Because I suck. :)
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Feb 282009
Because I suck. :)
Feb 272009
“Blow me,” he demanded, so I slipped between his legs to follow the suggestion.
Other men may like it hard and fast, constant pistoning strokes which eventually tire my mouth and neck. This one wants it slow and gentle, the barest touches of lips and tongue on hard flesh. But I forget; I forget every time that he needs it differently than I’ve learned to give, and so every time he’s forced to remind me.
“Open your mouth honey,” he asked. “Just use your tongue,” and though I can’t understand how such a light touch can be effective, for him it clearly is. With my mouth wide open I watched him arch up so that everything but his shoulders rose off the bed. When he came only my tongue anchored him down.
So many things in this world I have not yet accomplished, but I have managed to make my partner levitate. Is it wrong to feel deeply proud about this?
Feb 262009
Not a one of my children has ever met a grape that didn’t immediately become his or her best friend. They adore fruit. They are passionate for vegetables. With unlimited access they could down pounds of pears, crates of carrots, bushels of broccoli, oodles of oranges, barrels of bananas and cubits of cucumbers.
I’m thrilled to see them eat like this, especially considering my own shaky relationship with food. Weekly I loaded down the grocery cart with as many colors and textures as I thought they could eat but invariably the fruit ran out before the week was up. Guilt and faulty logic twisted this to mean one clear thing: that I should deny myself those healthy foods so that my children could have more.
It happened at nearly every meal I now realize. I’d prepare the plates, including one for their father on the days he planned to join us. Rarely did I fix one for myself. “I’ll eat later,” I’d tell anyone who questioned my actions, with the plan that I’d grab a quick bite while working or during errands. Invariably what I’d end up with would be a flabby sad burger or some of the main dish I’d fixed hours before. No fruits. No veggies. No good stuff.
This makes utterly no sense, but when are these decisions ever based on logic? As much as I’d like every action of myself and others to flow in a gentle stream from the Fount of Rationality, this rarely happens.
Daily I’m reminding myself to place as many colorful crunchy items on my plate as I load onto theirs. I’m refusing to work or run errands over mealtimes. And by God if we run out of fruit before the end of the week, it’s back to the grocery store we go. These things are so simple. Why didn’t I do them before? Did I really have so little respect for my needs?
Eventually the belief that my body is worthy of the same care that I automatically give to my children may become ingrained in my poor thick head. I hope it happens soon.
Feb 252009
“I hope the doctor says that you have herpes,” my friend L said, quoting the text which had just winged its way to her phone.
I crossed the room in three fast steps prompted by an anger so strong that I wasn’t entirely sure it would be directed at the right person. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Why are you putting up with this?” My nose was inches from hers.
“He won’t stop. I keep asking him to stop but he won’t.” She was crying. The anger dissolved as I hugged her.
“He won’t stop,” I said, my lips pressed against her hair. “You’re right. So you have to stop answering the phone. You have to stop responding to his texts.” She sobbed against my shoulder that she couldn’t do that. She was afraid of what he’d do if she blocked him out completely.
They’ve been divorced now for months, and yet L’s ex-husband still phones and texts her as many as seventy times each day. The topics are always the same: What are you doing? Are you going to see the man who stole you from me? If you let him be around our children I will take them. You are a slut. I hope you get a disease. I want to come home. I’ve changed. Please take me back. I love you. In the time it took her to drop off her child at my house before a doctor’s appointment they exchanged five texts, a phone call, then one final text in which he wished upon her an incurable disease.
As infuriated as I am that she continues to answer the phone or respond in any way, she’s not yet ready to cut him off. Repeatedly I’ve suggested that she accept only emailed communication on the topic of their children from him. But he threatens daily to drag her into court, where he’d probably only get far enough with his spurious claims to make her life miserable. This keeps her from filing the restraining order she’s had filled out since their divorce was finalized. She doesn’t want him to make her more miserable.
How much more miserable could it be, I want to ask her. How much worse could it be than dozens of harassing messages each and every day? I don’t have any good answers for my friend. As much as I wish it were as simple as not answering his calls or texts, it’s likely that she’ll have to take more of a stand before he gives up or moves on to his next victim.
But I wonder how much longer she’ll be willing to let her children see her being abused by their father. And I wonder what conclusions they’ve already come to as they’ve watched.
Feb 242009
When I went into the bedroom to fetch her after nap time, nothing seemed out of place. But when her older sister entered the room some hours later, I deduced from the drawn-out screech echoing down the stairs that something must be amiss. I’m quick like that.
“It’s an emergency, mom,” she yelled, and when I looked upon the crime scene I had to agree with her. Her younger sister somehow, despite my removing every possible implement of destruction from the bedroom, had conjured up a pair of scissors. These she employed during the alleged nap to shred several of her sister’s prized treasures along with her brand-new bedding, a belated Christmas gift from her grandparents which had only been in use for a week at the time of the massacre.
