I have the very beginning of a head cold. I can tell, the way my throat feels ticklish and round. This frustrates me. It derails the little stirrings of arousal that I like so much in the very late night. It’s hard to masturbate when I need to sneeze. It borders on the comical.

Maymay sick and horny is like a flopsy kitten ballet. On the one hand, he can barely move his body. But on the other, parts of him twitch and rotate without him even noticing. He makes small noises in his throat that echo the small noises of my squeaky, wheezing nose. It would be quite sexy, were it not mildly gross.

I have been feeling off, of late. My dominant instincts keep lying to me, telling me to try things I know don’t work. I have taken to pulling May’s hair, even when I can already see that he doesn’t want his hair pulled. It is like I’m trying to force the issue.

What is that, I wonder? Is my energy unfocused? Am I not paying attention? Am I looking for validation? Or am I just having a string of bad days?

It’s all right. every time I veer off, I always come back. It just takes a little while to learn to work the buttons again.

When we moved here we did  not buy a mattress. We were budgeting, and we didn’t know how long we’d stay, so we bought a foam pad, thin, soft, and malleable. We figured we could always replace it in the future.

Ten months later, our foam pad has dips carved where our bodies rest in the night, and we still have not replaced it. It is obvious now that we will not. We will only be here two more months; two months and three days, in fact.

Last night I sunk into this feather nest of pale green cotton, and May and I slept like dead and drunken logs. It felt amazing to sleep that way again. It makes it harder to think of sleeping on our foam for the next two months, and then the inevitable bumps of couch surfing and floors and whirlwind unsettlement that await us before we can finally start building our home again. I want to do it right this time. I want to find a place I can paint and push and pull and make just ours, just right. I have not had a chance to do that, yet.

A sketch for some possible tattoo work. Bonus points for naming the visual reference. Happy new year, lovelys, and loved ones.

Yes, I did suggest the film to him. Yes, I did suggest it because of the promise of hot onscreen sex. And yes, it was sexy.

It was also infuriating. Gripping my seat, digging my nails into May’s arm, biting my lip and scowling ferociously infuriating. But it’s Woody Allen. Maybe I should have expected that?

I really have a hard time watching people fuck relationships up. I realize this ruins me for about half of cinema. And I have a particularly hard time watching people fuck up polyamorous non-traditional relationships that are literally idyllic. What? We couldn’t have walked away with one mainstream representation of polyamory that didn’t involve mass marriage and teen pregnancy? That was too much to ask? Obviously, yes.

I have been writing short stories (and hopefully long stories) about non-traditional relationships and kink, of late. I find myself reluctant to add drama to these stories, because I want so badly for there to be good stories about my kind of sex and relationship that don’t end in emotional meltdown or fiery death. I want stories about kink in which the protagonists are not intrinsically fucked in the head, and stories about poly in which the relationship is not inevitably doomed. 

But those stories, though lovely, are narratively boring. There’s a trick to writing them, somewhere. I’m still sorting it out.

We pay attention, and we talk a lot. We identify issues and do the work we think is best to solve them. And really, I think that’s it.

There is an idea that having a healthy relationship depends, in some way, upon finding the “right person,” but I’m not sure that’s true. I have had many healthy relationships in the past, and have many at the moment. I have even had relationships end in healthy ways. In every case, they were the right person for me at that time, for whatever it was we were doing.

And then, every relationship I’ve ever been in that was hurtful or unhealthy had issues stemming from problems in communication. Perhaps that’s why I’m so obsessed. And, perhaps that’s why I’m so neurotic, and why the self-awareness tag in this blog keeps growing.

And as for whether Maymay is the “right” person for me, right now, he is. And he continues to be, in a way I’ve never seen before. We are suited to each other in the long term, which is why we’re pushing four years together and we’re still talking, every single day.

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.

We’re leaving Sydney in early March. We will return to New York, for a while. Long enough to see our friends, our families. Long enough to launch Kink for All. Long enough to arrange the scattered pieces of our lives. Hopefully long enough to get Maymay kidnapped, captured and througly played out.

