Tease/Stripper, wife, ecumenical nun, none of the above, whatevs

"The mind mingles not with the breath, whether moving gently or violently, when it has once drawn itself apart and discovered its own power, and think also of all that thou hast heard and assented to about pain and pleasure and be quiet at last"
--Marcus Aurelius

My messy living room:



I'm so glad I'm finally objective enough to regard a man who calls my virginity "beautiful" and another state or country "home" as a lost cause, romantically-- no matter how undeniably gorgeous, Christian or charming he may be. These things just do not phase me anymore.

Luckily I can now spot a heart-breaking tease a mile away. In fact, I recognize without reservation, due to the extreme level of paraphilia with which I'm psychologically saddled, that I am often a tease also. I finally know better than to date the type of man who keeps me at arm's length, reserving his most intimate, engaging thoughts and experiences for long-time friends from out of town whom I never do seem to meet. I've done it, too, to men who serve a purpose in my life as opposed to the ones who strike me as relationship material. So I'm now wisely avoiding the sort of man who seems to like my innocence only as long as he fancies himself the potential possessor of it-- a resource he can toy with at his leisure. Till my panties drop, perhaps, in a desperate effort to connect with such an unavailable Adonis, which is not a likely event at this point. Even so, I wish all those boys well. They still want the same three things I want in life, just like everyone else.

Anyway, we're all only flawed or selfish when viewed from a limited human perspective-- eyes that can't see atoms (though they exist!) view things at face value and label another person as a jerk when the truth of that person's wholeness remains hidden, or possibly perfection is too vast to be perceived all at once. If I could step back and see the bigger picture, everyone's truly flawless nature would be revealed, so I just take the matter on faith and know nobody is a victim or a predator... we're all equals.

So now I'm trying to feel my way. However, I'm not relying upon the mutable mess of selfish human emotions I used to let rule me. Instead I'm using a deeper divining rod-- a telling sort of vibration that becomes fairly intense when I visualize someone or something currently meaningful in my life; it's an as-yet infallible method which tells me where to focus my energy, The only catch is that I can usually only feel it during meditation. Soon I hope I'll be able to let the particulars of the people and things drop, and be able to catch various vibrations anywhere, though.

My love is free, and unconditional, but from now on I will only flow with a partner who is as much of an open book as I am, or strive to be. I don't shrink from physical affection, especially after I get to know a man well, but potentially making myself a night-blooming garden of disease simply because I've got nothing better to do than be charmed by a handsome man seems to be a bad idea. I want to be tidy and pure, mind, body, and soul and share my secrets with just one man.

Sometimes it gets a little bit frustrating, though. I'm already impossible to fuck, so I have limited patience with the hard-to-get game.

If I count the five most attractive offers (ie intelligent, well-off, handsome, non-regulars) from the strip club patrons and the most interesting random guys from the train or craigslist (more about that tomorrow...) I suppose I was asked on about a dozen dates this week. It's overwhelming. If nobody I like makes sincere boyfriend overtures in the next week or two I'll probably get burned out and bury my genuine sensuality underground again, unearthing a modicum of it here and there, perhaps, as a reserve upon which to draw for method acting at work. I'll be happy either way.

I'm beginning to realize human beings have so many more similarities than differences that I just try to be sweet and have fun with the dating process. I'm ever-aware that the romantic formula I'm after (statistically speaking, the most successful for marriage) is: smitten guy who tries the hardest to win me plus me, pleasant yet detached-- maintaining a degree of emotional distance because I'm confident things are under the auspices of the Divine and can't help but work out well, rather than using my serene equanimity as a hard-to-get ploy. The attractive, honest man who really wants me most will probably get me in the end. Anyway, I can always become a sister at Taize if nobody snags me by 30. Stripper, wife, ecumenical nun, none of the above, whatevs. I have a lot of love to give and, as always, it'll inevitably get channeled in some constructive way and saturate those around me, thankfully-- I'm learning to be more of a giver every day.

Moving on...

I am considering buying some bad-ass, sewn-in hair extensions and getting a fake tan in the near-ish future. I kind of want to try the stripper look on for size and really go for it.

