crushes: the danger that lurks

I got an email a few days ago from my friend Waspy. A cry for help. Waspy is my well-to-do, white, yuppie friend from law school who works at a big firm and lives in the suburbs (the most elite Portland suburb, in fact) and has a husband and a kid and in-laws and the whole, mainstream thing. In a lot of ways we're very different, but we've managed to forge an unlikely but strong friendship that has lasted into our post law-school lives.

So I got this email from Waspy asking for my "expert" advice about a crush. She's had a very safe crush on an older guy at her firm for nearly two years now. It's "safe" because it can't possibly ever go anywhere, there isn't the slightest risk or danger of anyone taking any action, so she gets to enjoy it even as it tortures her. It's a sort of guilty pleasure she indulges in, like ice-cream for lunch. It's harmless.

That's not what she needed advice about. She needed advice about a *new* crush, a crush that is not so safe...

Unfortunately she didn't give me any more info than that. All she wrote was that this crush has "the possibility of going somewhere..." -- which, she claims, she really doesn't want. "But on the other hand..." she writes cryptically. And that's where she leaves it.

She didn't want to give any more details on email and we weren't able to meet up for drinks before she left for a weekend firm retreat in Washington, presumeably WITH the crush-guy, but who knows. The best I could do was text her the advice "be careful" on her blackberry. She texted back "I will." I guess we'll see.

A year ago, in the same situation, I would've been vicariously thrilled for Waspy. She's been married to the same nerdy guy for nearly 20 years now. The thought of my frigid little Waspy going up to Seattle and getting crazy with some hot guy from work would have tickled me to pieces. You go Waspy!

But that was then and this is now. NOW, I just feel vicariously anxious about the whole thing. I used to revel in the excitment and scandal that crushes involved. I used to indulge in excessive crush-behavior and I would have urged Waspy to explore her feelings, take risks, do what she had to do. That was before I came to accept the reality that I have terrible boundaries. All my crush-mongering was just immature rubbish -- avoidance, melodrama, projecting.

Now I recognize that crushes are not these magical blessings from the universe that have to be treasured and explored and fully exploited. Crushes can be fantastic inspiration when viewed through a different lens, but the way I treated crushes in the past was nothing but sexual opportunism. Some kind of romantic permissiveness not only allowed but practically required me to throw caution to the wind and risk everything to follow every urge and impulse.

Now I see crushes as flirts from the universe, pulls in certain directions with a deeper significance than sex. A crush can be explored psychologically, can be taken inside and examined: am I attracted to this person because I want to be more like them? I want to have things that they have? Is this crush telling me I want to grow in a new direction? Crushes don't have to be about connecting with someone sexually, they don't have to be a threat to existing relationships.

When I look back at my former relationship with crushes, I see that I allowed myself to engage in a whole host of voluntary crush-behaviors. Some examples of crush-behaviors: indulging in fantasies about the object of the crush, engineering interactions with the object of the crush, subtly communicating your interest to the object of the crush, and ultimately creating situations in which the crush can move to the next level: adultery.

Of course crushes and crush-behaviors can be fine if you're single or in a non-monogomous relationship. But if you're trying to be monogomous (and for some of us it definitely takes effort), you can't just let yourself run willy-nilly into crush-behavior. It's a slippery slope and if you're not careful, you'll find yourself tumbling in a big crashing heap to the bottom where you will probably land alone.

My advice to Waspy, if we're ever able to finally sit down and talk about it, will be to tell her husband. Am I crazy? Keeping it a secret from him will continue to enforce for her the idea that it's her own little private indulgence, it will give her the ongoing sense that there's nothing wrong with tending her fantasies and keeping them alive. It will drive a deeper wedge between her and her husband, it will invite resentment and contempt and maybe -- am I being an alarmist? -- maybe it will speed her in the direction of cheating.

If you want to stay married, if you think of your relationship to your partner as your primary, number-one, important relationship, you can't keep those kinds of secrets. You have to talk about it. Telling your partner about the crush is a new kind of crush-behavior: it closes the door on the object of the crush and opens the door back up to the primary relationship. It says "I know you're not going to like this, but you're my person, my one-and-only, and I will make myself vulnerable to you now by sharing this feeling and then we can process it together. Even if it's painful, it keeps things in the family.

I know from plenty of experience that secrets and lies can only end in destruction in relationships. Crushes can and must be managed responsibly, good choices must be made, or relationships will suffer and eventually end. This used to be a risk I was willing to take and eager to watch others take. Not anymore. Maybe I've just gotten old...

what-what

Surfing YouTube a few months ago for episodes of South Park, I found a really hilarious and surprising video of Butters singing "What What (In my butt)" -- which apparently is an actual song that other people besides me have heard before. I was amused and scandalized, and so enthusiastic when I saw Mera later and told her all about it, but Mera, who works with precocious queer youth at a drop-in-center for that population, just rolled her eyes and "Oh *that* -- the youth were all over that, like, two years ago..."

Well it was news to me. I guess I'm a little behind the times...

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is to introduce the topic of anal pleasuring. I don't have the time to devote to a full post about it right now, but it will be my next topic for exploration. And to prepare you all for it, I have created a new poll to gauge my audience's proclivities and preferences on that topic. Please participate, and feel free to elaborate in a comment. Then keep your eyes peeled for the blisteringly awesome post that will (eventually) follow.

home sweet home

Sorry I fell off the planet. Mera and I spent the first of the month moving from the tiny studio apartment and into the not-so-tiny house that Mera has owned for 8 years. It's a long story why Mera was living in a studio apartment instead of her house when we met, but I won't tell it now. We're still working on unpacking and setting up the place, but Mera pulled her soas muscle again and that's knocked her out of commission these last few days.

I'd like to say she pulled it with all the hard work we've been doing in the house: all the heavy lifting, all the tedious manual labor. And I know that was definitely part of it, but the straw that broke the camel's back was the fucking. Woops. Sorry sweetie. Fucking when your soas is already a little tweaked is, it turns out, a pretty bad idea. It's a good thing I don't mind waiting on her hand and foot...

Anyway, I promise to write more as soon as things get settled down a little more and as soon as Mera's back in action. Getting laid helps keep the creative juices flowing... especially where this blog is concerned.

it's a small (awkward) world

Mera and I are moving this weekend and I took today off work to pack and start cleaning. I've got soooo much to do, but instead of jumping right in, I'm going to sit here for a few minutes and blog. Because blogging sounds a lot more fun than packing and I just haven't had time to do much of it lately.

So Mera and I might have a "sex bed" made for us. I have fantasized often about having a bed specifically constructed with sex in mind. It could have any features I want: bars to hold onto, rings for attaching bondage gear, special drawers for the toys, a headboard with shelves and hooks for lube and accoutrements. The possibilities are endless.

Mera and I got this idea last weekend at a picnic in a nice sunny park with all Mera's coworker's from the queer youth organization where she works. Someone was leaving, there was a going away picnic, and we all convened on a North Portland park for bbq and daytime drinking. It was obviously a fun time.

We were sitting for a long time chatting with one of Mera's oldest coworkers, Xena, when the sex bed topic arose. Xena's girlfriend is a woodworker, among other things, and in the nine months they've been together, they've started building sex beds for people. The bed they made for themselves is probably their fanciest yet and Xena told us about it in great detail.

Which was cool, but also a little weird, because unbeknownst to Xena, I already know her girlfriend and their bed. Biblically...

I met Xena's girlfriend, Sam, last year online during my "swinging single" phase. I met a lot of women during that phase and had quite a good time. Sam was a quiet, brooding rugby player of the overly-masculine variety and I had a very brief fantasy that she would become my big, butch "boyfriend" and use her woodworking skills to help me build my own kayak. We went on three dates: the "meet 'n greet" coffee date, the "real" date in the evening at a nice restaurant which is when we made out for the first time, and the "seal the deal" third date, which ended with a roll in the hay, that is, a roll in what would eventually become her and Xena's "sex bed." (For the record, she and Xena weren't yet dating when I had this experience with Sam. They met shortly thereafter.)

My experience with Sam ended on a sour note. She's got terrible social skills, though she's quite good at getting the ladies into bed. She turned just enough charm on me to get my clothes off, but otherwise, she was a dud. In the end, the sex was anticlimactic and she emailed me the next day and informed me that, in her humble opinion, my hymen was probably still intact (because I protested her immediate insertion of three fingers into my snatch without any warning). Unfortunately, she informed me, deep penetration was her favorite thing about sex, so having sex with me wasn't really gonna work for her. Sorry.

Sorry indeed. It was a disappointing and humiliating experience to say the least and it never occurred to me that, nearly a year later, I'd find myself sitting in a park, hearing stories about her from her new girlfriend who was utterly clueless about the whole thing. And Mera forbade me to tell her! I felt so weird, sitting there listening to Xena open up and tell me things about her relationship, I found myself right on the verge of saying "I know," when she would divulge some juicy info about Sam. It felt so wrong to keep quiet, but Mera insisted that it wasn't my place to "out" Sam like that, that the information had no value to Xena and that it would be more inappropriate for me to bring it up. I trust Mera's judgment, so I buttoned my lip and kept up the charade.

Now it looks like we'll probably have Xena and Sam make a sex bed for us. This promises to be as awkward and disastrous as any Seinfeldian misadventure. I have vowed to steer clear of Sam and to conduct all the sex-bed business through Mera. I am horrified to imagine the moment when Sam and Xena walk in and Sam and I are "introduced." Will Sam say "hey... don't I know you?" Will she react clumsily, will she gasp or stare? Or will she play it off like we're really just meeting for the first time?