A few days later I found that my boy had broken off yet another doorstop, this time in his bedroom. This brought the count of damaged and/or destroyed doorstops to five. He’s got a thing about doors; he lives for opening doors, closing doors, playing with doorknobs, and especially slamming. Oh how very much he loves the slamming.
So I replaced the doorstop, this time with one like this, which I hoped would be less of a temptation to curious little fingers. It was, but it encouraged more of what I’ve come to call reverse slamming, wherein the door is swung open so hard that bad things happen. Such as terrifying the cat, forcing mommy to yell, and causing door-stop-shaped holes to appear in the back of the door where stop meets wood.
In attempting not to lose my mind over the damage, I discovered that my boy enjoys a good ride on the door. I’ll admit that it looks like fun. He grabs hold of both inner and outer doorknob, pushes off with his feet, then hangs on through the radius of the swing.
Fun, right? Unless of course you are the doorknob, or the person who must pay to replace the doorknob after it snaps cleanly in half by the weight of a swinging little boy.
What haven’t these small hellions broken? They have pulled towels racks and curtain rods from the walls. They’ve denuded corners of drywall by tossing toys down stairs. They’ve colored on counter tops, tables and walls. They run, they scamper, they fling, they shriek, they leak.
Please, someone tell me that this is normal childhood behavior and not the mark of emerging sociopathy?
Please?
Feb 232009
My skin is not chalky white, nor is my lover’s skin faux-tan orange. I’m not winsomely slender. His neck’s not so bendy. Neither is my left arm. And I certainly don’t wear a Nike swoosh of blush or such a pained expression during sex. At least I don’t think I do.
In the same say, I’ve never (ahem, yet) dressed as a bird while getting busy. Neither, to my knowledge, has he.
And yet there’s something compelling about each of these images, something that reminds me of the way my partner and I touch. Wrapped around each other on the desert floor or suspended half in flight on wicked curved claws, these pairs of partners look like I imaging we look, in a surreal yet idealized way.
If I were a braver woman I’d buy both images, as large as I could afford. I’d frame them and hang them in my bedroom. But I’d worry what my friends, my family, my ex would think to find them there. I’d worry that my children would be scarred to see such vivid depictions of pleasure. Perhaps a tiny fig leaf fashioned to fit over the naughtiest bits would be enough to shield their eyes?
I’m not brave enough, at least not yet. But in thinking about hanging kinky pictures on my bedroom walls, I remembered a post I wrote about a million years ago, in late 2005. It was called “The Perfect Bedroom,” and you’ll find it below the cut. Please agree to hold me blameless for the shoddy writing, especially the use of an overabundance of ellipses when you click the link to read more:
Feb 202009
“Stop by for a few minutes,” I requested when I found out that work travel would bring him through my town one night. “Just long enough for a kiss.”
“I can’t get naked,” he warned. “It’ll be late and I go back to work early the next morning. We won’t be able to play.”
I agreed with this stipulation and yet when the hour neared I couldn’t help but brush my teeth and put on fresh panties. And some lip gloss. And remove my bra. Just in case.
He found me engrossed in the first few minutes of Top Chef, which I’d intended to switch off as soon as he arrived. Instead I got him a drink and then curled next to him, trying to keep my hand from roaming too far up his thigh. Mostly I succeeded. When I didn’t he silently pushed me away. In that happy state we stayed for way longer than a few minutes, talking quietly about our days, the relative successes of various gumbos, and if “sandy” is an apt descriptor for grits (I say it’s not).
At the end of the show he left, having stayed long enough that at least a quickie would have been possible if we’d applied ourselves. For once though it was lovely just to touch each other, to sit quietly, to stroke clothed skin, to relax together at the end of a busy day like normal couples do.
It almost made me long for a normal relationship. Almost but not quite, because what I want is not a normal relationship, but instead a relationship with him however abnormal it might be.
Feb 192009
Once one attains a certain age, it’s crucial to determine whether the unsolicited bodily permutations which present themselves almost weekly are the result of a problem or simply time’s merciless ruination. Gray hair, for example, fits into the latter category: There’s nothing I can do to stop it, so I either live with it or else try without much success to cover it up.
A continually expanding waistline, however, is another story. It’s definitely a problem, and will become more so the older I get. I see the future in my parents’ current health. It’s not pleasant.
Clearly some renegade genes swim in my pool. My family is happily (or not so happily) apple-shaped on both sides. None of us will ever be supermodels, basketball players or even television news reporters. And un-skinny genes seem to have been exacerbated in my case by some…er…unique parenting.
“You’re perfect right now,” said my dad during meals twenty-five years ago, casting a lewd eye over both body and plate. “You’ve got curves in all the right places. But if you keep eating like this, you’ll balloon up and then no man will want you.”
