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

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.

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.

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.

1. He is like direction

This is him, my boy. 

He has legs round and firm as rubber balls, with monkey toes, long, grasping, narrow. He has little frog fingers that are skinny, the knuckles pressed together in strange places, and when I call him my frog-fingered boy he puts them to his face and covers his eyes. The pads of his fingers are thick and white, like silver coins. He makes me pulverized and strange.

He stands in our kitchen washing the dishes with his belly pushed out against the sink. He scuffs his feet, turns his toes pigeon-angled in. I come up behind him as he washes, and run my fingertips from the hard knobs of his collarbone to the backs of his thin hands. I do it to see the goose-bumps. I put my arms around his waist and press my face into his back, my feet flat and strong and bare on the tile floor.

He has, like a pufferfish, found a crack and puffed himself up to fit my life. He is wrapped around my lazy days with all the grace and wriggling charm of an octopus. He has the sleek softness of little harbor seals and the dry tenacity of a pit bull puppy dog.

He has a big hooked nose like a mountain, like his father. It is a family nose.

He has skin like vanilla ice cream. I tell him this over and over, while I tongue my way down the dinner rolls of his ribs, the mound of his ass where it swells from his legs. He has chili pepper lips and hair and ears and secret places. I like to split him in two with my tongue. 

My boy is like direction, my east, my sunrise, my north, my compass. He has the push and pull of magnetic insistence.

This is me.

I have a body like circles with a bird’s neck. I swing low when I walk. I walk like a boy, sit like a boy, cock my head and wear my hair like a boy. I like things that cling, cotton that sticks to my curving trajectories.

I leave trinkets in my wake, books, drawing pencils, a sock, a bit of yarn, a leather coin purse, a pearl earring, a knife. I put them down and he cleans them up, and then I come back and can’t find them again.

I think in layers and he thinks in lines. I speak with subtext and he speaks without. I feel things hard and short, he feels things hard and long. I float and he swings.

Some nights, when it is hard to focus, I open the window to the fire escape. I sit on the bed and thread temporary needles through the skin of my arm. I know how to do it so it won’t leave marks; I have practiced many times, on many people. Sometimes when I have a job the next day, or the day after that, I will be careful. Other times I pull the needles out hard and at a slant, so they make double bruises like twin purple grapes. I like them. They make me laugh. I like to leave marks to show where I’ve been.

I was in a plane crash when I was five. I tell people this, and I tell them I remember the bumps, metal, the green sparks. But I don’t know if I do remember those things, or if I painted them into the gaps later on. This is what I do; I tell lies like they’re true. I don’t know which of my stories are real any more.

This is me. And this is him. This story is about the things he does to me, and the things I do to him.

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.

We sit for a while, and he reads bits of my story, and we talk about the relationship of character and action. He becomes interested in a character: a boy who stands against a wall with his shirt off, his eyes closed and mouth open, completely silent as a girl with a grin presses a knife to his face, and then hits him in the shoulder. He’s a character I based off the Boston Boy, except I’ve changed his name and re-imaged his life, and kept his face, his body, and his nuances of sound.

How does this character’s silence betray his personality? My older friend asks me these and other questions. He calls my writing “acceptable” and I laugh at him, a little.

We talk, and I think aloud, and then he apologizes for kicking me out so soon. A famous author is coming to see him, and I just don’t rank. That’s all right, I assure him, I understand. And as I say it, the famous author is at the door of his office. We are both caught by surprise.

My friend introduces him to me. “Nice to meet you,” I say as I shake his hand and smile.

“Nice to meet you too,” he replies. He is very short, and round, and I like him. I have heard his books are terrible.

My friend then introduces me to him. “This is Eileen,” he says. “She’s a pornographer.”

I smile again. “Well, aspiring.” I amaze myself with my own suaveness.

The famous author looks between the two of us, and then everyone chuckles. “I’ll be one of your best customers someday,” he jokes, although I wonder if he’s really joking.

“Great,” I respond, “someone’s got to read it.” And I smile one more time, and say goodbye. As I walk out of the office, down the stairs and into the light rain, I think how proud I am that I caught that curveball and threw it back. And I wonder when I became content with my pornography. And I wonder how many times I’ll have to catch that ball again.

I go to a library and find a desk by a window. I curl up in the chair, and then I write about sex.