Handrails.

"Why are all handrails roughly the diameter of a penis?" Kevin asked me once.

"Because that's the size a hand goes around," I said, very sensibly.

Every time I have to stand on the bus, I think of that conversaton.

Skinny bimbos.

I showed Alan the (awesome) Honky-Tonk Badonkadonk video.

"Eugh," he said. "Now I'll have nightmares of skinny white girls shaking their asses in my face all night."
"Most boys wouldn't call that a nightmare," I said.
"No, really," he said. "That's just not my type."

For some reason, that conversation felt enlightening. I'd always thought of my body as kind of a second choice. As though all men really wanted the exact same thin white D-cup bimbo, and all women were trying to approximate that archetype, and my body was just a particularly poor approximation.

The idea that someone could actually like my body, rather than only liking it inasmuch as it sort of resembled an ideal body, was embarassingly revelatory. (Alan's the sort of guy who says what comes to mind, he's not much given to diplomacy, so I don't think it was a "not as pretty as you, honey" sort of thing.)

And the ironic thing is that I don't like the archetypal male body at all. My ideal man isn't an 18-year-old lifeguard, and I actually think overdefined muscles are kind of a turnoff. I go for more wiry strength and worn features. I like a guy who looks a little older than his age, who's got a couple scars, and I'm utterly indifferent to belly size as long as he can keep up with me.

I don't go for perfection, so it's pretty damn sexist of me to think that all men would.

Back to Front.

One of my favorite positions to be in (actually having sex or just messin' around) is back to front. It's a selfish thing; I can't do anything for the guy but wiggle against him a little, and his hands can do anything to me. And it's a power thing. They teach you in martial arts that the worst position you can get into is facedown on the ground. If you're grappling and someone gets on top when you're faceup you've got a shot at bucking them, but if they get on your back you're fucked.

I like that feeling. Especially when a guy's not afraid to put his weight on me, even so much that it's a little hard to breathe. Especially when he's got my hands, stretched out in front or pulled tight behind my back like in COPS.

I need to lose weight. I feel like sexuality has no legitimacy unless you're hot. If you're hot it's sexy, if you're ugly it's just ridiculous. (By "you" here, I mean "me"; I'm being insecure, not assholish.) I would like to lose so much weight that a photo of me naked becomes a filthy picture. I would like to become so hot that I could videotape myself having sex and then enjoy watching it.

And, um, I'd also like a pony.

Yom Kippur Festivities.

It's Yom Kippur, a day on which I should not have eaten, drunk, worn leather, bathed, or had sex. Oops?

Alan and I did it four times. The third we finished with a blowjob and the fourth he couldn't finish, but we certainly got to it four times at least. Two on the sofa, one in the bed, one on the floor. Extremely fun (if soul-crushingly vanilla), and I didn't feel guilty because I'm an atheist at the moment.

I'm a little worried that in the future when my atheism has gone the way of my relativism, socialism, nihilism, and every other goofy ism trapping of liberal-arts-kid thinking, I'll feel bad about it. But what the hell, if that ever happens I'll have to start with bacon and the fact that Alan is not technically my husband and the Yom Kippur thing will just be icing on that guilt cake.


While I was having my bad-Jew sex, I had a spasm in my right hip so bad I almost had to stop. (A message from the Almighty?) This has happened to me masturbating the last couple days too. I'm not quite sure what's going on. My right hip does have a history of sucking; I dislocated it as a teenager and it's been prone to transient limps and pains ever since. But the sex thing is new. And scary! I'm way too young to be going "oh, sorry, honey, not tonight, my hip is acting up again with the rheumaty."

History of Fantasy, Part 4.

It gets even goofier.

Because on the top floor of the sex tower, there is no horsefucking, no double fistrape, no cumbaths, just a little goofy sci-fi headset. Put it on, and you're in a five-sense ultra-realistic shared simulation... you're in the Matrix, okay? The Sex Matrix.

The benefits of the Sex Matrix are multifold. Lucky little Janelle can prostitute herself to anyone, anywhere, and be watched by everyone, everywhere. Nothing can harm her body. Scenarios can shift without logic.

And, more grimly than I intended, she can never truly get out. She can think she's taking off the headset, but... the headset can simulate that. As the world's first and most prolific virtual prostitute, she's far too lucrative to the tower's owners to be allowed to leave.

So this, bizarrely and almost not my idea, is what I fantasize about almost every night: a woman trapped in the Sex Matrix, forever subjected to bondage and torment and rape by utterly nondescript "clients", handsomely paid for it but unable to ever collect.

It's not that thinking about sweeter and more normal things wouldn't get me off; it's that I can't do it. My mind goes to the strange creepy Matrix butt-rape scenes and won't come back until it's good and satisfied. I don't seem to control it.

