Cariños, escándalo me ha encontrado.

I was a bad girl and didn't post yesterday. Too riled up from all that hurricane speculation, I suppose.

But today, in the calm aftermath, I'm craving a less terrifying sort of adventure. I have been feeling a little boring lately, so I don't know, maybe it's time to find a sexy stranger and have some ultimately-mediocre-but-situationally-exciting casual sex. Since I've had a steady (non-monogamous) date for awhile now, I haven't had sex with a new person in about 9 months, which is a bit of a record for slutty me. The problem with me and casual sex, though, is that I've realized that 97% of my first-time sexual encounters are less than satisfying. For me, sex is at its best after we've had a few goes at it and have really figured out what works for the other person.

But you know, bad dates are always great blog fodder, so stay tuned. Hopefully there's some kind of intrigue for me and some good reading for you in the cards.

Like all bodies on earth, mine goes through changes. My brain knows this truism, and usually, I know both the why and the how of its changing. I know why my body has changed of late, and my brain is ok with that. What's hard right now, though, are the unwelcome memories and associations that my body's recent change is bringing up for me.

Several years ago, I was in a relationship with a really bad person. Not only were we terrible for each other, but she also brought out the worst in me. During the year and a half we were together, our dysfunctional relationship and her ever-declining sexual interest in me directly correlated with the weight I gained due to depression and our extreme incompatibility leading to a relationship based almost exclusively on cooking meals together and watching the television.

Horrible Ex manipulated me in many ways, but her all-star tactic was through her withholding of sex and affection. When we first dated, she couldn't get enough of me. Our chemistry was hot, and though I knew our personalities and lifestyles were quite different, I thought that the passion was enough to make a relationship. But just two months into our dating, she pulled a classic bait-and-switch. Suddenly, she didn't want to be creative in bed. She revealed to me that she didn't like lingerie and actually, she also didn't like kissing, so we wouldn't be doing that anymore. Both giving and receiving oral sex were no longer on the table, because oops, she didn't forgot to mention that she didn't like that either. I could forget about having sex more than once a week, and never too early in the morning or before bed, and definitely not if she was tired or hungry or cranky or stressed or whatever excuse was most handy. Eventually, I stopped trying to initiate and waited pathetically for her lukewarm invitations when they came.

I could write a whole separate volume on why I stayed, but I did. And in the last 6 months especially, I was fucking miserable. We'd spend weekends together on the couch, eating in silence and watching some movie that one of us inevitably hated because we could never agree on what to watch anyway. Sex was infrequent and perfunctory on her part, though I was so sexually deprived that I was still hot for it even at our worst. And at the very end, she blamed my weight gain over our relationship on her disinterest, and I was beaten down enough to eat up every word.

It's clear to me now just what a manipulative, lying sack of shit she was, but that terrible 16 months that she spent chipping away at my self esteem, and the way that I learned to blame it on my body's natural response to the awful situation, has been extremely hard to extinguish.

Fast forward several years, and I'm in a much better place emotionally. I've done a shitload of emotional work to heal from that time, but lately, it's been flooding back for me. Over the past several months, I've had some injuries that have limited my mobility and as a result, my body is at about the same size as it was when I was at my unhappiest with Horrible Ex. And though, like I said earlier, I know why my body has changed and my brain is at peace with that, a big part of me can't help but feel the crushing weight of self-hatred and feelings of failure that I felt at that really low point in my life. Combined with my shitty job situation and fear about not knowing what's next for me, I find myself lately in a bit of a depressive funk with more self-doubt about my self worth than I've had in years.

I kicked Horrible Ex out of my life three years ago this fall, but it seems as though she's the gift that keeps on giving. Sometimes I feel as though the residuals are like a fucking case of bed bugs; you can starve them for a year, but they can still bounce right back into your life, wreaking havoc and wrecking the peace if you give them even just a little taste of blood.

Jenna

During my tender 'tween years, I had a penchant for bible camp, young adult fiction, and strong teacher's pet tendencies. Unsurprisingly, I had never kissed with tongue, had a boyfriend, or any worldly knowledge other than what MTV and the trashy Up All Night (with Gilbert Gottfried) B-Movies taught me.

Then came Jenna. Jenna was a babysitter my parents hired, mostly to take care of my young sister. I thought that I was way too old to be babysat, and after a few times at our house, Jenna agreed. Quickly, our babysitter-babysittee relationship turned into a friendship/mentorship. I hung on Jenna's every word and followed her around like a hungry puppy, because at the age of 16, Jenna had the kinds of experience with boys and sex and dating that I had only fantasized about at night while staring into the dreamy eyes of any one of the 103 Jonathan Brandis posters adorning my wall.

If I'm being honest about the kind of relationship we had, I guess you could call Jenna my slut mentor. A sensuously curvaceous teenager with long brown hair and Wet N Wild-lined blue eyes, I envied her languid pace, killer rack, and overt sex appeal. Jenna had a loose tongue, and we would stay up late into the night while I listened to her long and detailed accounts of blowjobs in playgrounds at night, getting fingerbanged in a car after a movie date, and many epic erotic dreams Jenna claimed she could direct even while asleep.

