One of The Seven Deadly Sins

There's no excuse, really, no excuse at all---my friend says that there can be reasons, but there are no excuses.
Sloth, the inability to find one's way to complete one's tasks---and I've ignored my poor blog.
Not out of lack of something to say...I ALWAYS have something to say, but sometimes I show an inability to say things...that's what the shrink says...it's like the line in Cool Hand Luke "a failure to communicate."
But I'm back at it, and I do have a lot to say...and it will show as the New Year progresses. I want to write about the dating website I joined, continue the tale of Not Enough, hopefully have more new adventures, depart for another high altitude trek and live to tell about it (Annapurna), sing with the NY Phil in June, and experience things I don't even know about just yet.
Thank you to those precious few bloggers who've added me to the blogrolls this year...the newest ones I'm reading (and enjoying) are Bareback Girl, Slut No Bounds, Pandora's Box.
Be safe, happy and healthy in the coming year, dear reader. If we have that, we can all survive the economy, Bernie Madoff, and all the other bad things that come down the pike.

Not Enough-Part I

We had survived the holiday season, She and I, getting through Christmas at Her loudmouth sister's, survived the early morning phone call from the Wicked Witch of The West sister, who spent our precious time gushing about her wonderful Christmas Eve, and excoriating Her about everything else, knowing full well that She would be on her best behavior (as the middle child, the appeaser, the gratifier, the go-between) and would be sure to not rock the boat...they were all daughters of the same parents after all, all ACOA, each assuming the specified role long ago proscribed by years of family misadventures.
We lay at opposite ends of the long couch, our legs intertwined, each of us occasionally shifting from one hip to the other, squirming to find a more comfortable position, each of us struggling to catch up on newspapers and magazines that had fallen by the wayside during the Christmas season, the unread events and editorials of the past ten days on the floor before us, each of us with a mug of coffee close at hand. We were smug in the knowledge that we had survived another holiday season, the onslaught of retail adventures and wholesale giftgiving put behind us. We had escaped again together.

Or so I thought.

We had been together for more than ten years at the time, and had long ago stopped talking about sex during sex, both of us feeling that there was some element of traffic directing in specific instructions, and so we had taken to discussing whatever happened in bed at some time the next day, or the day after, sort of like a post game show if we had been playing some sport. The comments often came out of nowhere, no preamble, out of the clear blue, and the listener often had to take a moment to shift gears, the wheels spinning before gaining traction.
"It's not enough for me," she said, and I struggled to understand what she meant, as my heart dropped in my chest. "It's nice, but it's not enough. I'm not lost in it, I'm not abandoning myself to the sex, I'm not disappearing into it. I'm watching as though I were a third person in the room, apart from the two of us, watching the mechanics of it from another place in the bedroom."
I was dumbstruck, unable to say a word, shamed and embarrassed by the knowledge that I was doing my job but not completing her. I had no response, knowing by the way she phrased her words that there was no chance or opportunity for me to find a solution and fix the problem. She was presenting everything as a fait accompli.
"There's passion and intimacy, but there's no lust. I miss the lust. I truly ache for it. I lust for the lust," she said, flashing me an smile that conveyed both sadness and desire at the same time, her eyes narrowing with determination and blatant horniness.

"I want to take a lover."

TMI Tuesday

1. What are your turn-ons?
a good listener, politeness and civility, good deeds done w/o recognition or the desire for same, the sound of silence in a conversation.
2. What are your turn-offs? bad breath, rudeness, being cheated by design, being ignored
3. Not counting your turn-ons, what's the best trait a person can have?
the ability to be truly interested in others
4. Not counting your turn-offs, what's the worst trait a person can have?
being self-centered to the exclusion of anything else
5. What's your biggest pet peeve?
the use of the phrase NO PROBLEM coming from a service person, like a waiter or counterstaff...of course it's not problem...IT'S YOUR JOB.
Bonus (as in optional):Describe your best and worst experience.

Much too broad...one of the best was the day I realized the Boy could read, and that he'd learned to do it intuitively and on his own...one of the worst was the day She found out that there were others...

"We're An American Band"

I am an accountant by profession, getting my start by being a tour accountant for various rock bands, back in the day before many of you, dear readers, were born. The thing to remember about touring with a rock band is that everything you've ever heard or imagined is true. If you think about the movie Almost Famous, you'll have some inkling as to what goes on.
This story is deadly true, and took place in the mid '70s, and I was out on the road with Alice Cooper. We were doing a spate of concerts for MidSouth Productions, and we blew through Memphis, Mobile, Jackson Miss, and then we pulled into Little Rock. I headed for the hotel to sort out my accounting and count the money, the crew went to the venue to set up, the musicians took naps and relaxed. When I get to the hall around 6PM, one of my roadie friends asks me if Connie has gotten to me yet, and I ask him Connie Who?? He says, "You know the song by Grand Funk Railroad...sweet sweet Connie's doing her act, she has the whole band and that's a natural fact," and it dawns on me...the song is about a groupie, a groupie whose aim isn't so high, the one who does the crew.
Now, all my guys know that I'm married, they've met Her, we're all good friends in spite and in addition to my being the straight guy, and yet the road manager hooks me up with Connie. I tell him it's really not my style, he tells me that I'll upset her, disappoint her, she prides herself on getting to EVERYONE. And so I wind up in Alice's dressing room, with my tongue down her throat, to start with, her hands all over me, and then she drops to her knees as if poleaxed, opens my zipper with her clenched teeth, pulls out my cocks and starts to go to work...and after a few minutes, I realize that her breath is tickling my stomach, and it's because she's swallowed me whole, and is breathing heavily through her flared nostrils...she's facing me and deepthroating me ever so efficiently...now She can do this, but usually only in a 69 position. But Connie, sweet Connie, has engulfed me and is mashing her nose into my pubic hair for all she's worth. And despite it all, I don't cum in her throat, but wind up fucking her standing up, and cum deep inside her. Yes, I know, unprotected sex, but this all took place during the only era when you couldn't die from having sex...post syphilis, pre AIDS.
The stranger part is that she travelled with us for a couple of weeks, met Her along the way, told Her how cute I was, and She never once imagined that my cock had been deep inside numerous parts of this seemingly nice girl.
Well, she was a nice girl, just a slut in the process.

Earworm-Grand Funk Railroad We're An American Band

Just A Few Random Thoughts #4

I've long been fascinated with tales of Hollywood back in the day, specifically harking back to the 30s and 40s, when Hollywood was a wide open town ruled by a crooked and corrupt police force. I've devoured most of James Ellroy's books, loved Hollywood Confidential, have The Changeling on my shortlist for this weekend, have been in love with Louise Brooks (one generation earlier, back in the silent era), thought Devil in A Blue Dress and Black Dahlia were great fun, and am about to start a bio of Tallulah Bankhead, an "I don't give a damn what you think" girl. If you know of any other movie or book that fits into this category and is worth pursuing, please let me know.
I'm starting to work on a sex and intimacy survey that comes from Thurday's Child, who runs a wonderful blog http://www.sexnshoes.com/ and who will be happy to include you in if you ask her. I've always felt that introspection is important to keeping your balance in a tippy world, and this survey asks lots of nice questions that will probably help me stay on track, or get back on track, or just understand why I've jumped the tracks. OK, enough of that metaphor. From what I can understand, the thought here is to learn about oneself, and to help Thursday's Child figure herself out...both worthwhile pursuits.
I've just finished reading desire by Susan Cheever, daughter of the late John Cheever. I thought it would be similar to the book a few years ago by a retired prima ballerina from ABT who revealed herself as the queen of anal sex, a tell all book with lots of juicy details, but it was none of those. She discusses at great length her sex addiction, how she views sex addiction historically and in numerous other ways, what lies ahead for her, similarities and differences to other addictions, lots of other stuff. It's a well written book, albeit with a few too many references about where lunch or dinner or drinks took place, and slim enough to be read in a day or so, perhaps over the long holiday weekend.
My thanks go out to those that had or held a positive thought for me concerning my audition. As always, it was much more benign that I would have thought, and I'm happy to report that I passed, and will be appearing with the NY Philharmonic next June for 7 performances during the month---yeah, me and about 200-300 others on stage, but still exciting.
The upcoming Thanksgiving holiday is a time to give thanks, so please take that time. Be thankful for friends either in the flesh or online, for family near and far, for loved ones past and present, for those that care about you and that you care about. Be thankful for the things you have, and truly examine what those things are, be they small or cosmic, and truly appreciate them.
I'm on the away team this holiday, and so it's unclear whether I'll have the freedom to get online for a few days. Travel safely if you're on the road, hold your loved ones near and dear.