These conversations took place concurrently with sexual abuse. Suffice it to say that the synergism between word and deed made an impression. As predicted my curves became excessive, and while my dad’s interest in me eventually waned, other men were not particularly put off by my apple-iciousness, at least not when balanced against whatever positive psychological, spiritual or mental characteristics I might have possessed. Not to mention my mad blow job skillz.
By getting and staying larger I avoided my father’s deplorable attentions and proved him wrong all at once. The fact that this logic was twisted and faulty did not move me. It was the basis for decisions trivial and profound, the recounting of which would exhaust me to write and bore you to read.
At irregular intervals in my adult life I lost much of the roundness. When that happened my body attracted a lot of attention, which simultaneously thrilled and horrified me. The motivating factor in each case was a man I wanted to impress, a man whose esteem I hoped would change inversely with my weight. Did the plan ever work? Maybe. I’m not really sure. Every time I eventually lost momentum and slipped back into heavily curved comfort.
But a switch seems to have flipped in the days since my birthday. Somehow it’s beginning to dawn on me that what I was doing with food was not particularly effective. I believed what I was taught: That my body was not deserving of care. That it was meant to be abused. That if I covered up enough I’d be safe. All of this is bullshit of the highest magnitude, which I’ve long known. But now? Now I’m starting not just to know it but to believe it.
I’m not even slightly confident that this line of thought will lead to more consistent self-care. But now that the second half of my life has almost assuredly begun, I think it’s time to try.
I’d like to believe we could reconcile the past
Resurrect those bridges with an ancient glance
But my old stone face can’t seem to break her down
She remembers bridges and burns them to the ground.
Feb 182009
It’s not a matter of whether or not someone’s watching
over you. It’s just a question of their intentions.
Randy K. Milholland
In college I studied literature. I chose this major because I enjoyed reading.
Unfortunately, I enjoyed reading like an alcoholic enjoys drinking: greedy quaffs during hours spent alone but for the company of my chosen drug, letting the rest of life fall away as I got lost in someone else’s world. Studying literature, I decided after a semester or two, was much more like wine tasting: slow, deliberate, and with the expectation that you’d spit to stay clear-headed. While in some cases I enjoyed the study very much, mostly I ended up frustrated by the esoteric dissection of phrases when all I wanted to do was swoon with passion for entire books, authors, even genre.
Sitting in countless hot classrooms armed with pen and text, I wondered what the authors would think of our discussions. Would they be frustrated with our incompetent interpretations? Angry when we missed some crucial point? Or just bemused that we were taking far more time in oft-erroneous interpretation than they’d ever spent in writing?
Never in those years did I imagine writing a piece that would inspire anything like the sort of close textual analysis we gave to canonical works (This is hyperbole. I’ve found dictionary.com to be an excellent resource when I’m not sure of the meaning of a word.) Finding out that someone took the time to look so closely at my little post has been extraordinarily entertaining.
Entertaining yet creepy, like someone’s mawkish aping caught in the corner of my eye. “Is that really what you think I act like?” I might dispassionately say to that person, just as I now want dispassionately to say, “Is that really what you think I said? Because I thought I said something entirely different.”
But I guess what I actually said is not the point. What I ever actually say is not the point. The reader brings his or her own thoughts, prejudices and hurts with them when they click this or any other URL; they look through the lens of those issues as they read. They cannot put aside those blurry glasses. In fact no one can. It’s the nature of every aspect of reality that we cannot be objective.
But perhaps in the future we could hope that they’d look up an unfamiliar word before castigating the writer for using it?
______
*Misconscrew — Thank you CarrieAnn!
Feb 172009
I’d aim for a time when his roommate was out, then slip quietly into his room and pull shut the curtain. Closing the door would likely be a mistake as it would attract more attention than it deflected. Complete privacy in a place like that would difficult if not impossible to come by, but the curtain would give us at least a measure of the commodity we’d enjoyed so extravagantly in the past.
We wouldn’t need as much privacy as we once did. A blanket pulled up over us would be enough to hide my hand stroking the warm flesh of his thigh, moving up to his hot balls and soft cock.
Would he still get hard for me? Would he talk dirty to me like he does now? Would he touch me back? Would we even care about carnal responses at seventy and eighty-one?
Minutes-deep into this fantasy I come back and chide myself for indulging. Foolish girl, I think, to be dissatisfied by as many months as we’ve already spent together. I should want absolutely nothing more than the exact amount I’ve already had. When I shut the door after him on a Saturday evening I should be so satisfied that if chance called it our last meeting I could honestly say that I’d had enough. Forever.
But I’m weak. I want so much that no number of Saturdays together are enough. I want so much that not even thirty years more will be enough, and if I get to spend them with him I’ll still sneak from my room at the nursing home into his to enjoy just a sliver more time.
