weak

Your cock was warm, soft, sleeping beneath the fold of your hairy belly. This was a part of you that I had never known before, your body.

We all are made of these things, body, mind, heart, but some of us live distinctly in one or another, the strongest part winning the lead role of our being. Being professional requires it, really, relying on the mind, perhaps a nod here and there to our bodies when they are sick, to our hearts when they are filled beyond capacity. But just a nod, not this.

The erotic can be distilled, too. It can be reduced into a play on words, an exercise of words on a page, a network of thoughts and theories, so intriguing, so beguiling, so utterly irresistible, but neatly contained within the confines of the mind. We spoke of semiotics, theories, tropes, games of the text. It was clever, intellectual, civilized.

Alone in the PQ section, I could feel my heart pounding in the dark silence, Alcools, Lettres à Lou, cent vingt journées, ou plus bas, si bon te semble, my panties drenched, thrill in the stacks, my dream, my desire, my fermented mind ceding to body then heart then back to mind again. I never told you, of course, but you knew that urge to read, to write, to wonder. You were my mentor.

Your cock was a squishy toy. Did you want it to jump, to squeak, for me to pet it, draw it from its warm nest? Would it grow, a monolith to what you wanted from me? You took my hand, placed it there, and your cock twitched, still soft, comfy I guess, or disabled by my recoiling. We drove a little, and you saw clearly. No brush, no lather, no rub-in. I sat in sadness, the twinkling beyond the windshield, thousands of little dreams just shattered there on the side of the road.

I had passed by so many times without noticing. The pause that refreshes. Mmm, mmm, good. Just Do It. Reach out and touch someone. So obvious, but a blur to me speeding by, flying, expecting the real thing, the lucidity of your mind to guide me. You would ride me, years ago, miles away, a flat, a missed exit, a bump in the road, a wreck, whiplash, and now, this.

fuck you, SM

SM are the initials of my college advisor. He was a jolly man, intellectually astute, but lazy in so many ways, a weed-smoking, pleasure seeking cheapskate who paid me the rate of my work-study job to babysit his adorable but spoiled children. I walked them home from school two days a week, and played with them for a few hours while he taught a class.

A bit of background, though. I was not a typical student in the Romance Language department, and was in fact, a transfer student when I met SM in my first semester at the prestigious university. Several years before this, I had graduated from high school and resigned myself to the state school that was a free ride for me, disappointed that my dad determined us unable to afford the school I wanted to go to, but desperate to get out of my parents’ house. Near the end of my freshman year, though, my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer, and a year later, he died. My frustration with the state school only intensified as I contemplated the brevity of life, so I quit, broke up with my boyfriend, and announced to my kind and reliable summer employer who offered to find work for me that I was going to be a translator.

I look back, and marvel more at my sheer determination than at the miracle that I did end up working in a translation agency in my mostly non-international midwestern city. Years of obsession with languages had paid off, and I ate up every morsel of experience I could, fell in love with a wild Latin-American poet, and finally decided to apply to the local university. I had come to know so many graduate students and staff from there, including the poet, that it no longer felt out of reach to me. When I was awarded work-study, I went to the Romance Language department and asked for a job. The department chair at first scoffed at me, but his assistant hired me on the spot.

I loved the people, but among undergraduates, I was a poor local student, while they were wealthy coastal transplants and kids from the much larger midwestern city a few hours away. I found my tribe, though, a group of music-obsessed literature students for the most part. I thrived. The office staff in my department loved me and channeled babysitting and tutoring jobs my way. I knew most professors’ children, and was usually paid well.

I am fairly certain that it would be harder now to fall so easily into the familial intimacy I found at SM’s house. I stayed for dinner and conversation with him and his wife sometimes late into the night, and never thought much of it other than that I was so inspired, by both of them. In this time, my relationship with the poet was not a detail I had shared with the department. He had graduated before I started, and was working in Texas. During my first year at the university, I flew down to meet him at a conference in Houston, and happened to run into my own university’s visiting writer. The writer greeted me warmly, and told everyone upon our return that he had seen me there.

