Author: C S

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Not Forever

“I am sometimes amazed that such wrenching cruel pain can be inflicted without the slightest hint of intent or even awareness. When that girl lit up on seeing her boyfriend, she didn’t imagine it could cause anyone pain. Obviously you aleady know this, but I just find it astonishing.
The way her eyes lit up, her face, her impulsive joy…to see that, and know it can never be you. To see that, and be forced to comprehend the immense gulf between you and a normal guy, between his experience in life and yours.
And you can’t say anything about it, you can’t complain or even just express a quiet sorrow about it. Even here, someone will come along and bitch about you thinking you’re ‘entitled’. And even if they didn’t, there’s no point in complaining anyhow. There’s no one to complain to; no one made any decision and no one can change this.
You wish someone’s eyes would light up like that for you. That’s all. It’s very simple and sad and empty. But you can’t seem to make it happen. Somehow, advice about lifting weights and being yourself falls a bit flat when 10,000 girls in a row have seen you and their eyes have remained unanimously unlit.
It isn’t something you can ask for. What a bizarre conversation that would be. “Hey, would you mind having your eyes light up when you see me? Thanks”. Seriously, what would be the point of that? It isn’t something she could decide to do on purpose.
Such exquisite shame and hurt, inflicted in total innocence. It’s just the inevitable result of being around people without really being one. Constant reminders of what you are and what you are not.
It would be easier to refute and resist such messages if they were delivered on purpose. If someone openly jeered and said you were unworthy, that might hurt but not nearly so much. When kind, decent people inadvertently show you what you are, the very fact that they didn’t mean to hurt you, makes it hurt more. You know they mean it. You know full well that girl had no idea of causing you pain at all. You know full well that her eyes would never light up like that for you. She’d never say such a thing. It’s just a brutal, silent truth.
No girl is ever going to have or express a conscious opinion that you don’t deserve to have someone love you. If you ever asked, they’d all insist that someone will but just not them right now sorry. But conscious opinions have nothing to do with it.
She didn’t see her boyfriend, muse over her options, and choose to react with joy. It just happened. And when girls react to you, there’s no real deliberate choice. It just happens. And what happens is, he gets joy and love, and you don’t. Other guys do, and you don’t.
You can’t even comfort yourself with bitterness or anger toward women, because you know they are just people reacting and feeling what they feel. You don’t want someone to force themselves, to pretend, to take pity. You want someone’s eyes to light up. And you have a sick horrible fear in your gut that it really might just never happen.
You came into the world as stupid and hopeful as everyone else. And you are learning the cold lesson now. You bounce up like a hopeful puppy, sure that you’re a part of this, sure that you get to play like everyone else, and you slowly learn you’re just not welcome. Nothing personal, you just don’t get to have that kind of reaction, that kind of experience. Nothing personal, you just have to be alone, and would you mind pretending to be ok with that? You’re not supposed to complain about it and make people feel bad.
Just live your life alone, don’t experience love, don’t hold hands, don’t have sex, don’t have children. And don’t bitch about it, you entitled creep.
Now go lift some weights.”

The above was not written by me. I peruse Reddit.com quite a bit. I have browsing apps downloaded to both phone and iPad and have to restrict it to wifi only so I don’t use all two gigs of my data redditing. Amidst the myriad chaff, I occasionally come across something that dramatically shifts my worldview. The above passage opened my eyes to something that resonates with me.

Much is said against the forever alone guy. He is pathetic. He is a white knight. He is entitled. His lot isn’t that bad. Suck it up. Et Cetera. The author of this passage is obviously familiar with what he describes, whether he feels it himself or he has a friend who has broken down and confided in him. He, forever alone, is one reason my work matters and why it’s so damn rewarding. I’ve talked before about how, the first time I went pro, I was able to relax more easily than in my personal life and how my arousal response went through the roof. Getting paid for my time freed me to sink in and enjoy it. I had made my decisions, I had taken my safety precautions, I was free of doubts that plagued me through regular relationships, and I had a blast. That feeling hasn’t changed. The feeling of freedom to focus on you and the feeling of exultation at a job well done. Every time you walk out happier than you walked in, I feel that joy and gladness.

For the forever alone guy writing about his situation with introspection, understanding, and forgiveness I offer this: my eyes will light up when I see you. Because your financial assistance frees me while we are together from outside concerns, my eyes light up. Because you reward my every move with a smile of appreciative desire, my eyes light up. Because your conversation assumes my intelligence, my eyes light up. Because your body responds to my touch with sensual focus, my eyes light up. Because you come back again and again, my eyes light up. Because you feel comfortable and safe and sexy and concerned, my eyes light up… for you. Whoever you are, forever alone guy, I hope you find someone who lights up for you, whether it’s within the realms of civilian relationships or the stolen moments of a professional, I sincerely hope you find it. If you’re in Seattle, I’d like to help.

