Her sexual personality

I have been thinking about why sex fascinates me so much, why I re-live sexual memories so often and so much. It is not just the visual. Sure, we males are visual creatures and I am strongly affected by even subtle sights of female beauty. But I think that what is amazing about intimate relationships, even rocky ones, even bad ones, is the chance to get to know her sexual personality.

I think about Music, for example. She had this mischievious energy. She liked to be coaxed, a little bit. Even when she was eager to make love, she would suggest it very gently, like a question. We'd be in bed in the morning, and she'd sit up, and ask: "Do you want to get up? Do you want to get down?" Leading question. Predictable outcome. Or she would be on her laptop, pretending to ignore me, while I came up behind her and started massaging her. She would purr, but keep her attention away from me as long as she could. She was adventurous with blowing me, too, always trying to see how far back she could take me, and then reporting it back to me proudly. "You were all the way back here," she would tell me after.

But when she was really hot, she would become much more serious, and much more submissive. She would still want me to take her, but she would be very quick to move to whatever position I moved her to, quick to do whatever I wanted her to, and vocally very responsive. When I miss making love to her, when I fantasize, I miss these things about her. As much as the way she looked, and smelled, and tasted, and felt, I miss these things about her personality, things that I only learned after we'd made love dozens of times.

Voice was different. She was always hungry. Our sex life was limited only by my endurance. If I was ready, she was ready. If anything, she was more flamboyantly submissive than Music. It was a wild, loud surrender, lots of screams, lots of "please take me".

Music and Voice were such intense experiences, and so different from Soulmate, when I was younger, or Princess, today. Soulmate was finding herself, back then; Princess is finding herself, now. I realized, Princess is the last woman I will be with, and neither of us know her sexual personality yet. Shakira sang about a she-wolf being in there, and I think there's a she-wolf inside Princess too. I've caught glimpses of her, but I am looking forward to when she comes out and we can spend a whole afternoon together.

The door's open, just a crack...

She's my friend's girl. They're off and on. Off, right now. She's in town for a few days. She stays with me, it's only sensible. Roommate is not at home. When we hang out in public she leans against me subtly. She hugs me for really long when we greet.

I set her up on the couch. Turn the heat up. Go to my room. Close the door tightly. Then I open it again.

I put my head to the pillow. 45 minutes later she walks in and crawls into my bed. "I'm wide awake," she says. "Is this okay?" She snuggles up to me and strokes my head and pulls my hair. "Yeah," I say. Our heads touch, and we are kissing. She likes to do it on top, holding me down, moving at her own rhythm. I smile and try to stay focused. I'm thinking about someone else. Voice flashes into my mind. Voice crying when I tell her I'm leaving. For real this time. Not like the last three times. So many betrayals.

In the morning I take her to the airport. We talk about her rocky relationship with my friend like we hadn't been making love two hours before. Or maybe like we had, and it makes no difference. This one will always be a secret. It all felt inevitable. But now it's done and it feels wrong.

A mostly freed mind

The author of the book about online dating "Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You", writes at one point that he has only felt free, or sated, of sexual desire for a few moments in his life. I am going through one such moment. Not that I'm getting all that much - in fact, I haven't gotten any in 2009. But there seem to be other things that matter more, these days. I've been working hard, really hard, at something that is sure to fail. I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out how to change a horrifically lopsided situation. And people I love, Voice included, are in it with me. Well, I suppose it makes more sense to say I am in it with her. She's on stage in front of thousands of people screaming her lungs out. I struggle my way through the crowd to get to the front so that she can see my face. "I think it will boost her morale," I tell Guitar.

"What would you do right now, if you were me?" she asks me on the phone. Our phone time is down to about 5 minutes a day, she calls from work and we talk until she or I get a media phone call.

"I'd like to think," I say, "that I'd do exactly what you were doing, if I had the strength."

"I don't know what to focus on - oh, wait, that was a complement," she says.

"It was."

"Your complements are always so indirect."

I haven't spent a moment alone with her in almost a month.

The Gymnast is making her way into my life now. I saw her once since I came home from the US, just for an hour. I was distracted, wanted to get home to work. She wanted to cuddle. We cuddled for a while and I began to protest that I had to leave. She kept contriving conversation topics and not releasing me from the cuddling. It was cute. But I left. I'll see her tonight, but tonight, too, I'd rather be working. So I'll go to her place late, I suppose, maybe spend the night with her.

