The Lament of a Good Time Girl.

I’m having trouble focusing on the computer screen as I type this.  Maybe it’s because I’ve had a few beers and am currently sipping Jim Bean while eating pecan pie.  Maybe it’s because I put my contact lenses in the wrong eyes (my right eye is slightly stronger than my left).   Or maybe it’s the fact that I just had amazing first time sex with a near perfect stranger. 

Perhaps, I was fucked so hard I can’t see straight, as they say.

And a near perfect stranger he was. Slightly stocky, tattooed, older, masculine, toppy, in a band—what more can a girl ask for?

He met me when I was in full stripper mode—six inch heels, big hair, glitter, false eyelashes, the whole shebang.  That night I hadn’t looked real—not “unreal” mind you, just NOT REAL.  Like a strange stripper pin up girl bettie page Barbie with one too many margaritas in her.

I had been magnetically drawn to him.  Probably cause he was wearing a vest.  Something about a man in a well tailored vest makes me want to suck his cock immediately.

I definitely got a little too close to him that night, and probably fucked up some private dance sales because of it.  Here I was letting this dude touch my ass, but as soon as a private dance patron tried to get a little frisky I got all stripper mafia on his ass and was like “HANDS TO YOURSELF SIR” in my sweetest Siouxsie Q voice.  It just didn’t seem fair.   I tried to stay away from the Hot Vest Man but I just couldn’t’ help myself and ended up getting his number and sexting him for several days after the party

Well tonight he finally came over. I admit that my margarita memory had failed me a little and I was slightly shocked when I opened the door. We had both lost our late night vampire glamour.  I was no longer 6’3’’ and he was no longer the hot dude from the band but rather just a cute tattooed guy on my front stoop.  I  let him in, kissed him chastely on his cigarette scented lips and wondered if I had made a good call inviting him over.

He had brought beer. And whisky.  So I had to give him credit for that.

We sat on my bed after an awkward introduction and tour of my apartment—I might as well have said 

“Hi roomates, this is the man I invited over to have sex with me, and now will we retire to my room to do so.  Hot Vest Man—you don’t need to know where anything is except the bathroom and my bedroom, and you should be pantsless is both locations"

We chit chated and touched each others knees, suddenly both unsure if we wanted to do this—until I took hom out to the roof where there’s a great view of Sutro Heights and an old church that is spectacularly lit from sundown til about 3am.   We are both creatures of the night, and as soon as moonlight hit our skin, the kisses fired off like bullets and it was on.

We scurried back to my bedroom and hurriedly undressed each other as if we were in a terrible early nineties drama.  He bent me over and admired the bruises on my ass.  At least someone was admiring them—I had spent the weekend doing everything from trans porn to kinky girl orgies and I had the battle scars to prove it.  Unfortunately my kink factor can be a little high even for the notoriously kinky patrons of the Lusty Lady and I felt like I had been weirding out customers all day.  But Hot Vest Man caressed my bruised ass like it was a sacred object.

This weekend I had receieved a blessing from the goddess. (I feel barfy for saying it like that, but really) She had magically postponed my period so I didn’t have to deal during a week of porn, lap dancing, and orgies.  Unfortunately, I was suffering the consequences now by a Sunday and Monday full of blood and pain.  But I was not about to pass up the chance for some alone time with one of my weekend conquests.  I didn’t really want to have the whole  “I’m on my period so can we put a towel down” convo with a dude who I had mostly communicated with via text message and tonsil hockey, so I instead opted for a porn star trick one of my co-workers had passed on to me: make up sponges.

I bravely stuck two triangular make-up sponges up my twat about 20 minutes before his arrival and felt very confident about the results.  After sticking my own fingers up there, I concluded that the velvety texture of the sponge felt so close to the texture of the inner walls of my vag that no one would be able to tell the difference except me.

I proceeded to spend the night forming another crush on someone I should probably not invest in too much emotionally.  Hot Vest Dude is great, but he’s a Gemini, just like me. A heartbreaker.   Someone who loves everyone and no one.  But how much can I complain, really? Two orgasms each, more hot body piercing and tattoos than I’ve ever seen on one single body, and lots of amazing sexy conversation over beer.  These are the nights I live for.

