Author: amaranthineborder

By Jamie

In the news recently, a prominent (and at one time revered) American entertainer and comedian is getting jail time for drugging and sexually assaulting women; his wife insists the accusers are lying.  Elsewhere, a squad of NFL cheerleaders is taken out of the country, their passports are collected, and they are forced to pose for semi-explicit photographs while high-level team supporters watch.  Internationally, the Nobel Prize in Literature may be cancelled this year due to the bad behavior of a male panel member and likely cover-ups by others.  And most recently, the Attorney General for New York (who filed charges against Harvey Weinstein for his own bad behavior) has resigned after four women accused him of assault, which he has categorized as consensual role-playing.  A CNN headline states the obvious: “In case you were wondering, #metoo is far from over….”

I’ve been wrestling for months with this topic.  First, it’s a beast with many tentacles that is probably more suited to a book-length treatment.  I was paralyzed by an overabundance of issues and details, each of which seems important.  Second, I wasn’t sure that a blog about two people having great sex was the right place to address #metoo, but Sophie’s trip, the ongoing news, and our conversations all along the way have put this topic on our front burner.  And third, I wasn’t sure I wanted to look under the hood of my past, go through the mental rolodex and reconsider innocent-seeming consensual experiences in this newer, more exacting light.

Continue reading “#metoo for the modern male”

“So I’m back home from my trip to the desert. Did you miss me?”

“I did. I realized how much I missed you after you got back. I tried not to think about it while you were gone because it would have tortured me.”

“What was it you said? ‘Absence makes the word count longer?’”

“I think it was, ‘absence makes the hard-on harder.’”

“Anyway. I missed you too. I thought about you a lot, between music and walking and art and watching people try to hook up with other people–”

“I read some coverage about that while you were gone. Women talking about how they were assaulted, groped. It bothered me.”

“I did run across a man getting yelled at by a woman wearing…not very much. He was being scolded for having looked at her fairly visible body. I kind of felt bad for him. I actually offered him a cigarette afterwards. It turns out he brushed past her body on the way to a bathroom. All I know is what he told me afterward, of course. He seemed surprised by the intensity of her reaction. I watched her yell at him for a good two minutes and he told me that had been going on for several minutes before I came across it.”

“Assuming he told you the truth, do women get to run around half naked and get angry when men notice?”

“I think that it is one hundred percent acceptable for women to run around fully naked doing whatever they want with the expectation that they won’t be physically engaged against their will.”

“I agree completely.”

“But I think the expectation that another person won’t look upon their mostly naked body without at least some degree of interest or desire is completely unrealistic and ignores a lot of what makes us human. And that’s really sad, the idea that it isn’t okay to appreciate beauty in a benign way.”

“My burner experience is similar. Freedom of expression includes everything up to total nudity, but you still want to look the other person in the eye and treat them as a fellow human.  In some ways it’s actually easier in that context.”

“What you’re saying is that consent to sexual activity isn’t implied or that it needs to be confirmed.”

“There are fun and playful ways to communicate your interest. Grabbing someone’s butt or breast or fingering them or whatever when they can’t defend themselves or can’t even tell who you are is just wrong.”

“Which is interesting to me because that’s kind of a fantasy, right? Hooking up with a stranger?”

“Stories have been written about that very thing, interesting stories, but the reason they are stories is because they can explore that fantasy safely. There are whole categories of porn based on this idea, but at the beginning of the videos you see the woman agreeing to the activity and at the end she talks about whether it met her expectations. But it’s still a fantasy on film. The topic can be explored safely on the page or screen but if acted out in reality, without consent, it’s not appropriate or acceptable. It seems ridiculous to have to say that out loud.”

“So what’s okay in art may or may not be okay in reality?”

“Honestly, I don’t know that the stories are completely appropriate – I’ve tried to write things like that but can’t finish them — but pretending that this piece of ourselves doesn’t exist is ignorant. It contributes to the problem, for both men and women.  We have to find a better way to address our shadows.”

“I feel that this is a huge sweeping topic with a million branching pathways that we could spend our entire year talking about and is insanely important, especially for us to address, since you and I have given each other blanket consent and not yet run into an issue… but not everyone is like us.”

“So maybe we should spend some time thinking about the broader picture. And then let’s get back to fucking.”

