A sketch for some possible tattoo work. Bonus points for naming the visual reference. Happy new year, lovelys, and loved ones.
3. Fancy Things
Monday, December 15, 2008
I am slowly building a collection of very shmantz toys. It started with the njoy pure wand, which came from the wilds of the Boston Fetish Flea one weekend, and which I rarely use any more because doing so feels a bit like beating my gspot with a club. Not a bad sensation, that. Just, well, a bit much.
One of the things I’ve learned from sex blogging is that eventually you will find a way to get free sex toys, usually in exchange for reviews but sometimes just because they appear, in little puffs of lube and smoke. For example, our wooden prostate massager. I know what you’re thinking – wood? For a sex toy? The case to the thing says that it’s been treated with a sealant, but I don’t trust such statements. It works well, with condoms. May tells me it’s actually quite lovely. And when it’s not in his bum, it amuses me to set it on my night stand like a little abstract sculpture.
We do have a glass dildo (how could we not, when it was free?) but I have yet to try it out. It is quite pretty, in a frosted chandelier sort of way. And through the tricks and turns of kinky friends, we also own a Vergenza Mk. 1, which, well…it works. It is trying a bit too hard to be a high-end product, I think. Unfortunately it’s made from aircraft spun aluminum, lovely but a bit lightweight for the price tag (which we did not pay).
And finally, my joy, my favorite: the Omega. Not even for me, and so ridiculously over the top that it makes me giggle, when I’m not drooling. But when May wears it, it’s as though he’s been thrown back several centuries, across a few fantastical borders, and landed smack in the middle of my imaginary harem. I love it there. Oh yes.
Money is tight at the moment (quel supris), but once it loosens up a bit I may come back to my collection. Like many of you, I’m sure, I am still hankering over the Eleven. In the meantime, I have a little shelf of pretty thing, art objects that just happen to be for sex, or perhaps the other way around.
Here, Now, This
Friday, December 5, 2008
I’ve been thinking recently about the defining questions in my life. I came about this backwards; I was confused and vaguely melancholy for a very long time, pulled every which-way like a glob of sticky taffy. I kept asking myself what I wanted, and harping on myself for not being able to answer the question.
For one thing, I have not yet sorted what I want to be from what I want to have. Everything is all mixed up, and in the meantime I look in the mirror and feel as though my skin is quicksilver and my eyes are changing color.
I want to use power tools and cook scones, and date women, and date men, and date everyone in between. I want to be a woman who wears suits and a boy who wears skirts. I want to start a PR business, and live on a sailboat, and bike across the country, and be a fashion designer, and run conferences the right way ’round. I want to be a country singer, and a travel writer, and a sex god. I want to make the world better, and I want to make the world work. I want high, rounded breasts like doves hung from my collarbones, and I want a girl with long hair to go exploring over. I want shoulders and arms like a man – like my first kinky boyfriend’s shoulders, triangular and etched in the hard flesh of military life – and I want a man to fuck who has those shoulders, and also long hair, and also the thick softness of a good life tucked into the curve of his swelling hips, ass in the air. I want people who love to cry for me, and with me. I want everything. I want to know who I am.
The thing is, the question is wrong. It is too simplistic for subtlety of planning, and to big for specific action. It is the question of a girl nestled in grass looking at stars; I am not that girl, right now.
The questions I should be asking myself are cleaner, crystallised.
Questions like these:
Do I want to integrate my queer identity with my professional career? How would I do that? What would it feel like? How would it hurt me, and how would it help me?
How should I manage my personal brand? How much energy should I invest into it, and is it worth investing in when split into two halves? Right now it is spinning and wobbling like a cloven coconut, and how do I put it back together without spilling all the juice out?
Should I keep up with my art? Should I focus on developing my design skills? Should I take up photography again, and does that mean I should buy a proper camera? Is oil painting worth my time; is any non-digital medium going to satisfy me?