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A for Andromeda by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot

As you well know, I love science fiction because it posits bizarre but universal circumstances and watches humanity respond. Orson Scott Card asks how we would respond to an inscrutable alien race. Ursula K LeGuin asks what we would do in response to gender imbalances and another messiah figure. Hoyle and Elliot ask what we would do when given a gift that seems too good to be true.

The book is slow to begin but short. A long afternoon is plenty of time to follow Dr. Fleming, brilliant astronomer and computer genius, as he discovers a signal from the Andromeda galaxy, interprets it, and comes to deal with the results. The signal codes for a computer faster and more complex than anything dreamt of at the time (written in the 60’s, set in the 70’s) and a program to feed into the computer. While Dr. Fleming and his team work to build and run this supercomputer, political forces push and pull and Fleming himself begins to suspect that this gift has strings attached. The computer begins to learn about humans and prompt them to experiment, eventually resulting in the creation of Andromeda, the beautiful young woman who may be the salvation of humanity or its destruction. Through it all, Dr. Fleming fights with himself, his friends and colleagues, and the powers that be, trying to learn the truth and prevent eventual disaster.

While the book is an easy read, it is not particularly action packed or fast paced or detailed. Character development is left to the reader to infer as large blocks of time pass with only a few sentences to mark them. I would have enjoyed more details in general because I love the act of creating images in my mind that reflect the action. I feel so much more involved in books that give me more to work with. That being said, I think the authors, one of whom is a professor, expect a certain amount of autonomy in their readers. It’s as if they gave me what I needed to craft the story and left the details for me to fill in. The details that are there are creative and interesting. They describe one man’s voice as ‘whinnying’ and Andromeda is described as blonde, with high cheekbones and very baltic looking. I’ve never seen that descriptor but I imagine that the readers of the 60’s did. It is clear that the authors are scientists and academics as the villains of the book are of course the government and the military while the scientists are the last line of defense in a war no one knows is on.

The interesting scenario is this: the computer Fleming creates and the woman it designs present a cheat for the British government. With her ability to communicate directly with the device and with its vastly superior problem solving ability, the government has a quick fix for medicine, agriculture, economics, and defense. However, it is alien technology which Fleming suspects has an ulterior motive. It is almost inevitable that the bureaucratic powers attempt to monopolize the advantages and trivialize the dangers of this new technology, even after several ‘accidental’ deaths by electrocution.

By creating a beautiful woman to act as its liaison, the machine takes advantage of gender dynamics to disarm the overwhelmingly male authority figures. While raising awareness about gender stereotypes was likely not the primary goal when writing this book, the fact that the authors chose to use a female character to serve as the ‘slave’ of the computer illuminates a deep seated perspective of women as subservient and sexual to the exclusion of individual personality. One of the politicians licks his lips when looking at her inert body during its development and our protagonist uses kissing and caressing to try to show her what it’s like to be human. These acts make sense in context and are extremely likely under the circumstances, but that’s part of why this choice raises the issue of women in storytelling. It’s supposed to show how bad the nasty politicians are and how achingly human Fleming can be but it feels cliche in what was otherwise nontraditional story telling. Add to that the fact that Andromeda loses her life only hours after she gains freedom from the machine and we see a female character who has nothing to offer except as a foil for male characters.

The romance was equally placid. She’s a spy set on him and he’s a big brother type who falls easily in and out of ‘love’. She’s conflicted about her roles and he’s oblivious and childish. Perhaps it’s just human but it’s so far outside my experience that it rings hollow. I almost don’t even remember the love interest because she spent the whole book wringing her hands and trying to get out of her responsibilities.

While I found the book entertaining, it is also jolting; plodding and skipping ahead by turns. The first half of the book is about Fleming discovering the message, decoding it, getting excited, getting dejected and playing around with boats and fast cars like a teen hit hard with affluenza, getting passionate, getting apathetic, and eventually getting his way but not really. I love the idea of finding, creating, and figuring out a trojan horse from outer space, but I feel like a rewrite could make so much more from this concept. The writers are obviously intelligent, but so much is missing that it feel less than a news story. It could have been a short story and had a greater impact while taking less time to write or read. It is a good idea and the writers are obviously intelligent, but perhaps I’ve been spoiled by detailed writing that paints rich images in my mind and find a book that relies on me to fill in the gaps too abrupt to enjoy in retrospect. While reading it it was great but I’m already prepared to move on.