SM had been a friend of the poet, and was undoubtedly intrigued by the gossip. I spent my last undergraduate year in France, and so of course was no longer working in the department. When I returned, though, I visited the university, had tea with the department chair, who asked me to come to graduate school there. In the midst of all this, SM invited me to catch up with him and his wife for coffee one evening, and I was happy to make a plan with them.

The fall of my return was a busy time for me. I had been working temp jobs to make up for lost income that I desperately needed. But I couldn’t find a real job, and when the last very viable possibility for employment fell through, I decided to take the offer of graduate school. As for SM, he had gained tenure while I was in France, and subsequently taught an uncharacteristically terrible graduate seminar. I had not yet heard all the rumors about this, so had agreed to sign up for his next seminar in rhetoric instead of the course with a very famous French writer who has since died. Ah well..

Shortly before I left for our coffee date, SM called me to change the meeting place to an infamous dive bar. Infamous to me, at least, because my parents had made jokes about it, with vague references to mob activity and unsolved murders. The neighborhood around the bar had been gentrified to some extent when we went, though, and either way, I had learned by then that the elite who inhabit ivory towers in midwestern cities are often fascinated by the plight of the working class, by the gritty neighborhoods that surround them. I circled the dark parking lot, and caught a glimpse of his late model Chevy. My car, also a late model Chevy, was almost famous, and he waved when he saw it. His car door opened, and he motioned to me.

I went to the car, and he was alone. His wife was in a meeting? Sick? With the kids? I can’t remember why she didn’t come, but she didn’t. I hesitated before getting in the car with him, but why? It was all so strange, SM just sitting out in the cold car. He started the engine to turn on the heat, and offered me a drag of the joint I only then noticed.

It was SM himself who first told me about the catastrophic failure of his graduate poetry seminar. He brooded about his situation, and lack of motivation now that those long seven years of proving himself were over. He reached for my hand, and held it for a moment before pushing it down between his legs.

I yanked back my hand. He did not seem particularly bothered, but I sat terrified to move, terrified to think. In any misgiving I might have had that he was sitting alone waiting for me outside, the worst I imagined was that he was drinking alone. He kept talking, mentioned my relationship with the poet, even brought up my near-rape in Paris. He asked if we could drive to see some Christmas lights, and I agreed, because I couldn’t remember how to open the car door, how to move.

Getting Started

My town had a resident with a well-known light show every winter. His yard became a wonderland of skating penguins and waving snowmen, and we sat outside to admire it for a few minutes before returning to the bar. Relieved to be back in a public space, I went inside with SM and had a beer, but I stayed for only a short time. And then, I had to see my former mentor every Tuesday for the first semester of graduate school.

If it had just been the odd night, I might have attributed SM’s behavior to a lapse in judgment, a misreading of my willingness to meet, something other than what it was. But in fact, he gave me a low grade in his class, while recommending me to submit the paper I wrote for it to a conference. He asked me to meet him in his library carrel, which I never did. He called me a few times, asking if I had made my submission, so he could send his. I realized that he had meant to accompany me to that conference, in Florida, in winter. My hope that he was trying to help me disappeared, and I avoided him. I did not submit the paper.

A year later, I was ready for my master’s exam. SM cornered me one day in the hall, and told me that he planned to be on my committee. In fact, he had already recommended himself to my new advisor. The year I had spent in graduate school, avoiding him, I had also become assistant to the editor of a big publication. I was happy. I had earned the praise of the graduate advisor, who asked me to stay for my doctorate. I studied for my exam, and I was ready, thrilled, excited.