What kind of work do I want to be doing? Is writing enough for me, or should I be looking into how to integrate my writing with activism, education, organization and social media? How do I do that?
How much of my activism is based upon my location and the people around me? Are the things I want still the same when I am by myself, alone?
Which of the hundreds of thousands of projects I conceptualise are worth developing? Should I be drawing comics, drafting book ideas, building websites?
What do I want to say to other people, and what is the best way to say it?
Where am I strongest?
These are better questions. I don’t have the answers, but these are my current thoughts. This is where I am, today.
Casanova
Friday, September 19, 2008
No, not the romanticized idea. The man. Giacomo Casanova.
I’m utterly cheating on this post. I admit it. At least this cheat is words, instead of the rambling audio journal I’ve been picking up in random moments. Do ya’ll need to hear my musings upon the deliciousness of guacamole? I think not. Obviously guacamole is delicious.
I walked into a little bookstore in the Rocks and picked up a slim black paperback with a rose etched on the cover: Of Mistresses, Tigresses, and Other Conquests. The inside cover informs me that this is a selection of excerpts from Casanova’s unfinished 3,600 page memoir, Histoire de ma vie.
And I took it home and started reading, and ridiculously, laughed out loud sitting alone on my couch. Because Casanova? A pre-computer-age sex blogger. Definitely.
Here are a few choice excerpts that pushed some of my blogging buttons:
If, dear reader, you examine this preface well, you will easily guess its purpose. I have written it because I want you to know me before you read me. Only in coffee-houses and inns do we converse with strangers.
I have written my history, and surely no one could take exception to it. Still, am I wise to present it to a public I know only in the worst light? No. I know it is foolish. But since I need to keep myself busy and to laugh, why should I refrain from committing such a folly?
…
In recalling the pleasures I enjoyed, I relive them, while I laugh at the pains I endured and no longer feel.
…
What depraved tastes! And how shameful to acknowledge them without blushing! This reproach tickles me to laughter. Thanks to my coarse tastes, I am so shameless as to believe myself happier than the rest, first of all because I think my tastes make me more sensitive to pleasure.
And for a little something extra, some 18th century T&D action:
With a trembling and timid hand, and watching her with eyes that begged for mercy, I untied the six wide ribbons that closed her dress in front, delighted that she did not stop me, and found myself the happy master of the most beautiful bosom. Time was running out. She was obliged to allow me to devour it after contemplating its charms; I raised my eyes to her face and there read an amorous sweetness that said to me, be happy with this, and learn from me to suffer abstinence. Driven by love and all-powerful nature, and in despair because she would not allow my hands to roam elsewhere, I did everything I could to guide one of hers to the place that might persuade her that I deserved her mercy; but with a strength greater than mine, she would not move her hands from my chest, where there was nothing of interest to be found. Nonetheless, this was where her mouth landed when her lips left mine.
Out of necessity or the fatigue of spending so many hours without being able to do anything more than continuously swallow our mingled saliva, I fell asleep in her arms, holding her close in mine.
Have A Pretty Girl
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
I’ve been fiddling in Photoshop recently, as my work piles ever higher and I feel the incessant need to create pretty, distracting things. So here, have a pretty girl to look at. I feel vaguely as though she should have a comic bubble, but I’ll save that for another evening.
Music And Lyrics
Monday, August 18, 2008
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 bleedI’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
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.
50. Bam! Brunette
Sunday, July 27, 2008
The end of the 50 post challenge. I laughed, I cried, I cut my hair. Goodnight.
44. Wanted: Cabin Boy
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
High level of detail on this, so the source image is quite large. I know there are some pirate fans in the audience, and I have costumes on my mind. Enjoy.
41. Medusa Dreams In Photocopies
Thursday, July 17, 2008
A third, probably final, and considerably more abstract work upon the Medusa theme. I’m gearing up to start posting large chunks of content again, when I have more than a day to work on them. I intend to dig up some old issues about power, age, and dominance.