“I agree. We definitely need to get back to the porn. But first, seriousness.”

“I’m putting on my hipster glasses as we speak.”

 

“The next Bedpost Confessions is happening this week.”

“I know, Jamie.  I’m bummed that I’ll be out of town.”

“Your commitment to chasing good music is one of the things I love about you, Sophie.  But yeah, our first BC experience was amazing.”

“Why did it blow us away so completely?”

“I don’t think we knew what to expect. A storytelling show about sex could be anything.”

“I have to confess—”

“Ha ha.”

“—sorry, lacking any other information, I worried that we would be bored.  I thought we would be more extreme, more privately interesting as you put it, than anybody else in the room.”

“Yeah, that lasted about two seconds.”

“Whatever worry I might have had about being too extreme or vanilla — and like you, I am fine with my tastes and range and don’t worry how I “rank” in the annals or land on the spectrum — melted away quickly.”

“Exactly. I don’t share a lot of the kink described in that room. But I didn’t feel particularly vanilla, either.  The fact that so many other people are having fulfilling sex lives makes me happy just in general.”

“The sense of community was overwhelming.  I was not vanilla or extreme.  I was not an outsider, or an insider. I was a fellow traveler.  We were all in one big sexual lifeboat together, as equals.  I am just a person, right where I should be, bobbing in the universal ocean. I have felt that way at times during my Burning Man experiences. I think you have felt it with music festivals.  That moment when your magnet soul knows just where to attach.”

“I was surprised by the power of the stories told onstage. I enjoyed the second speaker and his story of dating the younger woman. It was both sexy and real. It was almost like they knew we were coming.”

“I will also confess to feeling so, so smugly proud when my anonymous confession got read on stage.”

“Well, you are a writer, and writers like an audience.”

“It’s a very clever way to pull their audience in. At first I wasn’t going to write anything, but then I thought no, let’s honor the spirit of the thing. And I’m glad we did. Two supersluts having their virginal Bedpost Confessions experience. The world needed to know.”

“I enjoyed it more because you were with me. Not just the idea of having a date. It was a ‘you and me’ kind of thing.”

“I am now obsessed with having a confession read every time we go.  I have already written the next one: ‘After our first Bedpost Confessions, my girlfriend and I were so inspired that she took me home and demanded that I do violently cathartic things to her, to our intense mutual pleasure. Tonight we brought a date.”

“’Violently cathartic’? Sure. But did I get off, heavily and well, at the fact that you, a giving and talented lover with no need to abuse me, were doing it? One hundred percent.”

“Maybe it’s part inspiration, part generous bartender at that venue.”

“So who have you picked for a date?”

“Well, nobody.  I was trying to communicate that sense of overarching connection in a funny way.  But I don’t want to lie about it.

“Well, you never know what might happen.”

“That’s a topic for another conversation.  In the meantime, I am giving away the idea here, and we will have to think of something better to write the next time we go.”

“Which we definitely will do.”

“Definitely.”

by Sophie

Who doesn’t love a blowjob?

I’m not talking about the perfunctory “maybe he won’t ask me to do it anymore if I just suck his dick for ten minutes” blowjob or the “oh man that dinner was nice but I’m too lazy to have sex” blowjob. The kind of blowjob I am talking about could only be loved – slow at the start, wet, with lots of tongue and embouchure work. The kind of oral sex that takes a long time because the giver is having such a fantastic time. The kind of head where the receiver makes guttural noises in lieu of actual words. I’m referring to a raw, honest sexual act.

When I was first learning the map of my sexual landscape I realized very quickly that giving head was a surefire way to become aroused. I had my mouth around a dick long before I had my pussy around one. The boys I knew became resources – the sounds they made, the taste of their come, the way they moved, all of this input I mentally filed away to become better at oral sex. I learned how to use my tongue and lips as tools and how to play with all parts of a man’s erogenous areas, not just his penis. Every blowjob I gave before I lost my virginity left me a quivering, soaking, frustrated mess.

I don’t – can’t – understand people who don’t love sucking cock. There are so many powerful and lovely moments during the act of sex, but taking a lover into your mouth to please them is primal. Not as much as the actual joining of penis and pussy – after all, that’s how we make more of us – but there’s something instinctual about using the instrument through which we feed ourselves and communicate with others to pleasure another person. Oral sex is just another form of communication, at least in my thinking. One’s style of oral gratification can say a lot about who they are, much like the words that come out of their mouths. Who dislikes learning more about another person?