Why are we leaving here, you ask? It’s time. We’ve been in Sydney long enough to know we won’t be making a home here at this point in our lives. The city’s not quite right for us, right now. (This makes me feel like Goldilocks; too hot, to cold, just right. Too big, too small, just right.)

After some weeks in New York, though, we’re moving on. I know there is some hope that we would once again be residents of NYC, but it isn’t time, just yet. So where are we going?

San Francisco.

Why?

Isn’t it obvious?

I wrote about my first and last foursome. It was sexy, geeky, and a lot of fun. Geeky sex is the best sex.

Here’s what editor Rachel says about the anthology:

The Lust Chronicles is my first foray into e-books, from the newly launched Ravenous Romance. I have NO clue how it’s gonna go, but I hope people buy it because these true sex stories are excellent, and the lineup includes many people I found via blogs and Twitter. Unlike my other anthologies, this one only costs $4.99! Woo-hoo! You can even buy it as an audiobook (for $12.99).

Here’s the table of contents:

Lust Chronicles Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Introduction – Truth is Sexier Than Fiction
Solo Sex – A Personal History by Zille Defeu
Luke Lushious by Lolita Wolf
Five’s Company by Mal Ross
Straight Seduced by Siren
First-Time Mistress by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Fedora by Jincey Lumpkin
Fairy Tale by Mia
Day at St. John’s by Heidi Champa
I Remember a Night at a Renaissance Faire by Eileen
The Anticipation of Joy by Max Lagos
Flogger by Alysa Adams
Room 3025 by Maria M. Diaz
Three’s Company For Two, Please by Val Strange
Letting Off Steam by Graydancer
Digital Manipulation by Alessia Brio
Sex in Dirty Places by Twanna A. Hines
The Consequences of Complaint by Alex M. Quinlan
Slow Dance by NookieNotes
Rocked Deep by Zaedryn Meade
Mile High Club by Devan Sagliani
Submit by Shanna Katz
Daredevil by Desiree
Kiss My Boots by Mollena “Mo” Williams
Notes on a Night in Bed by Jenna B.
Older Woman Appreciation by Mark Farley

Publisher Blurb:

The Lust Chronicles takes readers inside the minds of men and women who know how to get their kink on. Fantasies are fulfilled as they go to orgies, join the Mile High Club, seduce sexy strangers and do all the naughty things they’ve always wanted to try. In “Luke Lushious,” Lolita Wolf attends a summer sex camp and finds the man of her dirtiest dreams, while Alex M. Quinlan learns “The Consequences of Complaint.”

Here you’ll find an ode to older women, lust for a girl in a fedora, one woman’s love affair with public sex, and several passionate paeans to the lovers you just can’t forget. Readers will identify with their cravings for over-the-top sex, and get off along with the narrators as they recount every last intimate detail. Proving that truth is far hotter than fiction, the Lust Chronicles authors bare all, letting you live vicariously through their steamy, 100% true stories.

Also, thanks to Essin’ Em for writing this blog post for me. I admit, I stole it.

One of the things I keep noticing is that people light up when they grok the Kink For All/Bar Camp/unconference concept. It’s like something very remote and intangible has suddenly taken a dramatic leap closer in their minds. I loved explaining it tonight to our new friends, over mango daquiris. And I loved, in particular, how my friend immediately jumped from the event concept to the potential to create and share lasting information. “That’s so cool,” she said excitedly, “Will you tape it? Will you keep that information around for people who can’t attend?” And we laughed, and kept on talking. I wished she could be there when it happens.

I am excited for March already, and for bringing the concept to San Francisco if someone doesn’t beat us to it. It seems almost silly, this mix of activism and organisation and drive, but I like inhabiting it. I like feeling as though we all might do something that makes the world shift, just a little bit. Because how amazing is that? The thought that together, we can shift the world.

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.