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Worship

I worship cock. I always have. In all their variations, cocks fascinate, intrigue, please, and entertain me. I love how an erection can be an instant eraser of intelligence I’ve seen, great care I’ve felt, and deep conversations I’ve seen interrupted mid-sentence. That being said, the intelligence, conversation, and care are absolute prerequisites for that worship, intrigue, pleasure, fascination, and entertainment. Establishing a connection as two human beings who have something in common other than compatible genitals is critical for my personal enjoyment. Once that connection has been made, and sometime it comes in the aftermath, my interest and pleasure skyrockets.

Without that connection, I am capable of providing a high caliber service, but at that point it becomes a service. It ceases to be the genuine back and forth of an expanding relationship and stays firmly in the realm of a provider providing a service. I am capable of that experience and as an actor of both skill and talent it will be a service of caliber and quality, but it will not be the kind of session that makes me want to keep you late, nibble on cylindrical meats, chat long into the lazy afternoon, play with you again until you cannot rise, and fall asleep gently on your shoulder.

That is the session I most often share. I started to write the word ‘offer’ but I share it with you as much as you share it with me. I like to describe it as GFE, but back in high school. We’re both good kids, not doing anything that’s actually sex no matter how much we yearn for it. We kiss and kissing leads to touching, leads to more touching, leads to the kind of exploration that doesn’t focus on some kind of finish. It focuses on the touch, the tease, the closeness, the surprise finish that’s fun and sweet and rewarding but not a disappointment if it doesn’t show. It brings us both to a combined frustrated and satisfied frenzy and that’s when I worship your cock.

I want to touch it. I want to look at it and observe similarities and differences. I want to explore it and the surrounding area. I want to tickle your feet and see if it moves you. I want to trail my fingertips across your chest, searching for previously undiscovered spots that send shivers and tingles through your belly into your cock to make it twitch. I want to test your reaction to my excursions. I want to explore the textures, bends, folds, fuzz or lack. I want to watch your face and breath for peaks of intensity and valleys of relaxation. I want to feel the swell and regress of your glorious cock as I find patterns and rhythms that please you but don’t quite satisfy… not yet. I want to hear you pant and feel my breath rise with yours as we both get sucked into the hot, wet intensity of our arousal. I love the mental and emotional swell I feel when your physical cues tell me you’re walking the edge. I want to feel myself throb between my thighs as every thought and movement is for sex and sensuality. I want to feel you struggle to watch both my arched ass rock across your torso and your cock, barely visible in the gap between you and I as everything I have that can reach your cock caresses it, strokes it, slips across it until, after ages of touch and tease, I finally feel the pleasure and satisfaction of your hot, sticky, slippery cum all over me. I don’t even need that ‘finish’; I still want to worship and pleasure your cock, regardless of the outcome. I want to bring pleasure and excitement to your every moment. I want to cover you with warm slick oil and bring you a bliss that requires only your appreciation to plaster a grin on my face.

I’ve discovered in myself an intense internal reward system that fires when I am appreciated. It only takes a moment, only a thought, to share that appreciation. I don’t require, nor would I want, some epic of care and thankfulness. I wouldn’t press for thanks as my services are given in a fair exchange, regardless of the attitudes (barring the pushy or downright unsafe) of my beloved clients. Thanks and appreciation are only to give me pleasure, something I regularly and often receive. They enhance my experience and quickly turn a pleasant session into a memorable one I long to repeat. Once in fifty sessions I will have a simply pleasant experience. Those other 49 are rewarding in thousands of ways. Flowers, exotic cheeses, wines, words of admiration and appreciation, acknowledgement of time invested and time stretched, contented smiles, exhausted poses, repeats and returns, long conversations that have nothing to do with either of us, those are the things that bring me pleasure and joy and intensify just how much I worship your cock.

Who among you doesn’t desire appreciation and to be desired? When I meet you, as a human with thoughts, cares, a history, a life before us, I appreciate you. I appreciate that you may be nervous. You may be cautious. You may be carefree, celebrating a recent life event. You may be an old hand or brand new, you may be thick or thin, tall or short, old or young…. Every one of you has something that I appreciate. You are shy and I care for you. You are bold and I admire you. You are clever and I laugh with you. You are serious and I am careful for you. You are curious and I am excited for you. You are verbose and I convers with you. You are young and I teach you. You are old and I learn from you. You are kind and I am nurtured by you. You are misinterpreted and I understand you. You are unsure and I am sure for you. I am suited to my work; I am suited to you.

I long ago vowed that I would only interact with penises attached to awesome people. While I have sometimes bent this rule and have once or twice broken it, my experiences in the last few years have been absolutely consistent with this motto. Thank you, to those who have and those who continue to help me uphold my personal motto. You are the greatest of men. You deserve the worship of a great woman.

