when virtually no natural selection takes place any more among men competing for women, it takes a very rare and special mix of hormones and attitudes for a man to be able to communicate the most basic, ancient message to a woman without the assistance of words. The authenticity of Lucas' masculinity was like nothing my adolescent body had ever understood before, and like very little I have known after him. That feeling of surrender to the male animal mostly only ever comes up these days in fantasies involving tangles with men who use inappropriate amounts of force and whose faces I can't make out in the half-dark...
So, this was all that happened, all that I have been getting at: I took his outstretched hand and allowed him to pull me up from the couch. He led me through the hallway and into the bathroom, where he brushed my hair for a few minutes and only sortof kissed me. That's all. Really.
You close the door click behind you and you turn around to face me. You spend a moment searching me, all of me, still trying to figure out what you intend to do. You seem to decide then and your hands go to my hips and slowly close around them. Slowly, firmly you pick me up by my hipbones, your thumbs pressing into my flesh, and I feel so small and deliciously helpless and you set me down gently on the sink, all the while staring, sometimes into my eyes but other times like a scientist dissecting me inch by quivering inch. You start opening drawers, rifling through tubes of ointments and boxes of dental floss until you find a hairbrush. The next five minutes seem to last for hours as you slowly, gently, painstakingly brush my hair while examining my face, my neck, my arms, and the world has receded and there is only your face, your hot, smoky breath on my ears, your fingers electrifying the skin at the base of my skull, the mad flutter of my heartbeat, and the burning and throbbing between my legs that gets harder and harder to bear. You are enraptured, worshipful almost, and your brow is furrowed in perfect concentration. Finally you stop, put down the hairbrush, and look at me. The furrow relaxes as you seem to remember time and space. Your thumb grazes my lower lip, and your two forefingers dig slightly into the soft flesh under my jaw, pulling my face into yours. Your big, soft lips find mine only for a moment, and I could scream with need for more of you but I know you won't, but anyway you're not completely cruel so you smile and help me down again, straighten my hair once more even though nothing is out of place, and then lead me out of the bathroom. The others turn to look from the other side of the room and I can feel them wondering, probing, and I can feel my face flushing even redder, but no one asks. It seems as if your sweeping look of brazen self-validation must have silenced their curiosity before it ever reached their throats. I go back to the couch, and you walk over to Amber and kiss her on the collarbone.
And that is one of the hottest things that has ever happened to me.
I met Lucas through the group of friends I ran with for a few years in junior high and early high school. I have no memory of my first impression except for this: I thought that his face was both grotesque and irresistible. I could not stop looking at him. In fact, Lucas' physicality has made such a lasting impression on me that I think the half-conscious memory of him may have contributed to why I allowed myself to fall so quickly into bed with Damon. But that is a different tale.
Lucas had an enormous mouth with a tongue as long as Gene Simmons'; he seemed almost to navigate the whole world by the use of his mouth, shaping each word he spoke with relish, tasting every person and situation he encountered, listening for his own amusement to the echoes off the walls of the great cave in his head. His laugh was impossibly loud, huge booming reverberations that seemed to come from everywhere at the same time. I loved his laugh, though, and his monstrously wide grin. I loved his long hair that was always dyed too black and the way it would fall over the prominent ridge of his eyebrows, which he kept immaculately waxed. This always made me giggle--that such a terrifyingly formidable hunk of man flesh would be so vain.
He had other charming incongruities, as well. For instance, he loved horses, and he kept several in a field behind his house. The rapturous attention he paid to them was as tender and startlingly private as a lover's. He would all but disappear into the depth of his affection for one of his horses, his hands finding every contour of her neck and face, his lips moving along her skin whispering his worship, and seem to forget I was there. I have never forgotten the image of him, a tattooed, pierced, black-maned goth boy leading his horse towards me down the crape myrtle-lined path on a late summer afternoon.
He had acquired a reputation as a talented lover, and we all pitied the foolish girls who attempted to possess him because every woman knew--or should have known--that he had been created as a gift to all of us, even men. (I am fairly certain that he even served as a male escort for a period of time.) His body was our temple.