I treat oral sex as an event. I like to take my time. I love sliding down Jamie’s body, softly kissing his chest, his stomach, scratching my lips on his hair, tracing tiny imperfections in his skin with the tip of my tongue. I love pausing right at his crotch, right above his cock, to breathe in his scent. It is masculine and animal and nakedly erotic, radiating hot from his skin. I make him wait – I move to his thighs, giving them the same attention as his chest, pressing my face into his flesh. My lips line a path back to his tight, pretty balls where I use my tongue to trace a slow pattern on the skin there. He’s so soft and smooth there, as is his cock, which is where I am headed next after I sneak a quick glance at him. Usually by this point in the act his arm is slung over his eyes and his lips are barely parted to allow shallow breaths of pleasure. I will often remember to use my hands at this point to caress his stomach and chest and hips. I like touching his body. I like looking at him. I think he is very attractive, possibly the most attractive man I have enjoyed in a long time.

I like to take him in my hand and begin the oral ritual by stroking him. His cock is perfect, average in size while flaccid but becoming thick and impressively proportioned when it stiffens in my grip. It is beautiful and smooth with fine veins, nothing standing out too much to ruin the pretty profile. When he is close to climax it becomes hard enough to stretch his flesh taut, rendering it difficult to move the skin, necessitating lubrication when I am stroking him. But I don’t – can’t – wait long enough for him to become that aroused before I have to have him. Sometimes I will run my tongue from the base of his cock to the head before lowering my mouth on him. Sometimes I will envelop him suddenly, without much warning. Everything is a surprise to him because he likes to keep his eyes closed. He says he can see me better that way. It’s almost a pity, though – I have been told I am a very, very pretty cocksucker.

My ex-lover loved for me to give him head, loved to watch. Oral sex was a much different experience with him. Everything about him is so different from Jamie that I honestly wonder why I was with him in the first place, given how much I love mine and Jamie’s coupling. Regardless, when my ex and I were together we definitely enjoyed ourselves, and we did for years. Our energy was rough and chaotic and consensually abusive. He liked to use me and I liked to be used. He would ask me to get on my knees and take his sizable dick in my mouth. He had big hands with long fingers that he would use to stabilize my head while he fucked my face. His palm would hold the back of my head, crushing my fine hair as he forced his length into my mouth. I became much better at taking dick deeply into my throat during our time together because he loved it so much. He was very vocal and his words were profane. “Take it, you worthless slut,” he would growl as the carpet of his apartment cut into my knees and my eyes watered with the effort of deep-throating him. “You are so pretty, you are such a gorgeous cocksucker,” he would say, right before pulling away from me and aiming himself at my face. “Look at me, I want to see your eyes.” He said he loved giving facials because “he just wanted to dirty something beautiful.” I loved receiving facials because I love giving pleasure. I would ask him if I had been a good girl for him right as he reached the edge. The thick shots of hot semen arcing across my cheeks and chin were quite the affirmation.

The dynamic worked for us, for a time. Anyway.

Jamie is a much more quiet partner. It’s an intense quiet. He prefers to lie back and enjoy the proceedings without much direction – maybe he doesn’t want to direct me, maybe he doesn’t know what he wants in that moment, maybe he is just enjoying the ride. It never takes me long to break down his mental resistances. Within just a few minutes his breaths become thicker and slower, and inevitably he will sigh, “Oh God,” and that’s when I know the gate is open. I draw him deeply into my mouth and into my throat – he is usually hard enough at this point that my throat tries to resist, but with the right amount of relaxation and patience on my part, he slides in, causing me to salivate. I use the extra lubrication to stroke him a little bit faster, using my lips and tongue to tease the head of his cock and both my hands on his shaft. I alternate my hands, switching from left to right, trying to confuse his senses. I like taking him by surprise.

This ritual is slow. I don’t mind. I love every long moment of the work. Sometimes his erection will wilt slightly along the journey but I take those moments to be more tender with my lips, kissing and licking, using my hands to bring him back to life. It always works. His cock’s behavior is not always the most accurate barometer of is arousal – more than once he has said to me, “It feels like I am rock hard.” I believe him.