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18 Days

As classes begin to wind down and my senioritis sets in to stay, I realize my writing has slowed to a crawl. I mean, I knew it all along, but I finally set aside a few moments to write that happened to coincide with a desire to write. It’s late at night and I’m sitting at the tiny kitchen table with a big bouquet of flowers, the night falling outside the window, and the glow of the screen beginning to make my eyes ache. I should get up and turn on a light to diffuse the strain but my priorities are in another order, as they often are.

I’ve discovered I have little to talk about other than school these days. I’m always open to a range of topics, but when five hours out of four days out of every week for 40 weeks are spent talking about the same thing, you tend to get a bit of a one-track mind. That being said, it’s been amazing information. The myriad ways our bodies heal themselves and the still greater number of ways we hurt them is mind blowing. My mind is a jumble of Muscle Energy Techniques, Reflex Arcs, Latin names and proper terms for standing up and sitting down, pokes and prods and facilitations and strokes and alternative positioning….. so much information that it’ll take me another year just to get it all straightened out in my head!

It does mean that in addition to my natural inclination towards being sexy in front of, around, and on people, I have techniques to heal and make whole that I can incorporate into any session, strength in my hands and arms, and confidence in that strength. It’s been a great journey and I can’t f***ing wait for it to be over. I do have a few days off here and there so keep an eye on my calendar for unusual availability between now and the beginning of August.

I finish school on the ninth of July and a week and a half later I leave town. If you’d like to see new providers while I’m gone (and I hope you do) please please please do the screening now. I usually answer screening requests when I’m out of town but this time I will not be.

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The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan writes about food. I love food. I wasn’t as huge a fan of In Defense of Food because I felt it more opinion than research and it was the research and story-telling factor of The Omnivore’s Dilemma that so enthralled me. In The Botany of Desire he again tells the story of food in an engaging and contemporary way.

Pollan chooses four foods to represent or tie to four human desires: the apple for sweetness, the potato for control, the tulip for beauty and cannabis for intoxication. As he tells the history of each plant, he ties in contemporary thoughts about how we treat the earth, ourselves, and each other and why we behave the way we do. It’s pure conjecture but it’s thought provoking, funny sometimes, interesting all the time, and altogether the kind of book I love to read.

One of these days I’ll live somewhere with enough space to grow my own food. It’ll probably be in Eastern Washington, somewhere quiet where people won’t pester me, but close enough to some kind of city center that I can find friends and food without too much trouble. When I’m out on my plot, sifting through dirt for little potatoes and picking spitters to make into cider, I’ll think of this book and smile to myself about the stories he shares of crazy but kind John Chapman who preceded westward expansion planting apple trees, the tulipomania of Holland that caused an economic crisis, the gentry’s ancient and the McDonalds fry eaters current distaste for a deformed potato, and the mind altering, healing powers of a good old fashioned doobie.

I’m happy to lend it out if you’d like to share my smile.

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On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

True love….. we imagine it to be the whisker away of problems, the smoother over of ruffles, the perfect bond that bears up under any pressure, a prettier and more emotional version of duct tape, if you will. In reality, it is a fragile concept, one which McEwan tears to shreds in his novel On Chesil Beach. I love it.

We meet our fairy tale couple on their honeymoon. The story is told through a series of flashbacks inserted into the tale of a wedding night shared by two people, obviously in love. Unfortunately, a combination of miscommunication, assumptions, and cultural conditioning leads to disaster. It’s 1962 in England and the newlyweds haven’t yet experienced the sexual liberation of the sixties and the free love of the seventies. They’ve never had sex themselves, nor have they been able to talk about it between them. He is concerned about coming too quickly, but aside from that is eager to experience this new coming together. She is not only concerned about the coming act, she is viscerally repelled by it. I would guess that she is either asexual or so thoroughly acculturated to sex as a disgusting act that she finds the idea repellent. The flashbacks tell the readers that these two truly are in love with each other and could have a happy future if they can get over this hurdle. The narrative unfolding in the marriage bed tells us that they will not.

Since his preparation for marriage was to abstain from masturbation for a week, we easily predict that his one fear becomes reality; he doesn’t even make it to penetration before his overexcitement causes him to ejaculate all over his new bride. Her revulsion, which she has carefully and painfully controlled until that moment, comes out all at once. In her terror, she races out of the room and onto the beach. She has been preparing for this moment for months, trying to ignore or overcome her gut reaction. She has come up with alternatives, she has prepared a plan, and when he finally follows her to the beach several hours later, she proposes that they live together as married but he pursues other women as he pleases. He, in his petulant anger over wounded pride, rejects the idea and the marriage is annulled. We follow only him through the short and uneventful rest of his life as he comes to regret his decision. Their lives are unusual only in that we have just read their story; careers are had, friends are made and lost, life is lived, and the end is quiet.

