Griffin Stadium

Once upon a time, a boy thought he’d suck a movie scene out of my lips.

It was late at night after a film screening.

I don’t even remember the movie.

Coffy, maybe? Some exploitation thing.

Blame Tarantino.

We ended up on the football field, at the 50 yard line, even though he’d heard me complain at length about the false tribalism of sports fandom.

I didn’t matter.

He had a girl! In the right place! At the right time!

I’m sure that when he wrote it? The lights were all on.

Certainly, in the story in his head, he wasn’t a stupid boy with too-long hair in a fucking swamp.

He was sweaty. I’d bet anything the sweat didn’t end up in the re-telling.

So I didn’t swoon.

I failed him, twice, that same way.

The kisses on his home turf weren’t right.

Not at the airport when I’d gotten off the plane and he’d reeked of gin, and not in Griffin Stadium at midnight.

He was just so sweaty.

The script worked better in January, in Texas, when we’d met. Where his friends couldn’t judge. Where he’d lifted me off my feet, and I couldn’t actually physically confirm that he lived with his mom. Where I’d grabbed his hand in a dark club, all ripped black velvet and 20 Eye Docs, and dragged him down a spiral staircase to dance while Ministry played.

He had pictures.  He had a whole fairy tale to act out.  He had a note from his mom to wish him well on his journey of romance and self-discovery.

I saw that note.

I really did.

And, I disappointed his mom, too.

This is why that Manic Pixie Dream Girl doesn’t exist.

She always knows you sweat.  She doesn’t find your worrisome weed habit impressive, because she’s probably done narcotics that aren’t on the schedule, yet. She doesn’t know she belongs to you, so off-camera she’s making out with karaoke champions while you sit at home and memorize the Coen Brother’s scripts.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to be at the time, though.

The phrase “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” didn’t exist.

He broke up with me. He dumped me.

At the time, I realized that it was because I didn’t fill in the details for the scene he’d had in his head.

It wasn’t a conscious choice on my part, which is what bothers me about Laurie Penny’s piece.

A few months after things didn’t work out, Sweaty Boy, the always-aspiring artist, the wannabe poet, blogged about me.

This was before 9-11.  It was still called an online journal then.

And, you know, I’d kept quiet. I’d let him alone.  I’d stalked the blog, sure. But I hadn’t commented.

But, he writes this entry–back when we were all figuring out how we actually navigated this sort of thing on the series of tubes–and I flipped my shit.

“This is what marginalized feels like. I’m a fucking anecdote. I’m just a footnote.”

He apologized.

That doesn’t change what those poetic boys do to you, though.

The only way around it is to be just as self-absorbed.

And to be a better writer.

“Life would be a lot easier if I were more upbeat. If I worked better in a group, and I wasn’t the kind of person that stiffens up when hugged.  If I were positive and less critical. If I stayed on the sunny side.

Life would easier if I were nice.“

I’m not nice.

I’m polite, usually, but that’s not the same thing.

I’m fair, mostly. I think fairness is undervalued in most things. Who wants fairness, when there’s in-group loyalty to be had?

I’m critical, and due to that sense of fairness, I’m paralyzingly self-critical.

Critically? I can see that it’s easier to get along in life when you’re a nice girl. When you smile and wave the pom-poms. When you’re not constantly talking about cocks and misogyny and sex dolls and… cocks.

I can’t do it.

I don’t, really, even trust nice.

Right now? I’m nervous.

I wrote something that’s not very nice.

I’m always nervous about putting new stories out there in the big, wide world for everyone to see.

I’m doubly nervous, because this most recent story isn’t tempered with much humor.

You can get away with a lot of not being nice, if it’s wry.

I can manage wry.

The name of the damned series is wry.

I can only barely manage nice, even on a good day.

I’ve complained about all this before.

But can she breathe?

The weirdest thing about being a hypercritical snarker, while writing for an actual audience, is that I feel entirely disconnected from how most people appear to read.

Readers, in general, are supposedly looking for what I think of as the Maas list:

• A Superlative Character: The best detective, the richest hero, the purest girl, the oldest vampire, the meanest biker, the smartest professor, the domliest dom, the subbiest sub, who has a:
• Palatable “Conflicted” Fatal Flaw: a quirky personality disorder, a romantically dark past as a poor person, humorous clumsiness and/or sexual abuse PTSD, an abiding love of humanity, Catholic guilt, having no game with the ladies, a dysfunctional family, an overdeveloped sense of interpersonal loyalty, must defeat:
• The Sexy Enemy: the charismatic head of INTERPOL, the evilest crazy slut, the armies of several kingdoms, the Fairy King, the head of the Colombian Cartel, a guy who sounds suspiciously like Rupert Murdoch, HIS FATHER, the whole world whut does not understand the magic of fancy underpants games.