I kissed him goodnight at my door in much the same fashion as I kissed him when he walked in.  He said “Maybe we’ll go on a date sometime and not have to fuck.  Maybe I’ll make you dinner sometime. You’re amazing.” 

Contrary to popular belief, these are the things one says to a girl when one has no intention of actually dating her.  When on has labeled her a “good time girl” .  Somebody so fun and fuckable she can’t even be real—and so she’s not.  She’s the perfect combination—hot, DTF (down to fuck), low key, just like one of the boys--but with a pussy.  She’s not “unreal”, she’s just….not real.

It’s not like I’m sad about it, or thought he was the one or anything. I’ve just done this a lot.  And hey, I’ve got pecan pie and whiskey on my side.  I can’t really complain.

My only real problem is going to be figuring out how to get these make up sponges out of my pussy.  

Seriously. 

The end of an era

So I gave internet dating a shot. (did I mention that pretty much everyone I've written about thus far I met on okcupid.com? I didn't? oh. surprise!)  What did I get from it?

• A threesome
• a bunch of bruises (the good kind) 
• illicit sex in an alleyway
• at least one love song.  

Not too bad.

I made it out alive with nary a bruised ego.

Well, there was the one cute older guy I had sushi with.  He worked for some software company that handled proprietary new ideas and was so proprietary he basically couldn’t tell me anything about it.  But he had rakish black curls and an easy going manner, and I was ready to  make out with him right away even if he was working for the next Manhattan Project.

I thought the date was going splendidly, until he dropped me off on my doorstep, gave me a hug and said “Well, we know how to get a hold of each other.”

Whoa.

Shit. I thought.  I guess that date didn’t go so well. 

I mean, it’s one thing to not call, but the sympathy hug paired with the “we know how to get a hold of each other” line is date-talk for “I hate you.”

Oh well. As a not very successful dating website once said: there are “plenty of fish.”

Maybe I’ll try meeting people the old fashioned way. 

I’ll have my father gather my dowry and plan a trip to the next township.  I can’t wait to meet some Austrian aristocracy.  

Coming Out as a Slut

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm a slut.  I mean, of course I am (please refer to the previous entries.)

However, I get nervous.

It's actually quite difficult to maintain a raunchy sex positive outlook 24/7.

I've become a stripper in the past 3 months.  I fucking love it.  It makes me like my body, myself, and humanity more.

I don't plan on telling my mother.

However, on Friday I went to a Giants game with her and my dad.  On the way out of the ball park, we passed the infamous Hustler Club mobile strip club--basically a box on wheels full of naked women and a pole.  My dad stopped to stare at a brunette with coffee skin pressing her ass against the glass.  My mom said something snide.  I tried to keep walking, afraid I might recognize someone, or somehow betray my alliances.

Coming out as a slut is way harder than coming out as queer.  I think I'm still coming out to myself about it.  There's still some bits of shame clinging to me.

They tell us in high school health classes that girls who are promiscuous really don't like themselves, and if having lots of sex and feeling good about yourself ever coincide it means that you've just bought yourself a one way ticket to teen pregnancy and a heroin addiction.  I suppose we're supposed to feel neutral about sex unless it's with someone you LOOOOOVVVEEE.

But having lots of sex with people I don't necessarily love....makes me feel awesome.

And being naked in front of people who pay me....has made me like my body more.

I don't know. Maybe I'm going down the wrong path after all, and Mr. Stevenson (my Bill Cosby-esque high school health teacher) was right.

But then again...I am going to Vegas with seven strippers on Friday.  We have a suite at the Monte Carlo with hot tub in the room and mirrors over the bed....

If I'm choosing wrong.....I think I'm okay with that.

Every third person

There are certain moments when your life flashes before your eyes. Sometimes its when you find yourself in the back of the SF Underground in the lower Haight sitting on the lap of the girl you have a crush on and watching someone you’ve seen in porn get fisted.  And then of course, the speed at which your life is flashing only increases when the person stops getting fisted and starts getting fucked with some one’s foot.

Your life also flashes before your eyes as you wait in your room listening to Regina Spektor at 3am, awaiting a BDSM porn star you met on the internet to come over and beat the shit out of you.

Or when you end up having a threesome with your boss and the innocent looking girl at work, and you realize that the innocent looking girl –braces and all—has kind of a mean streak as she digs her nails into your ass cheeks.