After a while, his piercing habit got fairly intense. That muscular expanse of flesh in his mouth started to collect decorations (or perhaps they are best thought of as tools) until he had five--count, FIVE--bars through his tongue. At the time when we were close, he only had one or two through the tongue, but he already had many other parts pierced: his septum, his cheeks, his le bret, his nipples, his scrotum, and his perineum. He also had surface piercings through the skin on the back of his neck and a ladder of four bars through the top of his shaft. Occasionally he would pierce himself on the surface somewhere random and then take it out a few weeks later, just for kicks. I know. Woah, right?
As much room in his psyche as I knew there was for the love of pain, rough dominance play, and humiliation in sex, he was always incredibly gentle and tender with me. He seemed to be motivated almost entirely by the desire to help me develop into a healthier young woman, and if he wasn't, then that was certainly a happy unintended outcome. He never once tried to penetrate me, and even gently refused to do so when I thought I wanted it. His project seemed to be making sure that I knew my body, knew what I wanted, and knew how men should be expected to behave in bed with me. Maybe I am completely wrong about this, but I am incredibly thankful for the memories and the personal growth he so kindly and selflessly brought into my life. He set the bar high--I still sometimes find myself comparing men to him--and equipped me with new self-respect.
You ask if I want to listen to music and I tell you of course because I know that it is your way of gauging what sort of mood I am in and I would like to tell you that I am never not in that mood when you are near but I don't want to make you worry that I am falling in love with you or anything even though I do love you so very much and thank you for making me shut up with that kiss.
And I loved him, and I still love him, but everything was always very clear. It was the weirdest thing. It's not like he was the wrong kind of guy for me to fall for, and it's not like all the ingredients weren't there. I had it all with him: love, mutual respect, sweet sweet lust, and lots to talk about. But I just couldn't bring myself to desire to possess him. I knew that none of the women who thought they owned him actually did, and I wished that they would see it the way I did: Lucas was serving his best and highest purpose when he was allowed to remain a communal resource. He lived to give of himself, and he had cured so many women (and men?) of their hangups, and there was plenty of him to go around. He was the true Love Doctor in the flesh.
Of all the naked fun we had together over those few years, the instance that I remember in the most vivid, panty-creaming detail occurred when we were both fully clothed. It is still one of the most terrifically, head-swimmingly intimate events of my life.
A bit of background and setting: One of our friends was the son of a very wealthy doctor. We usually ended up picking his house as our hangout spot because his parents left us alone to do as we wished in their enormous game room. Lucas, three or four other friends, and I were there on a weekend. I must have been about fourteen, and I still had impossibly thick hair that fell well past my breasts. I could wrap almost my entire torso with it.
I still felt very shy anytime I hung around these kids because I feared upsetting whatever magic made them accept me. I was two to five years younger than everyone in the group, and we had only recently begun to spend time together, so I kept my mouth shut most of the time. I had never had a serious conversation with Lucas before, only stared out at him from that deeply confused, impenetrable interior space that adolescence introduces to the psyche.
Ken had just turned on some music. The girls were distracted, chatting at the corner table with Tobias. I was reading something on the couch when I felt eyes on me, so I turned to meet them. Lucas had a musing expression on his face, and one corner of his broad mouth curled up in a devious little smile as he pulled himself up from his chair and began to walk toward me.
Towering over me, he extended his hand in a frank and commanding gesture that might have been translated: "You. Woman. Come." It was the sort of thing that I daydream about men being able to pull off. So simple, so complete. These days, when virtually no natural selection takes place any more among men competing for women, it takes a very rare and special mix of hormones and attitudes for a man to be able to communicate the most basic, ancient message to a woman without the assistance of words. The authenticity of Lucas' masculinity was like nothing my adolescent body had ever understood before, and like very little I have known after him. That feeling of surrender to the male animal mostly only ever comes up these days in fantasies involving tangles with men who use inappropriate amounts of force and whose faces I can't make out in the half-dark...
So, this was all that happened, all that I have been getting at: I took his outstretched hand and allowed him to pull me up from the couch. He led me through the hallway and into the bathroom, where he brushed my hair for a few minutes and only sortof kissed me. That's all. Really.