The day of my exam, I looked at my three questions. One was a question that I could not answer. The topic was vaguely familiar, one of the many meandering conversations a few students had had during break for the class my mentor taught, not remotely related to literature, or the readings we did, or anything I could have possibly anticipated. I felt the blood rush to my face, and I began to sob. I cried for about twenty minutes before quickly writing a few pages to answer the other questions, which by then were also incomprehensible to me. I handed in my booklet and left, early, panicked and distressed. The department secretary called me to ask if I was all right, because the department chair had asked her if I was.

In my oral arguments for the exam, no one mentioned the unanswerable question, although I had spent the two weeks learning all I could about it. I was sure I had failed.

Finally, about a week later, the graduate advisor asked me to meet. He informed me that I had in fact passed my master’s exam, but also told me that he was intensely disappointed in me, and that I would no longer be eligible to stay for my doctorate. He said that I must not have taken the exams seriously, and did not have the qualities needed to continue in the doctoral program. I didn’t argue, and in fact, am not sure I even remembered how to argue at that point.

I never returned to the department, skipped the rest of my classes that semester, and mailed the final papers for my remaining classes. A few months after I left, one of my favorite professors, one whom I greatly admired, wrote to me. He had been out of the country during my exam and the deliberations about my fate. He said that I was somewhat vulnerable. And that no one can be vulnerable in my situation. I still have the letter. Others, students and teachers alike, told me they could never believe what happened to me. But I am not entirely sure that anyone knew the whole story. They just knew that my former mentor had betrayed me.

I wanted to report him. It was 1990, though, and it was a different world. It was an even more threatening situation in my mom’s view, and she urged me not to say anything. She said they would judge me, flirt that I was, my pretty smile and notorious boyfriend, my date to meet my married professor in a dive bar near the tracks. So naive. I floated then. I had a nice boyfriend who thought also that I should just drop it. I dropped it. I broke up with my nice boyfriend. I resented the mom who loved me. I left my hometown with a former fellow student in the program, one of the fiercest critics of the professor, the guy who would protect me. The guy who isolated me, who abused me, who said finally that he wanted to destroy me. I did eventually return to grad school with the intention of finishing my doctorate, but it never felt the same. I felt conflicted throughout my studies, still loving literature and writing, and working, but I saw demons everywhere, and tread carefully where I had once been bold, and finally let the dream trickle away as I created a new life in another direction. I raised children, and switched careers a few times. I have felt like a failure in so many ways, and remember sometimes the dreams I had.

I left the marriage. I should have written more. I tried to write more, but have always written around. I wrote about writing. I wrote about music. I translated and edited. I looked for love, and pushed love away. I fought for my children, but not for myself. I ran from passion and into the safety that was not safe. I buried myself in a busy life and in flesh and in comfort and in the mundane that I never wanted for myself. I eschewed the silence.

Now it is silent.

Now you might hear me, SM. You seem to have had a happy life, a happy family, promotions, sabbaticals, full career, all the things a person might want to have. I wonder if you ever thought of that night, or what you did to me, or what you made everyone think about me, or what you made me think about myself. I wonder if you ever did it to anyone else. I hope it was just me, but then, it should never have been me, either. Fuck you, SM.

à la recherche, temps perdu, etc.

The pandemic in so many ways has been a complete and utter tragedy, a cluster fuck of bad responses, as well. But because so many of us are still unemployed, locked down, and consciously avoiding one another, other doors have opened. The human spirit is such that we seek survival, and sometimes, renewal.

I dropped my Lady Dragonfly persona for quite a long time. I wondered as I opened this page whether I was going to announce that I AM BACK! But as my dear uncle said to me once, returning is never really possible, because the world changes while you are not in it. The blogosphere is a messy place that makes me feel a bit grumpy and outdated now. And if I didn’t crave the comfort of that lovely boudoir I built, I might well evolve, but then I wouldn’t be the Lady Dragonfly I was, anyway. So, in that respect, even when I return, LD will never really be back.