I shouldn't whine too much though. It does get me off good. It's just ludicrous to share.

History of Fantasy, Part 3.

Around age 15, I started the story that I'm still continuing today. It is hilariously geeky but grows progressively darker; I actually set it up so that it could.

The story starts with a street prostitute (Janelle, a name chosen because I don't know anyone with that name; her image in my mind is tailored to not look like anyone I know) entering the doors of a skyscraper. This place is the biggest, strangest brothel on Earth, and the higher up you go the worse it gets. The ground floor is just a strip club, and a pretty cheerful and chummy one at that. Girls dance around in bikinis and chat with the boys, there's not even a Champagne Room, it's all in good sweet fun. On the second floor the girls will get a little nakeder, and the clientele is a little rougher. Few floors above that, they'll fuck you, or have sex on stage. Few floors above that, they'll do it up the butt or let you spank them a bit.

Around the thirtieth floor, girls are being locked in boxes with a hole in the back so they can't see who's fucking them and they can't stop it. Around the fortieth, electrodes are being used so the pain will make the girl involuntarily squeeze her muscles around the guy who's fucking her at the time. Around the fiftieth, there are dildos that make forearms look like foreplay, and no, you're not expected to take them consensually.

The men are always very anonymous and generic in my mind. The women being violated get all the focus.

I never numbered out exactly how many floors there are and exactly what happens on each one. Sheesh, that just would be weird. But I did have one thing figured out from the start. The top floor is said to be unspeakable.

Janelle was, of course, a trooper. Over the course of my late adolescence, in ten to forty minute installments, she made her way up the tower. I was 18, I think, when she reached the top floor.

History of Fantasy, Part 2.

Right around puberty, when I realized that "sex with yourself" and "that thing I do" were the same thing, my fantasies took their only plunge into vanilla. They did, however, stay sci-fi.

My fantasies have always been a continuous story, more or less, updated with about a half-hour of new content every night. I'm not one to go all anthology-style with anything that strikes me sexy; I write novels in my head, dammit, albeit incoherently lurid ones.

The first story was about a couple who can go between parallel universes. They spent a little time in places like The Universe Where Everybody Fucks Like It's a Handshake, The Universe With No Girls (until now!), The Universe Where People Have Sex Long-Distance Like Fish, and so on. Eventually, though, they settled on a universe that was just a big house, with perfect privacy, that they could change according to their whims. They called the place Alibi. Mispronounced Aleebee and I seriously have no idea why. I guess I thought it sounded exotic?

But during ages thirteen and fourteen or so, the stories from Alibi were gentle. The couple had lots of sex, but the variations were tame--oral sex, oh my, sex on the floor, how risqué, sex in the pool, ooh la la. Always fundamentally sweet and painless, never anal, never rough, just... the kind of thing I think you're supposed to fantasize about your whole life.

I got bored of it around fifteen.

History of Fantasy, Part 1.

The earliest quasi-sexual fantasy I can remember having was when I was maybe seven or eight years old. I loved the scenes in Saturday morning cartoons where the heroes got tied up and tortured. I'd fantasize about Ninja Turtles or Batman chained spreadeagle and shocked by the bad guys. I was also fascinated by a book of myths I had, which had stories like Loki chained in the underworld with burning poison dripping in his ear, or Prometheus on the rock with an eagle tearing his liver out. At the time I didn't think there was anything sexual about it. Just... fascinating to think about. Repeatedly. And somehow I knew I oughtn't share these thoughts with anyone else.

Of course, it also took me years to realize that when I touched myself in the place that made me feel good, that was masturbation. I knew what I did and I knew the word, it just took me forever to connect the two. "Well, sure I'm touching my vagina, and sure that's what masturbation is, but I'm not doing it like that, I'm just doing it because it feels good!"

I think I was about thirteen when I caught on.

Or am I fooling myself because I like it?

"Am I doing this because I'm a little bit messed up?" is a separate question from "Does that make it wrong?"

Even Mr. Rogers!

When I was a kid I was always amazed to think that men had penises under their clothes at all times. Walking down the street, playing football, anchoring a newscast, teaching Sunday school... they had those things hidden on them all the time. It struck me as incredibly naughty and profound.

Perspective.

Both boys are busy. I won't get any all weekend!

When you've been five whole entire days without sex and you come to the crushing realization that it might be as much as a week until you get more, you don't have a lot of people to complain to.

Wasn't long ago at all that I went two years between. I'm not bragging because I'm a hottie who can get it whenever she wants, I'm bragging because suddenly, almost inexplicably, after really five years (since my last actual boyfriend) of loneliness and frustration, I'm having actual sexual relationships again. What the fuck happened in the middle?

What the fuck happened just now?

Between now and my death I don't want to have another year without sex. Really I don't want another day without it.