 Does that ever happen to you?

My life has been flashing before my eyes a lot lately.  

And it seems that every third person I see on the street is someone I’ve seen in porn or someone I’ve “winked” at on OkCupid. 

Blood, Sweat, Sex, Drugs, and Fanny Packs

4/17/10

*side note: I am unsatisfied with the title I have given “Kinky Jewish Boy”.  It’s too big a mouthful, and while he is quite the mouthful himself, I have decided to rename him “Daddy”. So. Henceforth and hitherto, he will be referred to as “Daddy”.

Now, I’m not trying to brag or nuthin….but shit.

My life is fucking OFF THE HOOK.

Sometimes, I step back and just jump up and down and squeal like a little girl in glee about how fucking BOMB things are for me.  Situations in which this is likely to occur include:

 Right after going down on Daddy’s Girlfriend and then watching him fuck her while I stroke the base of his cock in this super amazing way he said made his cock actually heat up by several degrees before he had a self described “semi-volcanic” orgasm…

                                    …but I’m getting ahead of myself.

On Saturday I had stayed in bed literally all day.  I had been consumed by what I thought had been the beginnings of the flu. I could not move without aching all over. I remedied this by watching six straight (and very gay) hours of America’s Next Top Model and ordering Thai food delivery.

Thankfully on Sunday I woke up feeling like a new woman.  So I spent a leisurely morning cleaning my room and then headed off to Oakland for a daaaaaaate.

I had been wanting to go on a date with Faun Boy since we met for the first time in February at Ships in the Night (queer dance party in the lower Haight) and we fucked in an alleyway.

In contrast to our debaucherous introduction, our date on Sunday was quite wholesome. We went to the flea market by Lake Merrit in Oakland. We ate corn on the cob, drank orange soda, shopped for fanny packs.  Afterwards we went and lazed in the grass by the lake and talked about things you talk about on a date when you’re “really connecting”. 

You know, life, death, relationships.  I nodded and mmmed a lot but mostly just tossed my hair and hoped that I was looking really cute in the sunshine. I really wanted to kiss him.

And then I felt a gush.  

That extra special gush that you get once a month that says “no no, this does not mean you’re super turned on right now, it means you’ve just bled all over your cute aqua sundress”. 

Fuck.  

I prayed that this wasn’t the case, but I knew it was. I glanced down to see the damage, and thankfully it wasn’t that noticeable. Faun Boy invited me back to his place, but since I felt blood slowly coursing down my thighs, I thought it best to head back to the city.  I know he would have been understanding, since as a trans man, he’s definitely seen both sides of the gender coin and wouldn’t be all squeamish about my “lady process” But I started to feel the onset of knee-buckling cramps, so I kissed him good-bye for a good twenty minutes—which caused fireworks behind my eyes, no big deal—and we went our separate ways.

Earlier on my date, when Faun Boy had been buying some boxer briefs that said “WIN” right above the crotch, I had received a call from Daddy, so I while I searched the Lake Merritt BART station area for an open public bathroom, I listened to the voicemail he had left me. It went something like this:

“Hi Baby, I know you’re on your date right now, and I hope it’s going great.  We’re going to come by around 9 tonight, I can’t wait to see you, but if your date is going REAL well, don’t let us cramp your style and we can maybe meet you in Oakland instead. We were in the middle of fucking earlier when you called, I was just thinking about you….”

Today was a big day. Though I had met Daddy’s Girlfriend before at New Year’s Eve this year, tonight would be the first time that all of us would hang out in earnest—and there were distinct overtones of an impending threesome. Daddy’s Girlfriend is super hot, and though she’s not queer, she has in the past enjoyed having “girl hands in her cunt” as Daddy puts it. He has expressed to her that both he and I would greatly enjoy for me to get the chance to go down on her.  So, we’ll see what happens.

I call Daddy back and he picks up almost immediately though I know he’s having dinner with the Girlfriend’s parents in Marin.

“Hey Baby! How did your date go?”

The sound of his voice on our first date had been kind of a turn off for me, it has a higher timbre than I would like and it sounds overtly amiable; at the time I hadn’t been sure that I could take orders to suck cock from such a sweet voice—but now I recognize the firmness behind it and even a run of the mill greeting like this can start to make me wet.