Or will she not even recognize me or remember fucking me last year?? After all, she's a total player, she probably fucked a lot of women last year. Maybe she can't keep track of them all?

I just don't want to have to look Xena in the eye and say "Yeah... sorry... that whole time you talked to me at the park about Sam...? I knew all along who she was. Ha ha. Small world, huh?"

ok...

Ok, meet my REAL new best friend, the Laya Spot. It's the awesome ergonomic vibrator I got to replace my old standby that finally kicked the bucket. I know I said the Lonestar was my new best friend, and it's true that he and I are very close, but I have a feeling it's the Laya that's really going to be there for me when the going gets tough.

Anyway, the very helpful and awesome woman at the sex toy store was unwilling to effusively recommend the Laya because it doesn't hit her clit hard enough. She's a woman who needs intense clitoral stimulation to orgasm and, fortunately, I am not. Which made the Laya a perfect fit. I brought it home and tried it out and let me just tell you: it works. I like the way it spreads a diffusion of vibration all over my labial area without completely destroying my over-sensitive clit. I also like the varied power-settings. It is very easy to crank up a notch... and up... and up.

However, once you pass the highest setting, it begins a program of pulsating vibrations that I haven't yet had a chance to fully explore. I imagine they will seem kinda moot to me. I don't know why, I just don't think they'll work for me, but I'll be sure to let you know.

What about you guys, any new toys? Any favorites you'd like to share with the class? I'm all ears.

and now for... the REST of the story!

**Yes, both my blogs have the same title today. Pleasant coincidence...**

So... it turns out Vicodin is really good at masking the pain that might, say, accompany being fucked by a massive, silicone cock...

I neglected to mention in my glowing review of the Lonestar that I had taken a Vicodin almost an hour before the toy came on the scene. I took it for back spasms I've been having since my extreme kayaking trip that ended last Monday. I don't have a prescription, Mera just happened to have one pill laying around and she gave it to me for the pain and... then... well...

The Vicodin worked so well, and I was so excited about the new cock, I found myself engaged in some seriously strenuous and nearly acrobatic manuevering that certainly didn't help my back in the long-run but that was extremely enjoyable in the short-run.

Unfortunately, while I loved every minute of it and was chomping at the bit to go at it again the next day, I failed to take into consideration the role of the Vicodin in all that hot, steamy fun. It's a powerful painkiller, for christ's sake! It couldn't help but dull some of the natural pain response that might be generated by getting fucked by something enormous!

I learned the error of my ways the next night when we used the Lonestar again, this time without the aid of Vicodin. I mean, I'm no dummy, I knew the med probably made some difference, but on the second night I had taken a muscle relaxer prescribed by my doc for the muscle spasm, and I thought it might have a similar effect on my poor little body. I was wrong.

It wasn't exactly miserable, but there was *definitely* pain this time and soreness afterwards. Oh well.

I still stand by this toy as a favorite, I'm just realizing that I wasn't as ready for it as I thought.

How about you? Those of you who use dildos, have you tried this VixSkin stuff? What do you think? Despite the role of the Vicodin in smoothing out the bumps in that first ride, I still believe the VixSkin is a lot more user-friendly than regular silicone. It's softer, warmer and somehow more exciting. What do you guys think?

two thumbs WAAAAAAY up!

Meet my new best friend, The Lonestar. This much better picture will, hopefully, give you a better idea of the glory that is my newest toy.

This is a Vixen product made from ultrarealistic Vixskin silicone material that feels as close to the real thing as you could imagine. I've wanted to try this stuff for awhile now and I have to say: I'm a convert. As a "born gay" or a "puro" depending on who you ask (in other words, having never actually fucked a guy) I barely know what the "real thing" is supposed to feel like and that's certainly not a concern of mine.

However, the Vixskin feels sooooo much more organic than regular hard silicone. It's got a soft outer layer covering a much firmer inner core. I don't need it to feel like a real cock (which it does), I just want it to feel like something that should be attached to a human, not a hard hunk of cold plastic.

One added bonus to the Vixskin is that the extra layer of soft makes it very, very easy to take. And let me tell you, there is a lot of this monster to take. It's a very comfortable insertable length (six and a half inches), but the diamter is one and seven-eighths, just under two inches. That's fat, people. Really fat... for *me* at least...

I don't know what came over me -- Mera and I have been slowly working our way up to fatter and fatter cocks, but this one was off the charts. We popped into It's My Pleasure yesterday to replace my vibrator (which finally died after nearly seven years of steady service) and we spent some time fantasizing about potential new cocks. I was mesmerized by the proportions of the Lonestar, and very intrigued by the Vixskin, though it seemed too fat to imagine using.

For some reason, though, the pull was very strong. We didn't buy it yesterday, but I kept thinking about it. At some point in the middle of the night I made up my mind to get it. Mera had a two hour study-date today, so after I dropped her off at her classmate's, I drove straight back to It's My Pleasure and snatched it up. Of course I immediately texted Mera "I got you a present..." and I was thrilled at what a surprise it would be.

She, of course, was beside herself when she saw it. She's been wanting to get a big fat cock inside of me for awhile, but she's had to settle for relatively little guys. This one seemed like the mother lode! I made a grand pronouncement that I was going to give her head tonight, then sit on it, which made her immediately suspicious. "Are you sure you can take this thing?" She kept asking. "Do you really think you can do it?" She was so skeptical. I think she was afraid of getting her hopes up only to have them dashed.

Not to worry. I don't know how, but I managed to get myself onto that thing in no time. It was AWESOME! I could not believe how perfect and comfortable it felt, even though it was so much bigger than our previous big cock (which is a meager one and a half inches in diameter). I thank the Vixskin for making such a fat cock feel utterly comfortable.

Granted, it was tight at first, but after the initial burn wore off, it was like nothing else. Mera, completely shocked by the success of the operation, was in top form. I sat on her cock and bounced up and down for awhile (her special request), then eventually she flipped me over and pounded the shit out of me. The room was so hot and she was working so hard, sweat was pouring off her and dripping all over me. It was awesome.

Now I think I'm in love with the Lonestar and in serious danger of becoming a sex-addict. I only hope I don't wear Mera out, or scare her off with my enthusiasm. Yee-haw! Ride 'em cowboy!!! When can we use it again...?

product review, coming right up...

We just bought THIS today... It's huge. And scary. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow...

(Sorry if the picture is pixilated, none of the gd image files are coming up very big...)

nature

I'm back from my monumental and moderately dangerous kayaking trip with very little to report about sex. Except that I saw some, on the last day of the trip.

We'd just entered a back channel (hee-hee) which would take us around the back-side of a privately owned island and spit us out just a quarter mile from our final destination. As we made our way up the channel, one of my compatriots mentioned how odd it was that the island was private. "What would you do with a private island?" she asked.

I was just about to say something clever about all the cool things I'd do with a private island, when we both noticed a landing on the island complete with deck chairs and a grill. "Oh, I guess *that's* what you do with a private island," Wendy said and paddled on.

But something caught my eye and I kept watching. I noticed a woman behind the lawn chairs maneuvering herself into a strange position that I couldn't quite see... and then start... well... sort of bouncing up and down...

As I slipped further past the island, I could see a little more. I saw a man's hairy legs under the woman, and then I could hear the man making the kind of grunting sex noise that you'd be embarrassed to hear yourself make on video. "UNGH, UNGH, UNGH!!!" It was awesome.

By that point, the rest of my crew were tuned in to the action happening on the right. Someone whistled and everyone laughed, which I felt kinda sad about. I mean, what a buzz kill! To realize seven kayakers are suddenly witness to your special moment in what otherwise felt like a secluded little natural locale. Seven LESBIAN kayakers to boot! But they probably didn't know that from where they were standing - er - laying...

i'll tell ya what i want, what i really really want

First let me apologize for putting that song in your head for the rest of the day. I feel your pain... even though I caused it.

Let me ask you a question, fellow lady-homos, do you believe that your partner is there to give you what you want? Everything you want? Some of the things you want?

Here's an example from my own life. I love to be tickled. Lightly tickled, all over, any part of my body, for hours on end. I like a lot of things, but I like this most of all, more than anything else in the whole world. ANYTHING. And I have always, from my very first relationship, believed that being petted and stroked in this way would be one of the many services performed by a girlfriend.

I have almost always been wrong.

Before I even HAD a girlfriend, my first FANTASIES about girlfriends involved being tended in this way. In high school I had really long hair and I used to sit in front of this girl named Betsy in one of my classes. Every single day, my hair would lay across the front of her desk and she would play with it. She'd start out slow, just barely grazing the ends with her fingers, but I'd feel it like little electrical bolts down my spine. Then she'd start to rake her fingers through it, moving higher and higher until she was practically massaging my scalp.

It felt obscene.

I sat on the front row, right in front of the teacher, and there I was, having the most sensual experience of my life. Every day. Five days a week. On display for an entire class.

And she spoiled me!!! She spoiled me to that kind of decadent, luxurious touching! I would sit there in class with her fingers in my hair, and imagine myself in college, in a dorm with a hot roommate, who might start playing with my hair one night as we watched TV together... it would start out so innocent, but then I would turn around, take her by the shoulders and stare deeply into her eyes... then...

Yeah, well...