TMI Tuesday #162

1. What is your favorite Thanksgiving food?
the cranberry sauce, the kind with the raw crans and minced up orange.

2. You can flip a switch that will wipe any band or musical artist out of existence. Which one will it be?
two bands from back in the day---iron butterfly (ina gadda da vida) or vanilla fudge

3. You seem to be having an excellent day because you just came across a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk. Holy crap, a hundred bucks! How are you gonna spend it?
I'm with lilly here, just fritter it away, although new toys might be a possibility

4. What is your favorite curse word?
again, siding with lilly, the F word---just sooooooo expressive, can be used in almost any context, except a religious service

5. Rufus appears out of nowhere with a time-traveling phone booth. You can go anytime in the PAST. What time are you traveling to and what are you going to do when you get there?
Again, a back in the day answer...I had to opportunity to move to SFO in the days of the Haight, and passed it up.

Bonus (as in optional):You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what's even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What's it gonna be?
I'd opt for speed and becoming Flash

The Kid Stays In The Game

My good friend viviane recently used the phrase "pick up guy", and I harkened back to that moniker last night. I was never a pick up guy, never the one with the smooth line and the calculated come ons. I could always make small talk and still can, but I never had the rap and patter down pat.
She and I went out to the Blue Note to see Ivan Lins and the NY Voices. He's a wonderful Brazilian singer/composer, and they are such capable and innovative singers that they left me wondering how they find their notes and lines, and I've been listening to jazz singing groups since Lambert, Henricks and Ross.
The tables at the Blue Note cost $45 per person/cover and are reservable...and the seats at the bar are only $25 but alas not reservable, and so I went ahead, way early, arriving at 6:15 for an 8PM show, only to find that some seats were already gone, and so I sat way at the end of the curved bar, and was quick to notice two women sitting just past the curve. And we made eye contact right away, the prettier woman's gaze direct and unabashed. I ordered a Jameson and soda from the bartender, remarking to him that it was a shame that She was coming later, the two women were soooo attractive and obviously on the prowl. I was quick to notice that they conversed in French, Parisian French at that, and seemed to understand little English, as I had to translate several remarks from the bartender to them.
There were several back and forths with the prettier one, much eye contact, serious non-verbal flirting, and the doorman even floats by, saying to me what a shame it is that She's coming, because I'm already sitting there involved with a very pretty lady. Finally, they ask me when the show starts, and I reply "A huit heures, plus ou moin", meaning eight o'clock. It becomes obvious that they had no idea they'd be holding down the bar for another hour, and so after a brief conversation, they get up to leave, the prettier one throwing one last smile at me.
Nothing happened, but it's always nice to know that someone might be interested in picking me up.

Higher and Higher

The preface to this post is that I've outlived my father, his brother, one male cousin on my father's side. My father had his first heart attack at 47, as did his brother, as did two of my three male cousins. So you can see that my father's side of the family is fraught with health issues.
In 2001, I realized that I had a significant birthday coming up, and decided that I wanted to do something meaningful to reaffirm the fact that I was still alive, and was planning to stay alive and active and healthy for a very long time. I decided to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. Well, not climb, because Uhuru, as it is known to the local Masai, requires no technical climbing to get to the summit, no ropes, no ice axes, no pitons, just the physical strength and the mental toughness to walk uphill for days on end. I traveled with an organized tour, shared a tent with the only other CPA on the mountain, earned the sobriquet Babu (a term of respect and endearment, meaning Grandpa), became the poky puppy early on, and summitted, reaching the roof of Africa after untold difficulties and superhuman efforts. I framed my certificate proudly, and look at it every day as I sit down to work.
I applaud the efforts and achievements of Anne Curry and her team in reaching 15,700 feet. She's right when she says that they were on the hill at the wrong time of the year...perhaps broadcast journalism required her to do make this journey live, and not film ahead and put it in the can for later broadcast. Even with days for acclimitization added into the mix, it's frighteningly difficult, no doubt about it.
What I don't understand is why none of her crew took any medication to combat the altitude sickness. This isn't one of those purist discussions, like climbing Everest without oxygen. Everybody that I've ever known has taken medication to combat the effects of the altitude on cranial pressure, whether it's Diamox(which was originally invented as a kidney medication) or some other substance. Even some of our less experienced Masai porters took pills as we climbed above 16,000 feet.
I only tuned in to the climb the last few days, so perhaps I missed the explanation of non-medicating which might have been given earlier in the series. Can anyone enlighten me as to whether a conscious decision was made, and discussed on air, as to why not taking the medication was the option chosen?

Client Relations Part III

"Please, don't make me beg."

She pulled one end of the tie of the dress, and it slowly slid part of the way open, the two uneven sides of the dress parting as she cocked one hip slightly higher than the other and tried to twist her lips into a crooked enough smile, her dark eyes flashing their lively message out at me. What precious little she wore under the dress could've fit into a coffee cup with room to spare...a pair of panties that didn't seem to begin anywhere, a tiny triangle of white silk covering the area where her thighs met her torso, suspended from her slim hips by what seemed like fishing line colored white, the lines making tiny indentations in her white skin...a quarter cup bra holding up her sweet looking breasts, her nipples surprisingly dark, peeking out from behind narrow white lace shells, the tips erect and pushing forward, almost bruised looking in their arousal.

She paused for a moment, perhaps feeling some small sense of modesty or embarassment, because she raised her right arm up and across her breasts, cupping the left one but effectively hiding them both from view, her other hand rising slightly to the cleft between her legs, and I could see her middle finger depressing the tiny bit of silk between her lips, the fabric all but disappearing. Her smile changed and faded, replaced by a different sort of grin, a cat that ate the canary grin, the cheshire cat grin, the only one corner of her mouth grin, her eyes squinting closed just a bit in concentration and determination. She tried hard to pout out her lower lip, and ran her tongue across both lips making them wet and shiny.

"Can we work something out? Isn't there something we can do?"

TMI Tuesday

1. When did you last use your cellular telephone as a flashlight? I never have, but She used hers to open the front door this past summer, in the dark, both of us way too inebriated to remember that the lock is installed upside down.

2. On a scale from 1-10, how comfy are you being naked? 8-9, not embarrassed by my body, just sometimes lost without my glasses.

3. What is the longest you've ever been celibate after having lost your virginity? close to a year in college...things just weren't working out.

4. Have you ever had sex in a car? No, born and raised in NYC, one of the oldest people you'll ever know that learned to drive.

5. When did you last use food or drink as medication? within the last month, when I had to put up with family issues, Hers not mine, and it meant listening to tales of mental cruelty and abuse.

Bonus: Name three words that:
a) get you excited-beach
b) make you squirm-honesty
c) make you laugh-nothing here, i'm a very random laugher

Me And The Night And The Music

So, I've tried to write this post more times than I care to think about, each time coming up slightly short or slightly out of tune, feeling as though I was singing the wrong words to the song, feeling the hesitation of 4 against 3, knowing that chords have been left hanging with their 7ths or 9ths reaching out for some sort of resolution. The true story of me and the night and the music is a lifelong story, one told in proper prospective, with intense periods of involvement, a constant background soundtrack, the never ending feeling that any teenager has in the incomplete movie of his life, in which he is always the star and always the focus of attention. I've started from when I was two years old going forward, from today looking back over time, from any number of midpoints blossoming out in all directions...not a single start has found its way to completion in any meaningful or satisfactory way.

There's some much to say and tell, and I'm only a lowly blogger...my skills at wordsmithing and storytelling are suspect, my capabilities sometimes falling below even what I might deem adequate for the purpose at hand, and so I constantly start and delete the story of me and the night and the music. Perhaps the only way to get through the story is to just jump in and start telling it, and see where it goes. The process sounds comfortable, soft, friendly, forgiving of errors in style or content, accepting what is proferred, allowing me to get where I want to, to get to where I need to get to.