I proceeded to tell him the details and he oo-ed and ahh-ed appropriately, told me how much he missed me, and how just talking to me gave him a hard on. I broke the news of my cycle to him.   Not surprisingly, he responded with ambivalence.

“Why should that matter?”  he said.  

I must say that after years of dating WOMEN who won’t even touch me when I’m on the rag, it is so refreshing to have all these MEN in my life who don’t give a shit about fucking while I’m bleeding. 

I made my way back to the city, first stopping to take care of my lady business in a bathroom at Laney College. There was a basketball game going on that afternoon, so I stopped and bought some water at the hot dog stand run by one of the Sororities. I was definitely the only white person there. While waiting in line, a fucking adorable little stud rushed to the front and said, 

“I can help you”.   

She had dimples that could kill you and big bling in her ears, corn rowed hair, and sharp lookin' suit.  She smiled at me real big and it only took a flicker of understanding between us to know 

that she knew 

that I knew 

that she knew.

“Uh, yeah, I’ll just have a…uh…a bottle of water.” I smiled.

She gave me this sexy half smile “You sure that’s all you want?” I wasn't. 

I made my way back to the Bart Station and popped a couple of Vicoden to deal with my menstrual pain.  The rest of my evening was spent in preparation for Daddy’s arrival—it was a mad housewife whirlwind of vacuuming and cheese platters clouded by a pharmaceutical haze.  When I slipped on a 1950’s A-line gingham halter dress over my naked body, my cell phone blew up announcing Daddy’s arrival.  I ushered my guests in, and though Daddy felt me up in the hallway, I set my hopes no higher than an evening of pleasant after-dinner conversation.  However, if you will refer to the first paragraph of this entry….the night brought much more than that.

I don’t think I’ve ever had such a rad first day of my cycle. 

Somebody up there loves me. 

Wouldn't it be nice?

Wouldn’t it be nice?I thought to myself.

To just want a boyfriend. A simple little boyfriend. Who wears skinny jeans and likes yoga.  Who likes to make out, eat pizza, watch a movie and send me cute text messages.

Maybe. I thought.

Maybe this is what I’ve been missing...

So. Tonight I went on a date with a regular boy. A Wisconsin transplant who was cute enough.  But not too cute. I learned a few months ago that dating someone who feels like they are out of your league means they probably are, and won’t call.

But this boy had soft hands, big eyes and the potential for male pattern baldness in about 5 years.

We at pizza, drank beer and watched Twin Peaks.

He kissed like a nervous goldfish gulping for air.

And despite his sweet exterior he leered at me when I spoke about how my ex girlfriend had ripped my heart into tiny shreds.

When I asked what HIS last serious relationship was like, he said he’d never really had one.

Great.

I could tell he would have fucked me then and there with Audrey and Agent Coooper watching.  But could we really call what I know he could do to me “fucking”?  I don’t think anyone who reminds me of a nervous goldfish could do anything resembling the quality of fucking to which I have become accustomed.

Sure. I could keep him around and rock his world a little bit. I think just talking to me blew his mind to some degree.   It became painfully clear over chicken pesto pizza that we did not speak the same language when I had to not only explain what “T” and “top surgery”  meant but what a trans man even was. When I told him I was generally most attracted to trans men he asked where I met them..and if I had to spend a lot of time cruising the Castro to find these illustrious unicorn-like creatures. I found it best to drop the subject.

I had hoped that his lack of worldliness would be compensated by an unbridled passion for love-making that could only be a by-product of a repressed Midwestern upbringing (I find that since I was raised by hippies in an environment largely free of repression, I tend to fetishize things that are generally thought of as repressive: the South, suburbia, Catholocism, ya know)

But as I discussed earlier, there was no wild buffalo roaming through this one.

Oh well. Guess I learned my lesson once again.  

Conclusion: This is not what I’ve been missing. 

Harry Houdini falls in love

This morning I’m sitting in the kitchen of an Oakland recording studio and the sunlight is streaming in victoriously. Kinky Jewish boy is in the shower, organic fair trade espresso is in the French press—and I am in a lot of pain.

Starting with my jaw.  The right side aches with surmounting pressure—it may be very bruised.

My chin and lips are raw from being scraped all night by his five o’clock shadow.

