Music And Lyrics

I don’t consider music to be an incredibly pivotal part of my life, in the way some of my obsessive musician friends do. It simply doesn’t receive much of my creative focus; it is more commonly an afterthought, a casual acquaintance. But at the same time, having music playing in my ears can change my entire perspective, can knock me from a bad mood to a good one, from a good one to dancing. Musical theatre was my gateway drug to theatre in general. And I don’t think I could have finished my painting thesis without The Who on repeat in the background.

It’s easy to guess (writer, musical theater geek) that I am inclined toward lyric-heavy music. But it goes a bit beyond that; I often stick to musicians simply because I think their lyrics are sexy.

That seems like a simple thing to say, and sort of obvious as a general statement. But then, throw an alternate sexuality in the mix. Kinky themes show up in odd places in music, in ways that often seem fake, wires crossed, something not-quite-right. Rarely genuine.

So tonight, when I put my iTunes on shuffle and let the program work its way through the 35-odd gigs of music, I caught myself perking up, swinging my hips a little more to the sexy, kinky favorites. I get an irrational shot of joy to hear my life in music; it seems like a cultural acknowledgement of the possibility of viable kinky love.

Yes, I will give you some of my favorites. I know you were gearing up for the link-fest.

I met one of my former partners through a question he posted on an LJ community, looking for kinky lyrics. My contribution was “Blood, Sex, and Booze” by Greenday. I remember writing out the words in the comment form before I surfed over to his journal and found out he lived in New York:

Waiting in a room
All dressed up and bound and gagged
Tied to a chair, it’s so unfair
I don’t dare to move, for the pain she puts me through
is what I need, so make it bleed

I’m in distress
Oh mistress I confess, so do it one more time
These handcuffs are too tight, well
You know I will obey,
So please don’t make me beg
For blood, sex and booze you give me

Almost painfully obvious, no? But I think there’s a good pornographic film somewhere in that song.

Or then, we could talk about The Magnitic Fields, whose 69 Love Songs became the background noise of my rushed-by graduation days, just when May and I were meeting. They swing around from sweet:

Andy would bicycle across town in the rain to bring you
candy, and John would buy the gown for you to wear to the
prom, with Tom the astronomer who’d name a star for you
But I’m the luckiest guy on the Lower East Side
cause I’ve got wheels and you want to go for a ride

To brilliantly disturbing:

A pretty girl is like a violent crime
If you do it wrong you could do time
But if you do it right it is sublime…

And I still love Great Big Sea, not only because they give a thrilling live perfomance, but because they are overflowing-full with these little gems, often from older covers:

Sally Ann, Sally Ann, oh when you dance
Every move that you make is amazing…
See me swallowing my pride
She got me crawling on the floor

Then, once upon a time, Maymay handed me a mix CD that I almost wore a hole in. On it, Sting:

It would make a prison of my life
If you become another’s wife
With every prison blown to dust
My enemies walk free
I’m mad about you
I’m mad about you

And really, no list of mine is complete without the bitter-chocolate-orange voice of Leonard Cohen. The first time I heard “I’m Your Man,” I almost cried of appreciation and want.

If you want a lover
I’ll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I’ll wear a mask for you
If you want a partner
Take my hand
Or if you want to strike me down in anger
Here I stand
I’m your man

All right. Maybe music is more pivotal that I’ve admitted. These songs get under my skin. There’s something sensual there; they thrum with me.

The Components Of A Lifestyle

Today I want to talk about lifestyle.

I am having some trouble sorting out changes in my perspective upon the world, and myself. And my New York friends, the lot of them, are trouping off to Floating World this weekend, an instance that has produced a welter of nostalgia as I reflect on the truly marvelous experiences of last year.

I am certainly not cut off from the kinky community. Sydney’s scene continues on around me. My internet connection continues unabated. But as I mentioned in my last post, a shared sexuality does not my community make.

So when we get right down to the nitty gritty, the reality is that I am isolated now that I’ve left New York City. I’m isolated from my kinky friends and my favorite spaces and my comfort zones.

