we'll have our day

Trace the thump thump thump with your finger, feeling tiny reverberations beneath the marsh and marrow.  Pulled together with cotton and cool breezes.  This bed is our island, this room our country, this house our world.  Pay no mind to the comets crashing against our atmosphere.  You're safe now, secluded from the screams and secure in the handcuff of my arms.  We are perfect, lying in the inky black of bundled silk, lip petals and onyx eyes.  We are supple cannibals, one body nourished by the other, fragrant skin and warm throats.   

And we are disgusting.

But only by other people's standards, of course.  We're an aberration born from texts and timid minds.  We were an alignment or accident or maybe a divine delegation.  We don't know and we don't care.  Our lips come together the way the clouds kiss the sky and that's all that's ever made sense to us, all we ever needed to know.  Bursting suns and burning rays of need.  Undulating heat and hunger.

Ignore the bang bang bang at the door and keep focus on the fullness, this bed, this rhythmic flow.  Mind this medicine, unlocked and measured out in mouthfuls.  This is not unholy.  This is ethereal and beautiful and above us all, this gift, this flesh, these nerves and electrical currents teasing transcendence.  I'm inserting the key to God's house, opening the door for us to enter and evolve.  Together.  This is us, pulled apart from the masses and cast into the cosmos.  Mute out the mouths on the other side that tell us we are wrong.  They don't know love, only lassitude.  We are not filth.

But yes, we can still be dirty.

Feel the scratch scratch scratch along my back, marking territory on pale skin.  Red lines of belonging, parallel to past scars.  No one can breach these barriers but you, switching over with soft words and gentle moves.  Waves and waves and waves, blood rushing through my eyelids, feeling fuller and falling deeper in love.  Ignore anything but the bustle of breath, the tension in your tendons, the quickening flood of chemicals.  Snapshot the stars spiraling behind your eyelids.  Revel in the release of fluid and fear, shuddering in sameness.  Now we are one.  I am all you've ever been and you have become all I've ever aimed to be.  My love, lower your lashes to the noise at the threshold of death.  When the fire dies outside, we'll have our day.

fifty shades of what women want

At the behest of my work girlfriend (who I will refer to as WG for short), I read Fifty Shades of Grey.  I didn't really want to but she kept insisting and I thought it could be something new we could discuss.  We've never talked about books before so I was looking forward to an intellectual exchange regarding fictional characters and their motivations.

But as I read, I kept pointing out problems I had with the book.  Christian Grey was too perfect, too mysterious.  Anastasia Steele was too innocent, too inexperienced.  Early on in the book, she said she didn't know why she was falling for him.

"That doesn't make any sense," I mentioned to WG.  "He's super rich.  He's super handsome.  He's graceful and just distant enough to leave her wanting more.  That's reason enough to fall in love with him.  Any girl would.  Heck,  I think I'd fall in love with him, too."

WG laughed.  "Well, he does have some physical flaws, though.  He's not perfect."

"Oh, yeah?  What?  Is his penis so large he can't find comfortable underwear?  What a tortured soul!'

She laughed again.  Ah, such a nice sound.

"So, what is so appealing about him?"

"I don't know," she said, her kohl-lined eyes wandering off to the ceiling, pondering.  "I guess I just like that he's dark."

"I'm dark," I said.  Hello, I was dead for three years.

"No you're not," she said with a smirk.  "You're just emo.  And you choose to be that way."

Ah, not such a nice sound.  She really knows how to stab a guy right in the face.

"He had a really dark childhood," she added.

"You don't know about my upbringing.  It could have been dark, too."  It wasn't.

"Not like his," she countered.

"You don't know what I've been through!"  Nothing.

I just wasn't that impressed with the book.  I'll admit I jump on literally bandwagons.  I read the Twilight series and The Hunger Games series and I always tried to enjoy the books for what they were instead of what they were hyped to be.  And they were both all right.  But this one I just couldn't seem to get into like the others.  I guess I can understand it's popularity because it's so provocative but honestly, it wasn't as filthy as I imagined, which was admittedly another reason I wanted to read it.  I wanted to see how raunchy it really got.  Maybe I'm just a sick mofo but it seemed a little tame to me.  It's possible things get more extreme in the other two books but I think the first one walked the fine line between kinky sex and all out smut, just enough to titillate and not alienate, which is why it worked so well.  So I give her props for that but the writing is pretty amateur.

sour cherry

"I want to learn how you save yourself 
for someone who loves you for you
So many times we just give it away 
to someone who couldn't even remember your name..."
-Sense Field, Save Yourself

"We're under the sheets
and you're killing me..."
-Ellie Goulding, Under the Sheets

One day in my art history class, I sat at my desk and looked around me as my professor droned on about Duchamp's "Fountain" and surmised I was probably the only virgin in the room.  I was not interested in a urinal as a piece of art so my mind wandered and landed in sexland. 

Because art history was a foundation class, the students were not separated by major and it was a mixed crowd.  Everyone from the trust fund valley girl fashion student to the animation student who doodled bunnies with manga eyes in his notebook to the chunky girl who wore pajamas to class every day sat among me.  And they had all probably been laid before.  So, why hadn't I?

"Well, look at me," I thought to myself.  Although I was the most attractive I had been in my young adult life, I still felt chubby and untouchable and I thought my physical appearance was why I hadn't yet had sex.

But I knew a lot of trolls who had engaged in sexual activity so that couldn't be it.  Just about anyone can find someone to sleep with.  People are so horny these days that being picky isn't always an option when the possibility of orgasm is within reach.  And it wasn't so much the fact that I thought I wasn't good-looking enough to be touched, but my looks caused a crippling insecurity that made me feel unworthy of intimacy.

I had enough trouble feeling good about the way I looked clothed, with all of my biggest flaws completely covered.  I couldn't imagine stripping away all the layers of protection and revealing everything to a partner.  Nakedness and intimacy opened up a whole new world of insecurity.

What if I wasn't good?  What if I wasn't well equipped or satisfying enough?  What if I jiggled too much or had no coordination?  I can't even pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time so how can I be expected to kiss and thrust and massage all at once?  Did I have the capability to cause pleasure?  Could my tongue tantalize?  Could I cause another to shudder with satisfaction?  It was something I hadn't thought much about.  It was a foreign concept to think I could put my body next to another.

When I was younger, I was fascinated with the concept of kissing.  I never understood how people could be bad kissers.  It seemed pretty simple.  Press your lips together and voila, nerve endings react and fire and pleasure pervade the body.  But when I actually had my first kiss, I understood.  I was so nervous and focused on not landing on her nose that all pleasure drained from the activity.  I tried to navigate my lips around hers without mashing my face into her mouth and the whole thing felt too hard and mechanical.  The thought of tongue usage terrified me so I cut our kissing short.

So with that taste of intimacy, I realized I was either done with it all or simply just not ready.  Through the years, thoughts of kissing progressed to thoughts of sexual intercourse and how much more involved it seemed than kissing but I still wondered how anyone could be bad at that, either.  I guessed it was possible but when you get down to it, don't the same basic mechanics as kissing apply?  Aren't you still just pressing parts together and waiting for the slippery friction to send waves of calm across the body?

I feel like some of you are giggling right now, thinking I have a lot to learn about how bad it can be.  But who will I trust enough to teach me?

Do I even want to know?