My fantasies never quite became realities. I have had wonderful girlfriends who have consented to tickling me on a semi-regular basis. My crazy drunk ex, CB, for example -- she spent the first two months of our relationship tickling me for hours as we lay in bed talking and trying to fall asleep. But pretty soon the novelty wore off and I practically had to bribe her to do it.

Mera does a decent job, but it's not her forte. If I hint that I want more, she gets hurt and says "Are you saying I don't touch you enough!?! I touch you so much!" Now I rely on our occasional bets to guarantee myself a solid 30-minute back-tickle. We bet on all sorts of minor disagreements and the stakes are always 30-minutes of some kind of physical attention. I get back-tickles and she gets foot rubs.

She LOVES foot rubs, so then I ask myself if I give her enough of those. Maybe she feels deprived? Maybe she's got a hidden need and I'm oblivious to it? When I start feeling all hopeless and deprived of back-tickles, I try to remember her foot rubs and ask myself if I'm giving as much as I'm expecting. That helps a little.

But back to the main question: is it her job to tickle my back as much as I want? Is it my job to rub her feet? Is it pathetic and self-indulgent to wallow in self-pity when I think I'll never be tickled enough? There probably aren't enough tickles in the world to satisfy me anyway...

So here's a poll. Knock yourselves out.

lazy

I'm feeling lazy, yet I want to post. And you guys seem to love the polls, so... here you go. Enjoy. And please suggest alternatives, I don't feel like I was particularly creative...

the best possible scenerio

It has always been my opinion that, in a perfect world, everyone would fuck exactly like me. They wouldn't necessarily mirror my every movement, but they'd at least follow my basic protocols for pleasing another woman. I don't like to brag, but I have received VERY positive feedback about my sexual performance from almost all my partners, including and especially Mera. I have been told, and I believe, that I'm pretty good at fucking women. And even though I know I don't sound the least bit humble, I don't think I do anything particularly spectacular. Everything I do seems like common sense.

First of all -- and this is absolutely foundational -- I LOVE WOMEN. I love women's bodies, I love touching women, I love every tiny bit of skin, I love every sound and smell and flavor. Furthermore, I feel empathic when I'm touching women. It's like I can feel it in my own body too, like I'm melding just a little with the woman I'm touching, and her pleasure is my pleasure too. This empathy helps me read her signals and follow the flow and rhythm of what feels good. It helps me carry us both down that path towards the big O.

But aside from all that emotional, spiritual, psychological bonding, there are just some basic physical things that seem obvious, little tricks that seem utterly self-explanatory... and yet lots of people don't do them. There's a kind of sliding that feels so good, a finger sliding down to pick up that natural lubrication and then sliding back up across the labia and around the clit. The labia seem so neglected by many of the women who've fucked me over the years -- and the labia have so much sensation to offer!

And speaking of the labia, what ever happened to teasing? To the slow build-up of sensation? I like to spend a nice chunk of time getting closer and closer, but not quite touching. My hands reach far down the legs and come up the inner thighs, barely grazing the pubic hair, closer and closer every time, building the tension and expectation to a fevered pitch. In my mind I imagine my partner's cunt swelling and engorging, which it literally is. By the time my fingers slide towards her snatch and back up to her clit, she's all fat and throbbing with desire.

Once she's in that state, she's putty in your hands! You start slow then build, listen to her breathing, feel her hips rise to meet you, follow her rhythms, speed up, speed up, be careful not to hit that clit too hard and overbalance the load, then pretty soon she's coming and coming and -- if you're lucky -- you get to start over again in a few minutes. Maybe slip in a few fingers this time, work your mouth over her clit while you fill her hole up with your digits, maybe slide one in the back door. Whatever you do, it ought to BUILD. And it's just like a house of cards -- if you're careful, if you set up the right foundation, you can build it really, really high.

I've never understood the women who don't tease, who don't build, who don't start slow and get fast, soft and then hard. I've never understood the women who just start poking around, who don't take a minute to survey the lay of the land, to explore with curiosity rather than blind urgency. I've never understood why what I want isn't obvious. It feels so obvious to me.

I know I'm being a little crazy. I can't help it. I'm indulging in sexual narcissism. Of course I'm glad all women don't fuck like me. If Mera fucked like me I'd never get pounded like I do now. But if Mera could just learn to fuck like me in *addition* to fucking like she does already... then we'd be in business.

not coming

First of all I'd like to say that I really hate the "cum" spelling of the word that means "to climax." It feels sleazy and weird to me for some reason and I try not to use it. However, sometimes I wonder if people *expect* this use of the word "come" to be spelled "cum." I'd love to know the etymology...

But I digress. Koen asked a very good question in a comment to my last post: why doesn't Mera make me come? I've probably touched on the issue before, but I probably haven't devoted much time and attention to it. Mera doesn't make me come because it's kinda hard to make me come. Simple.

First of all I should make clear that it's very easy for ME to make me come. I've been coming from masturbation since before I can even remember. Literally. And that may have been my downfall... all my jacking off may have programmed me to come only from very specific stimulation. I can rub my clit to orgasm easy as pie, but when someone ELSE starts poking around down there... well...

There have been plenty of lovely ladies out there who have mastered the fine art of making me come, but I have to say that the experience is often less thrilling than you might think. On reflection I have come to realize that when women learn how to make me come, the sex tends to evolve into something less like "sex" and more like my partner masturbating me. Does that make sense? Her hand or my hand, I'm still laying there being digitally manipulated to orgasm. It feels good, but it isn't always so passionate... meanwhile, my partner is nothing but focus and concentration, trying to follow all my subtle signals and walk that fine-line between getting me off and turning me off. It's no picnic.

With Mera, I trade the highly tailored digital manipulation for full-on, full-body, hot, passionate, penetrative, rough, sweaty, awesome sex. I feel like my long, slow dalliance with penetration has finally begun to blossom and from the first time Mera fucked me with a cock, my whole definition of sex has changed. Now I equate sex with the cock, all my fantasies involve Mera and the cock, I LIVE for the nights when Mera decides to sleep in the cock.

However, the cock doesn't make me come. I guess that's one of those weird dilemmas of life. I can certainly come when Mera's fucking me with the cock, but only if I touch my clit exactly like I'd do if I was jerking off alone. And I can't *always* come when she's fucking me, sometimes the rhythm of the whole encounter just isn't right, sometimes the pleasure is too much, kinda like when a sneeze builds so fast and strong that it blows past the threshold of actually becoming a sneeze and ends up lodged in your head like a stuck firecracker.

I guess the important thing is that I don't miss the orgasms. I have plenty when Mera's not around and I have quite a few when she is. I just feel bad for Mera who is starting to get a complex. She said last night "I just don't understand! We've been together six months! You should be ejaculating by now!" I guess that's the kind of track record she's had... and I hate to ruin her self-image, but I can't lie. And I can't exactly fake female ejaculation either...

Ultimately, she'll have to manage her own identity crisis. As for me, I'm excited about the possibilities. In my opinion, Mera and I have only just begun to explore our sexual landscape together -- there's so much left for us to do! There's so much unexplored territory! Who knows what will make me come in two years, maybe my body will learn to come from penetration, anal stimulation, a good hard stare.... Or maybe I'll still be the same old masturbator, but I'll still be having plenty of fun. Who knows. Maybe we'll start seeing a sex therapist! That could be interesting.

No matter what happens, I am crazy in love with Mera and happy to be on this journey with her and only her. Regardless of my previous infidelities and forays into polyamory, Mera has nothing to worry about. To steal from Walt Whitman, she contains multitudes. I don't have to look anywhere else to find everything. I've got it all right here. (Except the orgasms... but whatever)

only so much you can say...

I never thought I'd be at a loss for something new to say about sex... As much as I like to think about, read about, and actually, occasionally HAVE sex... I don't have anything to say about it anymore. Why???

I blame the weather, number one. The weather is shitty. There was the hope of summer weather a few weeks ago, but it was quickly replaced by grey skies and clouds, the kind of weather you might expect in November, but you kinda hope will be over by June. This return to chilly grey has prematurely squelched my spring rut. Dammit all. As soon as it gets hot again, I expect my sap will start to flow again at least a tiny bit...

Then there's Mera's sexual dysfunction. I guess that's something to write about... She went from strong and confident in the beginning, to anxious and hesitant. Last night she fucked me with the cock... and she was actually slow and gentle. GENTLE!?!? No matter how much I said "harder, harder" and "don't hold back," she still kept it nice and easy. I asked her later why she'd been so easy and she said she did it for me. Wow. Don't be gentle for me. Please.

She's definitely in the midst of a major sexual identity crisis and I have no idea how to help her. The crisis exists on two fronts. One: the gender front. She's used to being the total top, the stone-cold-don't-touch-me-don't-remind-me-I'm-a-girl top. And then I came along and started fucking her right from the beginning... and she LIKES IT. And she finds that to be very confusing.

And then there's the performance front. She's used to believing she's the best lay on the planet. She's used to being treated like god's gift to hot sex. And I'm not saying that she's NOT the best lay on the planet, but she's aware that she doesn't make me come, and she's aware that there are things I like that she doesn't necessarily do... and that baffles her. And it makes her feel inadequate. I don't really know how to reassure her. Sex with her IS totally hot, but as much as I say it, it never sinks in.

Of course there's the "too busy" front -- ie: she's just too goddamn busy. She's in grad school, she works two jobs, she worries about all sorts of things and has insomnia, etc, etc, etc. She's super stressed out and I guess sex has kinda fallen off the planet in her mind. She keeps saying "I can't wait for my schedule to change, then we can actually fuck more." But I don't know if that will make a difference.