So, I have closed and reopened the site, posted infrequently, written explanations, little anecdotes to amuse myself while bored professionally, and a few attempts to recover what I lost. I felt I had lost myself because I was heartbroken by the break-up of the relationship that inspired so much of it. Or so I told myself. In reality, while I was sad about the end of love, of friendship, of being with him, I had used the relationship to express my most fervent wishes, many of which I shared with you here.

In so many ways, he was perfect for me at the time I met him. I was injured in ways I did not realize, and his utter unavailability was ironically comforting to me. It gave me a freedom not to commit, but also to feel sorry for myself while doing so. That longing gave me space for a whole realm of expression and imagination, and the happiness I derived from it was almost completely in my own creation. I look back now, and I can see perfectly that I knew he was going to break my heart when I met him, and the whole experience was cathartic in wildly disturbing ways.

I am not sure what my past lives involved, but it is pretty fucking apparent to me that I came into this life with some serious debts to resolve. Today, having hurt plenty, and having had more injury in the form of a toxic job, I have now had months in relative isolation to think about it all. In this, I have experienced something that I never really knew before in more than fleeting moments, and that thing is joy.

Not that I have not had an enormous amount of luck and happiness in my life. I have, and I have much to make me grateful. But I have also experienced abuse and uncertainty, instability and deep disappointment. Resolving these parts of myself means accepting them, which for me means expressing them. I have a little, but this is an erotica that asks for mercy.

mother ship

My recent trip to the UK sent me on a rather fitful trip down memory lane. Recent years have not been kind to me, I must admit, and my absence on these pages is only one symptom of the distress I have felt. Yes, my erotic adventures ceased entirely, my desire having waned in response to what I can only now identify as grief. Though a number of situations in my life went awry in this time, I believe now that my misfortune stemmed from my acknowledgement that I was not loved–a fact that I admit was not unknown to me for nearly the entire duration of my last relationship, but a fact that I nonetheless ignored until unavoidable truths smacked me squarely in the face.

I sank into a depression, the mere glance of an admirer enough to evoke feelings of despair and memories that I could scarcely admit to others. So I hid. I gained weight, which made this easier, and still I thwarted the advances of a fair number of potential lovers who seemed blithely attracted to a body that has frankly disgusted me–an outward manifestation of my inner turmoil. In the end, I was largely successful in my introversion, having quelled nearly all creative inclinations and social engagements. My work is a dull repetition, but I have managed to make headway on some goals that seem worthy of a woman of a certain age, and have reaped the benefits of this security. I let myself go in some good ways, too, in fur and plantings, sleep, and sun.

It was a fan of these pages who enabled my trip, and for this, I am ever thankful. It was not an erotic journey, but the trip was a reminder of the wonders I discovered while writing in the past, the love I felt, and the joy that the world still holds.

It has also given me the perspective to examine the events of recent years in a new light, and has sent me on a new trail of adventure, the details of which I intend to share with you here.

To my friend, I say thank you, and more. From the bottom of my heart, that deep well of confusion, lust, and warmth, I say thank you for the tea and friendship, warmth that relights my imagination and my spirit. You have reminded me of who I am.

 

trickle

I was thinking back to that day in the museum.

I was thinking back to sitting in the museum cafe with you. You ordered something with polenta. I was drinking gewürztraminer, but I don’t remember at all what I ate, or if I ate.

All I remember was my cunt pulsing wildly after you fucked me in the men’s room.

It was glorious, you know. I remember sitting in the restaurant, with jeans and no panties, the seams sticking to my wetness. I remember that sudden warm rush as I shifted, and your come gushed from my pussy, soaking my jeans.

It made me hot with want for you then, love. You know? I wanted you then, wanted to take you back home and fuck you wildly all afternoon.

These moments are my museum, you know, these collected works of fucking you. Of loving you.

I wonder how the critics would see these works over time. Would they scoff at the sheer indecency of it now, proclaim it genius later? That is the way, the stereotypical response of misunderstanding.