You close the door click behind you and you turn around to face me. You spend a moment searching me, all of me, still trying to figure out what you intend to do. You seem to decide then and your hands go to my hips and slowly close around them. Slowly, firmly you pick me up by my hipbones, your thumbs pressing into my flesh, and I feel so small and deliciously helpless and you set me down gently on the sink, all the while staring, sometimes into my eyes but other times like a scientist dissecting me inch by quivering inch. You start opening drawers, rifling through tubes of ointments and boxes of dental floss until you find a hairbrush. The next five minutes seem to last for hours as you slowly, gently, painstakingly brush my hair while examining my face, my neck, my arms, and the world has receded and there is only your face, your hot, smoky breath on my ears, your fingers electrifying the skin at the base of my skull, the mad flutter of my heartbeat, and the burning and throbbing between my legs that gets harder and harder to bear. You are enraptured, worshipful almost, and your brow is furrowed in perfect concentration. Finally you stop, put down the hairbrush, and look at me. The furrow relaxes as you seem to remember time and space. Your thumb grazes my lower lip, and your two forefingers dig slightly into the soft flesh under my jaw, pulling my face into yours. Your big, soft lips find mine only for a moment, and I could scream with need for more of you but I know you won't, but anyway you're not completely cruel so you smile and help me down again, straighten my hair once more even though nothing is out of place, and then lead me out of the bathroom. The others turn to look from the other side of the room and I can feel them wondering, probing, and I can feel my face flushing even redder, but no one asks. It seems as if your sweeping look of brazen self-validation must have silenced their curiosity before it ever reached their throats. I go back to the couch, and you walk over to Amber and kiss her on the collarbone.
And that is one of the hottest things that has ever happened to me.
Monday, December 13, 2010
In Which Carnita Writes a Letter to a Prospective Contributor and Outlines the Concept
Dearest Mr. LaDouche,
So I've been thinking a bit more about things that I would like to typify the blog posts on carnal porridge. If you're truly interested, then maybe it can help inspire some direction for you and this can be a mutualistic relationship. You're clearly talented and may benefit from a safe outlet for some impulses that fall outside the normal range of what society at large sanctions, and I would certainly benefit from having some trustworthy, (preferably) gifted, and motivated co-conspirators. If you decide you're not into it, then no harm done. In fact, I may end up re-posting what I write to you here because I'm trying to articulate something for myself as much as I am trying to explain it to you.
My husband and I were talking today about the things that we find to be lacking in most readily available mainstream porn and/or erotica--especially that which relies on images for its appeal, like video, visual art, and photography--and a few themes emerged. For example, both of us (and many people we know) are pretty grossed out by the practice of obsessive hair removal. It's not just about the fact that it betrays a disturbing fascination in our culture with childish bodies and denies something of the animals that we are, but also because it is just one more thing that tends to reduce the amount of variation that can be found in the human form. In a way, it represents a sort of McDonaldization of sex: pre-packaged ideas of what is attractive, what is "clean," what is sexy, etc. (The weird idea that hairless bodies are "cleaner" is especially irritating to me. Let's not fool ourselves here; there is nothing clean about sex, and in another way, there is nothing dirty about it, either.) This practice also precludes some of the intimacy involved in sexual acts, eliminating the mystery of the literally dark areas of the body that have to be revealed, and also discovered, incrementally. My personal choice not to shave some parts of my body is only distantly related to these ideas, since pornography, erotica, or whatever we're calling it is essentially performance and inhabits its own symbolic world, whereas this is my actual life.
One of the other major complaints I have about what I have been able to find so far--and mind you, I am a novice at finding the porn I want and really don't know where to look yet--is that when there is a subject-position or "observer" in the situation being portrayed in heterosexual porn, it is almost always the man. This is on the one hand a classic feminist concern about objectification, but for me, it is more a simple matter of never being able to assume the role of the viewer as a woman, the one experiencing the woman's position in the scenario.
It is true that it is somewhat more common for men to be interested in porn, but I wonder what that statistic would look like if there were more readily available material made for women. This does not mean that women would necessarily have to make it, but that writers and film artists would need to step up efforts to include women in the "protagonist" roles of pornographic art, photography, and video. Furthermore, I don't think that it's fair or accurate to assume that just because certain scenarios are portrayed over and over ad nauseum in porn made for men that these scenarios are the only things that men are interested in. So in general, my issue with porn is how homogeneous it is although human sexuality, even within the confines of basically heterosexual orientation, is incredibly diverse.