My reaction to this is akin to exhaustion. I ask myself how much effort I want to spend on building a life here in Sydney? Aren’t I just going to pick up and move again? I had never envisioned our move here as being long term, and I know how quickly a year or two can pass. But “in an hour, there are many days.” I have great swaths of time I try to fill with work. I’m writing a novel. I could kick myself for being so cliche.

(As a side note, I have been stalwartly resisting the impulse to turn this into a blog about teaching, understanding, and perfecting one’s writing. I don’t think my readers would appreciate the switch. “What is all this nonsense on teaching styles, Eileen? Remember the kinky sex we come here for? Come on, kinky sex!”)

As a result of this general ennui, my kinky identity has been going through something of a hibernation. I can envision the kinky part of myself, curled adorably in a large fluffy blanket somewhere warm, sucking her thumb and cradling a singletail to her chest. I haven’t stopped having sex, I haven’t stopped thinking about sex in masturbatory ways. But I have stopped thinking about sex in community ways, about the connections in, and advantages of, communicating with others like me.

So, seeing this disconnect in my identity coincide with my withdrawal from public spaces, I ask: How much of my kinky identity is based not around what I do in the bedroom, but what I write and say and do in public?

I don’t actually know the answer to that question. Do you?

The kinky community consistently picks words to push back against. We’re cranky like that. Among the list that garners resistance is the word “lifestyle.”

But I don’t buy into that particular resistance. I like the word lifestyle, specifically because it implies that being kinky is not just a matter of freaks in their bedrooms. Being kinky crosses those boundaries; I am kinky all the time. My sexuality is a part of my lifestyle, and affects the decisions I make in multiple contexts, not just when I’m flipping through my porn stash looking for something juicy.

In my observations, one of the best ways in which queer communities have gained acceptance is the acknowledgment of queer identities as being connected to lifestyles. Having gay neighborhoods, gay bars, gay-friendly merchants, gay-friendly medical centers. Acceptance trickles down, slowly but surely, as we begin to insist that we can’t just leave our sexualities at the bedroom door.

So how do I maintain that lifestyle in a healthy way now that I’ve moved away from the community that supported it? And more specifically, how do I do that without spending four hours of my life every day surfing blogs?

The Price Of Entry

Since moving to Sydney, my relationship with the public scene has drastically changed. On the one hand, because the scene I’m finding in Sydney is drastically different to the scene I know in New York. And on the other, because the things I want from the scene are now different than they were six years ago, or one year ago, or six months ago.

Let me break one factor of this change down. Hopefully with some delicacy. I want to talk about money.

Even though I should know it by now, it consistently shocks me how expensive it is to be kinky. Money is one way in which much of the public scene is privileged; there is literally a bar to entry open to a selected few. (Not to mention all the other ways in which much of the scene caters to a particular privilege: age, time, location, race, gender, orientation, able-bodied, to name a few. With a nexus of overlying, unspoken requirements, it’s no wonder the public scene is comparatively tiny.)

Now, I’ve come to realize that the Australian relationship with money as I currently see it is a little different than I’m used to. Namely, they spend more on their pleasures. It’s not just that Sydney is an expensive city, especially with food prices skyrocketed. NYC is also an expensive city; I’m used to this.

Rather, it seems a regular occurrence for the people I hang out with to drop $100 on alcohol in a single night. A weeknight. On a weekend? An American girl I met the other day told me, in hushed tones, that an Australian guy she knows spent $600 last Saturday, between clubs, cabs, and drinks. We stared at each other with our mouths open. $600 is my rent for a month.

So it doesn’t seem like a good enough reason, in this culture, for me to say that something is simply too expensive.

I have spent a lot of money on the weapons and gear of my sexuality of choice. I have spent a lot of money on events like Floating World and Black Rose. Thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars that I, and others in my economic situation, cannot technically count as disposable income. And as half of a couple who travel together and split our expenses, for every dollar I spend, Maymay spends one too.

If we shall speak very technically, it is not too expensive for me to spend $40 to go to a play party. I do have $40 in my bank account, and it could potentially go toward such a thing. So let me be a little more honest.

