I have been thinking about where I want this blog to go. But first, I’d like to talk about where it started.

Bloody Laughter didn’t start here. It started, in point of fact, with an open diary I had back with my first kinky boyfriend, where I wrote him love notes and jumped whenever I realized someone else was reading. That blog, before I deleted it, was called Your Sadism Is Showing. When I started dating Maymay I decided I needed somewhere to store ideas my family couldn’t read, and I started a LiveJournal, titled Sweet Steel. (It was that LiveJournal, incidentally, that eventually allowed my family member to connect this blog to me and subsequently confront me over my chosen topics.)

Just as I like to think that in his time with me May’s understanding and appreciation of art, literature and fashion have matured, I know that in my time with him my technical capabilities and opinions have matured. Hence, Livejournal moved to Blogger and eventually to my own site with Wordpress, newly titled A Place To Draw Blood Laughing. I have in the past year hesitated over my choice of name, blunt and potentially disturbing as it is, but I kept it because I think it is poetic, and accurate.

At first blush, this was just a space I’d made where I could talk about how I have sex, and be sure (wrongfully sure, admittedly) that my nearest and dearest were not reading, or reading only with invitation and sympathy. It’s a theme here that I over analyze, that I am extremely body-conscious, that I am sensually driven and sex-positive and in some ways deeply strange. So it made sense to write about my strangeness, and to make a place for the dark parts of me to breathe.

And then there was a merry rush in the form of a golden summer of kink, of working on Floating World and digging out my strong opinions in words for the first time. Then there was the death-defying tailspin of being attacked over what I’ve said in this space, and my somewhat pathetic attempts to crawl my way out of the wreckage.

I limped along, for a while. I moved to Australia. I widened my scope.

I said when I started this blog that I would never apologize to myself if I didn’t want to update it. That was my little way of being clever, keeping myself free of the thing. In the end, though, that’s a stupid plan for a blog. Blogs should update. It is unfair of me to not update and still call this thing a blog, and want to make it thrive.

Maybe you have seen where this is going. Maybe you knew months ago, as I knew. As I’ve said before, I make decisions quickly and then come around to them slowly. The truth is I knew in the middle of last year that I would lay this blog to rest.

This is the end. A Place To Draw Blood Laughing is now closed.

I’ll give you two of my reasons. The first is creative.

At the height of this blog I was writing two posts a day and chronicling my sex life with lust and eager glee. I was also not writing anything but blog posts. My stories stagnated, my fiction trailed off and was eventually nothing. It seems I do not have the focus and energy to write here and also maintain my other creative pursuits.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m writing a manuscript, a long and meaty thing. In doing so, I have become jealous of my own words. I don’t want them here. I want them there, in the pages that are growing.

I pour letters out in the shape of sex, of Maymay’s hips and the wispy curls on his soft neck, of hot mornings alone in my bed with my hand between my thighs, of a blond Australian man who moves my hand to his throat when he comes and smiles in his own aftermath.

I pour them out and want to keep them for the book, this thing I’m trying to write that keeps growing into my creative spaces when I’ve looked the other way, so all of my drawings turn up pornography and all on my blog posts are sucked clean-dry.

The reality is I can’t figure out how to write about sex and blog about sex at the same time. I want to write this book more than I want to blog my current adventures; I want it to be finished so badly, the thought makes my chest ache.

The second reason I’m ending my time here is because I’d like to learn to speak for myself, openly, with my real name and my real voice.

I wrote once:

I honestly believe that being able to write what I want about my life and my sexuality is more important to me than the possibility that I may never teach children. I may never become powerful within a large company. I will definitely never run for public office…

A part of it is the belief, the naive, wide-eyed, furious, childish insistence that my life is my own, my body is my own, and I should always be able to speak my mind.

I can only be hurt by the words I write if those words represent a secret that is for some reason damaging. In many ways, being out protects me. Being unashamed, vocal and revealing can only limit the weapons available against me.

I have become increasingly skeptical of anonymity, or pseudo-anonymity, in my case. I’m certainly not saying we all need step from the shadows and reveal ourselves. I think our identities within our community are always our own, to do with as we like. But for me, keeping up the anonymous show seems increasingly pointless.