And so I shall---jump right in. I hate auditions, I lose focus, I lose attachment to the real world and seem to be operating on autopilot. I have sung pieces in the wrong language, omitted the last page of the sheet music for the accompanist (who politely left me hanging in an unresolved cadence), started sightsinging on the wrong note and floundered through a whole piece without hitting many correct notes, gone to the wrong room at the wrong time, shown up for auditions where I wasn't qualified to audition, you name it and I've done it. And yet, I've managed to pass every audition I've ever sung. I know it's partially because men in any chorus are desirable, partially because I really do have a good voice (jesus, such ego!),and partially because although I may screw up mightily, I never actually overstep myself and try out for a chorus I'm not reasonably sure of getting into. I'm a second bass, and can sing down to a low D comfortably, and up to an F above middle C without making dogs howl in the moonlight.

Next Monday I audition for a new chorus, a chorus that will do eight major performances in NYC next June, and as always, I'm petrified with fear. No prepared music is required, only a voice test, a follow instructions test, and the dreaded sightsinging requirement. I can learn the music, follow the conductor, show up at every rehearsal prepared, but I just don't sightread that well, and I'm hoping, praying, beseeching the almighty, that I can dazzle them with footwork and blind them with prestidigitation, once again passing the audition and giving me somewhere to go on Monday nights so that I won't have to keep company with David Caruso any longer.

Please, please, please, pray for me.

Earworm-Miles Davis, Porgy and Bess

Lady Heather

Tonight marks the return of Lady Heather to CSI...it's probably the only hint of the bdsm world on network TV. Melinda Clarke, who is always wonderful at playing sluts and fallen women, has always worked so well at capturing the domme side of relationships. Granted that you have to read between the lines sometimes---there's only so much that will get past the censors, and what gets shown here is, for the most part, only the mental and psychological side of the relationship.
But it's a chance to say "ah, I get it. That's me," regardless of which side of the relationship you're on.
And if you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, cbs.com has a sort of highlights catchup reel running on their website, just to put things in place.
CBS Network 9-10PM.

TMI Tuesday

1. Have you ever had a moving violation? An auto accident? That was your fault?
Never an accident, but got my very first speeding ticket in December 2007
2. Have you ever voted? How old was your were you the first time you voted?
I was 21 when I first voted...the rules were different back in the day
3. Are you glad this election cycle is over?
The cycle is endless, the process endlessly fascinating.
4. Do you have guilty pleasure? What is it (or are they)?
Porn for sure, shoot em up movies, the juacqueline carey novels among many
5. What is the most embarrassing thing you have done recently?
Told my shrink that she didn't really know the whole truth
Bonus: How much impact has the Wall Street and general economic wilt had on you?
Probably a lot going forward..as a CPA everything always affects me on a delayed basis

Don't Be A Lanavat

Early on my parents impressed upon me the importance of voting, of making a choice, taking a stand, adopting a position. I went into the voting booth with my stay-at-home mother every election day, and watched as she made her choices...I wasn't allowed to pull the levers, but I could come in and watch the process.
And so I impress upon my small readership the importance and necessity of voting. I know who I would encourage you to vote for, but it's sooo important to be part of the process.
IF YOU DON'T VOTE, YOU FORFEIT THE RIGHT TO COMPLAIN UNTIL THE NEXT ELECTION!!
And many many bonus points to anyone who can tell me what a lanavat is.

The Calendar

I've long held that despite the fact that we're all adults, we all live on an academic calendar, from September through the summer...the calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen and use to notate various events, is just formatted incorrectly, and Her filofax, which runs on the academic year, is the one we all live by.
I used to live by a slightly more skewed calendar years ago. I used to be a serious runner, a marathon runner, a train 6 days a week runner, someone who ran 12 months of the year, staying indoors only when the temperature dipped to single digits. I had started running while I was studying for the CPA exam, listening to review tapes on my walkman---it was a really long time ago, picking up the idea of mens sana in corpore sana for an ancient episode of the TV show The Paper Chase. I ran every morning in Central Park (lucky that way), awoke every morning at 5:51 AM (don't ask, please), and was able to complete a lap of the park (which teeters on 10K), be home to clean up and breakfast, and still manage to get to work by 9. I wasn't particularly fast, just persistent. I would focus on a fall marathon every year, running NY in the odd numbered years, and travelling to other cities in the even numbered ones---DC, Montreal, Newport among others.
And so this time of the year, the first weekend in November, which is when the marathon settled here after clashes with daylight savings time (don't ask, again) and Jewish holidays is somewhat sad and bittersweet. I miss the excitement of the foreign runners clogging the park during the week before the race, the Italian restaurants being stuffed to the gills the Friday and Saturday nights before the race, the getting up ever so early to take the ferry and catch my reserved cab across Staten Island, the millions of people waiting in the streets to applaud and encourage me, the occaisional stroke of good luck in finding a runner like the blonde haired woman in Montreal, who ran at exactly my pace for 22 miles, and was sad when I faded and we couldn't finish together. This was long before the marathon became an anybody can enter and walk the course event, when the participants were all runners and not tourists just sightseeing the city. I miss what I used to tell the Boy was "the gathering of eagles".
But I'll be out there tomorrow morning, which promises to be a brilliant day, cheering for the elite runners, and then staying to cheer of the citizens of the road, the people just happy to finish and meet or beat their own personal goals. They're all still my heroes.

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.

Just Don't Get It

We've been together long enough so that She can pick out of a crowd the woman or women that I'm attracted to---for the most part, they're of a certain type, both in body type and in facial structure...on tv you'd see them as Jorja Fox of CSI, or the Montana Girl on CSINY...short or shortish, slightly longer than shoulder length dark hair, round face, high cheekbones, and the list goes on. And She's almost never wrong. We agree on them, and we agree in women in general who we think I find pretty or striking.

But what She, and women in general find attractive, is a total mystery to me...men will almost always respond to big boobs, long legs and short skirts, Playboy-type faces. There doesn't seem to be any unified concept of what's sexy for women---Slut No Bounds, among others, will only pick out hardbodies, and I can understand that---it's the equivalent of the kneejerk reaction that men have.

And then She tells me that She thinks Prince is sexy---and I just don't get it. He's not physically imposing, not particularly handsome, skeevy moustache or naked upper lip, OK he's got a tight body but not overwhelmingly impressive---and I just don't get what's sooo sexy about him.

And She can't quite explain it to me either.

Saving Grace

My good friend Jack and his wife know that I fall in love every day, both from afar and from up close. A couple of years ago, I fell in love with Holly Hunter on Saving Grace, a show currently on hiatus until next spring. She's tough, she's soft, she laughs and cries and seizes life with both hands, holding on for the ride of her life. She loves hard and returns love even harder. Here's her creed:

I want to bust the world wide open the way you do when you're filled with you. I want to engage with people and friends...I want to be physical and I want to ask the big questions. I want to tast the taste and fix the problems...I want to run headlong into chaos and bad guys and darkness and pranks and fun, and laugh laugh laugh. I want to best the best friend and I want to be the greatest aunt and the most complicated daughter.
I want to be the mystery in the room, and I want to be known.

Playing With Old Friends-Finale

And so we stood there, all four of us, fixed in a lurid tableau...Franny in suspended animation, her eyes closed and her arms and legs just dangling in the air, alone in her own private world of sensation, the voracious couple plundering her sexuality, their hands and mouths, their limbs and organs all working away to drain the lust from Franny's poor soul, I just standing there dumbstruck, my hand slowly going back and forth on my cock, watching my poor wife being driven to a place I had never taken her, lost in her surrender to sensation, worshipping her surrender with my own self pleasure, using both hands on myself in a vain attempt to convince myself it was someone else jerking me off and tryaing to find pleasure in the act.

I watched as Franny struggled to shake her head sideways, trying frantically to remove herself in the most elemental way from what was going on. She detached from Gayle's mouth, her lips spread apart in a rictus of expression I couldn't place or understand. She gasped once, twice, desperately inhaling, whispering out "Please, no more...no more. I can't, I just can't," and they stopped, the twin vultures of lust, understanding finally that a limit had been reached. Gayle dropped her hands away from Franny's nipples and breasts, sliding her arms under Franny's to help support as the poor shell tried to stand up, stumbling backwards from Tommy's lap, juices and moisture of all sorts running down her thighs.

I came, on the floor, watching her absentmindedly make her way to the back bedroom to collapse, and I wordlessly followed her, finding her laying on the bed. I covered us both with a sheet, holding her close, not knowing if she was awake or not, conscious or not, still with me or not.