Don't get me wrong, things are great with Mera. I love her so much and I have never felt so compatible, so sure, so well-matched and happy. And that's all the more reason for me to write about the troubles, because people should know it's ok to have troubles, to talk about them and work on them. That's life. I know this isn't the first time I've written about these troubles, and it probably won't be the last. I just hope you guys aren't bored.

And what about you guys? How are things in YOUR relationships? Things going along ok? Hitting any snags? Those of you in Portland... how's the weather impacting you, if at all? Talk to me.

here's a poll, are you happy now?

Wow. Nothing but crickets and tumbleweeds after that last post. Deafening silence. I was shocked. And dismayed. Was it something I said? Were my fantasies too taboo? Or not taboo enough?? Maybe you guys are inexplicably no longer interested in my musings on sex? That would be pretty sad.

Or maybe you just need to be weaned back into sharing with a handy, helpful poll? These things make sharing as easy as clicking a button! How easy is that?? So why don't you give it a try? And feel free to share the old fashioned way too... in a comment... if you want. :-)

uncle jake

I am procrastinating. It is my fourth favorite thing to do besides: kayak, hang out with mera and eat. I should be over at my apartment doing the last of the packing... the *worst* of the packing I should say. I saved a few of the least appealing tasks for last and now I'm digging in my heels for a few stolen moments of denial before I head over there to try and finish it off. For now, I'll enjoy this nice cold beer and tell you all about the hot sex me and Mera had this morning.

First of all, I just wanna put it out there that I don't even have an Uncle Jake. Fortunately. And neither does Mera. Uncle Jake was this morning's awesome fantasy. It's a frequent flyer for me and Mera, though the details often change. This morning we both found ourselves awake at 5am as light seeped in through the window we'd forgotten to cover the night before. I rolled over and buried my head in the pillow and Mera started tickling my back.

Not only is back tickling my favorite feeling on the planet, tickling my back opens all sorts of doors for the tickler... if you know what I mean... and I'm sure you do. I mean: if you tickle my back a little while, you can get anything you want out of me. ANYTHING.

So Mera was tickling my back and I was in heaven and completely unconcerned about being up so early and knowing I'd be underslept if I didn't fall back to sleep soon. Who cares about that stuff when you're in heaven? I was busy being blissed out while Mera's back-tickling took a very slow but exhilerating turn for the naughty. Pretty soon I could hear Mera muttering behind me, "I'm your 36-year-old uncle and I'm visiting from out of town. You're 15. I haven't seen you in years..."

It went on like that until we both had some orgasms and went back to sleep. I mean, I'm not going to give you an absolute play-by-play, I just wanted to introduce the fantasy: incest. I'm a firm believer that a person absolutely cannot control or predict the things that will turn her on. Obviously you can control your ACTIONS. So, if you happen to be so unfortunate as to find yourself turned on by prepubescent girls, you may not be able to control the attraction, but you can control the action.

But fantasy-land is an absolute free-for-all and no taboo is taboo here. My favorite taboo fantasies tend to involve incest and coercion. I don't really have any particular *actual* family members in mind in these fantasies, I'm usually just fantasizing about a generic older male relative having an inappropriate encounter with a generic younger female. It usually isn't even me. And in my fantasies I often switch my point of view from the girl to the man and back again.

However, when I'm actually engaged in a fantasy with Mera during sex, I tend to take on the role and stay there. It's kind of interesting, though, because Mera's focus tends to be less kinky than mine and I often adjust the scripts slightly in my own mind to keep myself interested. For example, Mera likes to be the older uncle with the hot, pubescent niece who is nervous but eager to be fucked. It's not so complex. Me: I like it a little more fucked up. Where Mera wants me to be 15, I'd prefer to be 12. Where Mera wants me to be secretly longing for her cock, I'd prefer to be a slightly unwilling participant slowly coerced and ultimately forced into the action. See: fantasy.

Even though my fantasies tend to go a little further than Mera's, the material generally overlaps, which I think is very fortunate. There's nothing worse, in my mind, than having fantasies that are utterly repulsive to your partner. I feel extremely lucky to have a partner who is not only willing, but who is very proficient at talking through stimulating and complicated sexual fantasies and who is never freaked out by the sketchy twists I like to put on things.

That Mera's a keeper.

And now I'm off to my apartment to pack. Please, please, please post comments with anything you'd like to share about your own fantasy worlds. Do you have fantasies that freak out your partner? Do you and your partner act out any elaborate role plays? How far have you taken it? Thanks in advance for sharing, you guys rock.

maybe i should put my own "swell" spin on this...

I've been tagged! Grumpy Granny nailed me on one of those amorphous, "10-things" memes. I will admit that I love being tagged and I mostly love memes, though I have shied away from these blank-access memes because they aren't concrete enough to be easy. I have a hard time pulling ten ANYthings out of my head, I'd prefer my meme questions to do more of the work.

But my vanity wins out and since I'm so flattered to be tagged, I'll give it my all. Here's the deal, as cut and pasted from GG:

"Once you’ve been tagged, you have to write a blog with 10 weird, random, facts, habits or goals about yourself. At the end, choose 6 people to be tagged, list their names & why you tagged them. Don’t forget to leave them a comment saying “You’re it!” & to go read your blog. You cannot tag the person that tagged you, so since you’re not allowed to tag me back; let me know when you are done so I can go read YOUR weird/random/odd facts, habits and goals."

Since this is supposed to be a sex blog, I feel morally obligated to write about ten weird random SEX facts, habits or goals. Maybe, if I'm feeling really ambitious, I'll write a non-sex version on my non-sex blog. We'll see. But you know... now that I think about it, there might not even BE ten weird sex facts that I haven't already shared. Hmm.

Ok, here goes:

1.) My girlfriend, who I love dearly, who is a super hot top and who fucks me like nobody's business, has never actually given me an orgasm. I know, I know -- nobody GIVES you an orgasm, an orgasm is a gift you give yourself, yadda yadda. But you know what I mean. Plenty of people on this earth have managed rub my nubbin to the point of climax. Not my gal. She's strong on the strap-on, which I appreciate, but if I orgasm during sex with her, it's because I'm touching my own clit while she fucks me. Which is 95% fine with me, though that other 5% is waiting for her to branch out just a little...

2.) One time, an old girlfriend of mine straddled my legs while I was on the toilet and peed between my legs. The pee didn't actually get on me, but I could sort of feel it skimming my pubic hair. I haven't done it since, but it was strangely, inexplicably hot.

3.) In addition to fetishizing penises, I have a very strong attachment to leather daddies and bears. I. Love. Them. In fact, I was just in a very nice magazine shop that carries porn (Counter Media near Powells downtown) and the guy behind the counter was a bear, then a few of his big bear friends came in and I was beside myself with happiness. I wish they would adopt a cute little dyke to be like their little "brother" and hang out with them... and watch them have sex.

4.) I went to a men's leather bar in Columbus Ohio one time and kept getting cruised by guys who thought I was a smooth, young twink. At first I thought it was awesome and then I got sad. The complete and utter disinterest that followed the realization that I was a chick was pretty depressing.

5.) I once went down on a woman who was so filthy in her parts I almost gagged.

6.) I have had sex with 28 women in my life. None were one-night stands, but some were mistakes.

7.) I have goals. I want to explore public sex, like sex in sex clubs for example. Mera and I also talk sometimes about trying somehow to enter the sex industry. In addition to simply making porn, we've considered the possibility of fucking in front of people for money. We've thought it all through, actually, and would recruit a transman to be our "handler" as it were, finding us clients (who would most likely be straight men) and chaperoning us on the "date." We are both aware that this probably makes a hotter fantasy than reality.

8.) I have taken over 500 naked and nasty pictures of myself in the past few months, all for Mera. This is the first time in my life I have taken lurid photos of myself. I love it.

9.) I have engaged in chat room sex in the past. With a dude. Once. It was disgusting.

10.) When I was around 9, my best friend Sue and I used to do this masturbation thing together which we called "pussying ourselves." We'd take rubber bouncy balls and roll them all over our parts, usually with our hands shoved down our pants, laying on twin beds in the same room. We did not think this was weird or inappropriate.

Ok, there you go. Hope that wasn't too painful or gross to read. Not sure who to tag at this point, so tag yourself if you feel inspired. And you don't have to write about sex, so don't worry. :-)

nature

This is the second beaver I've seen while kayaking... the first was swimming along near the boats. This one was better...

Usually we see cool birds and stuff on our paddles... this is not the kind of natural beauty I was expecting to see today...

random

Today I bought a green, vintage metal suitcase for Mera and I to put our sex toys in. Mera has mentioned several times how much she'd like to keep our toys in a cool trunk or box of some kind. Her real fantasy is to have a James Bond-y sort of suitcase with foam inside, cut out and shaped perfectly to hold each toy in its place.

That's a pretty tall order and unlikely to manifest any time soon. Instead, I've been keeping my eyes peeled every time I drive by Rerun, a consignment shop on Fremont. My (soon to be former) apartment is just off Fremont and I drive by Rerun a lot, so I've got plenty of opportunities to scope out all the junk they pile into the parking lot every day. Today I caught sight of this awesome green suitcase as I drove by, so I circled the block and parked.

From the street it looked like a trunk... it still looks like a trunk, actually. But it's really a suitcase and it was only ten bucks! The tag had "$18" crossed out, then "$14" crossed out and then "$10." What a bargain! When Mera gets home from work tonight we're gonna load it up. Between us, we've got quite a collection, but the suitcase is pretty big and I'm sure all the empty space will inspire us to buy even more to fill it up. And really, there's nothing like the sight of a whole bunch of sex toys all in one place.