Or would they find it forever nostalgic drivel? Love is such a common sentiment, after all.

But it inspired me then.

I think of all the moments I never would have enjoyed with you, if I had seen them without the lenses I wore, the ones that cast a pink happiness on everything we were.

You had the best of me, when I loved you.

No. That’s not really true.

You had the best of me when I thought you were the one in love.

pillow talk

My words were wandering, voices inflected, laughter, little more than that as we lay up in the dark room.

He is my friend, one I could tell anything, I imagine. I have. I am telling him my secrets about you, the things that you and I have done together, the things we might have.

We talked about sex parties and old lovers, and rhetoric. The comfort of words, here in the dark, devoid of anything but the warmth that eases them from brain to brain, topic to topic, bouncing and gently swaying sometimes. I thought of you, there, thought of the first star, and the dreams I long pushed down, as if my wishing would make them fade fast instead of bringing them to life. I wish, still.

My face reveals nothing here in the night, I realized, and I could just turn away, quietly. He didn’t have to know, and neither do you.

I realized then what I was trying to say to you, what I told you I wanted.

Not this. Not quite.

I lie in the dark and swap stories with my friend. We could fuck.

We could fuck and still be friends, and lie here in the dark, and it would not mean so much, except that we had fucked and laughed and were still friends.

And still, none of this is what I want with you.

I want context.

I want the dark.

I want the comfort.

I want the quiet and the night, your hand softly brushing mine.

I want to lie with you here, in the dark, and plot and scheme, the words as much the adventure as what we’ll do to invent them. As much as all we did to speak now.

I want to hear what you thought, today, and tomorrow, and what you think about what I thought.

Is it to0 late, for us, for pillow talk?

Were we looking for adventure? to feel alive?

Oh, love, the novelty of the moment is charming.. but it was never the new that thrilled me, you know.

It never was the shimmer on the surface, the fleeting smile that caught my eye.

It was the memory of the shimmer, of your smile back, thousands of nights later, the footsteps we heard, the knock at the door we answered, and invited in, and kept, treasure like the first night, retold, stripped down to this touch so familiar, the breath, so precious, ours.

details

Yesterday, in my current searching, or as some might prefer.. midlife crisis… I went for a sexuality consultation.

I thought that I would spend my time talking about woohoo taboo sex I wanted to try, and all the things I fear expressing, like some desire for anal fisting, or more…

It was not about that. Nope. My erotic is so bland, my friends. And yet, it thrills me beyond belief to think of it.

I had the task of writing down my deepest desires–not sexual, mind you, but emotional. My very skilled sexuality counselor, whose name I want permission to reveal, took me on a journey that I hardly expected when I entered the doors of her Center. I started talking about.. well.. why? Why I was there?

I had come, because sex was always a problem. Wasn’t it? Was it for you? Were you slut shamed? I was. Oh yes, I was, and yet.. and yet, it was not about that.

She told me that the top three desires according to studies are: to be seen, to be craved, and to know that what we are doing is exciting to our partner. Really. Not blow jobs, after all. We desire authenticity and vulnerability. And I do, too.

I thought of this, in the context of all my recent wildness, and what more of that, to me, the intimacy I have found in it. I want my lover, so much. But I want the little things.

Oh god, I want his glasses on my nightstand when I roll over at 6am when the light stream into the bedroom. I want him to roll closer to me in the middle of the night, and grab me close to him, not out of desire, but out of instinct. I want to drink wine with him in the kitchen while I make us dinner. I want him to text me something funny he thought of in the middle of the day. I crave this simplicity so much, it moves me, and yet it seems so faraway and hard to ask for. This is my erotic. Really. This is what I want.

I think of this, sometimes, when I see people who have loved one another for years and years. They grab onto these things, these precious tangible bits of everyday life, as though they are gems. And they are, they truly are.

