Client Relations Part II

She had always been pretty in a black Irish sort of way, always sort of flirty one day and serious the next, trying to be grownup and little girlish at the same time, being serious one minute and childlike the next, and so I wasn't quite sure which version of her was coming to see me. Sometimes she would be dressed in a business suit, and then the next time it would be bib overalls and pigtails. I had always dealt with her in the same businesslike manner, regardless of who showed up, and so, when the doorbell rang, I hastened to answer it.

She stood in the doorway clad in a vintage DVF wraparound dress, white with a shamrock green print, wearing high heels and stockings. Her dark hair fell just to her shoulders, the peekaboo bangs partially obscuring her eyes. She had a trenchcoat incongruously thrown over one shoulder, and some sort of expensive handbag held in her other hand. She flashed me a smile that didn't extend up past her mouth, her eyes retaining a vaguely haunted look, as she brushed past me on her way to the living room, where she tossed the trenchcoat on one of the wing chairs and sat down in the corner of the couch.

I began the conversation by reiterating what I had told her on the phone, that I liked her and thought she was a very nice person, but that I really couldn't extend myself out for a third year without some sort of payment plan or something more concrete than her best intentions. And I watched as her eyes softened and her mouth lost its smile, her lower lip pouting out. She stood up and began to pace back and forth, the heels clicketting loudly on the parquet floor, as she started in on a long tale of mishaps and misdeeds, of jobs that didn't pay her at the end of the week, dead end commission jobs in the garment center, her voice becoming softer and softer as she spun out her tale of woe.

"Please," she said, "don't make me beg."

Me and The Internet

I have just a few lingering complaints about the internet and how it works:

---We all visit websites that are by invitation only, and I'm always thankful to bloggers that invite me in, and take me along when they travel from address to address...many readers here will also visit toy, joy shared, slut no bounds, dirty little details, to name but a few that I read regularly, and I truly am thankful for the invites...my question is this---why, when I sign in each time and check the box that says remember me, do I have to sign in the next time, why doesn't the remember me part stick?

---I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority here, but my feeling is if a blog is out there in public, I find it offputting when some of the postings become private/by invitation only. I'm not talking about the type of blog that was written up in the NYT several months ago, and read by thousands daily. I'm referring to a relatively, as far as I can see, small or medium sized readership, the story of four people, two couples, in what I read is a polyamorous relationship...if it's just for the four of them, why is it public to begin with?

---I can't remember if I ranted about this before, but it's still irking me big time. We all look at youporn, redtube, any number of other sites, just because we want to get off on what we see. A week or so ago, I stumbled across a three minute clip from a porn flick that I had seen about 5-7 years ago, called Crack Whores Of The Tenderloin, produced locally by someone here in NYC, one of the best things I'd ever seen. BUT NO CREDIT GIVEN!!! Be honest, give kudos where they are due, and don't steal from other people w/o some sort of disclaimer.

That's enought crankiness about the internet...my change to gmail is coming soon...or soon enough.

Sick Of It All

Fellow blogger, business clients, family and friends, all have chided me over the years for still using AOL---and they all know that I'm the last of the Luddites, loathe to change and wary of anything different, let alone new and unknown. I come from the generation that thinks if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
But all that's going to change, and hopefully by the end of the year---here's why, in two concise paragraphs:
---I finished some work for a client last week, at an fee that was agreed upon in email some six months ago. But when I couldn't access that particular email, because AOL eats its children after about a month, unless you specifically designate it as something to be archived. And fortunately the client was honest and was able to pull up HIS gmail and "remind" me what we had agreed upon.
---The desktop computer I use for work was purchased about 5 months ago, and when my computer guy installed it and transferred everything over, he installed the British version of AOL, which comes with a very sexy voice, British pop ups, a specific screen to close out of email, etc., etc. Something has changed, not by me for sure, and AOL has started to sign itself on periodically, using whatever account was the last one used...it's sort of like Skynet and the Terminators, with the machine thinking for itself.
Both excellent reasons to forsake AOL and move to gmail, which will happen before the end of the year. Please come along with me, and be kind enough to answer questions as I post them here.
Because I still am the Luddite, and loathe to change towards what I don't know.