Right after I left my crazy ex, way back in early 2006, I dug out my bag of toys and dumped all my silicone gear into the bathroom sink for a scrub down. They'd all been cleaned after use, of course, but they were dusty from lack of use and I also felt the urge to purge any bad vibes from my previous relationship. I took my Terra Firma harness apart and scrubbed every nook and cranny, and each dildo, butt plug and vibrator got a good soaping. When I was done, I lined them all up on the bathroom counter to dry. Maybe the tiny bathroom counter was to blame, but that brightly colored little army of sex toys looked massive and amazing. So much promise! So exciting!

Alas, that little army went back in the bag and much of it didn't see the light of day for almost two years. Fortunately that's changing, however I have to admit things aren't completely perfect over here in Shagri La. I love Mera and the sex is totally hot... when we have it. And we haven't been having so much of it these past couple of months. There are lots of factors at play: Mera's schedule is awful for starters. She's in school full time and she works two jobs. She's not superhuman, after all. There's also the sexual identity crisis I've written about. Mera's coming to grips with a relationship that is unlike any other she's had before -- in a good way -- and she's slowly re-imagining herself as a slightly more dimensional sexual creature. Which is awesome, but also, as I said, slow. As for me... I'm mostly raring to go. :-)

Using the sex-toy suitcase will help. The case will add another layer of ritual to the sex, which Mera and I will both appreciate. The case will become like a sexual totem, a power object all unto itself. Just being in the same room with it will remind us of the possibilities and will maybe inspire our sexual creativity. Maybe the case will be like an aphrodisiac...?

Maybe I'm putting too much on the case. Who knows. What about you? How do you store your toys? Underwear drawer? Or somewhere more unusual and inspired? Do you have other toy related rituals? Please share. And I apologize for my recent lack of polls, I promise I'll try and think another one up soon...

that question which is begged...

Koen asked a very good question in a comment to my post "uh-oh" -- just what exactly did I say to Mera to push her so very far away?

It wasn't much really. And this time it wasn't even that bad. It happened one night while we were making out at her house. She'd just given it to me nice and hard with the cock the night before at my house and I was looking forward to getting it again. At some point in the midst of the make-out (which had by then escalated to hand-fucking), I asked if she'd brought the cock from my house. When she said "no," I was disappointed.

According to Mera, I was more than just disappointed. She says I was practically devastated. I don't know if I completely agree. She perceived me to have completely lost interest in the fucking that was already occurring and to be singularly fixated on getting fucked with the cock.

Many questions then ensued. Mera tends toward paranoia, and sometimes jumps straight to the worst possible scenerio. The worst possible scenerio in this case was that I was only interested in the cock and not at all interested in Mera fucking me with her hand. Mera asked me many, many questions along these lines and eventually I shared that while I did enjoy being fucked by her hand, I preferred the cock because the cock was more reliable and I was able to relax more. The hand is kind of pokey -- any hand, all hands are pokey -- sometimes fingers come out a little and go back in at a weird angle, sometimes fingernails make themselves known. Cocks are long and smooth and very predictable. Given that I've never been 100% keen on penetration and given that I'm actually kinda sensitive "down there" it all makes perfect sense to me.

Well, to Mera it sounded pretty bad. As I've mentioned before, Mera's got a reputation for being really good in the sack. In fact, it's a major part of her identity (for better or worse) and any feedback about her performance that sounds in the least critical is very hard for her to digest. Like I said, she's sensitive. She felt she'd always had very positive reviews regarding her hand-fucking skills and she could not wrap her mind around the possibility that I might not like it. (The fact that I DO like it, and that I never, ever said I DON'T like it, was not helpful. Mera only heard one thing.) And if *I* didn't like it, how many other lovers hadn't liked it and just kept quiet??? She became retroactively paranoid.

The longer she went without fucking me, the less specific the issues became, though the identity crisis only got worse. It didn't help that she let me fuck her several times. She felt she'd lost her own mojo, and being topped by me (as much as she totally loves it) didn't help. I tried to reiterate that I never said I didn't like hand-fucking, that she was a totally hot top, an incredibly awesome lover, etc, etc. I tried to build her top ego back up, but nothing seemed to help.

I don't know what finally did it. My so-called "coup" never even happened. I'd made an elaborate plan for Sunday night, but I gave up on it before I set it in motion because I was tired. Regardless, it all just happened naturally. I think we were both ready and enough time had passed that Mera probably forgot what the original issue even was. I don't know. I just know I'm really glad she was able to fuck me Sunday night and now she's back to feeling confident.

All that said, there have been other times when I said things a lot more cranky than this. The similarity between those times and this time is that they were all thoughtless reactions to a situation that I made without thinking much about how Mera would feel hearing them. My challenge is to stop myself from *reacting* -- to pause first before blurting something out (even in the heat of the moment) and imagine how I would feel if I were on the receiving end of it. I've had to do this in my regular life out of the sack, now it's time to do it here too. I've had a bad habit of mouthing off, which can be funny sometimes, but it can also be pretty hurtful and alienating. And believe me, the last thing I want to do is alienate my favorite person on the planet.

update on last night's coup

Mission accomplished. Thank god. I didn't even have to work my full scam, it just happened naturally and Mera reports feeling "re-empowered." I feel happy, relieved and... well... pleasantly sore, if you know what I mean...

uh-oh...

Looks like I made my "weenie" confession just in time for the spring rut. Next confession: every spring, as soon as the weather starts to warm up a little and the breeze feels so nice on the newly exposed skin, I get super sex-hungry. (I desperately hate the word "horny" and refuse to use it seriously in a sentence.) More than just regular sex-hungry, I start craving the penis. The PENIS for christsake!! I can't get away from it.

I blame it on evolutionary biology. I believe the spring rut occurs because my animal programming is trying to make me reproduce, even against my better judgment. Fortunately, my better judgment always, ALWAYS wins... though I've had a few close calls. I have been known to troll the craigslist "casual encounter M4W" ads during the spring rut and to actually... actually... write emails to dudes who catch my eye...

Because there is voyeuristic pleasure to be had on this site, I will give you some examples of my craigslist tomfoolery and then move on: I have written three dudes from craigslist. I went on a date with one... and briefly made out with him. I think he was wearing some type of man-girdle and he had a cock the size and shape of a can of campbell's soup so... I said no thanks. Another guy I went on a walk with, then he emailed me later and said he felt really gross about meeting someone just for sex, apologized, and then took all his craigspostings down. Uh... was it something I said? And the last guy I never bothered to meet. The spring rut passed before I had the opportunity to make some huge mistake with him. Thank god. And believe me, when the spring rut passes and I've managed NOT to fuck or fondle a guy, I am always greatly relieved and thankful.

So, the spring rut has started up again and I'm bravely weathering the storm, but I'll tell you it isn't always easy. Especially since my girlfriend is in the middle of a top-identity crisis and hasn't fucked me with a strap-on in a month and a half. Yikes. I guess I could write a whole lot more on that topic, but I'll skip it for now and just say: if you have a top-identified partner with a fragile sexual ego, be very, very careful how you talk to her about sex. And don't do anything that could be considered critical. Steer the experience gently and use lots of positive reinforcement. Basically, treat her like a four-year-old trying out ballet or piano or soccer for the first time: lots and lots of praise with very gentle directives. Otherwise, she might freeze up like a terrified snail and refuse to come out of her shell for weeks. (Am I really that scary? I should really look at that...)

I'm planning to stage a minor coup tonight to pull her out of her shell a little. I'll let you know if it works, and I hope it does because the guy at the optometrist's office was flirting with me today and if he's there tomorrow when I go back to pick up my new glasses, I might accidentally slip and fall into that goddamn spring rut...

confessions...

I was just reading over my last post and the comments that accompanied it and I realized I was somewhat remiss. I wrote about my interest in guy-on-guy porn, but I forgot to mention the fact that I've completely fetishized the penis. Forgive me if I've written about this already, I tend to forget what ground I've already covered. But it seems incomplete to talk about guy-on-guy porn without mentioning that I've got a thing for the weenie.

I should admit also that I've never had vaginal intercourse with a penis. (Some voice inside my head can't stop itself from saying "THANK GOD!") Yet, I've had a "handful" of interactions with them in my day... so to speak. And... perhaps... a mouthful once or twice? (Did you just throw up a little? Sorry.) But really, besides those (literally) five interactions in my entire life with weenies, I've had no other contact and my imagination has been left to go crazy.

For me, the penis is the ultimate sexual totem. The erect penis practically throbs with desire and stimulates something in me that I can't completely explain or even comprehend. As you may know, the penis and the vulva grow out of the same bits of fetal materials, they're not so different. When I see an erect penis I feel the potential of being penetrated and I also feel my own "erection" mirrored. The erect penis is a larger than life version of my own engorged clit. It can fuck me, but it can also represent my own sexual desire.

My masturbation fantasies are almost exclusively about men. There's another confession for you. I don't think it's just the power of the penis that drives those fantasies, I think it's possible for me to get off on men because I get to project all my own ideas onto them. I haven't had a boyfriend since I was 17 years old, and none of my two and half boyfriends were particularly serious anyway. I've had no *real* connections with men at all, so fantasizing about men is like fantasizing about some tropical island somewhere. In my fantasy it can be whatever dreamy thing I want it to be without any of the gritty sand, rotting fish, poisonous spiders, rabid monkeys or whatever other unpleasant junk might wind up on a tropical island. For me, men are blank slates, uncomplicated by emotional entanglements or any kind of reality, for that matter. I guess, now that I think about it, I objectify them when I use them in my masturbatory fantasies. Huh. I guess that's ironic.