Unfortunately for the good people I’ve met here in the scene, some of whom host simply gorgeous parties, I have a hard time getting myself out and putting down cash at the door. This, I should clarify, is not through the fault of their parties. This is because, as I mentioned, the things I want from the scene have changed:

Where I used to consider the possibility of pick-up play, I now play only with established partners and long-term friends.

Where I used to feed from the energy in kinky spaces, I now feel awkward and exposed.

Where I used to be willing to manage the social minefield of not knowing anyone on the room, I now feel more comfortable around at least a few people I’m close to.

And where I used to be able to make friends with people solely upon the common ground of shared sexualities, I now find myself unable to do so. This has unfortunately knocked munches off my list, as well as parties.

So the events are not at fault. But the events are no longer right for me. And the Sydney scene appears to be structured in such a way that these kinds of events are the first point of entry.

So when I say that something is too expensive, I am being a little unfair. What I should say is that I’m not, at this point in my life, willing to pay an entry fee in order to be exposed to a number of kinky people with whom I have a slight chance of becoming friends. Because that’s what these parties have become for me; the vapor of a possibility that one of the other attendees might be someone I want to make friends with.

In the end, having complementary sexualities has almost no value for me in forging new friendships. It comes below a laundry list of other factors that must first align: our humor, our interests, our intellectual inquiries, our attitudes toward society and life and ourselves.

Complementary sexualities become a real factor in maintaining a relationship once sex itself becomes a factor of that relationship. To say that I am more likely to find friends among the kinky is similar to saying that if I were hetero, I would be more likely to find friends among men. Largely illogical, consistently untrue.

I have been reassessing the return on my investments, so to speak. Unfortunately, if I go to a play party that does not yield me any kind of good feeling, friendship, or conversation, I don’t just shrug it off. I get upset at myself, a little depressed. And where I get a little upset, Maymay becomes angrily vicious and bitter. It is not uncommon for us to leave play parties that are unsuccessful (by our standards), go home, fight, and end up miserable and crying. So in many ways, an entry fee is not just an entry fee; it’s a gamble.

And as what I’m looking for diverges further and further from what play parties are designed to deliver, the gamble becomes increasingly bad.

Sex and Nachos

One night a few weeks ago I’m sitting on our thin foam mattress bed trying to catch up with my email. When May pushes the front door open he makes all the familiar sounds: his keys clink-clank, his shoes thud on the carpet, he puts his iPod on the front table with a click and hangs his underwear over the arm of the couch. Every night, the same little clatter.

He comes to the bedroom naked and curls up on the matress like a June bug. He starts banging his forehead into my thigh.

“Yes, may I help you?” I say, petting his hair.

“Can we have sex?” he says, all hopeful.

I pet his hair. “No thank you, dear.”

He goes and gets his iPod from the table and wedges his ass tight against my knee as he checks his Twitter feeds. A minute passes.

“Now can we have sex?” he says, in his best little-boy voice, like I have cinnamon rolls hiding under the blankets. Pretty pretty please with a cherry on top?

I finish my email, put my computer on the floor and roll him over, rubbing my face and hair into his. I pitch my voice high and smile while I make fun of him. “ Can we now, can we now, huh? No? Hoooow ‘bout now? No? Now? Now?” And he laughs and hides his face in the pillow. I throw the sheets on the floor, lace my hand through his hair and drag him downward with one hand. With the other hand I awkwardly pull down on the elastic of my cotton boy-cut briefs. They are one of my oddest pairs of underwear; they have bananas printed on them.

He goes in soft with his long tongue, and has just made contact when I start screeching. The long wiry hairs of his beard are brushing in little circles over the sweet-spot skin of my ass. “Augh! It tickles, stop, it tickles!” I writhe back and forth and try not to laugh so hard. “Get off!” I plant a hand on his forehead and he goes back in a jumble on the edge of the bed while I try to start breathing again. When I stop laughing I crook my finger at him.

He comes back firm this time, and that goes well until his beard starts to brush my bum again and I squeeze my eyes shut trying not to laugh. For a little while it works, but soon I can feel the tiny bits of laughing tears start to gather. I’m trying frantically to swat them down with the incoming buzz of juices.