PS I just rediscovered this modest dress-- seems like a good dress for church or a date that doesn't involve teasing anyone:



PS 2 I guess I don't need to go to France to be a sister in an ecumenical community:

http://www.benedictinewomen.org/index.html

Kind of reminds me of Wesley Woods, the secluded Methodist retreat on Lake Geneva where I spent many long, happy weekends as a teenager.

New Blonde Friend

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge."
--Voltaire

I hung out three times this week with my neighbor Megan. Strangely, although we lived in adjoining apartments and even shared a living room wall, we never met until the evening before I moved out. Luckily I only moved down the block.

Blonde and attractive in that hale, classically conservative Utah Mormon way (Her mother is a lapsed Mormon, her Father is a Swiss-born Catholic, and she was brought up Catholic in the heart of LDS territory-- with an endlessly prosletyzing extended Mormon family-- talk about alienation!) she is, to my shock, another virgin and writer. Most worthy of note are her moments of awkwardness and distance when it comes to personal sexual matters-- the very mirror of my own! Since I've had many more intimate experiences than she, I have also found myself-- for once-- possessed of more carnal knowledge than a girl of my acquaintance.

The two of us have begun a regular practice of meditation in my new home. I can already feel the positive effects of sharing extended moments of unbroken awareness with another person in such close proximity, and I relish her company. I find it very easy to pray for her as well as myself, and I have every expectation that we will effect great changes in our respective mind-states the more we dedicate ourselves to the practice.

Observing her behavior, I noticed an interesting tendency she has to absolutely obscure her sexuality and attractiveness-- not by means of dress or even speech, necessarily, but by putting up a wall/withdrawing her personal sensuality to the far recesses of her being. I know she does it to minimize random approaches and confessions of love and lust from men in whom she's not interested; however, I'm sure it's difficult for her to loosen up when a man she is attracted to comes on the scene-- a sure-fire recipe for being an old maid if she isn't careful. I notice these things in her because I do them also. We discussed the matter and acknowledged it mutually, which will hopefully be the first step to overcoming the problem.

Truly, this joint effort to stop projecting unconscious frigidity is a matter of the blind leading the blind, but hopefully we're being led in the right direction. We're ignorant in some respects, having chosen (as yet) to not fully indulge ourselves sexually, but I believe we really can open ourselves fearlessly to a less guarded outlook and mode of behavior if we try.

I think our quiet moments together are going to bear immense fruit. We are two very similar souls lucky to have found one another.

Not that I believe in luck.

PS I've been wearing this robe my best friend in Chicago gave me. It cheers me up when I'm struggling with my sleep disorder.



PS I really like Mormons. Especially the young blonde missionary boys.

PS She doesn't have anything negative to say about my sex industry escapades, so I don't have to hide my true self from her.

In The Flesh

All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase—'I love you.'"
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Out of the blue I've been thinking often and fondly about my friend Paul, a brilliant young lawyer I met in East Hampton this summer. A friend of his-- a beautiful dominatrix I worked with at the time-- brought me to his marathon birthday celebration at his vacation home with every expectation of seducing me, which fell flat when she discovered I was totally infatuated (needlessly, as it turns out) with someone else.

The upside of all of this was being introduced to Paul, who was and is, a kindred spirit of the sort one does not meet every day. Dashing, charismatic, and almost brutally intelligent, his self-assured smile made me feel welcome-- even coddled--immediately. At the time we met, he was in an open relationship with a girl I thought was very sweet but possibly a little bit too reserved for my tastes-- she was, however, of the same redheaded, fair-skinned white girl variety as myself, which I suppose must be Paul's type, based on the scant amount of time he spent dropping hints that he was very attracted to me also.

Surprisingly, he was charming, rather than vexing, in his attempts at seduction, never pushing me or pouncing, but playfully ruffling my hair or teasing me-- which I secretly loved-- and always carefully gauging my amused but distant reactions with his sparkling brown eyes.

In short, he is a bon vivant rather than a libertine, which I never do mind.

I found every conversation with him to be memorable, but our physical rapport was probably even more so. Every time we touched I felt my body relax, and every instinct told me, despite the way he openly flouted monogamy, Paul didn't have a truly mercenary or vulgar bone in his body. When we hugged it was so heavenly that I can still recall the press of his slender waist against mine, my head resting briefly against his lean but powerfully built shoulder. I wonder if he remembers my body as warmly?