By word alone, Jenna exposed me to the seedy underground of teenaged exploits that seemed a universe away from the G-rated life of books and church I had been living. With each tale, I felt more and more impatient to grow breasts and hips and exercise what seemed like her free reign to be as sexual as I wanted to be. Awkward and friendless, I saw sexuality as my ticket out and in my post-Jenna years, did everything I could to get myself into the same kinds of trouble (mostly aided by the installation of a home computer).

Jenna and her life weren't perfect, though. God, this one time, she tried to set me up with this kid named Greg. It was all sweet and good for awhile; we met once and took a chaste walk through the woods, and he wrote me hand-written letters and sent me his school photos. But when he drew a picture of a Confederate Flag and wrote "The North shall fall, and the South shall rise again!" (not an uncommon rallying cry for where I grew up) on his last correspondence, that was the end for me. Jenna also dated a series of shitty dudes and ended up going the way of so many working class girls in my hometown. She became a young single mother and moved back into her mom's duplex soon after that. As a teenager, I often babysat her infant daughter while she worked the afternoon shift at Marshall's. She loved her daughter and didn't regret her choices, but Jenna also struggled with trying to create more opportunities for herself and her family. I don't know if she ever got that.

I could certainly make arguments about the impropriety of Jenna's relationship with me as a babysitting charge and fault her influence on my subsequent pursuit of sketchy dudes on the internet, but more than anything, I credit Jenna for seeding my budding pursuit of outlaw sexuality. I don't know if I would have had the bravery to come out as queer at 14 without her influence. I also see our relationship as a lasting lesson I learned about the power of erotic storytelling as a form of friendship bonding, and certainly as a key predecessor for my later desire to start writing about my sexual adventures and mishaps.

So, my hats (and skirts and bras) off to Jenna. This blog is for you.

Having massive questions about my current employment situation, a friend gave me a tarot reading last week wherein I asked the cards about my future. The first card I drew represented what would happen if I stayed on my current path; the other, what would happen if I went another way.

The "should you stay" card basically depicted a fiery pit of hell. It was the "Oppression" card, showing a burning building with a person buried under a pile of rocks. The "should you go" card showed a person leaping in the air to freedom, filled with creativity and liberation.

We could help but laugh about how strongly the cards felt about what I should do, and I couldn't disagree.

Now what?

It's a particular kind of disease, chasing those who can't or won't give you what you want.

I find it unnerving, the way that certain flashes of the past clasp their tight fingers around the recesses of my memory and refuse to let go.

She was an amazing lover, and she knew it. I was one in a long line of many women to whom she would dedicate hours to in bed with a singular focus, figuring out all of the vulnerable and tender spots to linger on; all the magical things to say about my body that would relax me into and onto her arms. Fulfilling me sexually while deliberately holding onto her own deepest desires was her way of feeling in control, and the way she maintained her fragile sense of safety. I know the tactic all too well - when you are afraid, it is comforting to be the one with less desire, the person who will hurt less if it all goes away.

I meant to write this as a chronicle of erotic memories, describing the way I smelled and tasted her on me all night after she sat on my mouth and chin, rocking herself into a frenzy. I felt dizzy and intoxicated for hours after that, interacting with the world like a temporary and inconvenient detour on the way back to her body. I think of the way she bent me over the bathroom counter in a dirty hotel room, pushing her fingers into me until I soaked her chest and the floor. The way I suddenly wanted things from her that I had never before found erotic. The way my need for her was so great, I wanted to consume every milliliter of skin and sweat and cum. The way I felt when I realized that she would never want me in quite the same way.

My desire is never so strong as when what I want is just beyond my reach.

Today I am a timid mouse, whiskers twitching a whisper to the wide open space around me.

The long road home

"Forget it. Just...don't even try to help. Let me do it."

The clipped contempt with which my dad speaks to my mother for what I've counted is at least the fifth time this weekend brings the slow simmer of anger in my chest to a rolling boil.

Both her and I are silent. As is the case when he corrects her speech. Or when he nearly shouts with anger over some little thing that has made him feel small. In a family of four strong-willed women, my dad does what he can to hold onto power. With my mother, he needs to be right. Any chance to gloat or one-up her he takes with a noisy fanfare. When he tries to make the fool of my mom by rallying the support of one of his girls, he is often met with a silent room. None of us approve of his behavior, but almost all of us have given up that fight.