From the time Music left my life until now I have not felt so focused or strong. I haven't felt like I could take it or leave it the way I feel now. And if I could keep this feeling forever I would. I think when I met Music I was much closer to this mental state than I was after I lost her. Loneliness and neediness are not sexy. And maybe it is true what they say, that it is better to want what you have than to get what you want. What I want to do in the world is so much more powerful than what I want from women or sexual life right now, and I feel a lot more balanced as a consequence. And perhaps it doesn't need saying, but my attractiveness hasn't suffered at all. The only problem this feels like something that happened to me, not something that I did or changed. Maybe if I can remember this feeling well enough I can call on it when I need it.

A Christmas alone

It is hardly alone. I'm at my parents' place, about to head to a party with all the extended family, including my sister and her two heartbreakingly adorable children. After Christmas I'm going to go to the US to be with some very good friends, to spend a whole week in their company, catching up on work. So I have no cause to whine.

And yet, I do have to say this is the worst time of year to be a bachelor. Everybody goes to their families. New Year's Eve is a caricature of this. My best friends all do family things, and I get invited to parties by other friends.

My best New Year's were with my Soulmate, and they were always good, never alone, for some 10 years. I had one very good one when I was here in Toronto with Music. We wandered the streets and then settled at a random restaurant on Queen Street and I can still remember staring at her all night, specifically her boobs, she'd dressed fancy and I didn't have one second of wanting to be anywhere else.

But Music's long gone. Soulmate's going to a South American beach.

And so, as it turns out, is Voice, who is escaping the city with her fiancee to lounge around on some resort somewheres. She and I have been fighting and I suppose, we've broken up again. And I miss her calling me twice a day on her schedule, expecting me to modify my own to accomodate hers. Like I miss her telling me I'm beautiful. And that she loves me.

And I'm here. The pretty snow is getting rained on. My city's become a slushy mess. I haven't been able to focus on any work today.

I don't deserve any sympathy. In fact, I've experienced a very pleasant seduction over the past week. A co-worker of mine, a different department, junior to me, but a bit older. I'd definitely noticed her around more than once this fall (the boots didn't hurt). Lean, built like a gymnast (which she was in her teens) she's got an incredible ass, and wears the tightest jeans that I've ever seen. I think even a few years ago she would have been, too much for me to handle, maybe. The whole thing progressed as if we were reciting lines from a script. We ended up on a project together, for which she gave me her cell phone "just in case" - I then gave her mine. When the project ended I called her to talk about "follow up" matters, which turned naturally to workplace gossip. A social outing neither of us would have gone to, but we both went and I sat with her the whole time... she sat with her knees to her chest and her feet on the chair, so when I was touching her I would touch her knees and her ass in the normal course of the conversation. Did she want to catch a movie at the Carleton? Should we have dinner first? Did she want to come over for a movie? Did I drink? Should she bring over a bottle of wine? Was red wine good? The movie watching room is my room, since I don't have a TV, and there's nowhere to sit but on my bed.

When I kiss her, she says: "I don't feel comfortable doing this. You're a senior and I'm a junior at work." I say: "Yes, but I'm not in any supervisory role over you and will avoid such roles." She says: "But I could get screwed more than you by this." I say: "I understand. If you don't feel comfortable..." The conversation takes place with me lying on my stomach, leaning on my elbows facing her, my hands together and interlaced on her belly while she leans on pillows on my bed against my wall. She says: "No, I just wanted to make sure I said it." And then kisses me very hard. We do it twice, I think she's leading but she's leading me to be pretty aggressive, though she's not passive at all herself. No talking, no names are called, but she does moan and dance for me. She pushes her ass in my face, thrusts her pussy down my tongue, but doesn't come until I'm inside her. Later, she looks out at the snowstorm and says: "I better leave." "Stay," I say. "I don't have a toothbrush". I have new ones. She leaves early, before breakfast. I offer her the toothbrush to take with her. "What about leaving it here," she says. I smile. "I'll have to write my name on it," she says.

We did it again yesterday. There's something about this one, a lack of sentimentality, a kind of refusal to be vulnerable. She's her own woman. She wants what she wants from me, and so far, demands nothing more than that. I get the feeling she wouldn't reward any sentimentality on my part, and the way this all has played out makes me realize some missteps I made with other women over the past few years, getting sappy and getting attached in an un-reciprocal way. This one said as much over the wine, and before the bedroom. "Sex is just sex," she said. "It's entirely separate from love." I told her I didn't agree, and the worst was when that was true for one person but not the other. She acknowledged that was a problem. I don't think it's a problem for us. But that fact itself makes me sad, somehow. I told her afterwards that I'd heard and respected what she'd told me. She nodded.