However, although the sight of the sunlight dappling his dark, roguish curls as we sat by his backyard pool made my heart race, I kept things between us strictly friendly. I was hopelessly smitten with another man, and he had a girlfriend.

After all, to me a man in a relationship-- ANY kind of relationship-- becomes unappealing-- almost inhuman-- romantically speaking. Taken men are forbidden fruit of the strictly rotten variety in my estimation-- at least when it comes to cheating with them.

Anyhow, he let me know as soon as he broke up with his girlfriend, although, at the time, he was back on the West Coast where he works and lives with as much good humor as he can muster while still longing for New York.

After our summer encounters I saw him briefly in October, after he showed up-- to my delight-- at my friend Pearl's birthday party. He met the person who had been the object of my infatuation over the summer (whom he knew by name and openly loathed on sight, which shocked me) but I kept the fact that there was, after all, nothing going on between the two of us to myself. Paul just assumed otherwise, and I was somehow reticent to disabuse him of the notion.

Maybe it's the disparity in our social classes that makes me so wary-- after all, he can't even join any social-networking sites because of the gossip blogs that constantly try to unjustly portray him as a rich, reckless party animal in order to paint his endlessly Forbes-featured father in a bad light, and I'm... a stripper (at least for now).

When I told him that, in addition to my ghostwriting job, I was working as a dominatrix, he hardly cared. He was more fascinated with my religious beliefs and having conversations about ethical quandries, astral projection, etc. I suppose it's the same way I feel about him, unless I'm much mistaken, or a fool-- our occupations are only so much stage business compared to the lively affection we feel for one another. I don't really want to tell him I'm stripping just yet, though.

Anyhow, he recently invited me "Come see him in the flesh" on the west coast. I'm considering it. Since he's now fully aware I'm saving myself for marriage, he can't possibly imagine I'm an easy lay, not that finding willing girls has ostensibly been much of a problem for him. Yet, in my mind, regarding an in-person encounter, all roads lead to his bed, and I can't imagine that he feels much differently. However, I'm sure it would be very frustrating for him to take things back to junior high in terms of physical intimacy, which is my basic M.O. In fact, I get so dizzy just thinking about the possibility of his lips brushing mine that I wonder if a weekend spent together wouldn't be more like torture for both of us, really.

I've accepted that my ideas about virginity are not the only valid ones. I wish other people would do the same... it's difficult enough to be divided from such a critical aspect of human life without being thought of as backwards. What Paul will say at the critical moment, I do not know, and slightly fear.

Even so, I'd be lying if I didn't admit the half of me that still believes that romance with a man is possible, despite all my previous strike-outs, longs to find out. I would love to give him my finest attempts at intimacy and partnership for a few days and see what happens.

Would he break my heart?

Would I end up becoming as frozen and out of control as I fear and say or do something cruel to him, as a coping mechanism?

Should I go?

I wonder...

PS The way Paul signs his emails with a single capital X makes me bite my lip.

PS I got so much paint on my clothes they were starting to actually drip. Consequently, after stripping them off to finish I got so splattered with paint my skin began to look as mottled as Zartan's in the swamp (Remember that villaneous changeling from GI Joe?). It's even in my hair.

Safe Haven/Vulgar

"I'm awful," he said sadly. "I'm diff'runt. I don't know why I make faux
pas. 'Cause I don't care, I s'pose."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "This Side of Paradise"

I spent the afternoon ordering this vintage wallpaper and some damask pillows for my new house. The figure on the wallpaper reminds me of a Mercury dime, which I love.

Sometimes, achingly lonely after riding the subway home all by myself after a night of hearing how pretty I am, and how lucky any man would be with to be with me, etc., I attempt to mollify my screaming psyche with home décor. It’s not mere retail therapy, more like some eternal, feminine nestling instinct that emerges when I am sinking in some sort of moral or situational quagmire and desperately need to create a safe, beautiful haven for myself.

Random note: if there’s one word I remember from my three years of Spanish classes as a teenager, it’s salvavidas: lifeaver. I guess it makes sense that I retained that particular palabra, when I give it some thought. After all, I’m the type who perpetually relies on the kindness of strangers, so I always have my eye on the buoy, branch, ladder, and, ultimately, exit. It’s a survival instinct. In fact, I’m lost so often these days that I’m actually getting used to it-- I have a horrible sense of direction. However, I often enjoy it, especially when I have to ask for directions and I get to meet someone new. I wonder if strangers can sense the gratitude and friendliness I feel for them in those instances. I try to convey it as ardently as possible-- it's safe to say it fairly radiates from me, so I guess I'm doing my part.