I give up. I pull him up, reach over to the desk drawer, and toss a condom in his face. It hits him on the nose, and that’s too much. I laugh hysterically while he rolls it on. He drizzles lube over his penis with a wrist flick like a dessert chef, and once he’s inside me I stop laughing.

It’s sweet, slow. I have a hand on the small of his back and I can feel the sharp line where his skinny hipbones dig into my inner thighs. My feet flop a little in the air, and then I pull them up to my chest. I push him out so that he has to hold himself up with his arms like a seal, and as I look at the gap between our bodies inspiration strikes.

I scoop the Hitachi from the side of the bed and wriggle it down into that little rounded space. He grins at me. I flip the switch.

Nothing happens. “Shit,” I say. I realize I unplugged the damn thing the night before to charge my cell phone. I pull it out of the way. “Plug that back in?”

He reaches over me, his penis still inside me at an awkward angle that makes me want to giggle again, and feels along the crack of the bed.

“What am I doing?” he says, bewildered.

I try to explain. I paint little pictures with my hands. “Take the thing that is plugged in, unplug it, then take the other thing that is unplugged and plug it in.” It’s perfectly clear in my mind.

He tries again. “Yeeeeaaa,” he says eventually, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I push him off and weave my hand through the bed frame to the plug, make all the right connections and pull him back inside me as I’m turning. I slap his ass and smirk as I flip the switch again. “Let’s get up to speed here, boything!”

The wand comes on. In a few minutes, while he watches and thrusts and sighs, I start screaming low in my throat, because my clit feels like it is under attack from an invading army and has chosen to run in six different directions. I grab the sheet and twist with my free hand, and come in waves that, amazingly, don’t stop. Between our legs things get wetter, and warmer.

The final spasms push his penis backward, and as I lay and quiver-twitch he runs a finger up my side. “Can I go back in?” he says. That same voice from before, a boy begging for sweets.

I put my fist in his hair and tuck him tight into the bend of my shoulder. When he comes he tries to get away, for air. I press his face further into my skin.

Afterward we lay gasping together for a little while. I sit up before I fall asleep, feeling the heat seep out of my body and into the room that is getting colder every second. I poke him; he’s dozing with his mouth open in a little half-moon smile.

“I like having sex with you,” he says.

“I like having sex with you too,” I answer.

“Damn,” he says as he sits up. “I’m starving. How long did that sex take us?” I pull my cell phone from the dresser and flash him the screen. Two hours. “Damn,” he says again.

He goes to the kitchen and makes a plate of nachos. When he comes back I’m writing.

“What’re you writing about?” he says with his mouth full.

“Sex,” I say. I steal one of his nachos.

“Are you writing about the sex we just had?”

“Yes. Damn.” The residual nacho grease makes my fingers slip on the keyboard.

“That’s very meta of you,” he smiles. We are very meta people. He gets out his iPod again and rechecks his Twitter feeds. After a little while he turns back to me.

“I like having sex with you.”

I smile. “You mentioned that, my love.”

He pokes at my arm with his finger. “Also,” he says, and his voice goes round and little again. “Also, I like the cryptography script I made today.” He looks at me like a puppy, so I reach over and pet him. His eyes sink gently closed and his eyelashes flutter as he smiles. I lean toward him.

“Silly sexy boything,” I say softly, just before we kiss.

50. Bam! Brunette

The end of the 50 post challenge. I laughed, I cried, I cut my hair. Goodnight.

49. Blogging Daily

Last night I sat at my friend’s computer while she put Carnivale in her DVD player, and Indian food cooled next to a chair I had just been sitting in. And I thought about my need to post in this blog. She won. I put the laptop away.

Writing this 50/50 challenge has made me redefine many aspects of my relationship with this blog. One of my resolutions when I began was that I would never apologize to this space if I didn’t have the time or willlingness to post in it. I’ve had variable sucess with that decision, because I’ve grown attached to the people and the attitudes to be found within the ever-expanding ring of blogs I read. But at the same time, I’m not happy when obliged to post. And that’s clearly evident, because I’ve technically missed my goal by a day. I can’t really bring myself to worry over that, and I think that’s the way it should be.