She's not 100% unsentimental. Afterwards, when we spooned, she took my arm and held it close to her chest. After I came, I pulled out, keeping the condom on, and said - I need to take this off. She hugged me tight and didn't let go. "But I can take it off later," I said. She laughed.

I like the way this one looks and feels, I like being with her and it feels fine, like a sharing between friends. But is it because I have had something much deeper that I can't seem to enjoy this for what it is? Should I just accept that sex without attachment messes me up? Or should I keep heading further down this road, knowing that it might cost me something I can't replace?

Before I met this one yesterday I had lunch with my sexy lawyer friend, who asked me about Music, as I'd never told her about the breakup, and told me she'd been through something similar before her current marriage, and that it was probably for the best. I said I'd never know. I definitely don't, now.

I have a few readers now, google analytics tells me. Thanks for stopping by. Have a good Christmas, everyone. Love hard, cause you won't have what you have forever.

When your heart's not in it...

I met Painter after coming back from a dangerous assignment. She was headed to the same country to work there and wanted some advice. I'd gone for a few weeks. She was going for several months. But I had useful tidbits for her. And some language tapes, which weren't easy to get (there's pretty much only one set of tapes for this language).

She looks like a victorian statue. Smooth pale skin (a novelty for me, I'm about as dark as they come), tall, built like a waif. Thin brown hair. I'm not good at remembering eye color, I'll admit it. I think hers are brown. In repose, she's totally gorgeous. When she moves, there's no economy or grace, though. She's no dancer. And when she tells a story, she laughs at her own jokes, before she even finishes the story. She's beautiful. But she doesn't make my switches fire.

She comes to my office. We go out for lunch. I give her the rundown of things to watch out for. She thanks me, takes my stuff, mounts her bicycle and rides off into the sunset.

We repeat the ritual a season later when she comes back. She's done interesting things out there, and her stories boggle my mind. So I try to open some doors for her, as much as I can.

And that was it, for a good while. Six months after Music and I broke up, Painter was back in town. I'd heard she'd broken up with her boyfriend. She was having dinner in my neighborhood, and invited me out. We had dinner, and she ended up at my place. She was staying a few blocks away. We chatted here, her and me and my roommate, and Guitar, who was visiting and couch-surfing. At midnight I offered to walk her to her friend's house where she was staying. We have tea on her couch. She asks me about my breakup. I ask her about hers. An hour passes on the couch and I'm sleepy, missing signals, not sure what I'm doing here. "I should go," I say. At the door, she says "You don't have to go if you don't want to."

I look at her, surprised. "Oh... oh, Painter, that's really... a surprise."

"Really? You didn't know I had a crush on you since before I left?"

I laugh. We're standing in her doorway. "I really didn't."

"Listen, just stay."

I sigh. "Painter, I... I can't. I'm not over her, I'd be thinking of her, I think. I don't think it'd be right."

She smiles, undaunted. "Kiss me goodnight then."

I do. And then my arm slides around her waist, she starts fiddling with my shirt... and then I leave. "You're really sweet, Painter."

Her eyebrows dance as she smiles.

A year later, she's back in town on a day that I'm flying back from another assignment. I answer her leading email with a leading one of my own.

At dinner, we laugh about our leading emails. She's perfectly confident about where this will end. She's right. I bring her home. She leaves my lamp on, and my light off. We're standing in front of my bed. She puts her hand on my chest and kisses me.

My hands move through practiced routines. I lift her to the bed, I take off her clothes very gently, moving my mouth down her body as I do. She makes moves of her own, takes me in her mouth, licks her hand and jerks me off, slurps while she blows me. She looks good naked, she looks good in my bed. "You're gorgeous," she says. I go down on her until she comes once. "It would be fun to fuck," she says. I don't want to look in her eyes while we do it, I don't understand how to do this, how to fuck someone I don't love. I tell her I'm close to coming, and she moves under me so that we can come at the same time.

She's leaving town in the morning. We run into my roommate in the kitchen. He plays it straight. They know each other. Just three friends hanging out and making coffee. She's brought her toothbrush and toiletries. "I don't want to leave," she says to me. I smile, but I don't feel the same. She hesitates at my door. But in the end, she does go.

Later, I'm telling a curmudgeonly friend, one who I almost went there with but never did, about it. This friend is a much better match for me than Painter. She also knows my type. She's a little bit puzzled, maybe a tiny bit jealous, to hear about the encounter. "What's the attraction?"

"I think... that she was leaving the next day..."

Her eyes light up. It makes sense. But it all hurts, too.

Maybe the grief isn't still too raw...