I find it so easy to love people I barely know. I wish familiarity didn't breed contempt, or that I was able to care about people personally for longer, which is difficult for me sometimes. I try to love everyone unconditionally and make few distinctions, which is Zen but occasionally alienating. Sometimes. However, I often find it just as satisfying to love others from a distance as when they are near, if not moreso in some instances.

That's probably why I occasionally have a difficult time letting go of crushes I rarely see, for whatever reason. It seems I'm attracted to men with the same predilection because my phone and email get absolutely blown up on every major holiday-- I even hear from guys with whom I went on one date years ago.

The weirdest one I got this Valentine's Day was from a person I was infatuated with to the point of distraction this summer. After an apology for not keeping in touch he sent some random text about his jock as if we were bro's... it really hurt my feelings. The fact that I had a raging fever didn't help, either. He apologized, but clearly that's that between us. Regardless, he's a brilliant painter of industrial landscapes, and I think one of his prints would go nicely on the western wall of my living room, which is the metal/metallic-themed area according to the laws of Feng Shui, which I try to observe faithfully..

However, after thinking about how vulgar he was (I once had a dream I was scrubbing his studio floor naked a few months ago, I liked him so much!) I'm suddenly inspired to take a deep breath and order some curtains, too...

Sex and Violence

I cannot forbear to mention among these precepts a new device for
study which, although it may seem but trivial and almost ludicrous,
is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to various
inventions. And this is, when you look at a wall spotted with
stains, or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some
scene, you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes,
beautified with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide
valleys and hills in varied arrangement; or again you may see
battles and figures in action; or strange faces and costumes, and an
endless variety of objects, which you could reduce to complete and
well drawn forms. And these appear on such walls confusedly, like
the sound of bells in whose jangle you may find any name or word you
choose to imagine.
-- Da Vinci




I’ve recently surrendered to the fact that overages of sexual energy often activate the most violent part of my brain. On some level, I’ve always felt, for me, sex and fatalism go hand in hand, but working in a strip club has, believe it or not, kicked my my sado-masochistic fantasies and inclinations into overdrive in a way being a dominatrix never did. So I guess I’ve answered the chicken or the egg question of whether my sadism was a product of working as a domme or one of the many reasons I wanted to become one in the first place.

Examples of random sexual/violent thoughts I've had recently:
Last night, as the hot water in the bathtub lapped across my bare breasts, my eyes hazy and unfocused, I found myself casually viewing the tiles in my bathroom as a strictly solipsistic Rorschach test, picking out images of myself as Salome, with the head of a certain customer I’d recently met on a charger before me, as well as a blank sort of Persephone, with my foot on the head of a smiling man in profile.

I had a dream the other night that a near-stranger with whom I recently had a naughty dalliance on a long train trip was inexplicably trying to steal my gown after I was done dancing onstage. We had a violent tug of war and he stuck his finger in my mouth, upon which I bit it so hard I actually felt the bone and gristle snap, my mouth full of his blood and his actual fingertip. The dream was so vivid I actually believe if I ever had a mouthful of someone else’s blood I’d recognize the coppery taste as surely as if it really had happened to me in reality.

Scary.

I'm not insane, though-- just dealing with a raging tidal wave of lust from strangers in a new form. Again.

PS Maybe one of the reasons I always draw a correlation between sex and death is that I always feel intimate physical connections with men distance me from the Divine, which is, in essence, the true wellspring of my existence. In that sense it is like death— voluntarily separating myself from the Absolute and laying my flesh on the altar for a carnal connection that is comparatively cheap. As much as I love to touch and be touched, since I've never been in love, I recognize that further effort to connect is fruitless, and it becomes like drowning, I hate it so. It was only different with one boy, ever, who pulled my hair and told me no but loved me fiercely and would have married me if only I hadn't sensed we were not quite destined to be together forever.

A good friend recently told me I’d probably feel an easier and more fulfilling communion with the man I eventually marry, since intercourse itself is such a source of bonding. I hope it turns out that way for me if and when I ever do find that person.