I love when his hips start to move and I can see goosebumps start to form on his thighs. I love his scent and how it becomes more and more present as his desire grows. His voice is always soft, which only makes it hotter when he groans and starts to lose control. I roll my tongue over his head before bobbing up and down, stopping for a moment to run it onto his balls when I have taken him completely. Sometimes I will, against most conventional wisdom, run the very tips of my teeth incredibly gently over the flare of his head, igniting the nerves there. He has never complained or probably even noticed that it was my teeth doing any of the work. Neither have the roughly four hundred other men upon which I have practiced that little trick.

Jamie’s movements become quietly frantic as he starts up “the hill,” when the rollercoaster of his orgasm has begun. There is no longer any give to his erection – on the contrary, I don’t think I ever see it harder than when he is about to come in my mouth. My strokes are no longer slow or teasing and have now become rhythmic and persistent and quick. I keep my touch light, not squeezing too much. His blood can be felt throbbing in the delicate veins, thrumming against my lips. His back arches, sometimes to the point where it looks like only his shoulders and his ass are touching the bed.

My cunt is drenched, my clit aching for touch, but this isn’t about me.

I turn my gaze to Jamie’s face again at the moment of release. It’s almost a pained look, almost a grimace. The sound of his orgasm is a hot, desperate sigh of pleasure that goes on and on as I experience the first pulse of his come fill my mouth. I keep stroking him lightly as he comes and comes, swallowing instinctively, enjoying him as I would a fine liquor. I could come just from the taste of him. He never tries to grab my head or force me onto his cock, which is somewhat appreciated just due to the force of his orgasm. I can’t help but feel pride.

It takes Jamie a while to come back to earth. Cleanup is easy; I just lick him and kiss him until any trace of him is gone. I love going down. I have been called the best cocksucker a man has ever had, time and time again. Sucking Jamie is a special thrill, however – I am helping him best some mental beasts that hold him back from enjoying oral sex as much as most men do. But there’s an added bonus.

When he regains his senses and sits up, wrapping his hands around my waist to pull me close to him, I know he is going to return the favor. Sucking cock is its own reward, but Jamie’s mouth has talents that rival mine. And I am more than ready to receive.

by Jamie

I have never been the world’s biggest fan of the blow job.  There are reasons.  My first experience — two kids fumbling their way into the unknown in a too-well-lit parking lot — was a surprise ending framed by confusion, a spit take, and the absence of any sort of towel or tissue.  The memory is horrifically humorous.  There’s also the fact that I like doing unto others much more than having them do unto me.  My penis simply doesn’t have the sensitivity to crave those quieter nuances of pleasure; it likes being in motion much more than lying in state, receiving worship.  And that brings me to how I embrace my role in the sexual contract.  While definitely more comfortable as a dominant, I find the idea of forcing a woman to kneel before me while I use her mouth as a Fleshlight to be distasteful.  I don’t need that formulaic script, that tired cliché, to know where I stand (so to speak) in the dynamic.  I prefer more creative and interesting and respectful ways to assert myself.

That was how it used to be, anyway.  But for the last six months, Sophie has been taking me to school.

Sucking cock is Sophie’s absolute favorite thing to do. It took me a while to appreciate why. Far from feeling used or demeaned, Sophie feels like the most powerful woman on the planet when my semen hits the back of her throat.  I can’t argue with her because I feel exactly the same way when I kiss her between her legs until she erupts.  So I was left with a choice.  I could deny her the chance to enjoy her favorite sexual activity, or I could peel back the lazy layers of my sexual defaults and learn something new.

So we’ve been practicing.  Sophie has an instinct honed by her years as a professional and by her simple delight in what she gets to do. She hungers for my pleasure. I believe this, I really do. We have worked hard, listened hard, to find each other. And I must confess, it didn’t take long to start enjoying this journey. I have come in her mouth a couple of times, to her victory-dance delight, but for now we are working up to that higher height.  For now the focus is on the hand job.

When Sophie reaches for the bottle of oil and opens the lid with a quiet plastic pop, I feel my blood stir. The Pavlovian dog between my legs (and ears) knows what that sound means. I lie back with my head comfortably pillowed. Sophie sits between my parted legs. She cups the oil in her palm briefly, in case it needs to be warmed, and then she grips my shaft and lets the oil seep out and on and in.