Most of the reasons I had to keep this journal separated from my real name vanished the day I sat down with my family member over Thanksgiving weekend and found my life suddenly ripped in tiny shreds. I clung stubbornly to the other reasons for a little while; the future jobs, the rest of the family, the possible consequences, the blinding, sneaky fear.

I find it very unfortunate and a little shameful that I feel the want to censor myself more fully now than I did when this blog began. Perhaps you could say that I’ve learned, or grown. You could say I’ve become more frightened, which is also true.

But in a wider sense, the real take-away is that my goals have changed. I am not content to speak from a pseudonym any longer. I have, in fact, soured radically upon the concept of not claiming my own ideas. But I recognize that speaking from my real name and voice will require a different perspective, and will have a different audience.

I’m sick of being afraid. I don’t want it any more. When it comes to emotional turmoil, I only really know how to bury things or confront them head on. I’m not sure which I’m doing right now.

The reality is that this is not an anonymous blog. Anyone with half a brain can find out who I am from here; Twitter was the last step that fell in place and clinched it. Any pretense we all may have made to my anonymity has been out of mutual respect and politeness. The sex community builds itself upon these fragile understandings, thin as sugar sticks. You support me, I support you. You trust me. I trust you.

I am out, but not unified. I’ve decided I’d like to feel unified, for once. I’d like to have a space on the web that can contain all of myself. Right now I have two sites and neither of them do what I what them to do. Both are limited, this site by its very narrow scope and my professional & personal site by its attempt to be clean. I would like a site that can be a little naughty, be professional, host my writing and my job hunt alongside my queer politics and community work. I don’t work well when I’m not fully integrated.

I’ve decided that I’d like to speak as myself, and that I can no longer accept the fragile, imagined protection of using other names and putting on a great pretending show. I am not a conjurer in that way. I am forthright, and know no other way to be.

My name is Sara.

I’d like to thank you for reading me as Eileen these past two years. I don’t mind if you keep calling me that; I answer to it now anyway.

I’ve found amazing support, dear friends and ever-expanding opportunities through this blog and the queer and kink scenes. I’m not leaving. I’m going to stay open, stay active, and keep writing. I’m going to make new spaces, run new events, spread new ideas. Perhaps I will return in a few years to this same ground, swept clean.

For those of you interested in the nitty gritty: the archives will remain active. I will continue to accept and respond to password requests. I may try to find a mental space that allows me to open those posts again; I’m not sure yet. The site may be slightly rearranged, but the content will not change dramatically, or be erased. The BloodyLaughter Twitter account will be suspended, as I’ve switched to SaraEileen.

In the meantime, you are invited to visit my personal site, where in the tradition of most blogs I am writing my way through being young, confused, and complicated. SaraEileen.com is a somewhat different website; it connects to my resume. It has my real name. It is not just about this part of my life, but also about writing, job-hunting, creativity and business. It will be a different blog, and I will not be offended if it doesn’t strike your fancy. Of course, I would love to see you there. As I said, I trust you.

It seems silly to just say thank you, but I will anyway.

Thank you for helping me take the big issues seriously and the little ones lightly.

Thank you for keeping me truthful, growing and proud in return for my words and affection.

It’s been raucous and wild. These things will continue. I’ll be seeing you, good people. I’m always around.

With love,
Sara

One of our recent challenges has been working from home together. The biggest hurdle at the moment is that our sleep schedules are absolutely fucked. It has been rare for me in the past few weeks to hit my pillow before 4am. Maymay does the same. That means we miss a lot of mornings. 

I sleep less than he does. And I wake up more quickly. Truth be told, had my lifestyle not unfolded in such a way that being a night owl is intrinsic to my interests and company, I would be a morning person. I like mornings. I wake up quickly. I write better in the morning. (But I write sexier in the night. Go figure.)

It’s hard for me to work and spend the day with May at the same time. And I have been feeling on the antsy side. There are many reasons we might spend time together or apart. But with living together, working together, being attached to each other, it gets a little much. 

We have been scheduling time apart from one another our entire relationship. That that works well. It means that we’re assured of our own spaces. We have been doing that, of late. It works well. It keeps me balanced. It makes me hungry for him when I come back home.

He is still asleep as I write this. I am going to the beach today. (Even though it looks like it might rain.) I am tempted not to wake him up before I go; he looks so lovely in his sleep. The thing is, it’s good to go my own way for a while. But in truth, I miss him. I miss him even when he’s right next to me. I miss his skin on mine.