Triggers

Most of us have five senses, the elemental capabilities that form the barriers of our lives and deliver to us the emotional enrichment that takes us past humdrum existence as an amoeba. Some of us lack on of those senses, and compensate by ramping up the other four. A blessed few have a sixth sense, can see or feel into the past or future, perhaps both for better and for worse.

I've long felt that each of us has one sense that is dominant over the others. For subs it might be the sense of touch. For an artist, it's the sense of sight, the ability to translate from what the eye takes in to manual performance. For Her it's the sense of smell, and I can watch Her travel far away when we enter an old apartment building in the city, and we smell the smell of old people. Neither of us knows what that smell is, a pleasant slightly lemony or perhaps talcum powdery odor, and She's gone, instantly transported far way in time and space, back to her grandmother's walkup apartment in the Village, knowing that her grandmother will feed her Arnold bread buttered toast with orange marmalade, and accompanied by tea with milk and sugar. I watch Her stand stock still entranced by the aroma.

Or we'll come home late at night, and the commercial bakery down the block is in full swing, the entire neighborhood awash with the smell of rising yeast and marzipan. Or we'll go into a bar, and suddenly we're both sooo many years younger, overwhelmed by the lingering odor of spilled beer and stale cigarette air, melancholy for the times that were and envious of the smell that's no longer ours.

For me the triggers are auditory. Certain music evokes uncontrollable washes of emotion, overpowering feelings of joy, longing, depair. The emotions don't necessarily follow the content of the music, either the lyrics or the music itself. As I was out and about this morning, doing errands with my Ipod buds stuffed into my ears, I listened to the song Graceland by Paul Simon. I had seen the Graceland tour when it first came around, went to see Paul Simon and friends recreate the concert this past spring at BAM. The music itself, even just the intro, the rhythm setup and the ringing guitar played by one of the African musicians, fills me with uncontrolled joy, and I play it over and over and over. I'm no longer walking in a straight line but swerving back and forth on the sidewalk, an unpardonable sin for a New Yorker.

And there are pieces of music that work in just the opposite direction. I can no longer listen to the Mendelssohn Octet for Strings, because it makes me sad beyond belief and weep uncontrollably. It's not a sad or tragic piece of music, but something in the tonal structure works its way to the core of my soul, fills me with a profound sadness and sense of loss.

I went to a high school that was essentially an experiment in the arts, organized by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia during the Great Depression, where we spent half the classroom time studying either music or art. And so, when we graduated from high school, in Carnegie Hall no less, the processional wasn't Pomp and Circumstance played by the marching band, it was the overture to Die Meistersinger by Richard Wagner, played by the senior orchestra. And I realized during the playing of that piece, sitting in what I now call The Big House, that high school was truly over, that I wouldn't see most of the faces int he future that I had seen for four
years. And so, when I hear the piece, I walk taller, but with an unerring sense of disaster ahead of me.

I'm interested to know about other people's sensory triggers, what sights, sounds, smell, touches, transport you instantly into another space and time. I don't often solicit responses, but if you read this post let me know.

PS-Despite what you might think, there's just a bit more to tell in Playing With Old Friends, but as I told someone earlier today, I have to write it right...and that takes the right mood. Patience, please


Earworm-Graceland, Paul Simon

Just A Few Random Thoughts (#3)

Emma of Mrs. Kelly's Playhouse has written a brilliant post about cuckolding, being a slave, opening up a marriage. Read it at http://mrsemmakelly.blogspot.com/

I recently started to read Paul Theroux's latest book, Ghost Train To The Eastern Star. He's long been a favorite travel writer, albeit wildly opionated and a great generalizer. Some things he says resonate far beyond the book-talking about a motorway in Europe and why it looks dreary and imitative, he says "because it is imitative and looks hackneyed and unstylish and ill fitting, the way no European looks quite right in a baseball cap." And about the local porn in Budapest, "...a country's pornography offers the quckest insight into the culture and inner life of a nation, and especially the male character, I went in and assessed the gooods. It was grubby stuff, which included bestiality (dogs and women), very fat people, very hairy people, a sideline in gay cruelty, and every German perversion."

And like most of the population of the USA, I've been watching the Olympics for the past two weeks...and I'M IN LOVE WITH SUE BIRD. It's so far beyond me how she can look sooo serene running the floor, hair always in place, makeup perfect and unsmeared, great smile, wonderfully full lips.

It's good for me that the summer is almost over. I spend a fair amount of time sitting on the beach with the same group of people day after day on vacation, and weekend after weekend. I'm in the very small cultural minority, and they all sometimes forget that I am what I am, and out come the biggoted remarks. They're all old friends who usually control themselves, and I usually try to zone out when something gets said. But it's getting closer and closer to my saying something, and so Labor Day can't come soon enough.

Earworm-RL Burnside, Everything is Broken

Hair Down There

Last week I went to the theatre with viviane, and on the subway home, as I glanced out the window I saw an ad for a product called Betty Beauty, promising to dye your "hair down there" to almost any color you'd like. Inasmuch as we were speeding out of the station, I could only get a quick glimpse.
Is this a new product? Is this a new practice? Was I napping when this hit the markets?
Can someone enlighten me?

Promises, Promises

At long last I've done what I've been promising to do for months---UPDATED MY BLOGROLL.

I've deleted all the inactive or closed blogs that I've said goodbye to over the past months, and I hope I've included all the bloggers that I promised to include. If I've left you off the list for any reason, let me know in some format, and I'll mend my ways (and real quick too), now that I've figured out that I won't break something if I fool around with it.

Playing With Old Friends-V

Franny and I had long ago settled into married sex, into the you know where to touch me and I know where to touch you kind of sex, not the mindblowing fuck your brains and and don't give a damn kind of sex, and I had felt for some time that we were just going through the motions of it, getting off and getting each other off. But the earth had long since ceased to move for her, and I knew that I was giving her what she needed, but not what she wanted. And so I had kept hidden the notion of her having rampant sex with another man, kept silent the thought of watching her get fucked silly, until she was weak in the knees and couldn't walk straight. And now, somehow, this woman with the suckable nipples knew, and she knew it all. And she was pushing me towards it, towards that precipice, towards the edge from which there could never be a return.

She took my hand and pulled me back down the hallway towards the kitchen, which was now strangely dark and shrouded in shadows. We stopped in the doorway, and I realized that all the shades had been drawn, and the light entering the kitchen was only refracted sunlight from the west facing window, the light coming through the trees as the sun began to set. Tommy had grabbed a low stool from the corner of the kitchen that we normally used as a spare dining room chair when we had lots of company. He'd sat on it in the center of the room, his legs stretched out before him, low enough so that he could position Franny straddling him and still standing. I watched as she reached down between her legs and grabbed his penis at the base, steering it towards her opening, slowly starting to crouch down to put it into herself, her cunt and thighs awash and glistening with wetness.

I saw her slowly and carefully manuever the head to her opening, posing still as she became accustomed to the huge head entering her, his hands reaching forward to her waist on either side. He leaned back just a bit for balance, and began to pull her down on his cock, her eyes opening wider still, her breath escaping from her mouth along with a wordless moan which continued on and on until she reached the base. Her eyes glazed over, their focus long gone, her gaze far in the distance, as she rested, her jaw still dropped and her mouth still open in a silent o, her feet barely touching the floor. I reached my hand down and started to masturbate, knowing that I was longer and harder than I had been for a long time, more aroused by seeing Franny gone far away, her reason deserting her in search of pure pleasure. Slowly she began to rock her hips back and forth, her torso leaning back, her head flung back, her eyes now closed, her mouth still hung open as tongue protruded slightly. Tommy also leaned back ever so slightly, so that her feet could gain greater purchase on the floor. She began to grunt in rhythm to the thrusts her pelvis was making, exhaling every time she pushed forward, the grunts becoming louder as she intensified her thrusting. Tommy looked over at us, I slowly stroking my cock for fear of cumming on the kitchen floor in 30 seconds, Gayle frozen in space watching her childhood friend hammering her husband's dick with her pubic bone.