I have the benefit of a culture that may not understand sex but at least is engaged in dialogue about it. I can’t decide whether I feel more pity or anger towards him. He’s obviously misguided if he thinks that avoiding sexual release for a week will give him some advantage in his first sexual experience. He is obviously ill-prepared for the idea that someone might feel differently about sex than he does. His constant reinterpretation of her actions as those of a sexually advanced but coy individual is laughably naive, fury-inducingly presumptuous, and disastrously incorrect. We have insights into his character along the way that clue us into his thought process. His mother received a brain injury during his youth which made her a bit crazy in a scattered, loss of focus kind of way and when his father tells him of her injury, he incorporates this knowledge into his world as if it has always been there and he has always known. This tells us that this young man is not only capable of but prefers to believe he knows everything about everyone and has always known it. His interpretation of his bride’s recoil as an invitation fits perfectly with what we know of his inability to think of another before himself or acknowledge the possibility that he is wrong. Even his regrets in his old age aren’t for the pain he caused his once wife, but for the love he missed out on.

She, on the other hand, is confused and afraid. She has spent hours thinking of how to sublimate herself to her husband, how to please him, how to get herself so small, so insignificant that he might be happy. Her inability to beat her own aversion into submission is not her failing, it is the result of natural inclination shored up by years of shame, disgust, and unspoken expectations. Again, I am fortunate to have information, support, and an inclination towards exploration at my back to power my decisions, regardless of what they are. She is not so lucky, as are many women still. I feel for her. Her every effort was for someone else, her every thought for another and still she met rejection.

Overall, the book is well written. By the same author as Atonement and The Cement Garden, On Chesil Beach is poignant look into what it might be like to miss out on so much love and beauty because of fear, confusion, misinformation, anger, and lack of communication. How much better the world might be if none of those things existed.

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Phillipians 4:8

Lately my published words have been few and far between. The kind missives of good old friends have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated. My words have not evaporate or even, in fact, lessened, but the time in which I have to mull them, roll them across my tongue, write and rewrite them has been sparse and preempted by assignments and money making schemes galore.

However, on occasion there is such overwhelming feeling and thought that no barrier of time or priority may interfere and so it is that tonight I write of a night.

The air is so still the clouds high high above have barely moved. Though I cannot see the city her blush spreads across the sky, ready for a devious night of passion and adventure. And a weeknight no less! haha!

Sweet strains drift from the record player to my ear, outside on the balcony, able for the first time this year to enjoy the outdoors after dark in only a sweatshirt and pink fuzzy slippers (and pants! naughty boy!) The intermittent sounds of grilling cheese sandwiches are an alternative music to my tipsy and dehydrated ears. My after hours mojito sits next to the mint plant it came from and a modest myriad of companion spices, foods, and flowers. Some dipshit rides his (or hers. women can be assholes, too) petulantly brazen motorcycle through my quiet streets, momentarily shattering the beautiful calm that is this evening.

Life is good, my loves, even great. For me particularly because I know and care for you, because my life is safe and full, because the night is calm (aside from ghost rider over there) and full of the scent of mint and rosemary and freshly melted cheese and fried butter. Please, wherever you are and whatever you do, whether we meet once, again, or never, see in your life something worth seeing. It’s there, I can promise you. Look and find a moment, a smell, a memory, a future plan, a present joy, anything you find pleasant and lovely, and dwell on it for a moment

Good night and all my best, always.

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A Cat’s the Only Cat Who Knows Where It’s at

He was tiny. A few weeks old, eyes barely open. He was perfect.

I always had pets growing up and as pets are wont to do, one died. I don’t remember it well but it was my mom’s pet, it had been a month or so since, and as is the way with our family, it was time to find a new companion. Friends of ours had adopted a puppy from my brother’s dog so we returned the favor when one of their wild cats had her own brood. The kittens had been irresistible to me as soon as the adults allowed us to play with them. A cautionary chorus of ‘gentle’s and ‘hold them carefully’s followed us through the house as we watched and helped them develop motor skills and explore their world. By the time they were old enough to take one home with me I already knew which one I wanted. He was a cute tabby with a white chin, chest, and tummy and little white socks. He was playful and exuberant and the perfect fit for my hyperactive, hyperfocused pre-teen self.

We brought him home and I could’t leave him alone. While my family watched TV and polished off dad’s Top Ramen Tuna Fish Casserole I cuddled our newest addition and sang phrases from songs I though might be comforting. Ostensibly he was mom’s pet but that first evening and my subsequent fixation created a bond that was to last until his passing sixteen years later.

