Hidden Identity

Tomorrow I leave Bangkok before the sun comes up, to start the serious part of the trip, trekking in Bhutan at altitude. One interesting aspect for me the first time I did this sort of trip two years ago was that I was way out of my league, physically just about capable of keeping up, but with no camping or outdoor skills, and so, as Blanche duBois so effectively put it, I had to depend of the kindness of others. I shared a tent with a guy from Alaska, a city dweller, who just about saved me from death and destruction at every turn, and he did it with kindness and courtesy. Others in the group also pitched in, helping me with all the skills that I never had learned before.

Part of this process was that I was forced to become the non New Yorker. We lived in a very limited world in Gotham City, and frankly I'm very good at it. We know what we need to know, and don't mind telling others that we're good at it, at living in the city. But out on the trail and in the wilderness, I have to become much more humble and ask people for help. Last time I had a daypack right out of Gilmore Girls. Now I have a real daypack, I just don't know how to use it correctly, how to get strapped in. I have new gaiters that I'm not sure if I can get on, and then there's just about everything else that I've forgotten since I did it in 2005. I want desperately to think that this is just like riding a bike, you remember as you do it, but my greatest fears are that once again I'll be the know nothing guy.

I'm always the one approaching the knot of tourists huddled over the map, asking if they need help. And I'm hoping that what goes around comes around, that the good karma that I try to share when I help those poor souls from Europe and Asia will come back to me when I look to others. Think positive thoughts just like you did for Tinkerbelle years ago when you first saw Peter Pan. I'll need all the help I can get.

This is Tuesday afternoon, and I go to Bhutan at 5AM tomorrow, and am out on the trail Friday morning, at which point I'll truly be out of contact until the following week.

Earworm-Who Are You by the Who, Only Living Boy in New York by Simon and Garfinkle

So Much For That

What I hate about the internet is that it can always be there. As I checked into my hotel, after being in transit for almost 22 hours, the one thing that rang out in my head was the statement that the entire hotel is a hot zone, and there are laptops to borrow gratis...it's a Relais and Chateaux hotel, a boutique in Bangkok, probably much more than I needed. But then there's this email thing.
I sat down with my friend Chuckie the gym rat before I left, he who comes here several months a year, and he regaled me with tales of the bar girls, all beautiful, all inexpensive, all gracious. And then the cab driver gave me the same spiel. Which starts to look more and more interesting.
I never wrote about my penchant for watching, for looking, for being the observer. I've known about it for ages, the rush of getting close to the action but not touching, being there but not being in it. When I went to Amsterdam two years ago, I went throught the red light district several times, but couldn't quite get through the door.

Part II_Leavin' On A Jet Plane

Tomorrow morning, well before the crack of dawn, I leave on what we're euphemistically (sp?) calling the B Tour---Bangkok, Bhutan, Berlin. It's a trip that's been in the planning for almost two years, ever since I summitted Kilimanjaro. It started as just Bhutan, then I added a long weekend in Bangkok, and then She decided She didn't like being left behind, and so together we added Berlin. I've been a nervous wreck putting together clothing and equipment for three radically different climates---humid and 90, crisp and 50s, damp and 40s respectively. And I've beefed up training so that I don't crash as badly as I did on day before summitting Kili. But that's another story.

It should be stated here that I'm about the only solitary (not single) male going to Bangkok who isn't going as a sex tourist, although my friend Chuckie the gym rat tells me that everybody does it, and what happens in Bangkok stays in Bangkok. I keep telling him no, but....

There are internet cafes in Bangkok and many in Bhutan, and I'll try to post if time and experiences permit. I will return on November 12th, so please check in periodically. Climbing to altitude is optional, but returning is mandatory.

If you believe in a Supreme Being, say a prayer for me, and if you're an agnostic, have a good thought for me. Everyone can always use whatever help they can get.

Earworms-One Night in Bangkok by Murray, Leavin On A Jet Plane

Part I-A Question of Terms

I grew up in the big city, She grew up in a very small village, where everybody knew everybody else's business. Or so it seemed. Her best friend had a child while still in high school, after the requisite shotgun marriage (do I have to explain what that means?), and She became the little girl's godmother. As time progressed, She and her friend drifted apart, as life changed. We still see the daughter from time to time in the village; she's grown into a lovely, capable, and accomplished woman.

This summer, She and I met her friend, whom She hadn't spent any sort of time with in a very long time. The friend was in town from Florida with her husband (ten years younger), and so we invited them over for drinks in the late afternoon. He is the beverage manager at a large restaurant where they live, and so he wound up managing the drinks. During the course of the two hours together, each of them remarked more than once on how much they liked their lifestyle (not in caps) and how much they liked to party.

The time ended and we all vowed to remain in better contact, leaving the ball in their court for when they came north. To me, when somebody tells you they love to party, and they're married or in a relationship, it's code word for open relationship, and that's what I took it to mean, while She just thinks that they like to have a good time.

Is this the usual male/female dichotomy, or am I hearing something that just isn't part of her vocabulary in any fashion?

The Words

I often put an "Earworm" song at the end of my posts---it's the song that's gotten stuck in my head, keeps going round and round, it's what whistle ad nauseum while driving. One of the worst was the bridge from an Oliver Nelson song called "Stolen Moments". I whistled the solo trumpet part while I was hearing the chords in my head. Even my friend Buddy, who knows the piece as well as I do, wanted to murder me.