"Gayle, could you shut this bitch up? She's gonna wake up the whole neighborhood if she keeps this up." And with that, Gayle left my side, leaving me alone to watch as the couple devoured Franny, chasing all rationale from her mind. Gayle crossed behind, allowing her to lean back further from Tommy and against Gayle, her cunt now thrust forward by the extremity of the position. Gayle grabbed her head and turned it just enough to the right to plant her voracious mouth on it, and I could see her plunging her tongue in Franny's mouth as if it were another dick, swirling and twirling around her lips, taking the upper one between her teeth and pulling it slightly, snaking her hands underneath Franny's arms to grab her breasts and tweak her nipples, moving her hands in small circles, her thumbs and forefingers holding the very nipple tips and moving them in opposing circles. I continued to slowly move my hand up and down my cock, so moved by the spectacle before me, the astonishing picture of my gentle wife being eaten alive by her own sexuality and the lust of others.

HB2SS

My blog is one year old today.

Any anniversary calls for some summations and conclusions, and I've been thinking for the past week about what to say here---a brief summation of what I've done here, an evaluation of whether I've remained true to my goals, an open invitation to readers to throw brickbats or shout hoorah. And none of it coalesced into meaningful paragraphs, so I'm left with doing what the Boy's middle school head used to do when she had to make a speech---random thoughts and musings, in the hope that some of it will draw a smile or a deep thought from someone.

I've made some true friendships with fellow bloggers, and kept more than I've lost. Most are women, many are subs, and I'm still always astonished when someone comments, or when I write to a blogger outside the blog and actually get an answer. I've had im conversations that have lasted over an hour, and not because it was all sex talk. I've missed bloggers who've gone on vacation, and I feel disappointed and left behind when bloggers just stop blogging or take their blogs private without any warning. Thank you to those who have invited me along when they've become "by invitation only". You know who you are, and I'm just thanking you a second time.

I've learned about myself, both from writing things down and from reading what others have written. I've told the truth, I've told stories, I've almost lost a childhood friend because of the blog, and I've learned the desperately bitter truth that I need to remember that I'm the star of my own movie, and that there's tons of room for others. I know that I don't have to act my age, that I never want to grow up, that I'll always want to wear short pants no matter what, that I will always need another mountain to climb, that friends can and will provide help when things are darkest

I've learned to communicate more with Her, even though we talk about things that neither one of us wants to talk about, although the basic problems between us remained unresolved, and cannot perhaps ever be fixed. I still need to figure out whether I can live the rest of my life within that scenario, but I'm dealing with it, and so is She, in Her own way.

Technologically I'm still as backwards as ever. I still shy away from all things that would make this a better blog technically, and I apologize almost weekly to bloggers who ask to link up with me...I know this, and I'm vowing to make amends and do better...I'll figure it out, and update my blogroll before the summer is over.

Thank you to engrailed, who first told me to start this blog (although sadly she is no longer blogging, at least in this context), thank you to lynsey who blew smoke in my ear about my writing and encouraged me to write more, and to the other bloggers who've had the courage and patience to establish a relationship, whether in email or at lunch. Thanks to those who kept checking back when I was travelling, and who wished me godspeed and a good return while I was gone.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming......

Outing

We all of us sexbloggers live behind various masks, and we do so for a variety of reasons.

We use aliases or screen names, omit our last names, most of us don't post full face pictures, we are careful about revealing details of personal life outside the subjects that we blog about, we set up duplicate websites and personalities. My friend Buddy has even set up a totally separate desktop (or something like that) on his Apple computer, in the hopes that his teenage son won't find out about his various ventures into jdate, other dating websites, porn locations and sex blogs. Before I started blogging, I had a lengthy correspondence with engrailed about being outed and discovered.

We do so because we fear disapproval and/or retribution...from friends, family, neighbors, the work environment. We think that because we think differently from the people that we're hiding from, they'll disapprove, retaliate, punish, not speak to us, fire us from work, disassociate themselves from us, make us targets for stalking or abuse, change our lives forever from what they are to what we don't want them to be. The very first blog I ever read with consistency, by a woman named Rose, a wonderful sub who wrote about her life in general and her time with Jefferson in particular, was outed and seemed to watch her whole world collapse. Other bloggers that I know have had to take their blogs offline at certain points and delete any and all personal details, because there was somewhere a scintilla of doubt as to whether they had been discovered.

Perhaps we reveal ourselves slowly to other bloggers that we become friendly and intimate with, first telling our non blogger names, then perhaps where we live, and then sharing other deemed important details of life. Through forces of geography we rarely meet face to face, although for me living in NYC there are perhaps stronger possibilites here than for others, like the hopeful sub blogger who lives in Alberta and struggles just to find people to interact with.

The first time I was discovered was by a fellow blogger whom I have known for over ten years, although neither of us knew about the other. I may have written about how we discovered each other, but she is the most discreet person I know in the circle of non-blogger friends we mutually have, and we've discussed who among those friends knows who we are. They are few, and they surprise me with their silence, being yentas of the highest order. It is a testament to her that they know and don't say anything. And they're sworn to secrecy about me as well.

The jury is still out on the second time I've been discovered. This blog is not a highly trafficked blog, averaging about 20-30 visits a day, and my sense is that some of them stumble here not from the few people kind enough to blogroll me but by people surfing the web and finding this blog because it has the word SWORDFISH in the name of the blog. While sitting on the beach this week, the brother of a friend (the brother who was visiting from Malibu) let me know in the most oblique and discreet way that he had stumble across the blog, put two and two together, and figured out who the blogger was.

He told me all this sotto voce, in a private conversation, just the two of us at the edge of the ocean. He's a lawyer, prominent in Los Angeles circles, lives three thousand miles away, and would have nothing to gain by outing me to friends and family, and in fact has told me that he won't say anything...ever.

And yet it's very scary for me, very frightening to think that with one conversation that would ripple through my world, he could bring tumbling down everything, and like Rose, my world as I know it would cease to exist.

Earworm-Simon and Garfunkel, Sounds of Silence

Playing With Old Friends-Part IV

She slid behind me and gently pushed my back, directing me down the hallway to the master bedroom, leaving Franny kneeling on the floor, struggling with the head of Tom's clublike penis. I made my way into the bedroom, Gayle now placing both her hands on my ass to move me forward, closing the distance between us until I could feel her warm skin pressed against my back, every little curve and groove indented against me. She took tiny little steps so that she could stay as close as possible, walking so close her feet almost slid under mine, forcing me to stride slightly wider than I was used to. When we got to the bedroom she knelt down before me to help me step out of my shorts, but instead of standing back up, she crouched even lower, sliding forward between my now wide spread legs, past the midpoint of my crotch, and she tilted her head back at almost a 90 degree angle, taking my balls in her wet mouth and holding them there, then moving her tongue laterally in the limited space that she was able, licking the under side of my ball sac.

She moved backwards even further, her mouth releasing my balls from their captivity, her tongue raking back and forth in the space between my balls and the edge of my ass, back and forth, over and over, long strokes back and forth, stopping at the very same place each and every time, the pressure feathery at first and then increasing, becoming more and more pronounced, as her head moved slower and slower, compressing the space she had been concentrating on, my cock bobbing up and down in front of me as I became harder than I thought possible.

"That's enough of that", she said, as she scooted forward and stood up behind me, edging closer to the bed. "My turn now", and she flopped down on the bed, her legs dangling forward, still wearing the little girl panties, now wet and even more translucent than before. I wondered who had enjoyed her licking more, her or me? She tugged the panties impatiently to one side, and I could see her moisture glistening before me.

"Stick your fingers inside and fingerfuck me for a minute or two" she commanded, and I was quick to jam two fingers deep inside her, sliding them forward and back. "Another one, and if you've trimmed your nails, slide your pinky into my asshole." The wetness had slid down the crack of her ass in just the few minutes that she was lying there, and my littlest finger slid in effortlessly, her round sphincter clutching at me as I pumped away, her hips beginning to gyrate with my motion, her hand reaching down to find her clit, her index and middle finger moving up and down, a soft sigh escaping her lips.

"Harder, dammit, I'm not made of china, ya know. I want to be pounded." And so my hand moved harder back and forth, trying hard to match her rhythm, listening hard for her exhale as she pushed down with her pelvis, hearing her grunt with the effort, knowing that she was jerking off against my hand, faster and faster now, until at last I heard a sustained moan, her asshole contracting several times around my little finger, her cunt awash in every kind of fluid imaginable, her excitement palpable and real. She stopped moving, and I held my hand still, waiting to see what else she wanted. She slowed her breathing until she was able to speak coherently.