Sophie’s hands are shapely and expressive. When she touches my penis, it’s as if she is a chocolate lover with the perfect bite melting on her tongue. Her motions are at once firm and gentle. She strokes slowly, insistently, up and down my swelling shaft. The effect is like that of ocean waves chasing each other up the sand, one after the other. Or perhaps a symphonic movement that builds and builds, phrase upon phrase.

My mind darts and flits, still never far from retreating to whatever it is in the shadows that distracts me. To stay focused, sometimes I play a tape in my head.  I relive sexy encounters from the past, random moments, or I invent scenarios that keep my mind attuned to this actual moment.  I remind myself that it’s okay to receive. I remind myself how much Sophie likes doing what she is doing, even though it will take 30 minutes or an hour to get there, even though my cock will lose some rigidity somewhere along the way before rebounding.  Together we’ve learned how this map looks.

In spite of my musings and self-awareness, I don’t know exactly why my map looks the way it does.  The most intense orgasms I have ever enjoyed, the top ten highlight reel, happened because of a hand or a mouth.  But that hasn’t been enough to tip the scale.  Sophie’s insistence has changed and broadened my mind.

Eventually her hard work starts to pay off, and my pleasure rises incrementally, almost imperceptibly, to the surface.  The ground begins to shift as if those ocean waves are scooping the sand out from under my immersed bare feet.  Each of the wayward nerves in my cock is a stalk of wheat in an endless field, each stalk randomly stirring or being still, each with a mind of its own, until a swelling breeze sweeps across the golden landscape and bends each stalk to its will, and the field ripples as one.

It takes a long time to harvest my wheat. Sophie doesn’t care. She can tell when my pleasure has risen to the top and begins to spill over. I moan involuntarily. I begin to lift my hips in rhythm with her motions – still gentle, still insistent, but her excitement shows. When it finally comes, my orgasm starts in my fingers, my toes, the strands of my hair, and it roars into my torso and my pelvis and out of my cock like an endless peal of thunder, a blinding flash of light, a summer storm parked right above the bed.

It gets better, easier, more powerful, every time we practice.  And last time, when I regained my senses, I looked at Sophie – sheepishly, because that’s still my reality to some extent — and recognized the look on her face.  It’s the look she gets when the tables are turned, when I’m between her legs and she is close. Expectant. Hungry.

“Are you okay?” I have to ask.

“It’s fine,” she says.  “Hang on.  I’m…”

And then, while she still holds my drained cock, her hands roped in semen, without any direct help from me, a spontaneous orgasm convulses her.

And watching her, my sheepishness obliterated, I come to a few quick realizations.

One, I know she means what she says about loving to make me come. Not that I doubted her. But it’s nice to have irrefutable evidence.

Two, I couldn’t ask for a more perfect partner to help me explore, to help me kick down some fences.

And three, I’m reminded that sometimes, when the energy is intensely right, I don’t need a refractory period.

 

by Sophie

Sometimes when I am unable to sleep and the traffic is nonexistent, I go for drives. Not for hours and hours, but long enough to make a loop around the city and listen to music and think. On one of these late night sessions I realized that I was driving past the neighborhood of a disappointing Craigslist hookup from many years ago, the guy who tried to caress the top of my mouth with a rough, clumsy index finger. Not far down the road was the memory of the guy I met, again on Craigslist, with whom I slept on and off again for several months back in 2014, then again for a stint after he broke up with a girl in 2016, then again one more time before he moved to L.A. last year. He was a really nice guy.

The southern part of the city brought back memories of the last guy who broke my heart, who, incidentally, also was a Craigslist meetup. Of course at some point I was close to Jamie’s neighborhood, and I squirmed in my seat a little, happily and viscerally reminded of yet another successful casual encounter that became a bit more than I had bargained for.

That rooftop? That’s the top of a garage that I and a dude from trusty Craigslist went to fuck furtively in a car and where we were caught by a rent-a-cop. That was our hilariously embarrassing final encounter. That park? Memorable bench blowjob followed by a make-out session that ultimately went nowhere, all courtesy of the internet. This city is a map of my sexual past with landmarks all over its surface. I grew into myself here and I have enjoyed myself — and others — in every corner of it. Craigslist, in many ways, was the compass that pointed me in the right directions.