My right breast is riddled with a supernova of bruises and is speckled with red and purple from the broken blood vessels.

My neck is sore from the ropes, not to mention the strangling.

And on top of everything I’m still recovering from the gym yesterday.

Between the lactic acid coursing through my muscles and the bruising, I’m a mess.

This morning at first light I awoke not so much from the grayish brightness seeping in from the window but more from my buzzing psyche and cramped arm.

Around 3am, after a failed attempt to go for round five, Kinky Jewish Boy reached for the ropes draped across the mirror by his bed. He then tied my wrists, neck and ankles so I was immobile and tucked me into bed.

The feeling of being tied up while I slept gave me erotic non-sensical lucid dreams of jumping off cliffs.  By morning I was exhausted.

Being the responsible toppy guys that he is, Kinky Jewish boy had tied me loose enough so that I could untie myself if need be in the night.  When I awoke with my arms aching from not being able to straighten them for hours, I proceeded to perform a Harry Houdini style escape half asleep and naked in bed at 5am.

My desire to cuddle was more pressing than my desire to submit. 

When I finally freed myself from the ropes around my wrist and neck I curled my arms around Kinky Jewish Boy and relished in his warmth. I drifted back to sleep in the growing light of the room.

When the alarm finally assaulted us and we stretched and yawned our way out of bed, he checked his iPhone and reported that the lead singer of Sparkle Horse had committed suicide. He put on their album and made coffee naked, to honor the dead.

Meanwhile, I gathered my items I had strewn about his place:

1. My cheap stilver hoop earrings I had lost while making out in the kitchen.
2. My tiny purple vibrator on his bedside table. (my all important tool for working up to anal sex)
3. My ruffly black undies I had discarded next to the clawfoot tub.     

                                 ….The bathroom still smelled like cigartettes. We had shared one in the bath earlier that night. I had never taken a bath with a lover before, and I felt like a fourteen year old in France with Roman Polanski.

As he prepared for his day, I fixed his coffee just the way I know he likes it and brought it to him while he shaved in front  of the dingy bathroom mirror.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why I like to call him Daddy.   Not only does it make me feel like a Moll in a 1930’s gangster movie, but also because he’s got that roughly affectionate five o’clock shadow demeanor that makes me feel like a 6 year old princess and as intensely disturbing as it may be, he reminds me of my dad when I was about six.
Now, nobody freak out, my Daddy never touched me or anything like that, in fact just the opposite.  He just wasn’t around.  I’ve seen my biological father about 25 times in my life (roughly once a year).  When I was very young I was raised by my grandmother and mother—two very strong women.  I joke around that it’s my mother’s fault that I’m queer—she gave me a model of two women raising a child, which I think is why I’ve always pictured myself settling down with a woman.
What she doesn’t know however is that by choosing to not have my dad around, she contributed to this really intense Daddy fetish that I have now. Luckily, I now get to play out those deep seeded childhood desires with Kinky Jewish Boy who gives me all the loving Daddy energy I need paired with the discipline of his belt and hand that I never got as a child.  It’s funny how the things we are denied as young people fester and grow inside our psyches and then rear their heads in our sexual lives when we are adults…

But it’s rather early for sexual psycho-analysis, and in this moment I’m content to sip my coffee and watch him shave, as something in the air is different this morning.

There's something so romantic about the bruises all over my body, the adrenaline hangover, and the broken wine glass with two blue latex gloves shoved inside it--collateral damage.

Sometimes.  I think to myself.

The life of a pervert is so sweet. 


And as I leave and go about my day, I can't stop thinking about the way our bodies looked in the bathtub together. And every time my shirt grazes against my breasts when I move and I feel a twinge of pain, I replay a chilling soundbite from the night before and my knees buckle. And I realize:

This kind of feels like love.

Oh shit. 

The Law of Anti-Attraction

There is a cardinal rule that I have learned about dating: if you have too many dates scheduled for one night—you will go home alone.  It seems contrary to logic—like if you buy more lottery tickets, you have a greater chance of winning—but in the realm of dating, the more people you try to hook up with in one night, the lower your chances are of getting laid.

I often fall victim to this law of anti-attraction.

Tonight was one of those nights.