"You wanna see what the others are doing, don't you? You're a watcher, and you'd love to watch Tommy fuck the shit out of your little wife, wouldn't you?" she almost sneered, and my face reddened, knowing that she had caught me in a secret that nobody else knew. "Let's go find them."

Left Behind

My father was a simple man, growing up on a farm, not learning to speak English until he went to school when he was six. His life never got more complicated than he could handle, he was true to his faith and religion, loved his family. He was never embarassed or ashamed of his humble roots, always believing that he brought all of himself with him wherever he went, and the farmboy was just part and parcel of that. And he taught his children the same values, to never ever forget where we started from, never to lose the common touch, never to think that we might be better than other people because of life achievements or material possessions.

I have friends who no longer remember where they came from, are no longer willing to acknowledge that they didn't always have beachfront houses and river views, who have forgotten that they didn't always summer in the Hamptons (and the very best one at that). I have friends who have moved on to other circles more prestigious, more cool, more au courant.

And so does She, and She doesn't understand why these friends cease to call, She misses them, and feels the loss mightily, until I tell her what I truly think of them, that they've forgotten who they were, and are working hard to keep on forgetting, that they're ashamed of where they started from. She marvels at the fact that I'm never embarassed by anything about myself, that I am who I am, that I'm proud of whatever I have and whatever I can do, that when we lived in a railroad flat with failing heat, it was still my home. And the Boy has grown up the same way, with the same pride in whatever he has and whatever he achieves. I see it in him all the time.

My father, if he were still alive, would be as proud of me as I am of the Boy.

Earworm-Randy Newman, Last Night

Playing With Old Friends-Part III

And I followed the look of her eyes, their lowered lids gaze rivetted firmly on the cock in front of her. It was longer than my 8+ inches, perhaps 10 inches, with a large knobby head, and I could see her head moving ever so slightly up and down as it bobbed free of its enclosure. "Do you think you can handle it?" he asked as he smiled at her, knowing that she was lost to the sight of it and was barely hearing him. I watched as she took one or two steps to get herself comfortable in the spacing of the kitchen, and then sank to her knees as if poleaxed with a baseball bat, staring at the cock hovering only inches from her face, her mouth slightly opened as her chest heaved to catch her breath.

I barely saw the hands move beside me, or heard the rustle of the fabric, as Gayle reached behind her head and untied the halter top of the dress she was wearing. "Hey," she breathed into my ear, "see anything you like?" and I turned to see her standing next to me, wearing only a low slung pair of white cotton panties, the crotch already translucent with wetness. She pulled the waistband up hard, forcing the panties into the crack of her crotch like a piece of string, and I could see her lower lips spread to either side of the string, partially trimmed back to outline her cunt, the rest of her hair not shaved but close cropped. She started to slide the string of her panties back and forth along her clit, and it slid easily in the juices accumulated there. Her breasts hung down pendulously, her nipples dark against her skin, the circles very round and dark, almost purple, and they looked like two plums. I bent down to suck on one of them, all reason and restraint long gone, surrendered to this couple who had obviously come to our house to seduce Franny and me.

She folded her head down until her mouth reached my ear, and then bit me, gently at first, and then harder. "I usually like it rough. And I like it in my ass...the first time, that is. But I'm thinking that the floor of this kitchen isn't the most comfortable place in this house to be on my hands and knees, is it? And I'm pretty sure that Franny's knees are starting to be sore as well. " And I looked over at my wife, her two hands wrapped around a stranger's raging cock, her delicate mouth struggling to put the head in between her lips, her mouth opened as far as it could be. I watched as just the head of Tom's cock disappeared into her mouth, the angle and his height making it difficult for her, although she showed no signs of backing off. Her hands, at first resting on his thighs, almost as if to control the rape of her mouth, now circled between his legs, grabbing his two buttcheeks, trying to will herself to swallow more of his cock.

"Why don't you show us where the bedroom is, so that we can get more comfortable and not put on any more of a show for the neighbors?"

Playing With Old Friends-Part II

And so the two of them stood there, silhouetted against the six o'clock sun, as Gayle continued to twist my nipple like a radio dial, and as I tried desperately to think up an explanation of what was going on that might be at all plausible. And then I watched a series of fleeting emotions wash through my wife's eyes---first a long period of disbelief, then some shock, a brief period of amazement, then a narrowing of her eyes that I took for anger, and then two final expressions that I couldn't place at first. Her mouth tightened ever so slightly, and her eyes narrowed even more, and I realized it was the grimace of revenge. And then she turned slightly sidewise to Tom, who smirked just a bit.

"I can see what's going on here, can't you, Tom? We've been left behind." And as my wife stared pointedly at the hand reaching across my chest under my shirt to grasp the other side of my chest, Gayle started her ministrations again, eliciting a sharp gasp from me. Her gaze drifted down to the tent that started to appear at my crotch, as I became hard, then harder, responding to the pain and pleasure all at once.
It was then that I recognized the last emotion on her face, the one that stayed there as she took a step or two across the kitchen floor and reached for my fly, pulling it down quickly and freeing what was now a rampant cock, loosing it for all to see. It was the throw all cares and cautions to the wind look, the damn the devil look, the I'll do anything look, the look that said please do me, please please do me, do something for me, it was lust with a capitol L.
She turned to face Tom, putting a hand in the middle of his chest, sticking her tongue out just enough to lick her lips back and forth, which she parted and then ran her tongue over the lower lip yet again, and then smiled archly at him. "Can we catch up, can we ever catch up?" she said, looking him straight in the eye.

Little Man Tate and Me

When I first saw the movie Little Man Tate, I was fascinated by one scene in the movie---the young boy is away from home at some summer camp for bright kids, and in this scene many of them are gathered in an auditorium, a math puzzle is projected onto a large screen, and the kids are trying to solve the puzzle, calling out various answers...nobody solves the puzzle, there's a moment or two of silence, and Tate comes walking across a vacant row, looks up at the puzzle. He stops to think for a moment, and you can see the components of the puzzle, and the answer swirling around in his head and on the screen. He pauses for moment, and then blurts out the answer, not knowing how he figured it out, not understanding the process of his own thinking, just arriving at the answer. Or at least that's my memory of the scene, which is just as important here. It's the process, the instant discovery, the intuitive movement...and I really should go back and scan through the film.

Yesterday, I took the subway downtown for my final (thank God!!) day of jury duty, spending time correcting mistakes of omission by both the judge and the plaintiff's attorney. Five or six mid 20s got on the subway with me, all clutching sheafs of colored papers, as I looked over the shoulder of the very cute woman who sat down next to me wearing a great black cami , I found that they were on an NYC scavenger hunt, which She later told me is a great team building exercise used by management consulting firms that hire the best and the brightest, or so they hope. They're given tasks all around the city, retrieving items, documents, information, memorabilia, answers to bizarre and difficult questions.

They all puzzled over a word jumble , scambled letters mixed in a 4/3/3/5 pattern, and I looked at it for a few minutes, listening to the group try to figure out the puzzle, and then realizing that they didn't know how to solve it, trying to figure it out by moving the letters around within the groups. As I looked at it yet again, I used the first basic tool, which is to find the repeated letter, and assume that it's a vowel. Coupling that with the placements of that letter, all of a sudden the answer jumped out before my eyes, and I leaned over to her, careful not to disappear into her cleavage, I told her the answer---BITE THE BIG APPLE. She was dumbstruck, to say the least, and asked how I knew the answer so easily.

I had to think about how easily and quickly I had done it, what the process was, and I realized that I intuitively knew how to do it, how to solve the puzzle. And it was an automatic process.

I wish that the rest of life was soooo simple to put together.

Jury Duty-Part II

And as Al Pacino so admirably said in one of the Godfather films, "Just when I think I'm getting out, they drag me back in."
And so it is with jury duty...this morning I received a call from the court clerk, telling me that the judge would like to reconvene the jury to ask us some questions, in order to preserve the verdict. My life goes on hold yet again, both the personal and professional parts of it, as I wait to find out which of the time blocks the judicial system would like to access,

Jury Duty

That's where I've been for the last two weeks, on a case involving a civilian suing the policeman who arrested him and the City of NY...the trial is over, the verdict was reached. Nobody was happy with it, which was just fine. We deliberated for over 6 hours, and reached a consensus. That's how the system works.