The Superlative Character with the Palatable Fatal Flaw must defeat the Sexy Enemy in a battle for the Ultimate Prize:

•  restoring humanity’s rightful heritage, rescuing at-risk youth, preserving her family name, defeating an evil God, winning all the drug trade in the Western US (or Eastern Europe), saving the ENTIRE WORLD, or finding deepest, truest, lifelong, undimming, forevermore, loverly love and then having a zillion babies.

So… yeah.

That’s the kind of High Stakes Bingo that really affects people.

Everything needs to be turned up to 11, as soon as possible, so as to “hook” the reader. Heroes must be heroic. The thieves need codes.  Hope must ring eternal.

The ending better be happy.

So, I see a lot of readers that use superlatives in reviews:  The hero is so hot they melted; they laughed, they cried, they squealed; it was the best thing they’ve ever read, they will die if they can’t have the next installment immediately.

I don’t fall in love with characters–not mine or anyone else’s. This is a huge thing. Danielle Steele used to claim she fell in love with all of her characters, and she thought that was why people liked them so much. She loved them, so other people loved them. The closest thing I can personally compare to “falling in love with a character” is actually falling into awe over how Tolstoy wrote the inner life Ilya Andreyevich Rostov. <— (That’s easily the least sexy sentence I’ve ever written. Sweet Jesus.)

I fall in love with writers. 

I fall in love with bodies of work–repeated motifs, commitment to building an aesthetic, obvious pre-occupations, Quixotic battles with stuff that just isn’t going to get resolved. Ever.

I fall for weird bits of truth.

A lot of what I like best is just plain depressing to most people.

I do this thing where I oscillate between “Whatevah, I do what I want, ’cause I’m awesome,” and, “Self, why are we not writing about Byronic Billionaire Doctor-Rockstars?! Are we insane?! Why must we be so difficult?”

I don’t know why I must be so difficult.

But… I don’t plan on any brooding punk rock podiatrists in the future.

I guess I’m committed.

For real, the only time I’ve ever been in a bathtub like that, it was at, and I quote: “The Freaky Freezer Dude’s House.”

Seriously.

Dude had a whole room full of deep freezers that he kept padlocked.

We decided it was Y2K storage.

Later, in 2002 or so, he burned the entire place to the ground.

I never said I was smart.

I swear, every time I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, Freaky Freezer Dude would magically appear in the hallway in sad, thin boxer shorts.

At the Freaky Freezer Dude’s house, spiders used to fall out of the ceiling on me while I listened to French house music and avoided the deranged cannibal landlord (who had opened bottles of Maker’s Mark FUCKING EVERYWHERE. Seriously. All over the place. It was crazy. And, he used to bring these sad women over, so as to ply them with Maker’s Mark. Jesus.)

Despite the spiders, I would sit and people-watch the whorehouse across the street.

It’s really was less cracked-out than it sounds.

…Kind of.

One day I did totally see a guy that had obviously been fishing in the downtown sewer ditches make his way back home with no catch.  And, there was this endless battle over stolen shopping carts between men that squatted in the old Victorians.

That area is totally gentrified now.  At the time it was about 4 blocks from my regular club, and 2 blocks from where the luxury lofts had just been developed.

Stories like this are why I salute the delay of the adoption of smartphones (PDA’s as they were called back in the day in the East Asian market) in the states.

It’s one thing to tell the story.

It’s another to have photographic evidence.

I’m not sure why this is, now.

When I was younger, I used to “act out” in a sexual way: sleeping with club take-out, or with inappropriate friends, or exes best left alone. Ill-advised encounters, often while drunk.

Impulse sex.

In retrospect, that’s a young woman’s superpower. That fake-out assurance that your personal life may be a total wreck, but at least someone finds you sexually attractive.

It’s good to be wanted. Or, at least, to feel wanted. To know you’re at least seen.

That sort of bad habit as band-aid isn’t an option anymore.

I have way too much to lose for any sort of “acting out.”

I’ll tell you what I want.

I want to feel visible.