Anyway, I don't guess I'm going anywhere with this, just trying to get back in the swing of thinking and writing about sex after a little lag. My sex life lagged and my writing life lagged, mostly because I started my new job, changed my schedule, and haven't completely adjusted to it all yet. After a month of the new job and new schedule, I'm starting to settle into a new rhythm and things are feeling normal again. A new version of normal, but normal all the same. Fortunately, and surprisingly, through all the changes, my emotional bond with Mera never faltered. We stayed just as attached as ever, which feels like a small miracle to me. I am so thankful for this relationship, more thankful every day, and know that it will only keep getting better.

But I digress. What about you? What do *you* fantasize about? Sorry Heather, no poll this time either. Not sure how to make a poll about this one, though I promise another poll soon. They're so entertaining for me. But so are your awesome comments, so keep them coming. You guys rock.

smut

I don't know about you, but I like porn. It's hard to say "I like porn" without adding a lot of qualifiers. Like, I like porn but usually just guy-on-guy porn because women in porn tend to look so exploited. Or, I like porn but only occasionally. Or, I like porn but for some reason I don't always feel so good about it.

It's complicated. Some people are appalled by it, and I can think of plenty of appalling things about the porn industry. However, at it's very core, porn is nothing more than depictions of sex or sexuality engineered to turn you on. What's not to like about that?

For me, I like the naked bodies, the titilation of the voyeurism, the "intimacy" with strangers, and the sex. I gravitate towards porn with a kinky story-line or amatuer stuff made by real people. I'm interested not just in the facade of the porn, I'm interested in the actual people behind it all. What are they thinking? Are they really enjoying it or is it just a job that pays the bills?

When I was living in Columbus, I dated a woman who did phone sex. She was a radical, anarchist, punk-rock brat and a bunch of her other lesbian anarchist friends got together and started a phone sex line with the support of a slightly wealthy, eccentric lesbian who liquidated a bunch of investments so that she could put her money into "woman owned businesses." These women wanted to "put the power and money of porn back in the hands of women." They wanted to exploit the men for a change, and they joked about all their pathetic customers, spending hundreds of dollars just to jack off to the sound of a stranger's voice on the phone.

They all talked a big talk, but really they all hated it. They were all depressed and miserable and none of them wanted to admit that they felt just as degraded and exploited as their pimped out counterparts probably felt. And I have to admit, I didn't enjoy it myself at all. The woman I was dating was basically on call 24 hours a day and almost all our dates were interrupted by lengthy monotonous calls. I was amazed that a man could stay on the phone for over an hour jacking off and I was constantly amazed that the outcome of my date in Ohio was dependant on the orgasm of some wanker in Minnesota or Illinois. "Cum already!!! I wanna eat dinner!" It was surreal.

So I don't fool myself, I know that porn entails exploitation. However, I still indulge occasionally. I'm a cheapskate though and tend to stick to the free internet sites. I also usually stick to the men-on-men porn. I haven't found enough real lesbian porn to even bother with, though I hear it exists. Mera and I talk about creating our own lesbian porn empire, but we've yet to take action. One of these days...

What about you? Porn? Erotica? Smut? Anything? Any deep intellectual thoughts on the subject? Any lowbrow, gutter-type comments? I want to know what other lesbians think about porn.

cha-ching

I always suspected I could be making money with sex...

no excuses

Wow. Sorry for my long absence. I hate the thought of losing my tiny but growing fan-base, and long absences sure don't keep people coming back. But I've just been so *tired* lately. I'm almost at the end of my third week on the new job and I'm still not used to the schedule. I worked 4pm to midnight for sooooo long and now I'm working a morning shift. Boy that's a rough switch to make! I'm excited to be off in the evenings, but I'm so tired! And waking up early five days a week mostly sucks. Yeah, I know, it's a life that plenty of folks have been living for a long time, but it's new and weird for me.

Before this change, Mera and I didn't have nearly enough time together. Our schedules were tricky and we only had two evenings a week together. This was obviously an intolerable arrangement, and our solution was to stay up until 3am every night after my midnight shift ended just so we could hang out, catch up, chat and have sex. Which sucked. So we fantasized about how awesome it would be if my schedule changed. We looked forward to a whopping four evenings a week, to cooking meals for each other, and to having lots more sex.

Well... we've definitely been making meals for each other (tonight I'm making perogies and steamed broccoli, yum). But the sex... not so much. I had dreams of hopping in the sack with Mera around 8pm every night for some super-hot lovin', but if I was to have hopped in the sack at 8pm these past three weeks, I would have fallen into a deep sleep immediately. I'm so disappointed in myself! Will I ever get my energy back?!? I hope so.

My kayaking friend told me recently that it can take your body up to six months to acclimate to a new schedule. I can't believe it could possibly take that long, but what do I know? Mera and I will have to just work around my exhaustion, because we can't go six months without having sex. That's no good. And as it stands, it's been almost a month since Mera has fucked me. And that's a long time considering that our relationship is barely four months old. We've gotta start having sex again soon or things might get weird. Ya know what I mean?

sad for so many reasons

Not only is it just sad that this is the best I can come up with after over a week of no postings, but look at this pathetic rating! I scored low on cussing? On my sex blog!?! That's just sad.

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating

boundaries

The post about cheating got me thinking about a related issue: boundaries. Another one of the ill-advised disclosures I made to Mera on our first date was that I have really bad boundaries. So bad, in fact, that I didn't think twice about telling her.

Obviously I'm aware of my bad boundaries, but until recently I have considered this to be an interesting quirk, another fun, wacky thing about me that makes me unique. Hence, it has never occurred to me to try to curb my boundary-breaching tendencies. Often I find myself on the edge of some risky and somewhat titillating experience and a still small voice inside me will raise a timid objection. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" But before the words can register in my brain, I've already leapt in with both feet.

The wake-up for me was sort of anticlimactic. Last month, my most recent ex-girlfriend, SK, was in town. (Forgive me, SK, for telling this story. I hope you don't mind.) This trip to Portland had been in the works for months, long before Mera and I got together, and the plan had always been that SK would stay with me while she was here. Sounded perfectly reasonable to me, however it made Mera a little nervous. I tried to reassure her that SK and I are now terrific friends and no longer sexually involved, etc, etc, but Mera was always uneasy.

Of course it didn't help that I planned to let SK sleep in my bed. It's a big enough bed and we're perfectly capable of sleeping in it together without accidentally rolling over and beginning to have sex. And anyway, I knew that's not the kind of space we were in. To me, sleeping in the same bed was completely innocuous and not the least bit threatening to my relationship and I just wanted Mera to understand that.

SK came and stayed one night then left for a few days to attend a conference. I went out for drinks while she was gone with one of my kayaking friends, a very "normal" sort of person. Older, more conventional than me, like a lesbian aunt who always wants to give me advice and weigh-in on things. I was explaining that things between me and Mera were sort of strained, which I did not relate to SK being in town. Then, later, I explained that SK was in town and, after some questioning, revealed that we were planning to share a bed.

"Wow," she said, stunned. "You have really bad boundaries!" And you know: she was right. Suddenly I realized that my bad boundaries issue wasn't just a nutty quirk in my personality, it was a problem. A problem that I should maybe work on solving. Even though I thought sharing a bed with SK was totally benign, it was making my girlfriend uncomfortable. I was a fool to ignore that aspect of the situation. I realized, looking at my incredulous friend across the table at County Cork, that I was often and regularly a fool, reveling in my bad boundaries and never considering the damage, often subtle, I was causing with my recklessness.

Since that conversation, I have watched myself carefully and started noticing my own pulls towards slightly bad behavior. There are so many opportunities to make a crass joke that's just a tad over the line, or to flirt with someone totally inappropriate, or to slightly encourage the wrong kind of attention. I had no idea how often I let my behavior slide into a gray area, hovering all-too-close to a danger-zone.

For example, there's a woman at work who had a little fling with me last summer. Just a make-out fling that didn't last too long, but a little fling nonetheless. Every now and again she makes herself available for flirting. She lingers in my office, she sends me unsolicited myspace messages, etc. And the old me would have subtly encouraged those behaviors. I would have engaged her while she lingered in my office, I would have responded to her myspace messages. Not because I was trying to start something up, not because I wanted to cheat on Mera or do anything really bad. Just... just because. Just because it was an opportunity, and maybe part of having bad boundaries is being a closet opportunist? Who knows.

So, since my conversation with my kayaking friend, I have stopped myself from crossing these lines. I am professional with my old fling from work, I ignore her myspace messages, etc. When I'm about to make a gutter-minded wise-crack to the wrong crowd, I check myself. I don't do it. Before I would just feel like I was letting a good opportunity slip by, I would regret my inaction. But now I feel powerful, I feel like I'm conserving vital energy and I'm not doing anything subtle but still troubling for my relationship. When I go home to Mera and she asks me if I flirted with "that woman" from work, I can say "No," and know that my answer is absolutely, 100% true. And that feels really good.

fidelity

This has never been my strongest subject and I approach it now with caution. In a comment on my last post, Heather raised the issue of cheating and I figured I'd tackle it. I don't have much else to report on these days (except a nice round of topping Mera last night, which is a rare and awesome treat).