The other thing the 50/50 challenge forced me to redefine was the purpose of this blog on a post-to-post basis. I’ve always tried to write when I have something to say, and to other wise keep mum. And I never intended to make this a personal blog in the way many of us think of personal blogs: a chronicle of my life on a daily, detailed level that I cannot convince myself anyone actually cares about. But I don’t always have something to say, especially within the narrow window I allow this blog to reach. I keep huge portions of my life off the radar here. I’ve had to resist drawing on those topics over the last 50 days, looking for something more to give.

And the final redefinition is the art. That was a surprise even to me, because I’ve never taken my digital art public via a blog. But now that it’s happened, I’m enjoying the transition, and I’m enjoying the every-once-and-a-while change. So the art will stay. And with that decision in hand, a CafePress store is in the works, should any of you care for physical representations of digital art.

I probably won’t do this again. But then, never say never. Change is ongoing, and never outgrown.

48. Amusement

I said that I am easily annoyed. However, although I live with annoyance all the time, it seems obvious that I must have figured out a way to counter it. Otherwise I would be a far crabbier person than I actually am.

The thing about annoyance is that it can’t be rationally soothed. Once that thing is under my skin, it can take years to work its way out, and all the logic and reason I possess won’t cajole the issue any faster. So it has to be approached from the side, so to speak. I have to sneak up on it.

The counter to annoyance is amusement.

Notice yet again that I haven’t said happiness. Happiness is much more open, and in some ways lacks subtlety. But I am constant amused. I like a good chuckle, a dry joke, a sardonic wit. Hell, I even like bad puns. They amuse me.

I’ve used this word before and been told that amusement is a belittling humor. I found that surprising at first, but I do see where the idea comes from. Both amusement and annoyance have an aura of detachment, or aloofness. But that was never quite my style, and I’m just as easily annoyed or amused by myself as by the world around me.

Most especially, I am amused by my constant annoyances. I find that aspect of my character just a little bit ridiculous, and worth a good chuckle. And that makes it all right; that’s how I keep from flying off the handle, and how I keep my character on the balanced side of bearable.

And this plays into my scenes as well: every time I walk into a scene annoyed, I leave it laughing.

47. Annoyance

I wrote in my very first, very precocious post in this blog that I would eventually talk about my relationship with annoyance. That was sixteen months ago. I think it’s taken me this long to come back to the topic because frankly, while saying that I’m easily annoyed is a telling insight into my character, it isn’t a riveting, full-length blog post.

I am very, very easily annoyed. Things can get under my skin like lighting, and once there they have a tendency to fester. But I’ve specified annoyance rather than anger here because such things never bring me to full blown anger. I rarely experience pure anger. In fact, I can count the number of times I’ve been genuinely angry, undiluted vengeful rage, on three fingers. Each time in relation to a single person, by the way. I have a thing about being personally wronged, and I include wrongs to my friends in the same category.

But while anger is a rare emotion for me, annoyance is a part of my everyday life. Little things annoy me: bad service at restaurants, lights that don’t turn green fast enough, not having correct change. Big things annoy me: human stupidity, inelegant systems, being patronized. I’ve caught myself making a particular face, a raised-eyebrow, wrinkled-forehead narrowing of my eyes, my mouth pulled to one side.

And yes, this has in the past filtered into my play, and my kinks. But not very often, and not with very much strength. I try to leave my shit at the door when I play, so to speak. Annoyance is not the right kind of emotion for me to work my way through via physical expression. It tends on the catty, sly side. I am much more physically direct. Anger, yes, I’ll work out anger physically, although not upon another person. Commonly upon myself, through bruises, music, mosh pits.

Sometimes the wry cattiness of my annoyed, demanding, *ahem* overbearing self shows up in scenes. But when it does, I beat it back. I flip the coin, so to speak.

46. What Kind Of A Man: Part 4

This series has been slowly dancing around two ideas, and I think it’s time to wrap it up.