For instance, if you were an alien who had to find out everything you know about human sexuality by watching porn, you might end up thinking things like this:
- Women always love bigger, harder cocks. A man who cannot achieve these ideals at any time a woman wants him to is not worth fucking.
- All women love to be sprayed with lots of cum, especially in the eye, in the mouth, on the ass, or wherever else a man can make it shoot that is close to a vascular area.
- Women always get extreme pleasure from long, drawn-out, rough, and somewhat humiliating intercourse with sleazy guys who don't respect them.
- Women cannot seek their own pleasure; they get pleasure only by doing things that result in getting men off. Also, men only really care about getting off.
- Men can't stand dealing with women's bodies as they are; if she wants to attract a man, a woman must make endless modifications to her natural shape, patterns of hair growth, hair color, skin tone, etc.
- Women's assholes are always cute and pink.
- Only women are bi-curious. Men who are bi-curious are an anomaly and we don't care about them.
- Circumcision is necessary for a man to be sexually attractive.
- Venereal disease and unwanted pregnancy are myths. Safe sex is shitty sex, and if issues resulting from unsafe sex occur, it's the woman's problem.
...and you get the point. So my project with this blog is, at least in part, to be part of the resistance to all these porno lies and to more faithfully represent what is hot about our actual consenting adult sex lives. I am convinced that I won't be disappointed by the array of possibilities that I discover.
The other major thing is more personal, more important than any sort of "work" I expect it to get done. My personal liberation is at stake here. I am a writer, I am a blossoming sexual creature, and my sex life is getting more interesting all the time. I want to challenge myself to embrace all of it and give myself a reason to keep generating good material by living it, if you know what I mean. Wink nudge.
I also have a basic and unsophisticated need to tell my story and validate myself in so doing. I want to see it written down, to force myself to tell it even when it makes me uncomfortable, and to make a commitment to myself to keep at it for a while instead of dropping it like I have dropped every other thing that has gotten difficult in my life. It's one among many other lessons in commitment I am trying to teach myself right now.
One idea, as I mentioned before, is to try to find others who might want to contribute as guest bloggers. I am not planning on asking many people I know in my day-to-day life since this could present a conflict of interests. I don't want to walk down the street and worry that I've been cast as "that sex blog girl," and I want others who contribute to be similarly protected from worries about their privacy.
So I hope that you might decide to keep working on your concept. Let me know what you think.
Sincerely,
Carnita
So I've been thinking a bit more about things that I would like to typify the blog posts on carnal porridge. If you're truly interested, then maybe it can help inspire some direction for you and this can be a mutualistic relationship. You're clearly talented and may benefit from a safe outlet for some impulses that fall outside the normal range of what society at large sanctions, and I would certainly benefit from having some trustworthy, (preferably) gifted, and motivated co-conspirators. If you decide you're not into it, then no harm done. In fact, I may end up re-posting what I write to you here because I'm trying to articulate something for myself as much as I am trying to explain it to you.
My husband and I were talking today about the things that we find to be lacking in most readily available mainstream porn and/or erotica--especially that which relies on images for its appeal, like video, visual art, and photography--and a few themes emerged. For example, both of us (and many people we know) are pretty grossed out by the practice of obsessive hair removal. It's not just about the fact that it betrays a disturbing fascination in our culture with childish bodies and denies something of the animals that we are, but also because it is just one more thing that tends to reduce the amount of variation that can be found in the human form. In a way, it represents a sort of McDonaldization of sex: pre-packaged ideas of what is attractive, what is "clean," what is sexy, etc. (The weird idea that hairless bodies are "cleaner" is especially irritating to me. Let's not fool ourselves here; there is nothing clean about sex, and in another way, there is nothing dirty about it, either.) This practice also precludes some of the intimacy involved in sexual acts, eliminating the mystery of the literally dark areas of the body that have to be revealed, and also discovered, incrementally. My personal choice not to shave some parts of my body is only distantly related to these ideas, since pornography, erotica, or whatever we're calling it is essentially performance and inhabits its own symbolic world, whereas this is my actual life.