But sometimes it's the words that get stuck in the rinse cycle. I've had a line from "Diamonds In The Soles Of Her Shoes", from Paul Simon's Graceland album going on and on---"EMPTY AS A POCKET WITH NOTHING TO LOSE." It's during the time when he really started to experiment with words as well as with music, and the result was breathtaking. The other line that runs round and round this week is from "Lady Madonna", the Beatles song. FRIDAY NIGHT ARRIVES WITHOUT A SUITCASE. What does that mean, and does it make any difference? The line is so expressive that it stands on its own, much as what Dylan (Bob, not Thomas), wrote in the 60s when he first went electric and recorded Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde.

And there are tons of other lines. Anybody got any, lines that just reverberate and stay with you, echoing in you mind over and over again?

Listen To The Music

In a way I'm like a teenager, in that I have a soundtrack to my life, music is always going inside my head, and it's not the simpler popular music that most people listen to, but complicated classical stuff as well as serious jazz (not that smooooth jazz that masquerades these days).

My musical capabilities aren't genetic, as far as I can figure out, but they do come naturally to me, and I'm always amazed that what I hear and take for granted is far from what most people hear. You hear the melody, for sure, and you probably hear the bass line, if it's pronounced enough. I hear that as well, but I also hear the inner voices, the chord structure, the secondary rhythms, and it's easy for me to isolate each element and understand what its function is in making the music sound as it does. And it's sooo easy for me to do this, it's the way I hear music. It's automatic.

And I've been fortunate to work in both rock n roll as well as classical arenas, touring with rock bands and singing at Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall, as well as singing backup for Andrea Bocelli. I've seen the music world from all sides, having cut my jazz teeth on Miles, Mingus and the MJQ. I've got chops, as they say in the industry.

I often wonder what lights me up about a piece of music, music of any sort. It's the voice of the music, the tonal structure, the vamp, the rhythm, it's everything and nothing all at once. I can't figure out why I like Genesis, why certain Bach cantatas speak to me, why Gerry Mulligan's Big Band recordings reach my soul, and why I just shut down listening to other stuff that's standardly (a word?) great, like the Brahms Requiem, which bores me to tears.

Yesterday I listened to a piece on NPR about the marketing of the new Radiohead(?) CD---almost said album---as a download only, pay as you wish, and the bits of music that I heard reached right in and grabbed me. Can anyone explain to me why? I, the luddite, now have to download (as soon as the DSL returns next week) the CD.

Dreams: Whatever You Want-Endgame

And so i heard the hotel door click shut, and i waited in the darkness, trying hard to remain calm, to not let fear run away with me, waiting for Her to return. And waited. And waited some more, trying hard to not allow myself to strain against the ties, as that would only bind me tighter. Finally i heard the keycard swipe through the door, and with a short gust of warm air from the hallway, She returned.
"Oh, isn't that nice, you've decided to stay and chill," She said, as She climbed back up on the bed and pushed my knees back up and out. "This is going to be so much fun...for me, anyway, and who knows, perhaps even for you," She whispered into my ear, as She reached down between my asscheeks and squirted out an enormous amount of lube. "I know, sweetheart, it seems like a lot, but you'll need every bit of it." And with that She put my feet up in the air, and then against what seemed like Her chest, and then right above the soft flesh of her breasts. I could feel the straps of her bra, and the swell of her boobs above the shelf of it. She plunged two fingers into my hole, then three, then stood up so that i almost vertical, standing on my shoulders with just the littlest bit of support from Her.
Her fingers came out, and something else went in. It felt smooth and round and made of plastic, filling my whole anus, as She stuffed me with it, pushing it in just once until it couldn't go any further up. "Here comes the really good part." And something rattled down the tube, then another, then another...She was pouring ice cubes down the tube and up my ass. Another, and then another, as I began to feel the chill of the ice, and feel the ice cubes melting as they met with the inner heat of my body. I was beginning to be chilled, and my balls retreated deep inside my body. Another ice cube, and then another, and then She began to stroke my cock with her lubed hand, pushing hard in only one direction. The water from the melted ice began to overflow and leak down my back and chest, and She put in more cubes with one hand, while She continued to stroke me in the direction of my face.
"I'm going stroke you just a little bit more, and then I want you to cum, sweetheart. Just three more times, and then you're going to cum. Are you ready? One. Two. Three. Cum now." And I did, shooting spurts onto my face and chest. Oh god, oh god, oh god..
And i was Hers, whatever She wanted, and seemingly whenever She wanted it.

"Heart Sick"

Two days ago I started reading a book called "Heart Sick" by Chelsea Cain, which was reviewed somewhere a month or so ago, and is now lurking at the bottom of the NYT bestsellers fiction.

It's a mystery, something I usually don't read, the story of a police detective kidnapped by a female serial killer and tortured almost to death (this part is told in flashback). The tec and the narrator, a newspaper writer who narrates the current part, are tracking another and different serial killer.

The description of the detective's submission to the torture by the serial killer and their subsequent relationship is breathtaking, and is one of the best d/s relationship descriptions that I've ever read. A must read.

The Times They Are A Changin'

It's come as something of a surprise to me to find out that after all these years, I really want somebody to take charge, someone to take the lead, to initiate the activity and set the pace. I want to be done to, rather than be to doer, and I want the feeling of surrendering to somebody else's desires. I've always like the bottom in intercourse, and now I'm finding out that I want to be that bottom.

But She's never comfortable with that direction, never one to be the doer rather than the done to, and so I'm still forced to turn the key and start things up. I've discussed it with Her over the years, and the conversations always seem to stick for a little bit, She becomes aggressive and the aggressor, but then it all lapses back.

We've been together longer than not, and it's hard to think about how to change this thing without changing everything, because the whole picture is fine.
Except this.



Earworm-Stealers Wheel-Stuck in the Middle With You