Continue reading “the last lovers to meet on craigslist”

“It’s Spring and I’ve been thinking about grackles.”

“Grackles?”

“You know, those big shiny noisy crow-like birds that live around here, that scare the tourists but not enough?”

“Yeah, but what about them?”

“Well, I think that all of sex can be explained by the behavior of these birds. For example–”

“Jamie, I know better than to shut you up right now. So I’m gonna let you keep going.”

“–when two male birds see a potential partner, the males walk up to each other and then stick their beaks up into the air to see which one is taller. When they figure that out, the shorter bird walks away as if nothing happened, and the larger bird is left to flirt with the female.”

“While this is really interesting, I don’t understand exactly how that applies to human sexuality.”

“This has to do with penis size.”

“Things are suddenly coming into stark relief.”

“So over the years I have been given to believe, from sex partners less experienced than yourself, that I am in the upper range of male size. Since meeting you I have learned that this is not true.”

“I’m super sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel badly about your penis. If it makes you feel better, yours is my favorite?”

“I feel surprisingly little angst about this – no, really — simply because I’ve never thought I was extremely big and it always puzzled me to hear it. I think what was actually being said is that my penis ‘hits the right spots.’ And here’s where you can reassure me that I’m actually sitting at least above average.”

“But size just isn’t really that important once you get down to it.”

“So to speak. You’ve convinced me of that, but tell it to the grackles. Or the people who make porn.”

“But porn is for viewing, you know what I mean? The larger something is, the more visually appealing it will be. Supposedly.”

“Given that, there is a whole subset of porn based on the idea of ‘Oh my god that’s too big I can’t do it, oh wait yes I can and I want to keep doing it.’ And guys are susceptible to insecurities about that. …Or are they? I don’t really know that for sure. It’s certainly what the jokes imply.”

“Just saying from my perspective — some of the best lovers I have ever had were honestly kind of …disappointing, on first impression. And many of the more endowed guys were more boring than you would think.”

“You are the most sexually experienced woman I have ever met, so I have every reason to believe you. And I am experienced enough to be comfortable with my endowments and abilities. Although there is a certain satisfaction to watching the occasional — often short waisted — partner crawl away in playful fear. Not to sound creepy. But it is part of the power dynamic.”

“That’s another entire conversation. But this one is about penis size. And we were talking about yours.”

“To summarize, I’m not the biggest a truly experienced woman has ever seen, but I’m often in the ball park, and for less experienced women I’m often the biggest. And that’s okay by me. And I guess this goes back to ‘how does he do that?’  It’s more about how a guy uses what he has.”

“Attractiveness is also a factor. And yours is very, very pretty.”

“Well, that’s like you being told you’re pretty. Thanks, genetics. Maybe we should make a dildo out of my cock. Sell it. Become millionaires.”

“Maybe.  But to summarize for me, being the person currently enjoying your cock, the thing I like most about its size is that it’s large enough for me to feel you very thoroughly, but it’s small enough that when you’re fully inside of me there isn’t any…wasted space between our bodies. Like, with a longer guy, there’s often space between us when he is fully engaged, and that means that I miss out on stimulating skin to skin contact.”

“So thighs, buttocks, pelvis….”

“And to get right down to it, if my clit is hitting your pelvis in a rhythmic fashion over and over again, it’s a lot easier to get to unassisted orgasm, which is always supremely satisfying.”

“Sex is a full-body sport, not just a piston in motion.”

“Exactly. And that’s why penis size is ultimately not that important, and grackles are dumb.”

“I like hearing that more than I care to admit.”

“Tell me about your dream.”

“My husband sent me to polyamory camp!”

“Is that even a thing?”

“Well, there were arts and crafts.”

“What, like basket weaving for four people?”

“That wasn’t clear.  It was a dream.  My husband handed me my packed suitcase, hurried me to the bus station(!), and waved goodbye.  And I was like, why did my husband send me to poly camp?  I don’t belong here.”

“Was it all hot tubs and group sex?”

“No, it was more like a seminar.  Or a recovery meeting. ‘Hello, my name is Sophie, and I am poly.’”

“Or an MLM recruitment meeting.”

“Sort of.”