Because I’ve spent my entire life having the entire world tell me that I’m mostly a visual commodity.

I am uncomfortable with being conspicuous at this point in my life, and I’m confused by flirtation.

I want to feel like anyone remembers I exist. I need someone to remember the parts I keep losing.

I want to say, “I am more than just the body you’ve gotten used to, emitting the noises you’ve already heard.”

And, I worry that it just isn’t the truth.  There’s no woman so beautiful, so captivating, that someone out there hasn’t gotten massively bored with her.

And, I know I’m boring. Depression is boring.

So, the first thing that goes is libido, now. I get really dismissive about orgasms. I can do it myself. I am, in fact, much better at it.  More efficient. Less frustrating. If all I wanted was an orgasm, I could acquire one.

What I want is what I can’t I do for myself.

**Get as Freudian with that as you’d like.

I’m still here.

I’m not dead.

I’m just depressed.

Kind of severely depressed. Definitely not “air of melancholy sexy depressed.” Which, I am pretty sure, really only works for attractively disheveled musicians.

Nope.

Boring old insufferable depression. Miserable, confused depression. Forgetting what you’re doing in the middle of what you’re doing depression. Libido-killing, ennui-filled, disenchanted with life depression.

All of which is pretty much the opposite of sexy.

So, you know, I’m not really sure what to post.

No one wants to hear some random internet broad whine. And, whining is pretty much all I want to do.

So, you know.  I thought I’d say hello, at least.

Have some naked.

I have a really hard time identifying as “a submissive.”

It just seems so simple.

Too simple.

The about page is more-or-less accurate given my current relationship.  It says I’m “a spanko-y, bondage-loving, d/s-y, masochistic-type.”

In true “bad at this” fashion, I forgot to capitalize the D.

That’s some serious eyebrow. Recognize.

It’s really not a case of hating labels, or anything. I just have a tough time identifying with the Mythic Submissive concept. The True Sub who’s magically “connected” to the True Dom?

You know the one. They need permission to breathe.  They wilt on the vine without micromanagement. Etc.

I’m not that girl.

I have respect for the “service” theory.  Service-oriented submission makes sense to me. Pride in a job well done. It’s all very Protestant Work Ethic.

There are passive people out there.  I get that.

There are endorphin addicts that like pain.  I definitely get that.

There are bondage lovers and humiliation connoisseurs and age players and yeah. There are subs.  Some insist they’re not doormats. Others prefer being ottomans.

But, the True Sub of BDSM lore? Not so much.

And I actually have a tough time not sneering at the Mythic Natural Born Slave concept. Just-so-stories in pretty boxes bring out my sneer-face.

There’s something about in the earnest, full-blown-slave that makes me want to push, push, push straight into “just how self-negating do you think you are?”  Because, it has a logical conclusion as an train of thought, really.

And, well, I know that there are people that go there. They don’t want to be a person. They don’t want to have a will.  They want to be meat.

I don’t find it noble. I am not jealous of their Very Twuest Submission. I just find it creepy.

I think it’s some expression of a death wish, at heart.  Longing for annihilation.

Wannabe Slaves actually bring out my inner sadist something terrible. And I have an inner sadist, so clearly I cannot be the Truest Sub.

So, yeah.  I’m a “bottom” at best. And, a bratty one that’s pretty good at head games.  And, I’ve got noooooo interest in life as property.

I do, occasionally, feel like I’m flailing with this whole blogging thing.  It’s been a year since I really started sex blogging earnest, after a few false starts.

I really sort of marvel over that. In a year I have:

1. Written somewhere around 100k words worth of porn.  Very little of which has seen the light of day, but hey, this is all new for me.
2. Built a little audience for this thing–and there are lurkers. WHO THE HECK ARE YOU PEOPLE?!
3. Befriended or made the acquaintance of some really flipping awesome creative types:  Jenny Lynn, Mr. RolledTrousers, RW Foster, Bella Blush and a bunch of other people I’m a big jerk for not listing.
4. Politely pestered professional writer types and not been issued angry smack downs.
5. Had a piece accepted for an anthology.  I hope.  Publishing is slooooow.

I really don’t want this to be a generic “writing blog.” There are a million writers out there, probably more, and I don’t have much to add to the gigantic mountain of advice out there.

But I write a lot, so… it seeps in.

And I just don’t have enough obsessive interest in any particular fetish for this to be a real “spanking blog,” or a “d/s blog,” or “bondage blog.” I am just not exciting enough for this to be a journal of all my sexual shenanigans.