I don't have the greatest track record when it comes to fidelity and I have often proclaimed that monogamy isn't something we should bother with, as a species, anyway. I don't know what happened to my scorpio loyalty, I guess it manifests in different ways. I have cheated (in often very small, yet very still-cheating, sort of ways) on many of my girlfriends. It usually runs this course: I get together with a new girlfriend who I love so much and spend all my time with, I rush into a serious relationship with that girlfriend without thoroughly vetting her, I probably move in with her after about 6 months, all our incompatibilities come streaming to the surface, I go into deep, deep denial for a few months, I don't know what else to do so I end up kissing some woman in a bathroom and my girlfriend breaks up with me.

Sound familiar? I like to think I'm older and wiser now and it's been quite awhile since I've engaged in this behavior, but for a good ten years, this was my m.o. And I don't think I'm the only one ever to struggle with this problem. I think it's more a backbone deficiency than a problem with fidelity. I was too weak to end a relationship that was clearly dead in the water, so I lingered miserably and opened myself up to temptation. I tried a couple of times to avert this tragedy by embracing polyamory, but it never worked. I had an open relationship with my drunk ex-wife, but for some reason I never took advantage of that opportunity to have my cake and eat it too. She did, repeatedly. And I would become insanely jealous and angry. It was a real eye-opener.

Later, after SK and I broke up last summer, I entered a phase of single-polyamory, which basically just meant I was dating a lot of random people and not seriously interested in any of them. As soon as I met Mera, though, all bets were off. Unfortunately, I announced to her on our very first date that I was polyamorous and had cheated on most of my girlfriends. These proclaimations were mostly exaggerated, but tell that to Mera. She believed them completely, as a matter of self-preservation, and she will probably never let me live them down.

She's naturally jealous and possessive -- manifestations of her fear of abandonment and rejection. I can live with all of these because I'm actually pretty jealous and possessive myself and I'm pretty content to cling to Mera and promise eternal fidelity as long as she doesn't leave me. After all, she keeps me pretty happy and we're both allowed to end it all if it stops working for us. I can tolerate her paranoia and her endless questions about every possible opportunity I may or may not have to step out on her, and she's not so crazy that she tries to stop me from doing things, so it works out.

I'll write more about polyamory in another post someday, but let's talk about cheating. Have you done it? Has your partner? Have you ever been "the other woman?" Here are two polls to start the conversation, but please feel free to comment with stories, I love to read what you have to say.

the tables have turned

Contrary to the impression this blog might give, in most of my past sexual relationships I have been pretty sexually dormant. I have always tended to start each new relationship with a surge of sexual energy that usually lasts the first few months and then peters out and often disappears altogether.

My vanishing libido has been a major source of conflict and heartbreak over the years. In fact, my crazy-drunk-ex used to tell me that she drank so much because I never wanted to have sex with her and she needed the alcohol to numb her against the pain of rejection. Wow.

At the time, I completely discounted this statement and chalked it up to her inability to take responsibility for her drinking problem. Until that time I had never been the one in any of my relationships who wanted more sex than she was getting. I had never lain in bed next to a hot girlfriend and felt the frustration of unmet sexual desire. Sure, I've had plenty of sexual frustration, but not that kind. Once the initial sexual magic wears off, I'm usually content to cuddle and am generally not the sexual initiator whenever sex does finally spring back into the relationship.

Well. Things have changed. As I've mentioned before, Mera has worked a one-woman sexual-revolution on my body. From the word go, things in the sack with Mera have been completely different than they've ever been with anyone else. All bets are off with Mera, I have no idea what I even *like* anymore. I like things I never liked before and I forget about things I thought I used to love. It's unreal.

Sadly, one of the many new things I'm getting to experience in this relationship is sexual frustration. Even though Mera is a voracious top, she's also a full-time grad student, working full-time at two jobs and taking care of a special-needs dog. She's busy, she's tired, she doesn't always have the energy for those two-hour poundings. And in addition to physical exhaustion there's also the complication of our power dynamic and her extremely sensitive top ego. Sometimes a simple-seeming conversation will end up alienating her and making her feel inadequate.

This is at least fifty-percent my responsibility. I can be a little too blunt sometimes and if I put myself in her shoes, I cringe thinking about some of the things I've said to her. And it's not just what I say, but how I say it. In my life I have been called "abrasive," "ascerbic" and (the less evil) brutally honest. I'm usually proud to be all these sketchy things, but these things don't help me in the delicate sexual milieu. "Abrasive" is no way to be when you're trying to gently steer your sensitve lover in a different direction during sex. Try as I might, I sometimes can't keep my attitude in check when it matters most. Mera ends up feeling alientated and distant and my chances of getting lucky any time soon disintegrate.

The other fifty-percent is on Mera, who believes she has a lot riding on her ability to fuck like a pro. In her darkest places, she thinks that's the only special thing she has to offer in a relationship, not necessarily because she's a sexual narcissist with low self-esteem, but because past lovers have given her nothing but positive reviews. How many women do you know who routinely cause their female lovers to ejaculate? I'm telling you, Mera is known for her skills and her reputation preceeds her -- she's in demand to a sickening degree. Three months into our relationship and the late-night booty texts have finally stopped, but there are definitely a lot of very disappointed people out there who wish Mera wasn't off the market.

But I digress... The point is: all those rave reviews from past lovers gave Mera the false impression that being a great lover is all she has to offer. She's already pretty sensitive and she struggles with abandonment and trust issues, so that makes it especially hard for her to hear anything that even remotely resembles criticism of her sexual prowess. I try and try to tell her that I *love* our sexual relationship and don't want her to change anything, even though I would like her to add a few elements, but all she hears at first is a complaint. That makes things difficult for both of us and it often takes her several days to recover her top-confidence and take back the reins again.

This alienation has left me on several occasions laying half-naked next to a snoring Mera, every nerve in my body alive and charged and waiting for the slightest stimulation. I had no idea how awful sexual frustration could feel! Now I have so much more compassion for my crazy-drunk-ex! I'm not excusing her drinking or accepting that my rejection drove her to drink, but I can now appreciate the agony of that kind of frustration. Looking back over all my previous relationships, I can finally see how I tortured so many lovers by losing my interest in sex. I feel like I should go back and apologize to all of them, and thank them for their patience.

What about you? Do you tend to want less sex than your partner, or are you the one lying there frustrated while your partner snores away. How have you managed it? And how have you talked about sexual issues that arise? I'll write more about sexual communication in the future, that's a big topic. For now, what about the balance of desire in a relationship? And thanks in advance for sharing, you guys rock.

not much time

Things have been busy lately and I haven't had much time to sit and ruminate and churn out clever blog posts about sex. Fortunately I haven't been too busy to keep actually *having* sex, but just barely.

I got a really awesome promotion at work and this is my last week working my old shift in my old position. This old shift, by the way, ends at midnight, which sucks. Last night I worked for the last time with my coworker and good pal Michelle and we went out after work for one last hurrah at our favorite dive bar.

Normally Michelle and I go out once a week for our "usual" (beer and pin-ball at Billy Ray's), and Mera and I tend to take that night off from sleeping over. However, for some reason last night Mera agreed to come sleep at my house even though I wouldn't be getting home until after 2am. God bless her.

I did not expect her to be awake when I got home. The basic idea was just that we'd sleep in the same bed, wake up and have tea in the morning, and squeeze in what little quality time we could scrape together before she went to school and I went to a noon meeting.

Much to my surprise, however, when I opened my door at 2:15am, I found Mera awake in bed watching a dvd on her computer. I was so happy to see her little face. I threw my stuff down and knelt by the bed to hug her. We had a nice, sweet, homecoming moment, then she took my hand and guided it down under the sheets where it encountered the firm and alluring contours of the new glittery cock, which was tucked neatly under a pair of boxer briefs. She was awake and wearing the cock. I was amazed.

Long story short, we were up fucking until 4:30am and I spent the day dragging, but at least I had happy memories of last night to keep me going. Tonight, however, is a totally different story. I arrived at Mera's (from my very last midnight shift, woo-hoo!) and found her zonked out and snoring in her bed, fully dressed, on top of the covers with the menu page of a dvd playing it's continuous loop over and over. She woke up long enough to kiss me on the cheek and listen to a couple of stories about work, and now she's conked back out and here I sit, writing about her and waiting for the adrenaline of work to wear off so I can join her.

gettin' brave...

In case you were wondering, here we are. I'm the one you can see. Mera's tastefully buried in my neck, where she belongs.

ouch

I like pain. Not all the time, and not all kinds of pain, but when I'm in the right mood, certain kinds of pain feel better than anything else on earth. I don't have the time or inclination to write a big S/M manifesto right now. Instead, I'll just focus on pain.

Of all the kinds of pain I have played with over the years, nipple pain is my favorite. I love to have my nipples mauled. The best is when my partner starts out soft and slow, then builds and builds and builds until she's squeezing and pinching them so hard they burn. The feeling moves from sensual to sexual to transcendently painful. I love it.

This weekend, Mera and I took it a little too far and now I'm sitting here with a bandaid on my left-nipple. Woops. I don't know why the right nipple got off so easy, but the left one is absolutely out of commission for awhile. We were both in a trance as it was happening. I was completely drunk off the sensation and Mera was in a sexual fugue state. I kept begging and egging her on and the next thing I knew she was saying "I taste blood."

Yeah.