His kitten year was adorable and fun; all the things that children and kittens like. We played with strings and feathers and I spent hours giggling and shrieking with delight at his leaps and spins. His ‘teenage’ years were full of mischief and mayhem. He used to relax on the steps between the first and second story, his twitching tail the only action. Innocent stair climbers would soon discover a coiled spring that would launch itself mercilessly at passing ankles. Those of us who were most often home learned to step wide or to the side, but there are family members who still harbor a grudge against the little stair monster. When that grew boring, he would lie on the ledge at the top and to one side of the stairs and swipe at whatever eartips and scalps presented themselves.

As the result of a urinary territory battle with a new arrival, he became an outdoor cat as all our cats have inevitably become. Despite the added danger and the succession of missing and DOA pets, we could neither deny freedom nor his ferocious tenacity as he grew into an affectionate and scrappy adult. Birds and mice were a common gift from the cats to our doorstep and we quickly learned to look first in the morning when heading to school lest we hear a tiny crunch underfoot. I once came across him toying with a mouse on the lawn. I rescued the little creature and brought it inside, only to have it escape in the kitchen. It lived in the kitchen long enough to create some highly amusing stories concerning mouse traps, fingers, and midnight snacks but it wasn’t until we invited my mighty hunter back inside that the now thoroughly fattened rodent took its leave.

I used to climb into the neighbor’s apple tree with a bag full of apples, oranges, water, and a thick book to sit in the warm summer sun, reading and snacking. On rare occasion he would come join me until my incessant petting became annoying and he left.

On the evenings we let him into the house, we would fall asleep together, his fur and my long hair an inseparable tangle of fuzzy, cuddly affection. Many of my pets had an affinity for hiding in my hair but he spent the most time by far on my pillow with me.

Leaving him behind when I went off to college didn’t feel like a betrayal or abandonment, it felt like an interlude at the end of which we would fall back into old patterns like the best kind of friends. Finding him wherever he was on property and giving him a snuggle was part of my home visit routine until I finally got a place where I could bring him with me. I had a little cottage type place out far enough that I felt fine letting him roam around and the little old couple who lived next door would give him little treats.

He and I lived it up that year. We had boys over and parties where he and I both earned the affectionate title of ‘snuggle sluts’. I remember one evening when he went from person to person until he had received adequate pets and snuggles from each attendee, then went back for seconds from the best cuddlers. Even my allergic friends couldn’t resist him, if just long enough to start sneezing before they had to shuffle him to the next person. By this point he was ten or eleven and had settled into a calm, alert, but relaxed regality that ruled our social circles from whichever perch he chose.

It is this age that I remember the most clearly. His full, round belly, thick, ropey muscles, easy, strong purr, and alert, brightly green gaze glowed with health and stability. I can see in my mind’s eye my hand cupped around his face, his eyes closed in ecstasy, his breath hearty and rumbly as my fingertips found all the right spots: under his chin, behind his ears, and that one spot that made him scritch like a dog with his hind leg. He always met me at the door in the morning and when I came home. A few times I even saw him racing me home as I turned the last corner to the little side street we lived on.

There’s something about that perfect combination of total independence and devotion that only a cat you’ve lived with your whole life can share with you. Dogs are wonderful and I’ll have them, too, when I can, but they have an element of neediness that cats lack. Many cats have that aloofness that keeps you from bonding but when you share the better part of two decades with them, there comes a point where that aloofness wears off. You share vulnerability with each other, you share strength when it is needed, and you become family in a way that still leaves you both room, free of judgement, to pick fights and make mistakes and still come home to someone who loves you.

My life thereafter didn’t lend itself well to pet ownership. I ran out of money and left him in the care of a friend ‘just until I can take him back.’ A year passed, two years, three, and I was finally in a place to bring him home with me but by then he had become a source of strength and joy for her in her times of need. He had become a loving grandfather now. He stayed indoors and slept a lot, he lost some weight but his eyes still took everything in and radiated wisdom and calm in return. His teeth started to loosen and fall out and we saw less of each other. Every time I saw him it was a surprise. The kind of surprise you get when you see you your parents after a few months away and suddenly they have gray hair. It’s been silvering for a few years now but you missed a few months of it and now suddenly you notice. His immune system started to fail but both I and my friend failed to get him the care that he needed.

Tuesday morning I got a text. “I just got home from work. He’s really bad. Can you come?”

…

I knew it. I’ve had pets before and they all find their end sooner or later. I went home and emptied out a cardboard box. I lined it with ragged towels and put it in the car. My eyes blurred as I drove and that image of his face pursed in ecstasy and joy came to my mind. I knew what I would find when I arrived and I knew none of us were prepared. I’m not proud of what I did when I bundled him up. I couldn’t deal with her grief on top of mine and so I left her behind, unable to make a full cathartic goodbye. I took him and he never came back.