And I'm back, with Part II of Playing With Friends and some other ideas...stay tuned, and thanks if you did during the interruption.

MIA Yet Again

I've written about this before, but it still irks me...people who I've emailed with or have blogrolled me, who suddenly either shut down their blogs entirely, or take them private with no warning and no follow up.
I've lost The Story of M, which I enjoyed reading, and Joy, shared, which had blogrolled me and then went private, perhaps over the weekend.
I do understand that nobody has any concrete obligations to anyone here, but common courtesy should prevail.

Just A Few Random Thoughts #2(?)

I finally got to see Sex And The City this past weekend, and I was surprised by lots of things: the theatre was mostly full (meaning the movie has legs and that I didn't miss the boat), there were mostly couples at the screening I saw (absent the two groups of high school-ish girls sitting in front of me in the third row), the movie itself was surprisingly good, and with the exception of one or two lines played for high humor rather than low jokes. For me, the movie was about friends who always have your back, who always tell you the truth (no matter how painful to say or to hear, something I'm really bad at, for the most part), and who will always do for you. The movie for the most part stayed away from low humor, toilet humor, the let's see how abjectly sex driven the conversation can get. I'm a hetero guy, and so for me it wasn't about the clothes for me, but the wedding dress sequence does indeed loom large.

A couple of female bloggers that I read regularly have, in the past few months, posted about their sexual exploits with other women. It's not necessarily lesbian sex, it's just being pleasured by a woman, and accepting the source of pleasuring from wherever it came. Neither of the women is gay, neither is a raging sub, both are sexual adventurers, both write or expressed positive feelings about the experiences, and neither considers herself gay, as far as I know. Great for them, truly. I just wish there were a similar avenue for men that didn't carry such a taint of homosexuality with it...guys with guys means only one thing---gay sex, whereas girls with girls seems to be able to be a girls just wanna have fun situation. Maybe it's a matter of physiology, maybe it's the whole Mars/Venus thing.

I've been trying for almost a year, the entire life of this blog, to write about music, and I've approached it from several different sides, none of them satisfactory to me, and all of the posts were scrapped before posting...but I have a new slant, and will try yet again (this as the opera Rienzi by Wagner thuds away in the background).

And the fact that this blog is drawing close to its one year old birthday holds some significance, and deserves a larger post than here, about changes for me and mine since its inception, the numbers slut thing, "friends and family", what I've learned.

And then there's always the continuation of Playing With Old Friends.....

Earworm-Rienzi by Wagner

Playing With Old Friends-Part I

She was an old friend of my wife, her best friend in high school, and she was in town visiting her parents when we met her, accompanied by her husband. She was much prettier than I remembered, having met her years previous, when she was all bundled up in a winter coat and hat. She had long dark hair, almost black, down below her shoulders, flashing eyes and a wicked come hither smile. Her husband was attractive in a general sort of way, but seemed years younger than she was.

And so when we met them at the local farmers market one Saturday morning, we were quick to invite them over than evening for drinks. It was the beginning of summertime, and the evening light filtering through the trees always made early evening the prettiest time of day. It was a casual invitation, no dressing up, just drinks and catching up on old times for the women, and so we put on soft clothes, clean shorts, and sat down at 5PM with a beer and a smile.

They arrived right on time, and we all sat out on the deck, Gayle wearing an interesting halter top print dress, her cleavage more than obvious, Tom like me wore a simple Lacoste and tan shorts, the uniform of the day. Over the first beers, they told us about their lives in Florida, she still running the cosmetics department of a major department store, he the beverage manager of a prominent club, emphasizing how happy they were down there, how they had a great time all the time, and how they loooved to party.

We love partying was the phrase used, and she looked me straight in the eye when she said it, just in case I had any doubts as to what she meant. My wife is a lovely person, kind, caring, trusting, and extremely naive, and so the repeated phrase and the interchange went right over her head. At about this time the first set of beers ran out, and I went into the kitchen to get more.

As I stood at the kitchen counter rummaging around for the opener, Gayle came up behind me silently, snaked her hand under my shirt and across my chest, quickly grabbing my nipple and squeezing hard. She leaned into me, pressing herself against me, her uncontained breasts pushing hard into my back. "Do I have your attention now?" she asked, barely whispering into my ear, her breath rushing along my earlobe. "What the hell are you doing?" I responded, as quietly as I could. "You know exactly what I'm doing," she replied. "We're not exactly novices at this, you know," she said, "and I've had this feeling about you guys ever since we saw you this morning." I hardly knew what to say, and said nothing, and so she pulled hard on my nipple yet again, as I stood there, obviously not moving away. "Tom's about to bring your lovely wife into the kitchen to help us out...what do you think she'll see?" And with that, I heard the screen door open and saw the two of them standing there, outlined in the open doorway.

Blog-Post Confidential

I'm surprised that there isn't more chatter in the numerous blogs that I read about the article in the NY Times Magazine section this past Sunday, the title of which I've purloined and used as the title of this post. It's a true confessional article by a woman who used to write for Gawker, but could well serve as a model for any blogger, especially any sexblogger, who shares intimate personal details and might be guilty of oversharing. And we've all done that, and continue to do it at times.
It talks "about how a single blog post can capture a moment of extreme feeling, but that reading an accumulated series of posts will sometimes revel another, more complete story."
But perhaps I'm just being New York centric---Gawker is relatively meaningless outside the confines of Manhattan, but perhaps the bloggers life experience is indeed meaningful.

Friday Night Fights

Back in the infancy of television, boxing appeared almost every night, and the Friday Night Fights, sponsored by Gillette razors, were the high point of the week.
Perhaps not so for She and I---we never learned to argue, we never learned to settle differences, she always agreeing (like a good middle child), I always forcing my feelings and opinions (like a very older brother). And like many adults, we are too spent by the rigors and turmoil of the day to have meaningful discussions at the end of the day, content to somehow make it through dinner and then slowly and gently shut down with the boob tube. And so now we have arguments every single weekend, we have disagreements every Saturday or Sunday, we have hours of gut wrenching baring of the soul every weekend...you said this, I felt that, you never do this, why can't you just do that...and if goes on and on.
I found out, from the shrink, that I don't even have the requisite tools to have arguments, that I never watched my parents have arguments, and so for the last six months I've tried to learn to argue, to learn to listen rather than speak all the time, and to stop enabling the ever shrinking cirle that we're inhabiting. I've had to try to find a way to give her enough self to express some ideas without always agreeing and capitulating.
And so now I look forward to the weekdays, when I can be alone in the office, as much as I used to look forward to the weekends. The fights are bloody, knockdown and dragout, hurtful and hurting, and I'm eager to see Monday morning come and take them away.

Earworm-Travelling Wilburys, Handle Me With Care

Movies at Home & Sex and the City

On any number of occasions, including at least once in this blog, I've said that one of my greatest pleasures is going to the movies...sitting in a dark room and having somebody tell me a story. When the storyteller is very good at his job, the time passes ever so quickly. Long movies are over in the twinkling of an eye, and I've had a transcendent experience. For a couple of hours, I've gone far away, and it's almost as if I've lived as someone else. And it makes no difference if I'm watching a thriller, a romantic movie, a sword and sandal epic, period pieces, science fiction, they all take me away.
And so I truly don't understand why people don't go to the movies...I have friends, as does She, who never ever ever go to the movies. They watch dvds at home on large screens, 62" screens, with stereo surround sound, and they're at home, and they're wearing their pajamas or their bathrobes. But it's not the same, at least not for me.
We have the cable necessary to get reception in the city, but we don't currently have any premium channels---no HBO, no Showtime, no Cinemax, no Starz. We had HBO once upon a time, and we tried to watch SATC, Sopranos, other things. We think we must have been in a bad patch for all of them, because we didn't think they were any better than network offerings, just different shows. We gave it up after about six months, and never looked back. When there's something we think we missed, Six Feet Under, Rome, The Tudors, Netflix is happy to send them to us, and we watch them over the summer, instead of reality shows.
And so I've never "gotten" SATC. Is it not for guys? Is there something I'm missing? What's the draw here? I thought the characters were sort of cartoonish and predictable. Is the point that the women can talk just like men? Are they today's woman? Are they the trailblazers for women everywhere?
I'm serious about not understanding this show. Can anyone, male or female, help me out here?