I want to fuck, but wild sex seems so easy, really. It may not be so obvious to the rest of the world, I guess. It freaks guys out to have a woman start to explore their asshole.. sometimes. But I would do that. I would spread my legs, and fuck a bunch of men mindlessly to turn you on. What turns me on is to watch you brush your teeth.

I wonder why, I do. I wonder why I feel so hot and bothered and horny beyond belief at these small, ordinary things.

And I know: it makes me feel safe to watch your tedium; it sets me free.

 

 

ripe morning

My clit is like a ripe grape this morning, juicy fruit, pop, not a cherry, but the stuff of swollen dreams, slumbered screams scattered through the bedsheets.

I lie in bed, warm, spread my legs my pussy drenched I don’t remember. It must have been about you.

A pinch to my nipple sends shock waves through my belly, straight to my cunt, my core being. The first. Kindling. I want to be your come-slut.

In scene two, you have grabbed my feet and pulled me to the end of the bed, where you kneel and devour my pussy, fingers roughly responding to my greedy lust. Fuck my ass. Yes, just like that. exactly like that. precisely. like. that.

I knew you’d hold me down, make me open, keep me there, raw, ready, make me swell, squirm, surrender.

“You want to be used, my little naughty?”

Oh I do, a steady succession of cock, assorted shape, assorted size, assorted whimpers, moans, muffled cries, at last, it is loud, I know, and you are holding my hand here on earth..

Use me last, love, you, lust lucky me as you watch what you have created.

I wish you were here. You are here.

rope

My lover and I have been experimenting with our adventures, expanding the limits of what we even thought we were capable of doing together.

This is what has led me to thoughts of gang bangs, and various other entanglements that have challenged me in various ways. It is intensely emotional, with the potential to blow the mind…

Nothing has captivated me more, though, than the ruby red rope he brought to my house a few weeks ago. It is gorgeous, particularly against creamy, white skin. I always had fantasies of being tied up. Cords still are attached from years ago when he tied me to the bed. But this was something different.

I thought it was all about the restraint, the dynamic of powerlessness within the scenario. I thought it was about submission, and trust. And it is. Oh yes, it is. I love this, love letting myself enter into that pure space–but this is only the second half.

Last week, the day before my birthday, my lover set to tying me up. He cut the rope into lengths, then started wrapping it around me. Too tight? too loose? How does it feel? It felt glorious…the vulnerability, inescapable. Submission, permission, admission, this sublime gift.

But there is something more that I never thought to consider. The intricate knots, the maneuvering.. it all takes time–and attention. It is perhaps this that I crave more than anything else. I bask in the glow, but it takes time, effort, patience. His, and mine. Tying me up, being tied up, it all is a careful exercise, foreplay, a meditation…

everyday

I wish for this, for the mundane, for the everyday.

It seems elusive for the outlaws in this world, love, the misfits like me. Like you.

I want love. I want to make you dinner.

Flannel shirt unbuttoned low, scruff beard brushing my face as you pull me close. This is the stuff that others have, that I want. This is the stuff I dream about.

Your muddy shoes lie askew in my entry hall, just like you, your fevered touch, your breath hurried on the first step, the step up to my bed, your cock already in my mouth, here. I can never deny you. I want you, too, want too much, want to please, know I please you now, then, tomorrow.

But it is not this, never this, never the trickling down my deepest throat, no not my fingers dug deep into your throbbing holes. Not my climax, the satisfaction of my frantic moans in the night, your tongue on my clit, your cock pumping me white, to limp, still wanting.

I want you, want your skin, the shirt you wore while working, your warm hands in my hair, late in the night, sleepy night.

I want you to want me.

No.

I want you to need me, to wait at my door in the night, late night, night of desperation. Knob Creek sending you to me against your better judgment. I want you to want me in your drunken unconscious moments. I want to be there, then, because I know you know better.

I know you want me, then, know that your mind wanders, that if you had the time, you would run away with me.