My favorite band in the world was playing at the Bottom of the Hill tonight.  The Bass Player was my quasi-boyfriend for awhile—meaning that we went on tour together and made out in the back of venues and bought each other souvenirs at gas stations in Kansas—so I was super excited to see him. 

I had also invited Girl of my Dreams, and Kinky Jewish Boy (who I had had a ridiculously awesome fuckfest with just a few nights ago. I’m still bearing the bruises from our time together).  The Photographer—who has begun to make his affections for me more and more obvious—would also be attending. In short, I had far too much on my plate

When I got off work and took a taxi from the wretched Marina to the beloved Valencia street, I arrived at Cha Ya (vegetarian amazing sushi) to have a meal with the Photographer. I drank too much sake and started giggling uncontrollably, which I’m sure was charming at first, but probably not for long.

Upon arrival at the venue, I searched the high and low for The Bass Player.  We eventually saw each other across the sea of crowded hipsters. He had grown a 70’s rocker mustache since the last time I saw him, but still our faces lit up uncontrollably as we embraced like brothers.  

He took my hand and let me up to the dressing room where we exchanged stories of the road. We compared the awesome belt buckles we had both acquired since the last visit (mine was far superior, having two roosters on it with the words “Cock fighting” emblazoned across the front).

And then, things got a little weird…

I suddenly felt like I couldn’t stop looking at my shoes and twiddling my thumbs.  I've never been to summer camp, but I have a feeling that if I had been to summer camp and had a boyfriend and then seen him the following summer…I might feel just like I was feeling in that moment.

Girl of My Dreams showed up.  She was tired and not drinking, which didn’t really mesh well with my overly enthusiastic “I love everybody!” mood fueled by sake and IPA.  All I wanted to do was kiss the corners of her mouth and dance all night.

I did a lot of just that.

Kinky Jewish Boy flaked, thank god.

Eventually Girl of My Dreams left for the night, and I was in the middle of the venue with The Bass Player.  We were standing in a sea of yet to be loaded out band equipment. I kissed him on the cheek and said…

I love you.

Fuck.

This is why one shouldn’t drink too much on nights with more than one date.

He was sweet and gave me lots of hugs with promises to keep in touch better, but as I sat in the Photographer’s car as he drove me home that night, my forehead pressed against the freezing glass window…I just felt really stupid.

I’m on my way to go see The Bass Player’s band again tonight in Santa Cruz.  I also might take some MDMA…why don’t I ever learn?

Hot Tubs, Pony Play, and Blood Sports, oh my!

I cannot decide if I am terribly forgetful or terribly nostalgic. However, one might say that in order to be terribly nostalgic, one must be terribly forgetful.

However, I find myself feeling less wistful these days and I long for my past less and less, and only experience nostalgia for the most immediate moment as it evaporates before me.

In other words…right now I’m very happy.

The other night during the mermaid photo shoot, the Photographer paused and suddenly said “Are you familiar with ‘pony play?” I immediately tensed; suddenly aware that I was half girl half fish and that perhaps I had naively walked into some sort of super kinky aqua-bestiality fantasy of his. 

“Uh. Yes.” I answered cautiously, wondering if the next prop he would bring out for me to pose with would be a bridle and a saddle. I shuddered to think.

Much to my relief, it turned out that the Photographer was set to shoot a fetish model later that week, and she would be doing some “pony slut” looks.  She apparently also has a kinky unicorn costume she wears on occasion, which I found exciting.

So tonight the Photographer asked me if I cared to act as his assistant for the night. Which sounded both fun and hot. How could I say no to being a fly on the wall during a fetish-modeling shoot? I couldn’t.  So I didn’t.

And there I was a few hours later, lacing a buxom Asian woman with magenta hair into a frilly hot pink corset.

She wasn’t the best model.  She got embarrassed easily and despite her wealth of exciting costumes and props, she seemed highly uncomfortable in her own skin.  While she was a lovely girl, I had to fight the urge on several occasions to push her out of the way, snatch her 6 inch patent leather pumps off her toes and show her how it’s done.

But instead I was civil and made friends.  Turns out we had a lot in common: When I mentioned some lesbians that I knew who recently did a photo shoot involving Spiderman underwear and smearing each other in vials of their own blood, we found out that SHE TOO knew of some lesbians who were into blood play…but it turns out they weren’t the same lesbians. Apparently in San Francisco there are a bunch of those.