Watching You Watching Me

I've confessed long ago that I enjoy watching, enjoy being the spectator, watching other people in the throes of ecstatic sex. Does it come from watching too much porn in all its varieties? Possibly, but for me there is an utter fascination in watching the illicit, the forbidden, that goes way past the enjoyment of watching smut on screen. (As an aside, She and I just finished re-watching Murder One on dvd, a brilliant legal procedural that was on tv for only two seasons, and successful for only one, the good season starring Daniel Benzali, Dylan Baker, Jason Gedrick, Patricia Clarkson, and the villian Stanley Tucci, playing the Devil incarnate. In the very last episode, as he's dying, he confesses to having videotaped the crime in question, and watching it over and over, a sexual liason gone very bad. Hm...)

There are times when I'm crouched between her legs on the bed, her knees spread as wide as she can, her legs opened much wider than a 90 degree angle, my tongue buried deep within her, and as I reach up to pull hard on her nipples (which she likes, but only when I'm going down on her), I look up and become the third person in the room, watching her as she lies totally inert, battleing mightily to cum, hands reaching to her groin to spread herself even wider open. And I watch her expression as she struggles to get there, her mouth open and her eyes scrunched way shut, my fingers deep inside her openings, my tongue and lips finding newer and newer patterns.
We've talked about how I've grown fatigued with always being in charge, always making the sexual decisions, and last night we started to turn the tables, as we lay head to feet on the bed, she pushing my hands away, losing patience with the struggle for satisfaction, starting to move towards me, hoping to climb on and ride me until one of us came. But I stopped her, guiding her hand back to my very lubed cock, taking her other hand and putting it down lower toward my butt, forcing it so that the first two fingers pointed forward and then moving it towards my opening. She continued to stroke away, moving her partially fisted hand forward so that the two fingers entered, and then started to move that hand back and forth in opposition to the masturbating hand, then together, then opposed.

And I was gone, gone in a second, and I felt heavy breathing and then soft moans coming from my throat. She continued, continued, and at one point, I opened my eyes just a little, just a bit, squeezed shut as they were, and saw her. She was watching me, her eyes open, not wide open, just looking, just seeing me gone, clinically observing, becoming for once the watcher rather than the watched, the doer rather than the done.
Progress.

Earworm---Englishman in NY, Sting

Falling In Love

My friends, those that don't read this blog, know that I fall in love all the time...I tell them so when I do, and I tell them all the time.

Two days ago I fell in love with a woman sitting in the cello section of an orchestra.

Today, I re-fell in love with Madeleine Stowe. She first hit my radar years ago in a movie called Blink, and today it was the movie Last Of The Mohicans. She's not the greatest actress, and often appears rather flat when speaking her lines. She's also in that group of actresses that seem to appear nude when it's not necessarily called for, along with Melanie Griffith of old and Kate Winslet of old.

She takes my breath away, and I'm head over heels...don't know why.

Earworm-She's A Beauty, The Tubes

Just A Few Random Ideas

I know that I'm imploding...it's a combination of not posting, not working, not really wanting to go out and do things, just wanting to sit and read, perhaps watch a dvd. I know that it happens periodically during the year, that's it's the normal ebb and flow of my energy, but I never quite know how to break the inward slide. I'm busy, but not doing work, have a full calendar of evening stuff to do, which I would love to ditch (even though I love the things I have to do at night), keep looking forward into the future to book up more things, can't seem to get traction, and the beat goes on.

Next...I was out in California visiting a friend, and we went shopping in the local tourist attraction, something akin to South St. Seaport or Faneuil Hall...I saw a t-shirt that I wanted, bought a large (the size I always wear), and took it home, washed it and put it on this morning...and it's hanging off me...the shoulder seams are way off my shoulder, it's too big.

Next...I hate when I extend an invitation to someone in email, and they don't respond. Tell me yes or tell me no, just don't not tell me anything. Is that supposed to mean no? Is it supposed to me you're not available? Is it supposed to mean you're hiding, or your partner won't let you out on your own, and you're too embarrassed to tell me? Does it mean you don't want to do something?

Enough ranting. Maybe this will get me to move on.

Earworm-Lodi- Creedence Clearwater Revival (or Al Gray, if you're really fortunate).

They're Ba-a-a-a-ack

And so, in just one day, spring descends...the trees across the street have fluffy, white blossoms, people are out in shirt sleeves and shorts, and women of all ages have instantly found their strappy tops, their slippy tops, their sheaths, the deep v-necked tanks, their push up shelf bras holding their boobs way up off their chests...warm weather is back, and so are boobs.

My friend that I had dinner with Thursday night thinks that all men are fascinated by boobs, and she's right...it's an instant head snap when a woman with a big chest walks by. Guys just stare. And I think it's because we don't have them...they're the difference between the sexes...at least in clothing. We all sort of look the same in clothing, in jeans and a t shirt, more or less, but put the woman next to you in a strappy top and everybody's staring, discreetly or not.

I love Her boobs, even though they've long ago stopped being the projectiles that they were when we first met. She's not in her 20s, neither am I, and we've had a child in the process of growing older. But I love to touch them, to grab Her from behind and just gently cup them, holding Her pinkish nipples between my first three fingers and rolling them back and forth. I do love to suck on them as well, and She knows this. It makes Her nervous and uneasy for some reason, and I know that She tolerates it without being a turn on for Her.

But it sure is for me.

Earwig-The Fugs Do You Like Boobs A Lot?

Not Leaving Out The Good Parts

I can write lots of different ways and use lots of different styles, but it's hard for me to write funny. I can be sharp, coy, quickmouth, and I can surely make people laugh face to face, but I can't do it in print. So you'll just have to take my word for it that this whole story was really funny, or perhaps fun for me.

I had bought a new toy about three weeks ago, a larger version of the Aneros called a Progasm...catchy name that. Owing to the crush of tax season and the fact that I don't have the spare time to play with it, it sat in the closet for a while, until one day when I just couldn't look at the screen or any client's grubby papers for a moment longer, and I decided it was time to have some fun for myself. So I went to the closet, where I keep the toys, and took out my new toy, and blanched at the size of it, as I always do with something new. Long story short, as they say in the depths of Brooklyn, it worked out and fit just fine, and I had a great time with it...slightly difficult getting it in, and then of course it didn't want to come out, but it did, and I had that wonderfully full feeling with it.

There is indeed a point to this story. Fast forward five days, and all of a sudden, I'm having some pain when I pee, like real pain...and so I wait a day or two, and then Saturday morning go to the doctor...remember this is New York, you can do anything at any time, if you're willing to pay for it. My normal doctor isn't in, of course, but there's this nice woman doctor holding down the fort, and so I tell her my tale of woe. She draws a few conclusions, has me pee (painfully) in a cup in the next room, and decides that even though the urine is clear, there's a touch of blood in it (she tests it with some chemical strip). She writes a script for cipro, and sends me on my way...doesn't look at the body part in question, let alone touch it. And I realize that she's embarassed, at the very most, and shy at the very least. I catch the feeling from her, and hold back the vital information.

Fast forward to today, Wednesday, I'm five days into the cipro, no improvement, and so I go back to the doctor and see a nice young doctor, who says he needs to do a visual, a touchy feelie, and probe my prostate as well. Ah, now we're getting somewhere. And so I start to tell him how I think I got the painful peeing syndrome, that nothing goes into my penis, but things certainly do go into other parts of me. And I'm really laying the whole story on the line, and he's wide eyed, he's a doctor but this is all new to him, people stick things up there to "heighten sexual pleasure" as he puts it. And now he's really enjoying the conversation, I can see that he wants to talk about it some more, and so we do, although he doesn't get the graphic details, just the basic understanding of what gets done and why. But he's digging it. I've made his day, I can see that.

He sends me off with a referral to see a urologist, with a probable test that I will only describe for the real masochists and pain whores out there, so close your eyes if this freaks you out. The test consists of running a fibre optic tube of some sort into my penis to see if there's a blockage or some sort of physical damage. OK, you can look now. We finish the chat, and we shake hands, he wishes me good luck, and asks me to let him know what the final outcome is. And I can see that he can't wait to head back to the staff lounge and retell this tale. I visit this practice to have blood taken every three months, and I can't wait to see how I'm treated the next time.

Earwigs-Handle Me With Care by the Traveling Wilburys, Misty by Errol Garner