So we stopped and now my left nipple looks a little like ground-round and hurts like it's been sunburnt. Hence the bandaid, to prevent chafing. And I'm also wearing a bra for a change. Anything to keep the little guy padded and safe from irritation until it's all healed up and ready to go again.

Years ago, I had my right nipple pierced. I had a theory that since I loved to have my nipples played with really hard, I'd REALLY love to have a ring through them to enhance the sensation. Boy was I wrong. Having my nippled pierced was the most intensely painful experience of my life. I enjoyed an endorphin high that lasted about three hours -- that alone was worth the $80 I paid for the jewelry and piercing.

Unfortunately, the ring only made my nipple ultra-sensitive and I was never able to enjoy rough nipple-play while the ring was in. Not to mention it never quite healed all the way. I kept it in for almost two years and it was constantly irritated and cycling through infections, even when it wasn't being handled at all. My body just wasn't into it.

I remember vividly the day I decided to take it out. I was working for Whole Foods in Durham and I was spending a lot of time in the dairy cooler because our Dairy Buyer'd quit and I was subbing. Spending a whole day in a giant refrigerator isn't good for nipples in general, but it's especially hard on an infected nipple with a piece of steel running through it. My nipple stayed hard as a rock all day in the cooler and the whole thing just throbbed.

Finally, early one cold morning as I dressed for work, I just did it. I didn't even think about it. I unscrewed one of the balls on the circular barbell in my nipple and gently slid the ring through and out of my body. As the steel left my skin, my whole body relaxed and I felt warm and comfortable again. It was like I'd been clenching and tensing every muscle in my body for two years and suddenly I was able to breathe free and rest. It was bliss. I have never looked back and would never, ever consider piercing my nipples again.

What about you guys? Pain? Nipple piercing? Clamps? Anything? I could write ten more posts about nipples and pain, but that's enough for today. I'm at the laundromat and it's time to fold my clothes and get out of here. But let me know if you've got your own pain stories. I'm all ears.

customer service makes all the difference

As you may remember, PollDaddy was on the fritz the other day and I wasn't able to make a poll about period sex, which saddened me. I tried every day to make another poll and came up against the same problem over and over. Finally today I decided to click the link that said "report this problem." I filled out the little form and submitted it, expecting nothing in return but an automatically generated response. Something like "Thanks for your feedback! We're working on it!"

Imagine my surprise when, within 30 minutes of sending that message, I got an actual message from an actual person named Dave, who explained how I could circumvent the problem and make polls anyway and promised that they would try and solve the other problem too. Now that's good customer service! And I'm not even technically a customer, since the services I use are free! God bless Dave and PollDaddy. They do good busines.

But back to sex and the related issue of customer service. I'm not talking about prostitutes, I'm talking about sex toy stores. If you're in the market for a toy, and you find yourself shopping in a brick-and-mortar store, rather than online, you might find that the customer service will play an even larger role in your experience than the toys themselves.

I still remember vividly the first time I ever bought a toy. It was, for your information, my very first vibrator and I was probably 19 when I bought it. At that time, I was in college in a relatively small, North Carolina mountain town (Boone) and the only place in town that sold sex toys was a head shop called "Expressions." If you made it past all the pipes, tie dyes and black-light activated posters, you'd end up in the far back corner of the store with all the "adult" items including edible panties, crotchless panties, wind-up hopping penises, and vibrators.

As you might imagine, this shop was run by a bunch of giggling stoner dudes and perverted weirdos who I mostly knew and liked to joke around with. Making crass, retarded jokes with "the guys" at Expressions was fun when I was just in buying screens or incense, but it was entirely less cool to come in looking for a sex toy, an item I was planning to touch myself with for pleasure. My only option was bravado. I went in, boldly announced that I was in the market for a sex toy, and jumped into the mockery and perversion with both feet. I didn't love it, but that was the only way I could get through it without appearing to be embarrassed, and after ten uncomfortable minutes of what felt like performance art, I was walking back to my dorm with a lovely new toy.

Nowadays things are different. Here in Portland there's an AWESOME sex toy store called It's My Pleasure. It's run by women, for women, and offers the most comfortable sex-toy environment you can imagine. They only sell quality products (none of that cheap crap that lesser stores sell) and their sales staff are knowledgable and friendly. In fact, there's one woman in there (who's name I can't recall) who is so sweet and so helpful, I always want to give her a big hug every time I see her. She has tried on harnasses to show me how they work, she never makes you feel dumb for asking dumb questions and she bends over backwords (sometimes literally) to make sure you get everything you need. Last weekend when Mera and I were in there looking for butt plugs, she spent about twenty minutes helping Mera decide what kind of new harnass she might want and then she opened up a package so we could inspect that doggie-style strap that we ended up buying. She is the best. And because she and the store itself are so awesome, I am much more inclined to drive way out Sandy Blvd to shop there than simply hop online and order toys from other, equally reputable purveyors of sexual items, such as Good Vibrations and Toys in Babeland. (Forgive my lack of links today, I'm in a hurry.)

Now I have to run off to work, but before I go, here's my latest poll. How do YOU feel about shopping for sex toys? We'll get into more discussions later about specific toys, but for now I'm interested in your feelings about the shopping experience itself. Embarrassed? Nonplussed? Start with the poll and then feel free to comment. Your comments make my little heart skip a beat every time. I swear.

yum

Big thanks to Grumpy Granny for turning me onto this hot website. I have to admit that my knowledge of real, lesbian porn is lacking. I've always been suspicious of so-called lesbian porn and haven't gone looking for it. But this looks pretty fabulous. Most of the content requires payment, sadly, but if you navigate around, you can find a few freebies, including a link to a site specializing in pictures of hot butches. Yum. Enjoy.

back to being rosy (in more ways than one)

Thanks for all your comments on that last post. It was really interesting to read what everyone had to say about conflict in relationships and also interesting to see the results of the poll. Not a single person voted for hot make-up sex, which I found to be surprising. Maybe that's some kind of hetero myth that I'd somehow absorbed...? Who knows.

Anyway, I'm happy to say that Mera and I are back on track. We had lots of hard, heart-to-hearts over the week and one more flare up on Friday night, which was the beginning of the end of conflict. That last flare of fighting was the equivalent of the fever breaking when you're sick. We both crossed big edges and came out on the other side much stronger and closer. Now I'm excited and feeling all gooey inside again.

Finishing up the fight on Friday night led us to a weekend of fun times and a return to hot sex. Thank god. We even visited the toy store again for some creative browsing and a butt plug for me (we'll save the discussion of anal play for another post). We even made one impulse buy: a special strap you can use to hold up your partner during rear-entry sex. I forget what it's called, but I'm sure "doggie-style" is somewhere in its name. We haven't used it yet, I'll let you know how it works out.

We did something new this weekend, something I highly recommend and that we plan to do again. We went to sleep last night with Mera wearing a cock, "just in case." We were both pretty sleepy when we hit the hay at 11:30 -- we'd had a long day and we'd just come from a fabulous dinner with a couple who are close friends of Mera's. We got home tired and stuffed and not much in the mood for monkey business, though we'd both been looking forward to it.

Mera's solution was to put on the cock, tuck it into her briefs, then curl up in bed with me and go to sleep. Of course there was a little hanky-panky before we both dozed off, but it didn't go too far and I fell asleep with the very promising sensation of Mera's silicone erection pressing gently against my thigh.

Somewhere around 5am, we both woke up. This happens often with us, it's one of my favorite things in our relationship. We both wake in the night and spend an hour or so chatting. It seems like a terrible sleep disruption, and in a way it is, but I still enjoy it. It's intimate and sweet and especially lovely to fall back to sleep again together. This morning, however, was obviously different. Instead of a friendly chat, we ended up having hot, crazy sex, all because Mera went to sleep wearing a cock. It was awesome. I can't wait to do it again.

This morning, however, Mera came back from her morning pee to announce that she'd started bleeding. She's a tiny bit early, but I'm probably still right behind her. We've managed to stay totally synced up since we got together. For us, this means we probably won't be having much sex for the next week. I'm not completely opposed to sex while I'm bleeding. I'd prefer to avoid sex the first couple of days when the pain and bloating are bad and the bleeding is heavy. However, the last few days aren't so bad and sex is fine then, if a little messy.

For Mera, as the predominant giver, sex while bleeding is only possible when the flow is light and the cramps are minimal. Which is tricky, because lately Mera's periods have been extra long and extra hard. She went to the doctor and got a clean bill of health -- the doctor thinks her periods have been more difficult because of stress. Considering that Mera works two jobs (40 hours a week total) and goes to grad school full time, not to mention she cares for a special-needs foster dog and is trying to keep a new relationship afloat, it's understandable that Mera's feeling a little stressed. It's just a bummer.

I started wondering, this morning, how other ladies feel about sex during the bleeding-times. Honestly, being fucked while I'm bleeding hasn't tended to be my first choice unless I'm really close to my partner and I'm really turned on. Otherwise, I'd just as soon wait till things are back to normal down there. I guess there's some level of self-consciousness about it. And it's also a bit more trouble, since you have to take special precautions regarding the mess. Strangely, I'm much happier to fuck a person who's bleeding and would hardly think twice about it, so I guess the mess isn't really the issue after all...

What about you? I'd love to start this discussion out with another one of those handy little polls, but Polldaddy seems to be on the fritz tonight, so I'll have to skip it. Please feel free to comment and share your feelings about sex while bleeding, as the giver, receiver or both. And thanks, as always, for participating and helping make this site so informational.