 She was not your typical fetish model with her hippie tattoos, and unshaved body hair.  She had some how fit all of her props and costumes, wigs and all into 2 saddlebags for her bicycle. I could not get over how “East Bay” that was.  

After the shoot, The Photographer asked me if I would like to join him for a glass of wine and hot tubbing at his friend’s house.  It was early, and I felt that I couldn’t say no to hot tubbing a second time. 

We arrived at a house tucked away in one of those lush green sections of Oakland that are full of blossoms and wonder. 

The Photographer’s friend was surprisingly good looking with strong features.

I instantly wanted to fuck him.

Turns out he was an opera singer, about to star in a production of La Boheme. He offered me a glass of wine that he had bottled himself on his first date with some girl.

“Wow” I said. Suddenly feeling like a teenager, “I’ve never been on a first date where I bottled my own Pinot Noir.”

“Well,” said the Opera Singer, “Clearly you’ve been dating the wrong people.”

Much to my chagrin, The Opera Singer did not join us in the hot tub.  It was just the photographer and me in a magical little garden bathed in moonlight….awkwardly sitting a safe distance away from each other. Naked.

I find that despite their health benefits, hot tubs are usually more about being awkward and naked with people you don’t know that well than about true relaxation.

All the same, I planned to enjoy myself. I loved the way when I let myself float in the water, it suddenly looked like had perfectly perky porn star breasts.  I’m sure The Photographer felt the same way, since at some point he felt that it was appropriate to come closer.  Yikes! I instantly transformed from a mermaid to a hermit crab and curled my legs up against my chest, trying to remain casual and continue our conversation.

“Your friend, The Opera Singer,” I probed, “Does he have a girlfriend?”

“Several” replied The Photographer.

Hm. I thought. Well, there are worse answers.

I made it back to the BART station and onto a train just after midnight before I turned into a pumpkin.

Back in my San Francisco apartment, I ate dinner at 1 am, standing alone in my kitchen. As I shoved seaweed and quinoa into my mouth…I suddenly felt terribly single.

Fuck. I thought.

So much for not being nostalgic these days.

Manic Monday Nights.

Disclaimer: It’s almost five in the morning now, I’m not sure if I can even write coherently.  Why does 5am arrive so quickly these days?

  Tonight was full of heartache and nostalgia.  After a long and boring day of selling stupid people things they don’t need on Union Street, I somehow made my way home with just enough time to check my email for pictures from my photo shoot the night before and to have an overly intense Gchat conversation with Girl of my Dreams about how she doesn’t think she can be intimate with me because of her past sexual trauma.

Fuck.

Now, I could go into a big fucking sob story about being sick of dating people who are unfuckable, but that would be insensitive, and I think there’s already a wealth of bad slam poetry written on that subject.  Instead, I cried a little (probably more to do with not having eaten in six hours than from heartache) and accepted these terms.  I informed her that as much as I respected and admired her choice to do the right thing for herself, I could not for MY own well being, be pursuing a relationship with someone who I was not having sex with. That’s just how I roll. Does this make me an asshole? In this amorphous world of polymorphous love affairs… I don’t really even know anymore.

After a good cry and a good energetic goodbye via gchat to the supposed “girl of my dreams”, I put on a pencil skirt they shade of a yellow school bus and made my way down the street to grab a burrito before heading out for the night.

I was on my way to see my high school friend, who I had not seen for 5+ years.  She was in a rockstar band these days, playing piano. She had recently married the super epic and hopelessly dorky drummer. They played at Kimo’s on Polk Street to a small but enthusiastic crowd, especially for a Monday night. I hungrily drank dirty martinis, drooling over the way her back would arch and dance while she played the piano, while I fielded texts from the photographer from the night before. “Come to the Make Out Room” he pleaded via text.

“I can’t” I replied. “I’m overwhelmed by nostalgia.”

He was persistent however, and promised that he was hanging out with a sea of single cute lesbians….I won’t say I wasn’t tempted, but I managed to stay put and committed to where I was.  No small task for me, since I seem to have social ADD.