“I guess it makes sense that you would have this dream.  You and your husband have an open relationship.  My partner and I have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, more or less.  And here this comes along, this thing we have, very big and powerful.  It’s natural to assess and affirm the pre-existing order of things.”

“Does this mean we are poly?”

“Well, I don’t know.  I hope not.  But…”

“Yeah, but.”

“I mean, I have this idea of what polyamory means, and I have the examples of various acquaintances over the years who have tried to make it work—”

“Not always impressive examples.”

“—and my head hurts when I think about doing that.”

“Getting out multiple day planners to organize date night.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t think we’re swingers, either, though.”

“No, to me that’s like sex parties where you throw your keys in the bowl and have a brief random playmate and then go home with your partner.”

“This is neither brief nor random, Jamie.”

“So maybe it’s really about how we define the terms.”

“Or whether or not we care to accept a label.”

“Well, there’s that.  I see the vanilla world over on one side, the monogamous cultural default, and then I see the polyamory community refusing to accept that default but still enjoying some aspects of it, such as stability and relative safety.”

“And we’re somewhere in the middle, looking at both groups from a distance.”

“So how did the dream end?”

“It didn’t really.  It just sort of faded away, like a lazy song.”

“So no orgies.”

“No, not at all.  And that’s one of my issues with poly, in my dream and in reality.  So much talking.  So much organizing.  Where’s the fucking?  Does it even happen?”

“Well, in terms of labels, we are definitely not vanilla, and we do seem to have some aspects of poly going on.”

“It’s so painful to hear that.”

“Yeah, in a way.  I think maybe the trick for us is to avoid getting boxed in and just enjoy the moment for what it is.”

“And take care of our people.”

“Including each other.”

”Definitely.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow.”

It’s Valentine’s Day, when as a culture we simultaneously celebrate and attempt to tame the return of spring.  Maybe a blog about sex is not the place to talk about love.  Or maybe it’s the perfect place to take a look under the hood of love.  So let’s take a stab at that.

This week marks the “fifth luniversary” (as she so cleverly put it) of when Sophie and I met.  We met because we wanted the same thing – good sex on the regular.  What we got was that plus a whole lot more.  Besides the witty banter, besides a simpatico on topics other than sex, we got Something Big.  This blog represents our attempt to get our heads and words around that ongoing event.

Nothing about this is usual in the mainstream vanilla way.  Sophie and I both have other partners, our anchors in life.  Each of our partners, in their different ways, accepts who we are and what is happening here.  Sophie and I are blessed to have found them.  But we also found each other, and from that serendipitous discovery we have blossomed together.  We aren’t new to this.  For years, decades, we have unabashedly chased our pleasure wherever it led, down bright highways and into dark dead-end alleys.  We have learned, gotten smarter and safer, struck a balance of sorts, but we are who we are.

It is amusing to me that the neologism “luniversary” and the real word “lunacy” come from the same Latin root.  In some ways Sophie and I are experiencing a bright beautiful lunacy – a transcendent firework burst every time we fuck.  In other ways we have let loose a big sigh of relief, as if to say, “Oh.  This is what we’ve been chasing for so long.”  We don’t know how long it will last – hopefully forever.  We don’t know where it will lead – hopefully to more of the same, in one long unbroken upward spiral.  But we know what the alternatives are, and we do not take this for granted.

There are so many things we want to talk about.  I have set aside a #metoo reflection to post this love letter in a timely way.  After that there’s polyamory (accidental or otherwise), sex addiction (yes, we know how this all looks), the red pill and the blue pill, fun events we have attended or will attend, and who knows what else.  We’ll get there, when our actions aren’t giving us even more possible topics.

But for today, a day when as a culture we celebrate or prop up or bemoan our relationship status, I just want to say thank you.  Thank you, Sophie, for saving me from the cesspool.  Thank you for posting that succinct, superior personal and for having the obvious intelligence (heh) to pluck me out of the hundreds of replies you got.  Thank you for your effervescent energy and vision and and wisdom and passion.  Thank you for spark-plugging this project, for helping me become a writer again (just as I have done for you).  And most of all, thank you for fucking me the way you do, for being hungry to experience whatever I can imagine, and for helping me explore my own frontiers.

Now finish work and gather your things and get your sweet ass over here.  I have plans for you this evening.