Well, I dunno, maybe the day my dad dies.

Hard Limit.

There are a lot of things I won't do, sexually. They fall into a few categories:

-Things I've never tried and know I never will--24/7 submission (does that freaking exist? I have such doubts), bestiality, erotic asphyxiation. The ludicrous, the stupid, the really exceptionally painful.

-Things I've never tried, and wouldn't do if you asked now, but know I will--anal sex, piercing, play parties, simu-rape. I'm working up to these. Unless I get hit by a bus in the next ten years I have little doubt that I'll experience each of them.

-Things I've tried and hate worse than everything and will never do again and will safeword and break your restraints and kill you if you try. There is one thing in this category. Tickling.

Don't ever tickle me.

Feet.

Possibly the most innocuous fetish in the world. About a third of people (well, of people who tell me their fetishes, which is an awfully biased sample) seem to like 'em. Brandon and Jon both do. I'm okay with 'em. I don't really lust for feet, or for things to be done to my feet. Doesn't gross me out either. Few things do.

But the great thing about a foot fetish is that even if you don't have one, it's still fun to indulge someone with one. All you have to do is lie back and receive some really enthusiastic footrubs. No embarassment, no pain, no grossout, no risk, no hard work, no fancy costumes. Although I have picked up some deliciously impractical shoes.

The only more convenient fetish I've ever run into was, sadly, a one-night stand. He had a cunnilingus fetish.

God I miss him.

Switching.

Benny and I switch. He's probably a little better at topping than me, and I'm a bit more comfortable bottoming. We're really both switches though. It's nice in a way because neither of us can take the Lord God King Master bullshit out of the bedroom and neither of us is in a position to embarass the other without being reminded of how goofy they looked with the panties in their mouth and the flogger handle up their ass.

(Man, do I hate it when I'm with a guy a while after sex and we're all dressed and eating dinner or watching TV or whatnot and he suddenly busts out with "hee hee hee, remember when you said you wanted to be my 'filthy cockslave'?" God dammit dude, you sure weren't laughing at the time, so shut your piehole dammit. Although I do admit that kind of thing can be a little titillating. A little.)

This is probably obvious to anyone who's into BDSM, but Jon and I agree that the person being submissive is the lucky one. Not that topping isn't sexyfun, but it's hard work and it can make you feel very insecure. "I'll do anything you command, mistress!" "Um... I order you to... um..." Bottoming is cake. To bottom is to be sexually serviced.

Even when his cock is in my mouth. Because, really, sucking cock isn't difficult. Being sure that I'm doing it when he wants and the way he wants is the hard part. Doing it under orders or force sure takes care of that. Unless your top is very demanding, plays weirder games than we're into, or into physically insane things, it's almost impossible to be an inadequate submissive.

As a frequently inadequate student, daughter, friend, employee, sister, and human being, I appreciate that certainty.

Another Side of Me.

Saturday night.


Monday morning.


Sometimes it feels strange to be two people. I wouldn't want to be either one of them full-time though.


(Interesting: Benny and I spent almost the whole weekend fucking, and yet we didn't have vaginal or anal intercourse once. And oral only briefly and not to completion. [The marks are from being bound in a kneeling position.] It was almost all hands. "Third base?" Handsex don't get no respect. But hands are very strong, not distracted by seeking their own pleasure, and are very... precise. It was quite satisfying.)

Healthy Flesh.

Last night, in between all-out bouts of sex (and America's Deadliest Women's Prisons), I looked over Alan's whole body. Creepily, probably. I like exploring things and feeling them out, on my own time, and it's rare that I get the chance to do that with a whole human body.

Well, no, it's not. I get to thoroughly examine naked, passive human bodies every single day. It's just that this is in the course of working in the ICU, and they're very, very sick bodies. And maybe this is sick, and maybe it's particular to me, but the fascinating thing about Brandon's body was how healthy it was. I see so many ways that flesh can rot away, whole flesh is not just beautiful but amazing.

"You're not like an ICU patient" is a terrible compliment. And so is everything in the following paragraph. It's the things I was observing last night.

Except for a birthmark (buttmark!) and a well-healed scar on his knee, his skin is unmarked. There's no lesions, no nonblanchable erythema or unhealed wounds or other horrible things. Just strong and smooth skin. And he has muscles! Squeeze his arm and you don't feel flabby tissue and then bone--there's a wonderful pleasing firmness, a feeling of strength even in stillness, a body that can defend itsef. And he has fat! A soft little pooch of it over his belly, neither so much that it overgrows and smothers the rest of his flesh nor so little that he has nothing to draw warmth and padding and resilience from. And everything is so deliciously clean.