Twenty years ago, our spars were frequent. I was the first child and so the first to rebel, the first to funnel my anger at them. For a period of a few years, we fought all of the time. Sometimes with my mother, but mostly with my dad. Who can even remember about what now, but what I do remember was the way the red in his face would deepen with rage and how his hazel eyes glittered as my stubborn silence persisted or my angered protests grew louder. Most fights would end with a trip to the kitchen, where either they or I would pick out the wooden spoon with which I was to be punished. Bent over, I learned to stare at a singular point on the wall, breathing through the sharp whacks to the fleshy parts of my behind and forcing the tears to stop until I was sent to my room. I remember the terror I felt the two times that he reached heights of anger that were foreign even to me. Once, a whipping with the belt in front of an audience and another time, a sharp slap to the face in the cool silence of the night, I lived those years with a bitter resentment that I can still taste.

At that age, I was angry all of the time. I had no friends, I hated my school, and I took it out on my family. At school, I tried to be as small and inoffensive as I could to stave off the merciless teasing of my classmates. I was new to that school and just a few pounds shy of being the fattest girl in my grade, so I knew that one wrong step outside of obscurity would make life intolerable.

So, at home, I fought. Those three years before puberty hit were a constant war of wills. Me, fighting nonstop with my parents and sister, and my parents angry, exasperated, and confused about what could possibly have gone wrong with their daughter. But sometime around 13, things just changed and we came to an unspoken truce. I guess like most girls my age, I learned to turn the anger inward, and grew tired of the fighting.

Someone once said to me, "Your family doesn't just push your buttons - they created them." When I see them now, and especially when I return to my hometown, the anger that I seem to have buried surfaces as if it had never disappeared. With just one wayward comment from either of them, my stomach clenches and I become tight and closed. As an adult, my relationship with my family is that of friendly acquaintances. They know the broad sketches of my life - where I live and work, who my friends are, and on occasion, who I'm dating. But beyond that, the yawning chasm between me and what they know about me stretches on. Every interaction are so fraught with memory that their words and actions can't help but be seen through my magnifying glass of resentment and yearning.

But, the question of whether or not we love each other has never actually been a question. We still laugh together, express joy and sadness and concern for each other, speak to each other from time to time and see each other several times a year. I feel their earnest desire to love me for who I've become, even as I also see them struggle to accept some of the fundamental basics of my adult self, just as I struggle to see them as whole, flawed human beings who are trying their best just like me.

Last night, tears rolled hotly down my cheeks as we watched a heartrending scene in a movie where a son is reunited with his parents after years of forced separation. He kneeled before them, his happiness and decades-long desire for them to see him for who he had become as an adult overcoming him. I couldn't help but recognize my own story in that scene, and fraught with longing, I looked at my parents seated next to me in the dark like two waving blots of color on a fading horizon.

What is there to say about today, other than that home is a painfully fucking complicated place to be.

Things I miss about my hometown

* Strangers offer you their unused coupons at the store
* No one looks at you funny because we all say it "kew-pawn"
* THE PEACHES
* Stocking up on all the staples that cost twice as much in New York
* Bringing home a suitcase full of dirty laundry and coming home with clean clothes
* Chick-Fil-A
* The screaming symphony of birds and crickets that greet me in the morning and lull me to sleep at night
* Fat people
* Cashiers don't look at you funny when you ask them how they're doing; or
* They ask you first
* Being in a public place does not mean having to be all close and personal with hundreds of strangers
* In fact, I do believe that the sound of light southern lilts kick up my kindness-to-strangers level a few notches

There's no place like (small doses of) home.

One sentence at a time

A year and a half ago, I quit the internet.

I mean, not in the 12-step tradition where you pledge abstinence and apologize to all you've wronged sense; no, I quit in a no more blog writing/blog reading/social networking sites sort of way. I wrote emails, I occasionally posted pictures of beautiful food on the internet, and called it a day.

The multiple hours a day I spent writing posts (on my other blog), reading others' words, and seeing every interesting person, event, and encounter as a potential post got really old. I felt like I was only as good as my next juicy story. Taking a break was exactly what I needed. I needed the space to live life without feeling the (internal) pressure to repeat it back to an audience.

But damn, after a year and a half, I've started to miss it again. So, I'm back. Sort of.

I no longer have the time to write long posts every day, nor is my life as exciting as it was when I posted here last, but I've decided to try and write one sentence a day. I hope that sometimes it'll be more, but I want to challenge myself to write at least one sentence every day about anything and everything.

Finally, to catch y'all up to speed, I thought you might like to know what happened while I was away.

Since 2007, I: found an awesome job; quit sex work; found a terrible girlfriend and dated her for far longer than I should have; thought that the breakup was the beginning of my Saturn Return; thought about writing a book, chickened out; had a dramatic friend breakup; had a bunch of dates and a lot of casual sex; thought I met the love of my life, but got a best friend instead; became quite enthralled with cooking and the world of foodies; got a pseudo-girlfriend who wouldn't commit and ended it exactly when I needed to; got promoted at work to a fancy position; had more casual sex and got disillusioned by it; went on vacation with friends on an annual basis, loved it; moved into my own apartment; thought about writing a book, chickened out again; realized that what I thought was my Saturn Return in 2008 was only the prequel to what I now believe is my actual Saturn Return; began to prepare myself for lots of bumpy-ass changes ahead.