Years ago now. She's kneeling. Naked. Small. Bronze. Perfect. She's in front of me on the bed. One of my arms is around her waist, my hand on her belly. My other hand is on her boob, I've reached around under her arm. There's a mirror in this room. I've never noticed it before. But our eyes are meeting in it. I have never seen anything so beautiful.

"You're beautiful," I say.

"We are," she whispers. And turns her head and kisses me.

She's small. Her skin is a little lighter than mine. It's like silk. She has these tiny, fine little hairs all over her ass and leading from her belly down to her pussy. I play with her like a toy. I pick her up and put her down, I turn her over and lick her ass and her pussy from behind. She can be fully clothed or naked, in front of me or just a voice on the phone, and I am fighting a constant urge to devour her. She hardly talks when we make love. Or only a few words. "You're wonderful." "I need your mouth on me." "I love you." I match her. Whisper to her only a little. "I love you." We would fall asleep at midnight and wake up, naked, making out, at 2 or 3am, and I would be inside her with neither of us making any effort. She prides herself on how far she can take me down her throat. We have phone sex. We're forced to stay in separate rooms at times, and nights she sneaks into my room. She rubs my arm to wake me up. We kiss for a while, then she tells me she wants me to go down on her. I go down on her and then I put her on her knees and fuck her from behind, in the dark. I'm naked, but her pajamas are still around her legs, her shirt pulled up above her breasts. It will never be like this with anyone again. My body will never want anything like it wants her.

She knows her effect on me. On anyone. She sends me photos of herself. She likes photos of herself. She'll take them herself or have others take them. I've thrown some out, the hard copies. The digital ones I keep, encrypted on my computer, so they're not easy to access. They are there, ready to break my heart any moment. Like googling her name, which I do too often. I stay off of facebook to avoid wondering who her friends are and who she is with now. I have that much discipline. Or listening to her songs. She made me mixes of songs. I never made her any until it was too late. But I made myself several, about her, since. Music.

When we broke up I didn't believe it, not really. We'd broken up before and gotten back. I believed it when she told me she'd been with other men. She told me who. Something broke inside me then. I stumble on their names sometimes, too, online. They still hit me like a punch in the stomach. I didn't think I was a jealous man. I want her to be happy. I don't like this feeling I have when I think of her. I don't like thinking of her with others. I hate it more than I understand. I'm not supposed to. If I loved her I should wish her the best. Now I think of the man she's been with and see signs of him online, I think of him as an idiot and it helps me to want her less: if she wants him and not me, she's a fool. But this is rationalization too. Rationalization or not, it's probably a good idea to stop wanting something you can't get. When will I stop wanting her? Until Voice every woman I have touched since has made me think of her, I've measured everyone relative to her and they've all been found wanting. My failure. My Music. Not mine any more.

Without (much) pretense

"Do you want to meet for lunch somewhere? We could do the Chinese place or the Thai place..." I have Voice on the phone. We haven't seen each other in months. At that time we (well, I) had decided to discontinue the relationship and I'd avoided her and her entire social group (which meant spending more time alone and more time with people I don't like as much). But I went away for a few months, came back, and missed her. Not like an emptiness I wanted to fill with anything that came along. Like a Voice-shaped hole in my heart that I could stand to leave empty, but that would also never be filled by someone else.

She hesitates.

"You could just come here. Why don't you just come here first and we'll decide."

"Okay, I'll just come over."

I have a day's growth of stubble. I shave. I change out of the clothes I wear around the house and into a good pair of jeans and a well-fitted long-sleeve t-shirt.

The doorbell rings and she's on my porch, facing the street. She's been to my house a million times. When I get to the door her back is always to me. I open the door and she turns around slowly, like she's dancing. She never smiles when she sees me. The smile is always a reward for something I say or do. She walks into my arms though, I hold her for a little longer than I would a friend.

She walks in like it's her home. I watch her take her shoes off. Which she's done many times here. She leaves her jacket and bag in my room. Like she's done many times.

"Tea?"

We go to the kitchen and I remember having her here. How I like having her here. How since we were estranged four girls have come through my place and my bed and how none of them meant as much to me as a single smile, or shit, even text message, from her did.

She's chatting about the million things she's doing, all the projects, what she's writing, what I missed when I was away. We take our tea to the living room, where she's always hated the furniture. I sit apart from her. I don't think I'm testing her, but maybe I am.

"You're far. Why are you so far?"

I sit next to her on the couch. I tell her stories from my travels. She complains about the couch. "Let's just go to my room." At each step, with each failure to find a new routine, we slip back to our old habits.