(Also, he has a decent-sized flaccid penis. I hate to have noticed this, but all the male ICU patients have absolutely microscopic ones. I mean, basically a stubby little head coming straight out of their groin and no shaft at all. One guy doesn't even have that; his catheter tube just goes into this hole over his scrotum. Nothing traumatic, his cock is just that small. Does sickness make your dick that much smaller? They're lying on their backs, they're feeling crappy and often cold, and they're not getting any boners, but still...)

Is Alan a healthy man, really? Eh, not really. He smokes, he drinks, he doesn't do any really demanding sports and he doesn't have any amazing physical abilities. You wouldn't look at him and go "oh wow, what a specimen of vigorous humanity." But he's fantastically healthy in the deeper way, the way us younguns like to take for granted, which is just that his body works. It moves and breathes and heals itself. It's beautiful.

Not being terminally ill is pretty fucking hot.

Adventure!

The first time I showed Brandon my toy bag (it's a hospital logo tote. kinkay!) his response was "I thought you had to be married for ten years before you resorted to whips and chains." It was a reaction I hadn't anticipated--he wasn't grossed out by it, he just didn't understand why we "needed" it while vanilla was still exciting. Kink not as an alternative to vanilla, but as a higher dosage of the same thing. And like a higher dosage, only necessary when you've built up a tolerance.

I haven't been married for ten years, I'd fuck my husband every day if I were, and I do get off on plain ol' gentle kissy sex. But Brandon's a little right. I think I am kinky, at least in part, because I get bored so easily.

Or to put it more positively, because I'm an adventure-seeker. I've worked in fast-paced, intense jobs--first in the film industry, now in intensive-care nursing. I've traveled extensively and sometimes without much money. For fun after work I do Krav Maga: full-contact martial arts with men three times my size. Call me spoiled, but I just don't feel alive if nobody's screaming.

Kink is an adventure, then. It' novel and physically demanding and feels dangerous. It's not more sexually exciting than sex--it's more exciting exciting. If sex is eating a delicious meal, kink is eating a delicious meal on a Portaledge halfway up Half Dome.

Kink is not high-dose sex. It's a sex and adventure cocktail.

Shouldn't that be "ribbed for his or her pleasure"?

Every time I buy condoms, I get the ultra-thin Extra Sensation ones.

Every time a guy I sleep with has condoms, they're always the "ribbed for her pleasure" ones.

It's sort of sweet. Sort of neurotic.

Or maybe it's just because guys don't understand that I couldn't possibly feel those tiny things. I mean, I have a sensitive vagina, I like to think exquisitely so, but I can't read Braille with it, for chrissakes.

Silly.

The first time I touched a guy's penis, my first thought was "Oh! It's just skin!"

I don't know what the hell I'd expected it to feel like, but the whole concept had been so built up in fiction and rumor that I had no expectation that his cock would just be a natural part of his body.

Gang aft agley.

One of the fun parts of having a regular sex life (still a novelty to me! I had one at about 15-16, then a massive drought until a few months ago) is the planning.

"Hey Holly, want to hang out? Are you free Saturday afternoon?"
"Yep, totally. See you then!"

Hearing that on a Tuesday night (does that violate The Rules? I hope so, The Rules are an immature sexist game-playing manipulation manual.) gives me three days to think about it. That we willl fuck is a given. I'm always in the mood and so are the guys. It's only a question of how.

Maybe I'll catch him right at the door. Pleasantries and drinks can wait; I'll step right in and close the door by slamming him up against it, kissing him roughly, giving him only scant seconds to catch his breath before dropping to my knees and opening his fly, just the fly so we can still be fully clothed as I take his cock into my mouth. I'd try to do it right then and there, keep going until he was writhing back against the door and see if I can't make him have his first orgasm of the night (there are always more) right then and there on the threshold.

Or maybe I won't end it there, maybe he wouldn't finish fast enough for heat and surprise alone to carry us and then I'd still be in charge, I wouldn't say a thing but I'd take hold of his cock and lead him by his pecker to the bed, where I'd rip both our pants off--shirts can stay, there's something brutal and urgent about fucking in t-shirts--and crouch over his face only as long as necessary, only until I started craving something harder and more forceful. And then I'd move down his body and take it for myself, penetrate myself on his cock and lean forward so I can move my whole body in long lithe strokes over his.

And then, after we'd both come and we were soaked in sweat and stinking of sex, we could say hello, get a snack, listen to some music, you know, start the night.

You'll notice that except for getting aroused on cue, the man is totally passive in my scenarios. That's why I never get to actually carry out my detailed plans. The tricky little buggers always turn it around on me and take it their own way. Then again, I've never let a man have a night exactly the way he planned it. It always goes our way, a way that's always a delightful surprise to both of us even though we create it together.

What's better than living out your fantasy? Living something you couldn't even fantasize.