After the show was over, the gear loaded out, and the merch purchased, we made our way to a bar down the street. It still had it’s Christmas tree up, and had paper Mache icecicles hanging from the ceiling. I ordered a drink that was so girly and sweet I dubbed it “The Walking Vagina” (recipe: peach flavored Absolut Vodka, sprite, a splash of OJ, and a cherry. Fuck yeah.)

I quickly developed a crush on the bass player, as I am wont to do. He could match me tit for tat in Beatles trivia and had cute glasses and an appropriately hairy chest. We exchanged hugs that lasted too long, but not phone numbers, which was dumb.

I was driven home by my budding Gay BFF.  He is the BFF of my most recent ex-girlfriend, so our relationship is complex. But by the end of the night we were cuddled in my bed weeping to each other.

“Who knew?” he said.  “I never would have guessed back in high school that someday you and I would be this close, and this gay.”

“I did.” I replied.

All in all, this is just the way I like to spend my Monday nights. 

 

Modern Love

“You’re quite the modern girl” he said as I arched my bare back a little more to more fully accentuate the curvature of the mermaid tail I was wearing. 

Click.

He snapped a few more photographs.

Here I was in a lush East Bay Apartment, posing half naked for a man more than twice my age.  The terrible thing was, this wasn’t the first time I’d been in this situation—but that’s another story and another body of water.

Since moving to San Francisco, I HAVE become quite the modern girl.  As I ran my finger along the lip of my glass of red wine it made that ringing sound that sound like whales crying and I told him about my date the night before:

She had riot girl red Shirley Temple curls. On our first date she had worn blue plastic squid earrings and an electric blue prom dress. 

She is potentially the girl of my dreams.

But tonight (date#5) she was more subdued as we were on our way to Queer Contra Dancing in Oakland.  It was far too wholesome to be abided for more than an hour, but she and I enjoyed being spun around by giant gay men in tie dye skirts until we felt like we would explode and then escaping to the parking lot to indulge in less wholesome activities.

Later in the night, back on the other side of the Bay, she got a text message from her boyfriend, who was on a date with his other girlfriend and his girlfriend’s other boyfriend.

WHOA.

Rewind. Let’s just do a little chart real quick

Me-àGirl of my DreamsàGirl of my Dreams’ boyfriend who looked like Mr. Clean-àMr. Clean’s girlfriend who had Aeon Flux hairàAeon Flux’s boyfriend who was wearing a skirt.

All one happy family having drinks at a the Dirty Thieves in the Mission.  Awkward does not even begin to describe my feelings.  

It did not help that I was wearing a ridiculous outfit of teal gingham and red crinoline, as I am wont to do, and everyone else seemed to have borrowed all their clothing from the cast of the Matrix. They looked at me like I had food spilled all over myself or something.  Like they were embarrassed for me.  When Aeon Flux asked me what Girl of my Dreams and I had just done for our date, I did my best to explain the wholesome summer camp vibe of Queer Contra dancing.  She stared at me with a deadpan glare and said,

“Weird.”

I drank my IPA as fast as possible and Girl of my Dreams and I made our way to meet my friends at the Lexington.

“I think he liked you. “ she assured me.

I told you she was the girl of my dreams.

Somehow the overly wholesome appetizer of Queer Contra Dancing made the harsh brooding hipster dyke scene of the Lexington feel less intimidating than usual.  We smoked cigarettes outside for a while with some friends of mine, and met some overly adorable girls from Australia…one of which started making out with Girl of My Dreams almost immediately.

My cigarette smoking friends pointed and gawked, expecting me to beat somebody up, since the last time something like this happened (Q Bar during Castro Street Fair,) police had been involved.  I won’t lie and say my stomach didn’t do a little drop, and I didn’t start to sweat a little bit when I saw them.  But when Girl of my Dreams was finished with the potentially underage Australian Sheila, she bought me a gin and tonic, grabbed my ass and kissed me in that way that said “Drink fast, I’ve got a white harness and a giant black silicone cock in my bag and I can’t wait to get you alone.”

So yes, I told my photographer, as I readjusted the ukulele chastely draped across my breasts, I’ve become quite modern.

He tried to hide his intrigue with more clicks of the camera.

When we were finished and I had become a two-legged creature again, he casually invited me to join him in the hot tub before I made my journey back across the bridge. I politely declined.

 For, despite my modern sensibilities, I am still a lady.