The holiday has made me nostalgic, and the nostalgia has really killed my sex drive. It’s sort of hard to be sexual when my body wants to curl up on a couch and eat cookies, and my brain swings back and forth between animal comfort and thundershower tears. I do miss my family today, and my friends. But it will be all right.

I find that sort of swinging emotional and sexual drive somewhat confusing. This morning I woke up feeling sick, as though I had been hung over for three days. I think my body revolted against my sleep schedule and lack of vegetables. Then mid-day I ate, went out, felt a bit of a tingle and maybe a goosebump here and there. I came home to my boy, and we put out candles and flowers on our couch and watched movies. I welled up briefly, in something akin to loneliness. And then we cuddled, I was better, but I could not rouse myself to sex. May’s skin against my own was far too soft and comfortable; I simply wished to stay in that bubble. I like it there.

I am sleepy, and it is far too late into this night. I will figure this sex-swinging body out in the morning.

Maymay, on the other hand, blisses out in tiny spaces. One night I folded his arms over his chest in a cross and tied them down that way. I’ve never seen him smile so wide. In bed, he wraps the blankets ’round himself like a burrito, or wedges his ass into my belly and folds his body into every nook and cranny of my own. Even day to day, in the way he sits and stands and walks, there is restraint. He holds his lips in, sometimes, and it makes me a little bit regretful because he has such lovely lips.

I joke that he is pocket sized. I want to create some sort of sac that I could fold him into, like fetal mummification. We play sometimes that he is verysmall and I am verylarge.

It is only when he sleeps that his restraint truly relaxes. When I wake up in the morning and shut off my alarm before he can roll over, he will be tumbled out along the sheets all fingers, legs, loose and parted lips. Then he is slinky long, and looks like a grown up, or a statue in white stone.

But when it arrived, all shrouded in bubble wrap and cardboard, I laughed aloud. I had failed to realize the essential flaw in this sexy plan: the thing is fucking huge. It is the size of my forearm; I feel vaguely as though it could be used to skewer a donkey.

Needless to say, at this point in time I have no intention of having sex with it.

So it’s sitting on our dresser now, alongside its case, my library books, and glasses cleaner. Every once and a while I pick it up and wave it at my boy. I’d attach it to the strap-on harness, but we don’t have a ring big enough to hold the monster.

Eventually I’ll find a place for it, somewhere in our teak box between the nylon and the hemp. The box is overflowing these days, as the weapons and gear of our sexuality gather to us.

I like that we still work without the toys, that we are still kinky naked, with nothing but our hands and mouths and tongues. Last night I wrapped my arm around May’s shoulders and held his wrists in my hand. With my other hand I cupped his cock, and stroked the tip of my thumb up and down the length of him over and over, until he had tears in his eyes and he whimpered like an angry child. He still had his t-shirt on, a soft cotton thing that smells like Old Spice. When I stopped he was angry, although I saw him try to hide it. His frustration was very sharp, and he thrashed on the bed and whined.

I rested a little while, while he struggled and pouted at me, his hands writhing inside mine. I closed my eyes and drifted toward the very edge of sleep. But I could feel the scene still in the air, like ending a concerto on an open tone.

“I like you like this, when you feel owned,” I said to him. I like him when every breath on his skin thrills him. I kissed his ear, his neck, pulled down his collar and licked his collarbone, pulled up his shirt and dragged my teeth against the barbell through his nipple. I kissed down his stomach and when I put my lips to the head of his cock he shrieked, almost sobbed into the pillow.

When he came, arching his ribs so that he stood off the bed like a bridge of flesh through the air, he shot so far he hit his own neck and shoulder, white streaks all over the thin cotton. And as he came I couldn’t help but think of water guns.

“Ah ga buh,” he said, when he could say things again.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” I smiled.

“Buz ugu ma.” He slurred the sounds, closed his eyes, long fingers sprawled across his sticky belly.

“I think I have broken you. Have you forgotten how to speak?”

He nodded. We giggled a little, and when I pushed him off the bed to shower he walked in zigzags, holding one hand to the wall to keep himself upright, all fluid, heavy limbs.

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.

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.

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.”

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.