I close my door behind me. We put our teas down and she crawls into my bed. She puts a pillow on the wall and props herself up. I sit next to her. Our voices have changed. We are talking softly, sitting close, I can feel her warmth. I've been thinking about her body since I saw her. She says something, leans into me, puts her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her and our cheeks are touching. I turn my head a little. She does. And her mouth is on mine.

She has a beautiful mouth. When she talks, I'm torn between her mouth and her huge eyes and her big boobs. She's always complained that I pay more attention to her ass than her boobs. She doesn't kiss so much as invite kisses, and take them from me like she was waiting for them.

Now that she's in my bed and our mouths are together, we both know the rest of the choreography too well. My hands wander up and down her back, to her ass, under her shirt, to her breast, down to her knees, in her hair. We move down the bed. I undo her bra with one hand, while her shirt is still on. As I unbutton her jeans, she pauses, as she always does.

"What what what what what what are you doing?"

"Taking your jeans off."

"Oh."

She wears tight ones that don't come off easily. So she takes them off, while I pull her shirt off behind her.

"I'm naked," she says.

"I know," I say, kissing her again, my hands wandering, my finger finding her pussy. She moans.

"But you're not."

That has always been her way of undressing me. To blandly call attention to the fact that I am clothed. I've told her she could feel free to undress me herself, but there is still a shy side to her. I remove my clothes quickly and while I do, she pulls the covers over her. Shy. She sighs when she looks at me. She laughs like a little girl. "Yay, Verbal is naked!" She likes my body. She doesn't hide that, even in public. Certainly not in bed.

I crawl in next to her and she is soon on her back, I'm on top. I move my mouth on her, down her neck, to her boobs, back up. I suck one nipple, then another. I start to move my fingers inside her. She's wet. She's always very wet, very fast. She moans and gasps, "Verbal, baby. My baby. My baby I missed you."

I move down to her belly, and lower. She panics again, moving her hands under my arms to try to pull me back to her face.

"Baby baby what are you doing?"

"I'm going to lick your pussy."

"Oh."

And I'm on her. Now I remember the smell of her pussy. It is clean and bright and the strongest of any woman I've been with. And that's like her. She's a fire that burns brighter than anyone else. This part of the dance is easy for us, too. But she doesn't like to come with my mouth on her pussy. She wants to be held not just after, but while she comes. So as she's coming she starts to yell, "Verbal verbal baby come here get here please..." and I have to stop what I'm doing to hold her. She puts her hand on the wall and looks at me, and to the sides, gasping, shuddering. "I'm still coming" she says, writhing. I grab her hair and kiss her hard.

"Baby why aren't you inside me?"

I'm hard now, so I answer by entering her. She cries out. Then she's crying. "I'm home. Baby I'm home."

"I am," I whisper.

Voice can lose herself easily but when we're fucking she becomes very concerned with my pleasure. "Please take me," she says. She means she wants me to come. I have to stop (which she hates) to put the condom on, but she forgets quickly when I'm back inside her. "Verbal baby take me, please take me."

"I'm going to come now."

"Yes baby please come now please please..."

I keep my eyes on her when I come. She says there's a moment when I'm coming when I smile and she can see that I love myself as well as her.

She hates when I have to get out of her and remove the condom. "Where where where where are you going baby?" I remove it quickly, wrap it in a tissue, come back to lying next to her. "That was beautiful," she says, drawing it out. "My baby my baby my verbal I love you." She's like this, after. Always. "I missed you soooo much."

Our tea gets cold. I have her sweat on me and I can smell her on me. Eventually, like always, her phone rings. She dresses in a hurry. She uses the hairbrush I bought for her. She checks herself out in the mirror for signs of sex. I walk her to the door. She turns away, then turns around to kiss me. Does that a few times, before she finally goes out into the street.

I go back to my room. Take the tea cups and pour out the tea into the sink. Take the tea bags and throw them into the composter. She calls from the street.

"I really love you," she says.

"I know, babe. I love you." I just wish...

If I could just say the right thing.

I have loved three times and screwed it up each time. I have felt desire out of control. I have tried hard to master my emotions and, at times, succeeded. In all these times I have felt the power of words. I know for a fact that if I had said different things at different times my life would have been different.

But this is not about just regrets. This blog, because it's pseudonymous, means I can say things I can't elsewhere. It means I can ponder, perhaps with your help, what these daily interactions mean and how to do better. It means, maybe, I can talk about sex. Perhaps even explore a style I wouldn't normally. What I think I want to do is talk about my internal world, one of sexual desire, messed-up relationships, nostalgia, loss, and pleasure, adventure, and hope, too.