It’s true that most boys are just boys, and that rarely do any of us fit the fairy tales of our childhood. Not only did I grow up wanting leather-wearing horse-riding nerds to romance me alternately with motorcycle rides and Shakespeare, I also grew up wanting to be a skinny girl in stockings wearing lipstick and a pretty skirt with ruffles. Part of me, the part that buys orange shoes and thin gold chains, is still deeply in love with delicate feminine aesthetics. And part of me is still enthralled by manly men and the accoutrement therein.

But it becomes clearer and clearer that the men I then wanted to date hold the qualities I now want to have, and the women I then wanted to be are the women I now want to date. This means a lot of radical redefinitions, not only of myself but of what I look for in a partner. I’m beginning to realize that I don’t really know what attracts me in any specific way. I haven’t managed to sort out where my identity ends and my lust begins.

The other revelation I have been musing my way toward is that, in a strange and unexpected way, I did end up with an amalgam of a white knight, a rebel, and a nerd.

That my boy is a nerd is an unquestioned fact. Once upon a time we spent the night at a friend’s house. Maymay fell asleep on her lap, and she and I talked into the small hours of the night. I remember her stroking his hair while she said, “He really is a genius. It’s a little scary.”

He really is a genius. It is a little scary.

And although it comes out rarely, curiously, and in unexpected places, Maymay is a gallant man. Gallant enough to take me out to dinner, to buy me flowers on a whim, and to stop himself from laughing when he kicks my ass at air hockey.

But what really started me on this series of posts was that I realized something about Maymay’s rebellion. I realized that he has managed to make the separation I could not, as a child, make: that the strength to embrace deviant ideals does not necessarily translate into sexual strength or dominance. And that making that distinction is, in and of itself, a rebellion.

In my mind he makes images like steel wires running through cupcakes, peaches with pits of stone.

45. What Kind Of A Man: Part 3

Last night, after we ate avocado salad and watched Transformers, I wrapped Maymay up in my arms and we quietly talked our way to sleep.

“I’ve been thinking about what kind of a geek I am,” I said into his shoulder.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“I mean that I’m not the sort of person who can spend hours in a bookstore or get really psyched up over research or academic papers,” I answered. “And I never really have been, but that’s sort of how I’ve always understood being a geek. I’m much happier to spend that time in an art store or making something, that’s what I’m actually passionate about.”

“That makes sense,” he said mildly, his usual response to my out-loud rambling thoughts.

I thought for a few breaths. “I think I need to redefine my geek identity.”

When I was younger, there was no question that I was a geek, a nerd, and to be such a creature came with a very narrow set of definitions. Among these, wedged between getting good grades, liking Star Trek and wearing doofy glasses (all of which I did), was the silent insistence that geeks and nerds date other geeks and nerds. If, of course, we were lucky enough to date at all. One of the reasons I took to ren faires so gleefully was because they broke this mold in a new way; not by hiding my geekhood, but by redefining it as part of my sex appeal. Unfortunately I never managed to meet a nerdy boy in a leather jacket on a white horse while I was there.

Though I never specifically pursued the male nerd image the way I did white knights and rebels, smarts have always appealed to me. And although very little of the imagery around nerdiness really got me going, I did harbor some long-standing and desperate crushes on very smart boys. I suspect one of the reasons they lasted as long as they did was because there was nothing in the stereotype to mess with my underlying preference for power exchange. The nerds of my younger days were never gallant, chivalrous, or sassy, but they were vulnerable. Shy. Wanting.

On a personal identity note, although I have since learned how many different ways a person can be smart, when I was younger being “smart” matched up perfectly with the kind of people who do spend hours in bookstores and jones over research. So though I never really adapted to this kind of geekery fully, I faked it stunningly well. And it’s taken me ages to work my way back out of that fake, and even longer to be able to say, honestly and sincerely, that sometimes bookstores bore me. That research fails to thrill me. That I would rather be somewhere else. And had I known that ten years ago, it might have changed those crushes. It certainly would have changed me.

There was only one problem, I realized, as I hit my 18th birthday with nary a boyfriend in sight. Most boys are not white knights, rebels, or nerds. Most boys are just, well, boys.