Client Relations Part I

I've worked from home as a tax accountant for quite a while now. It affords me the liberty and luxury of working in jeans or sweats, unless I have to go out to a corporate client, and it allows me to make my own hours, which is of course good and bad. During tax season I wind up working twenty hour days, during the summer I can get to the beach more often than not. My referrals are all word of mouth, and I'm sometimes astonished at the number of trusting young women who will call and make an appointment to come to my "office", having just me me on the phone. Over the years I've had young magazine writers among my clientele, and they've passed my name down to other writers as they've moved on to other endeavors. Sometimes they graduate to being editors, sometimes they decide to be freelance writers, sometimes they just get fired.

Geraldine had come to me three years ago, having just lost her job at a beauty magazine. I did her tax return with the understanding that she might need a little time to pay me for my efforts, and so when the end of the year came around, I understood that she had hit a rougher patch than she had anticipated. I met with her in March to do her taxes again, and she told me a long and sad story of barely making ends meet, living from hand to mouth, and so I did her tax return for a second year, and waited once again to no avail, as the end of the year came and I still hadn't received any sort of payment for my work. How does the saying go---fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice, shame on me, And so I wrote off what she owed me, and chalked it up to my bad judgment and her bad personality. The bills weren't large, and I frankly just felt annoyed that I had misjudged the situation.

And so, imagine my surprise when my caller ID lit up with her name last March...what chutzpah, I thought. And yet I answered the phone, and had a long conversation with her about her responsibilities, how I needed to make mortgage payments and put gas in my car, etc., etc., and how I really really couldn't get involved with her for a third year with no prospect of getting paid anything for my efforts. She pleaded and begged, promising that if I would see her, she would bring something to get the process started. And so, against my better judgment yet again, we made an appointment for the following week.

Test Driving #2

Over a year ago, I wrote about the difficulties and problems in buying toys without having tried them. Sometimes they just don't work, sometimes they are pleasurable but just don't hit you in the right spot or the right way, sometimes they suck...and they ain't cheap!!!

At some point, I had gone to my local branch of Babeland to buy multiple packets of lubes, so that She and I could try them out and find just the right one. She's so blocked that Her response to it all is "just go and buy the KY", and then her OB/GYN told her that Astroglide is the absolute best.

Let me be perfectly clear about this---Astroglide was absolutely horrible for us...we both thought it became tacky, sticky, non lubricating and more of a pain in the ass in general as we used it. So we threw it out, and went back to the sample packets, trying to find just the right one. And then we tried something European called Pur.

At the risk of being repetitive, let me be perfectly clear about this---Pur was absolutely horrible for me. The lube part of it was wonderful, great to the touch, very lubricating and easy to work with. But the clean up part is absolutely horrible...this stuff doesn't wash off, even after two soap ups and rinses. It just doesn't wash off...and I had to resort to drying it off with a towel. The toys themselves, both hard plastic and softer, will never be the same...they've been washed several times, and I will be boiling them tomorrow in a last ditch attempt to rescue them for any eternity of greasiness (and yes, I know you should always boil the hard plastic toys, it's just that these only go into me!!).

Caveat emptor.

The Other Blue Eyes

I live in New York City, at the very fringes of a neighborhood where mogul, captains of industry, Hollywood stars, and masters of conspicuous consumption also reside. And like all New Yorkers, when I see someone famous I tend to look at them once, and then studiously ignore them, respecting their privacy, and understanding that even though they're famous, in their own hometown they deserve to live a normal life.

Longer ago than I care to remember, She and I had taken her mother out to a neighborhood coffee shop, a diner with European asperations, for lunch. It was the middle of December, and her mother had come to the city for Christmas shopping. We were seated at a corner table, and I took no notice of the couple that was seated next to us. The waitress came over to take our order, and then turned to the table next to us. And then I heard that voice.