I felt for the people at the vet’s office. I walked in, carrying a sack of bones and bawling, knowing what had to be done. They expect people to hang on, to be sentimental, to demand extension of their beloved pet’s life and so they didn’t understand that I knew. I knew that he and I weren’t going out the same door that morning. I knew that his run was over, probably sooner than it needed to be. I knew that I had failed him by leaving him in the care of a friend and not checking in. I knew that regardless of what regrets I might have or damage I might have averted six months ago, it was too late now and he was already gone.

His belly heaved with each breath. His spine was a serrated knife, ready to tear through his thin skin. His fur was still soft and fine but now tiny parasites crawled in it. His gaze was directed inward, focused or fighting I will never know. I stayed alone with him until he began to grow cold. I had left him before and I would leave him now but not until he had left me first.

Mortality is a funny thing. We all have it, we mostly deny it. I’ve expounded to some on the research being done into hallucinogens as treatment for end of life anxiety and other mental disorders. I wonder if there was something more I could have done. His eyes that final morning did not hold the bright, outward gaze I got so used to but instead held the inward focus of a starving creature in pain. I had a thought of a cat on LSD, taking a guided trip to help him come to terms with his end and his pain. That wasn’t my only moment of wry, morbid amusement as the morning came and went. I thought of the last really bad hangover I slept through. It was all encompassing. I felt feeble and weak, wanting to eat and vomit at the same time, able to do neither. If that’s bad I can’t imagine what he must have felt and feared. The thought brought a chukle devoid of joy.

They say time heals all wounds and I’ve got a remarkably robust mental immune system so the pain of yesterday is already a shadow of what it was. The life that left us yesterday, however, was not, and I felt it important to memorialize that life. Words are my punishment, my joy, my artistic medium, and my platform and so in words we find his memorial.

My Kitty, I know you never could understand my words, but the feelings behind them must have rubbed off a little. I hope that you felt my love and my need for you and I hope that all cats go to heaven too.

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I Watched

Not often does one have the chance to observe. I tried it once, because it seemed like it would help, but it was merely uncomfortable for all involved. Today I had a real chance to observe.

The light was strong, slanting through the window so fully the edges were shattered, diffused through the room, lighting every detail for my inspection. I had only a few moments; both participants were so consumed, so passionate, so thoroughly prepped that the moment was gone almost as soon as I realized I had it.

It occurred to me, as I watched and brainstormed how to be with this preoccupied pair, that there was no need for me to be. I had done my part and there is a moment when the third becomes third in truth as in conceit. The advantage to our situation was that the edges of our interaction had been delineated prior and so there was no need for insecurity or egotistical fragility. I knew that they would, at some point, reach this pinnacle but I had not yet decided, or even considered, what to do while they were consumed by each other. So I watched.

First I observed his face. Expression is difficult to describe when you have only a moment and that moment is split into micromoments, each filled with its own expression. The impression I came away with was complete rapture. Eyes open, gaze far away, internally focused, filled with the intense concentration that arousal confers; lips parted, no effort spared to close the jaw or turn a frown or a smile, breath quick and shallow, not yet raspy but hints of what might come should they continue long enough.

I notice her back, striped pink flush and pale flesh stretched across ribs. The pattern repeats as she tosses her head back and low but throaty cries force themselves from her throat, the wild horses of legend tearing down a canyon: raw energy irregardless of its surroundings. Her face reflects her arousal: a deep and bright flush that I can only imagine he feels as she envelops and draws him into her. Her hair falls in that combination of perfection and tousle that comes only from the application of vigorous activity. She could have just come in from a run or a swim, but the circumstances are obviously otherwise.

I notice my own body, curiously absent from the action but a direct contributor to the circumstances in which it is occurring. I feel anxious and calm at the same time. I feel an impulse to insert myself into the interaction but immediately on the heels of that impulse I feel an assurance that my participation, while understood and welcome in spirit, are unnecessary. The pleasure of that relief is cathartic, opening my focus not to myself but to them. Thus the observation; the watching.

All too soon it is over. Her orgasm pulled from him his own and the flush begins to fade out as the broader focus fades in and the rest of the room comes to their attention. My moment of observation has passed and my attention is required again as she and I reassure him that he is the kind, lovely, generous, handsome, and trusted gentleman we have always known. The vision of her back, his face, the two entwined, haunts me as I go about my day. I wish for it again. I crave the opportunity to observe two people fucking, not for any voyeuristic pleasure but for the satisfaction of my Kinseyan curiosity.

I have confidence it will happen. Someday I will again watch two people, brightly lit by afternoon sunlight, completely enraptured in each other’s basest desires and shameless of it. Someday I will again watch.

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First!!!

I shouldn’t have had the whole pizza. That’s the thought my body tells my brain as I sit in the aftermath of a hungry decision. You know how it goes: you’re super hungry so you get more than you need because it all sounds so good. Now you’ve demolished everything you ordered simply because it’s in front of you and the feedback from your insides is not friendly.