One of the other major complaints I have about what I have been able to find so far--and mind you, I am a novice at finding the porn I want and really don't know where to look yet--is that when there is a subject-position or "observer" in the situation being portrayed in heterosexual porn, it is almost always the man. This is on the one hand a classic feminist concern about objectification, but for me, it is more a simple matter of never being able to assume the role of the viewer as a woman, the one experiencing the woman's position in the scenario.
It is true that it is somewhat more common for men to be interested in porn, but I wonder what that statistic would look like if there were more readily available material made for women. This does not mean that women would necessarily have to make it, but that writers and film artists would need to step up efforts to include women in the "protagonist" roles of pornographic art, photography, and video. Furthermore, I don't think that it's fair or accurate to assume that just because certain scenarios are portrayed over and over ad nauseum in porn made for men that these scenarios are the only things that men are interested in. So in general, my issue with porn is how homogeneous it is although human sexuality, even within the confines of basically heterosexual orientation, is incredibly diverse.
For instance, if you were an alien who had to find out everything you know about human sexuality by watching porn, you might end up thinking things like this:
- Women always love bigger, harder cocks. A man who cannot achieve these ideals at any time a woman wants him to is not worth fucking.
- All women love to be sprayed with lots of cum, especially in the eye, in the mouth, on the ass, or wherever else a man can make it shoot that is close to a vascular area.
- Women always get extreme pleasure from long, drawn-out, rough, and somewhat humiliating intercourse with sleazy guys who don't respect them.
- Women cannot seek their own pleasure; they get pleasure only by doing things that result in getting men off. Also, men only really care about getting off.
- Men can't stand dealing with women's bodies as they are; if she wants to attract a man, a woman must make endless modifications to her natural shape, patterns of hair growth, hair color, skin tone, etc.
- Women's assholes are always cute and pink.
- Only women are bi-curious. Men who are bi-curious are an anomaly and we don't care about them.
- Circumcision is necessary for a man to be sexually attractive.
- Venereal disease and unwanted pregnancy are myths. Safe sex is shitty sex, and if issues resulting from unsafe sex occur, it's the woman's problem.
...and you get the point. So my project with this blog is, at least in part, to be part of the resistance to all these porno lies and to more faithfully represent what is hot about our actual consenting adult sex lives. I am convinced that I won't be disappointed by the array of possibilities that I discover.
The other major thing is more personal, more important than any sort of "work" I expect it to get done. My personal liberation is at stake here. I am a writer, I am a blossoming sexual creature, and my sex life is getting more interesting all the time. I want to challenge myself to embrace all of it and give myself a reason to keep generating good material by living it, if you know what I mean. Wink nudge.
I also have a basic and unsophisticated need to tell my story and validate myself in so doing. I want to see it written down, to force myself to tell it even when it makes me uncomfortable, and to make a commitment to myself to keep at it for a while instead of dropping it like I have dropped every other thing that has gotten difficult in my life. It's one among many other lessons in commitment I am trying to teach myself right now.
One idea, as I mentioned before, is to try to find others who might want to contribute as guest bloggers. I am not planning on asking many people I know in my day-to-day life since this could present a conflict of interests. I don't want to walk down the street and worry that I've been cast as "that sex blog girl," and I want others who contribute to be similarly protected from worries about their privacy.
So I hope that you might decide to keep working on your concept. Let me know what you think.
Sincerely,
Carnita
Sunday, December 12, 2010
In Which the Protagonist Weathers Both the Snow Day That Ruined Final Exams and a Disgusting Head Cold
I am going to pause for a bit to pay some tribute, make some proclamations, and kill some time on a lovely snowy day! I am using lots of exclamation points because I took Sudafed earlier and I'm kindof all like woah! Look at that snow and my dog is so goddamn cute I can barely stand it and it feels funny to have plastic bags wrapped around your feet and ooooh, look, that's a pretty bird and yes Simon of COURSE I want a happy little drop of bourbon in my tea and why didn't I think of that sooner?!!
That's what it's like. We're both home sick today with no transportation and a couple of the biggest rutabagas I have ever seen. I think we also have plenty of condoms and a few logs to start a fire with later. What more could a girl need?
My poor students' exam schedules have been interrupted irrevocably by all this weather, and I know that they think they are happy about it, but it will not be fun for them to take these tests without a little bit more review. Plus, the car is in the shop and the mechanic appears to have gone on vacation. These are Carnita's troubles right now. Le sigh.