"Would you have anything as daring as iced tea?", the gentleman to my left asked, in a voice that I had heard hundreds of times, and I did the involuntary head snap to see just who it was. And I fell deep inside his incredible blue eyes...it was Paul Newman, having lunch with a friend. His smile was brilliant, the crinkles around his eyes magnifying his charm, and in an instant I was transported back to all the movies I had seen him in. And then, like a good New Yorker, I turned back, respecting his privacy, allowing him to have his lunch in peace the same way that I was having mine.

It was the first of many times I was to see him in the nabe and in the city...sometimes he was just strolling down 5th Avenue, sometimes he was shopping in the local Korean deli, trying to get the owner to stock more of his pasta sauces, sometimes he would smile or wink, giving the index finger on the side of his nose sign from The Sting, sometimes he just rushed by, hurrying on an errand. I saw him occasionally at the theater, growing visibly older and slightly more fragile looking and rickety, once talking to himself and referring to himself as Pops. I saw him at a Chantecleer concert in a church in Connecticut, visibly not wanting to be there as much I didn't want to either, but beholden, either to the church or his wife, owing the time and paying his dues.

His good work and his good works will live long into the future, and should serve as a model for others, both in show business and not.

And the Lad bears his name, because I realized at the naming time that all the Pauls I knew were the nicest people.

Playing With Old Friends-Epilogue

It would be nice to say that things reverted back to normal, or back to where they used to be, and it would be nice to say that things didn't really change and stayed the way they were before, but they didn't. We spent the next few days tiptoeing around each another, silent breakfasts followed by catch-as-catch-can dinners where each of us would fix a meal and eat independently of the other, each on of us working hard to be in the same place but to be invisible, sleeping in the same bed but not together or with each other, truly ships that passed in the night. Franny watched tv in bed, I watched many of the same programs in the family room, the sounds echoing through the house. Neither one of us really said anything about that evening to the other, limiting our conversations to the necessary sorting of day-to-day problems and tasks.

Until the night that I thought I felt her drape her leg over mine and reach across the bed, which by now felt as wide as a football field. I rolled over on my side, thrusting an open hand between her legs, letting my hand rest on the smooth parts of her thighs, and she reached down for my hand, seemingly ready to move it up to her crotch. But I had misread the situation, or just imagined it in my longing for her and for the intimacy of her touch, as she put her fingers around my wrist and moved my hand away from her body and back toward mine. She pivoted in bed, reaching over to turn on the reading lamp beside her, and then turning back to face me.

"You liked it, didn't you? You liked seeing another man making love to me, no fucking me, ripping the orgasms from me, didn't you? You liked it, you really liked it." Her eyes widened at me, a mixture of anger, fear, a tiny bit of lust mixed in as she remembered what had happened, her skin flushing slightly, the tiny pulse at the side of her neck beating away like a crazed metronome. She flung the sheet off, sitting up straight, crossing her legs as though sitting at a campfire, moving the sheet off me as well. And I could feel my cock jump at the shock of the cooler air...I was erect, hard, as aroused as I had been that evening.

"I can see how much you liked it, me getting the life fucked out of me while you watched...your cock looks like a fucking totem pole, it's so hard. It's what you wanted, isn't it? Look at how fucking excited you are by just my talking about it." And, embarrassingly enough, I could feel my skin begin to flush as well, the shame of what she was saying sinking in, the thought being said out loud for the first time that I had enjoyed seeing her with another man, seeing her doubleteamed by a voracious couple, not caring where the next touch or caress came from, only wanting to be used more and more and more.

And I watched the expression in her eyes change, the anger and fear draining away as she said the words, all the words, as she let out the feelings that she had kept in these past few days. Sly cunning and a look of calculated scheming replaced what had been there before she spoke, and I could see that although things were somewhat as they were, they weren't ever going to be the same. She reached across the bed, grabbing my hyper-erect cock and absentmindedly stroking it slowly up and down. "Now that I know what you want, what really lights you up, we can go forward from there, there have to be some changes. We're still together, but things have to work a different way."

And she just smiled, the cheshire cat smile, the cat who ate the canary smile, her face a mask of insolence.