Speaking of friends: the reason for my descent into mozzarella-based madness is a letter to a good friend. My friends have always been better at keeping in touch with me than I have at keeping in touch with them, but a stalwart few have called and written until their hands cramp and their lungs run dry. Thanks to those constant companions I have fodder for thought and also an excuse to go to my neighborhood pizza place and eat an entire medium white-sauce pizza.

In this case, the fodder for thought is love and sex, as usual, but in a slightly different context. Most of you know I grew up surrounded by conservative, Republican, Christian soldiers, raising up the next little army in a small town in Montana. There are several wonderful benefits to growing up in a small, remote town in rural Montana, but social development and cultural exposure are not among them. As a child of the creek bed and a horse riding, gun toting, bible quoting, evolution denying, Jesus freak, my exposure to sexual relationships was unusually broad among my peers. My parents regularly kissed and fondled each other in the hallways, I was 13 when I first learned of my father’s, then my mother’s indiscretions, I hid around the corner to listen in on Monty Python’s ‘The Meaning of Life’, we watched a british TV show about sex and relationships as a family when my peers were being carefully sheltered from any mention of sex, sexuality, or sex’s role in romantic relationships. The way my mother talked to me, frankly, without shame or sensationalism, about her sexual history, her opinions about when its appropriate, and many other topics, shaped my view of sex as something that is fun, normal, healthy, useful, and interesting. To me, frequent and gratuitous physical affection was normal, even in relationships where fidelity isn’t always present and love and like sometimes don’t agree with each other.

Upon my ‘maturity’ around age fifteen, I had been masturbating for three years so I knew what was possible given the right circumstances, and I had latched onto a phrase my mother shared with me that made sex ok as long as it was with the right person. She even went so far as to say it’s ‘usually your husband’ which didn’t make sense until later. Given this ‘license’ and my natural curiosity and inclination, it is no surprise to me that by the age of sixteen I was sexually active and loving it. Of course that’s where things went, not exactly south, but definitely not ‘north’. During one of my many uneventful encounters with my long term high school lover, I began stimulating myself. I hadn’t done either of us any favors months before when I told him he had given me multiple orgasms when in fact there had been none, not even close to one, but this sudden change from only needing him to climax (so he thought) to needing extra stimulation was so emasculating he stopped his thrusting and began pouting. I never again attempted to actually have an orgasm with him involved and simply continued masturbating in the privacy of my bathroom all throughout high school and college. I accepted that it was my lot in life to have orgasmless sex and I would simply do my wifely duty and take care of myself on my own. It wasn’t until a later sexual partner encouraged me to do whatever I needed (partly so he could figure it out and help, partly just to get me where I would be happier), that I discovered a fleeting ability to share climax with a partner.

I am among the fortunate. Many of my peers feel into early marriages, children too soon, and regrets. The idea that sex, love, and friendship are all separate is foreign, unlike the idea that some deity can end all woes and right all bedroom wrongs. The congregation I spent most of my time listening to espoused the notion that a god fearing couple who waits until marriage to consummate their relationship will find the sexual fulfillment of their dreams and everyone will live happily ever after. This becomes a problem under most circumstances but the two I have seen most often are the married bad sex and the unmarried bad sex. In the married relationship, if sex isn’t magical and perfect right away, that puts their devotion to god in question. Instead of seeing it as trouble in communication or a natural discrepancy in the sexual appetites of two people, any incompatibility undermines everything their world is based on. Bad sex is bad enough, but bad sex that means you’re not a good Christian is worse. The other scenario has the extra special sauce of shame and guilt before sexual activity even happens. Unmarried christian kids having sex for the first time can easily misinterpret natural awkwardness, discomfort, or dissatisfaction as punishment, reinforcing the negative attitude towards sex that they brought to the table in the first place, and further crippling future relationships. In circumstances where the sex is ok to good, the aftermath is less crippling, regardless of whether the sex is married or unmarried.

Some of these thoughts and scenarios may be familiar to you but perhaps, hopefully, you haven’t had to go through something like this or watch a close friend go through it. First experiences are formative and due to their import as firsts, what might be mediocre can feel traumatic and influence future experiences. A fleck of one of the conversations I had today involved this concept of formative firsts. We were talking about his experiences with several local providers. None were negative, but all but one lacked the liveliness and connection he was looking for. That one whom he felt a connection with happened to be his first. Had his first been any of the others, there likely would not have been a second foray into the hobby. I wish for everyone who makes their way in the world that their firsts are fabulous, and if those firsts aren’t amazing that they have the courage to try again, within reason. I, for one, will do my part to make all my firsts the best they can be, as I have for many years.