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.

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.

37. Chibi Emo Indignation!

One of the characteristics of my relationship with Maymay that does not generally make the blogging consciousness is that we are adorable. Seriously, we are cuter together than two sugar-crazed five-year-olds on a cotton candy bender. Although in many ways our interactions mimic the kink of age play, our “small spaces” are primarily non-sexual. Instead, they are a sort of relaxation time in our relationships. A resting rate.

But not only are these moments cute, they are a little bit ridiculous. They make us sound insane. We have actually had people cross the street when they hear us coming.

As an example, today Maymay accidently dressed entirely in black, with black Converse sneakers. When he bounded up the stairs to the bar where we met for dinner, I laughed out loud. “Hello, emo boy,” I said when I caught my breath. He stuck out his lip and narrowed his eyes.

Later, as we walked home, he clasped both hands around my arm and tucked his head down on my collarbone as we walked. I nuzzled his hair with my cheekbone. “You are a wiggler,” I said.

“I protest that you are the one who wiggles!” he declared, his voice high pitched and muffled in my shoulder.

I started laughing. That’s the thing about small spaces. They are silly, and odd, but mostly they are gleeful.

“You’re like a tiny chibi emo,” I said to him.

“Chibi emo!’ he chirruped back.

“If you’re a chibi emo, shouldn’t you be crying tiny, adorable tears?”

He shook his head and said forcefully, “Just because I’m a chibi emo doesn’t mean I have to cry all the time!”

I grinned at him. “Oh my! Chibi emo rage!”

He pulled away from me and crossed his arms in a small, exaggerated huff. “You’re mocking my chibiness! How could you do such a thing?”

I started laughing harder. “Chibi emo indignation!”

And he stopped there on the sidewalk, threw back his head, and wrapped his arms around his stomach as he laughed. “That’s it,” he declared. “Chibi-emo-indignation: the cuteness quota has been reached. Officially, if we get any cuter, the world is going to explode.”

I wrapped my palm around his soft, dry fingertips and started walking again. He bumped his shoulder into my side. “I love you,” I said.

“Yay!” he said back. “I love you too.”

22. In Wild

Once upon a time on a summer afternoon, the very first week May and I moved in together, he decided to try and teach me to rollerblade. Between the bumps and the concrete and the massive, amazing bruise the size and shape of a cantaloupe, I did, in fact, learn to do so. But curiously, what I remember about that day is not so much the speed and the bruising, but the distinct absence of D/s. We’d been together what? Three weeks? And yet we were already so far into D/s roles that the absence of them was noticeable, like a change in the air. It wasn’t bad, no. Just different.

Today we rode a winding train out into the Blue Mountains, hiked along the edge of a yellow-gold cliff dropping off into a massive valley, and then took a pitched-steep staircase down and down and down again to the floor of the cool, dark rainforest. Then we caught a cable car back up into the skyline, and, wandering back into the little town, ended up in an amazing cafe, with dark wood walls and no right angles. And as we walked, climbed, and ran, May was small. He was precious, he was my own. Sometimes I can’t figure out if I’m an outdoor-loving-dominant-girlfriend trying to drag my boything along with my adventures, or an out-of-breath adult trying to keep up with an exuberant six-year-old romp.

11. Precious

Saturday night I pulled May up from the beige carpeted floor of our living room and onto our rough blue couch. He was wearing thin satin panties. A garter, a slippery nightgown. Pretty things. Pretty boy.

I held my lips over the skin of his throat and growled, feeling my lips peel back from my teeth. I climbed on top of him and ran my fingers through the air around his skin. He writhed upward, trying to make contact somewhere. Anywhere. I hid my laughter in his curls. He moaned. The bright pink tip of his cock slipped out the waist of the satin, and waved back and forth in the air.

After a little while I caught him up in a little ball, his legs folded close to his chest and my arms around his entire body. He tucked his chin down to his collar bone and looked up at me. Red eyelashes. He has red eyelashes. His mouth was trembling open, his eyes enormous.