But I do all those things too, so… it shows up here.

And I really, really don’t want to end up primarily dealing in gender issues.

Bit of reveal that I am sure will surprise no one:  I blogged about gender politics for years. I can’t even describe the level of done I have achieved with that scene.  I should get some sort of merit badge or button.

So, yeah. I can’t turn that off.

I’m about to start another year of sex blogging, another NaNoWriMo attempt, and I’ve got a shiny new re-design.

What sort of things do you guys like in a bookish, kinky, occasionally ranty sex blog?

roman T photography, click image for original

I’ve always wanted fancy lingerie.  Whole drawers of it.

It just fits some fantasy I have about being grown up.

My acquisition of it has been sketchy and fraught with peril.

You wouldn’t think that underwear would be so dramatic, but that’s probably because you haven’t thought about it enough.

Sure, there are things you can get away with–robes, maybe nighties.  Bras and panties meant for everyday use.

It’s the stuff meant to make an impression that ends up silk and lace time bombs.

It’s expensive and delicate, basically it’s near-disposable, but you buy it anyway.

It doesn’t age well.

It sometimes ends up relationship-specific.  Bought for someone else. Or, worse, by someone else.  Ghosts in the pantie drawer.

Or, it can make the wrong impression. Their eyes don’t light up, and you can tell they’re trying not to laugh at you. It wasn’t in the budget, and you can see the mental math.  More often it’s just that your attempts to impress don’t matter.

And, it never looks the way it does in pictures.  It’s hard to feel sexy when you think you look like an hippo in a tutu.

But, one day.  One day I’ll do it.

I will.

you make me happy, when skies are grey…

Years ago, when I first found him, we’d do this thing where we flirted with hurting each other. Which other loves were deeper, and which other lusts were more extreme? What was harder? What will you miss, if this is it?

Because in your early 20’s, it’s not like your teens. It’s not all new anymore. There’s history and scarring.

So, we’d ask, out of some sort of masochism, “What was your favorite part?”

She’d sing to him. I don’t.

She was more damaged than me. While it’s not a competition you’d want to win?  It was what I had. She beat me. She’d still beat me. She’s a widow now. She’s a mess. She’s on his facebook. This is just… how it works now? They haunt your wires. We deal.

People would send me pictures of her, just to be mean. She liked group sex. She was an exhibitionist. She liked photos. Her father took photos. (I told you she was more fucked up than me.) She liked exorcising all that damage. I don’t know if it worked. But so many of us watched. I’ve seen more of her than I’d want to, and I’ve never talked to her.

She’d sing, “You are My Sunshine.” That was her song to him. For him.

It’s this simple, stupid song. My grandmother used to sing it, too. I can’t sing it to my son. I can’t. Even when it comes to mind. Even when it’s true.

It’d remind him of her. It reminds me of her.

And so that string of notes, that half-remembered bit of scent, one taste recalled, rips me out of time.  I’m too easy to distract.

There’s always something tapping me on the shoulder, catching me by the wrist. Look back. Don’t you remember?

Janelle Cordova, 2012

I remember all the things my mother wishes I’d forget.

Bramble scratches and vodka in plastic bottles. Trespassing. I was a good kid. Most of us were. There just wasn’t anything to do. Dirt roads, metal box fans and a/c units humming in windows all summer. Creeks. Cicadas. Burning trash, canned beer, and dogs under the house. So many stray dogs.  My dad actually shot at one, once, to keep it from ripping out the ducting and insulation. I remember standing behind him yelling at him to stop, because the dog was near the gas lines.

Bull nettle and fire ants. Filterless Pall-malls. Stripper aunts. Runaways.

Being able to sit on the porch and see things miles away. These hills make me claustrophobic.

I remember feeling like I occupied my body in a way that gets farther way from me every year. I don’t know if it’s the lack of extreme weather here, or the inactivity, or just that moving through space in a  newly full grown body loses it’s novelty.

I know that I don’t feel the air on my skin. I don’t climb on roofs anymore. I don’t cross creeks. I don’t hang my arm out the window of the car. I very rarely even sweat. I don’t know if it’s exhaustion or depression. I do know that it’s hard to feel sexy when you’re away. When your body has become an afterthought, a nuisance, and occasionally a disappointment. Everything around me is cleaner and climate controlled.

I feel wrapped in cotton. I feel like a house cat. It’ll drive you crazy some days.