I have decided more about how this blog has got to work in order to work for me, especially regarding how to present time, structure, and internal logic. Even though I have decided to write a lot of smut on this blog, I am inspired very much by Hyperbole and a Half these days; the freedom Allie gives herself to slip and slide around in time as suits her mood on a given day keeps things much more interesting for both the writer and the reader than rigid chronology. The more I think about trying to start from the "beginning" of my story and arrive at the "end," the more I yawn, so that's not how I'm going to do it.
I'm not trying to write a cohesive novel here, alright? Just a little smut, laced with a lot of other stuff. But I understand that once it gets going, if anybody reads this blog, he or she is most likely to skip to the steamy parts first. Maybe only those parts. That is absolutely fine with me, but I have to be able to find a somewhat cohesive rhythm and voice for the rest of it for my own sense of purpose and vision or whatever the hell people say you need to create something of any interest to other people.
The problem is that I am a total mimic, and I go through these broad phases of fascination with certain styles and topics. Ever since I was very young. I have mimicked things for my own entertainment. I loved to imitate sounds made by different things around me, like dogs, cats, birds, people, machines, singers on the radio, television personalities, or my surly pony. Later I found that I had a knack for imitating images, too: drawing and painting things I saw, making stencils, or co-opting the styles of different artists.
Later, in college, the objects of my mimicry became writers and their styles. For instance, I was shameless about rocking an obvious William Faulkner/Gertrude Stein style of stream-of-consciousness prose poetry. If you've ever read either author, you may have noticed my hard-on for them. During senior thesis season, I nearly perfected my impersonation of a stodgy academic writer of Completely Inconsequential Literary Criticism. So the issue with trying to walk in too straight a time line with the plot that unfolds here is that it denies my own assets as a writer. That's my excuse!
So the point is that you must be patient with all the jumping around.
We're gonna watch a movie now. <3
That's what it's like. We're both home sick today with no transportation and a couple of the biggest rutabagas I have ever seen. I think we also have plenty of condoms and a few logs to start a fire with later. What more could a girl need?
My poor students' exam schedules have been interrupted irrevocably by all this weather, and I know that they think they are happy about it, but it will not be fun for them to take these tests without a little bit more review. Plus, the car is in the shop and the mechanic appears to have gone on vacation. These are Carnita's troubles right now. Le sigh.
I have decided more about how this blog has got to work in order to work for me, especially regarding how to present time, structure, and internal logic. Even though I have decided to write a lot of smut on this blog, I am inspired very much by Hyperbole and a Half these days; the freedom Allie gives herself to slip and slide around in time as suits her mood on a given day keeps things much more interesting for both the writer and the reader than rigid chronology. The more I think about trying to start from the "beginning" of my story and arrive at the "end," the more I yawn, so that's not how I'm going to do it.
I'm not trying to write a cohesive novel here, alright? Just a little smut, laced with a lot of other stuff. But I understand that once it gets going, if anybody reads this blog, he or she is most likely to skip to the steamy parts first. Maybe only those parts. That is absolutely fine with me, but I have to be able to find a somewhat cohesive rhythm and voice for the rest of it for my own sense of purpose and vision or whatever the hell people say you need to create something of any interest to other people.
The problem is that I am a total mimic, and I go through these broad phases of fascination with certain styles and topics. Ever since I was very young. I have mimicked things for my own entertainment. I loved to imitate sounds made by different things around me, like dogs, cats, birds, people, machines, singers on the radio, television personalities, or my surly pony. Later I found that I had a knack for imitating images, too: drawing and painting things I saw, making stencils, or co-opting the styles of different artists.
Later, in college, the objects of my mimicry became writers and their styles. For instance, I was shameless about rocking an obvious William Faulkner/Gertrude Stein style of stream-of-consciousness prose poetry. If you've ever read either author, you may have noticed my hard-on for them. During senior thesis season, I nearly perfected my impersonation of a stodgy academic writer of Completely Inconsequential Literary Criticism. So the issue with trying to walk in too straight a time line with the plot that unfolds here is that it denies my own assets as a writer. That's my excuse!
So the point is that you must be patient with all the jumping around.
We're gonna watch a movie now. <3
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