“I love that look,” I murmured to him, just to watch him being sweet and coy. He flutters those eyelashes sometimes, when he’s pretty, when I compliment him. It goes right through my chest like a dart when he does that. I pressed my lips to his cheekbone, right at the corner of his eye. I smiled in his ear.

“You are so beautiful, precious, precious boy.”

Fin

For Christmas this year I was given a Border’s gift card. The thought behind the card was that I would use it to purchase an Australian travel guide. I already have an Australian travel guide. Instead, I went home with the newest PostSecret book, A Lifetime Of Secrets. This remarkable art project asks people to send in anonymous postcards with their secrets on them. I find it enormously touching, and often poignantly sad.

I leafed through the pages of the book on the subway, headed home with Maymay on New Year’s Eve. On the lower right-hand corner of one page, written in blue ink above a snapshot of a couple clapping, were the words I miss when you were just proud of me.

I started sobbing right there on the subway. I had to laugh at myself, I felt so foolish.

I spent eight days visiting family members during the Christmas holidays. I had enormous trouble organizing my thoughts while I was there. Much of my time with my family was nourishing, and content. I enjoyed Christmas. I ate cinnamon rolls and watched my cat pounce on wrapping paper, high on catnip.

I spent some time alone with the family member I shared that painful conversation with back at Thanksgiving. Seeing them was both relieving and difficult.

We did not have the beautiful, moving conversation one might have thought we’d have. I was not expecting us to. There’s a part of me that is amazed we talked at all. We sat in a crowded lunchroom over chili and hot chocolate, and built a small, sparse bridge of words.

“I’ve put passwords on my blog,” I offered, uncomfortably.

“That’s good, I suppose,” they answered. “I know you’ve been writing, but I haven’t read it.”

I wasn’t sure what to think of that. I turned a spoonful of chili over, contemplating. Eventually I answered. “You don’t have to read what I write, you know.”

“I know that,” they said. “But I’m always going to want to read what you write. You’re a part of me, what you do is going to last.” They paused a moment. “Your dust is going to be my dust too.”

I smiled at that.

“It was very painful for me, saying those things to you,” they said.

I teared up a little. “I know it was. I wrote about that.”

“This isn’t a good place to talk about it,” they said.

“I know,” I answered.

Later we drove home together. I watched the trees meld together in blurred shapes as we passed.

I drew a helpless gesture in the air with my hands. “I don’t know if you want to talk about . . . all this, if you want to learn about it or have me explain things to you.”

“I don’t think . . . I’m never going to think that violence is okay,” they answered. “I told you what I think, and I know you’ll do what you want.” They paused, staring at the road ahead. “I’m trying to let you go,” they said.

I thought about that for a little while.

Finally they spoke again. “Is there anything you really want to say?”

I turned the question over in my head. Was there anything I really wanted to say to them? About violence, or kink, or being an adult? About decision making, about work and energy and dedication? About criticism, constructive or otherwise? About Maymay, about how much I love him and how good he is for me?

I’m trying to let you go.

“I really think you could have handled the situation better,” I said at last.

“Maybe,” they answered.

We drove on, for a little while, in silence. Eventually I fell asleep with my cheek on the window.

Is that it?

I don’t know.

I think I’ll always disappoint my family in ways, and there will always be things we just don’t talk about. I think I will always live, as I have always lived, with this undercurrent of criticism and distance, and love.

I think I’ll relish the day I can see in the distance, the day I make decisions without my family.

I think that right now, just in this moment, that’s okay. I think that it will still hurt. I will cry on subway cars sometimes, and then occasionally, and then, hopefully, not at all.

Like I have been every other time my life was broken, in the end I will be okay.

Have I brought this painful span of words and weeks to an end?

Perhaps I have. I don’t know.

I do know that for the first time in weeks, I want to write again.