November 22, 2011
la chaleur
When we came to Amsterdam, we gave ourselves three months to make it all work. Visas, jobs, a long term place to stay. We allowed for the possibility of a fourth month if things look promising enough. I thought about this as I studied the contrast of black tiles on the wall to the white porcelain tub. My hair (which has gotten long again) is cold against my skin so I slip all the way under the hot water. My face brakes the surface and I lay still, thinking about what I need to do.
My chest rises toward the surface with each deep breath; my body sinks again when I exhale. The room is cold enough that you can see steam rolling off of the water, and you can see something like it just outside of the window. I sip occasionally from the cup of tea that I’d placed on the ledge behind me. Music played from the next room and I considered carefully all the things that we need to do in order to make Amsterdam work.
November 6, 2011
Genderqueer
Gender identity has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. I don’t really subscribe to the conventions of gay/straight/bisexual and if you asked me to give you a simple answer regarding my own sexuality, I don’t think I could. It wouldn’t be because there’s any confusion, I just feel attraction in a way that doesn’t really fit neatly into a column you could tick off on a survey.
Orion* and I have had a lot of very interesting conversations about the idea of unorthodox sexual identity including a very frank discussion about my father and the suspicion that he hasn’t come to terms with himself, his sexuality and very possibly his gender identity. During one such conversation, Orion brought up the fact that she’s going forward with a legal name change, which she feels is the next big step forward in the claiming of her gender identity. It opened up a few questions, the answers to which I thought my readers might find interesting. I’ve written about Orion* quite a bit and while I’ve alluded to the fact that she identifies as genderqueer, I haven’t really explored that topic at great length here . I started with a few basic questions and these were Orion’s answers:
How do you identify your own gender?
Masculine gender queer. I started off feeling like a butch lesbian, but that’s evolved. I identify as both male and female, but more masculine. And in certain situations I try to live as a male.
September 2, 2011
Le temps s’est arrêté
Before I even opened my eye’s I could hear the rain in the attic. It was hitting the wood floors, which were above my head and I wondered if it was the work of the most recent storm; this leaking in the roof. I could hear the rain hitting the copper that covered the balcony, tapping on the wooden shutters and the wet, almost sticky sound of it hitting the water that had collected in the grooves and divots of the flagstones in the courtyard. I kept my eyes closed and felt for her beneath the sheets. She turned over at my touch, rolled into my arms and I kissed the top of her head.
We didn’t have anyplace to be this morning so we laid in bed and listened to the rain. I wondered what time it was, because the clouds were stopping the sunlight from pouring into the windows like it does typically when we wake. The rain made another play on the things outside and my hand slid languidly beneath the sheets and over her skin as she laid on top of me. We weren’t committed to waking yet, but we found good reason to stir.
The music of the rain became the sound of someone outside working, perhaps to fix the roof or close up the greenhouse in preparation for the storm that is coming our way. Whatever the reason, it played against the sleepiness of the morning and instead of drifting off again, I let my hands wander. I traced her legs, her thighs, the lace of her panties with my fingers, waiting for the movement into a more accessible position that comes as an invitation to press further. I like doing this; waiting for her to respond in an almost unmindful way by tilting her hips, parting her lips, breathing just a little bit deeper. When it come, I press on; letting my hands slide between her legs, to the place that she wants me to touch the most. I make her come once, twice, while she’s in my arms, but when I want to have sex, I don’t let her touch me right away; I make her wait, I make her want and I revel in the buildup from the moment the thought crosses my mind that I want to have sex until the moment that she say’s “please fuck me”.
August 25, 2011
in all seriousness
The end of summer is near and I’m happy to see its approach. Long days of oppressive heat mean that we stay in more often, wait until the sun has started to set before leaving the house whenever possible. The humidity burdensome in the air, clinging to your hair, your clothes, your skin when you challenge the sun on an errand or two during daylight hours. Your day in the heat ends in the shower, lest you stick to yourself, to the sheets, to each other.
July 14, 2011
Before I sleep
It’s been raining today; thunder and lightning cutting through gray skies from the moment that I woke and then finally, the rain. I sat at my desk while Mina got ready for work, watching fat drops hit the glass and listening to the creaking of the shutters as the wind moved them, banged them against the house.
We slept late today, as we have been often, lately. A bout of insomnia keeps me up until the sun rises most days. Most nights Mina stays up with me for as long as she can, often offering the sort of distractions from my own thoughts that would send most men to sleep straight away, happily. She sleeps next to me after, one bare foot against the cool wall and I kiss the back of her neck, which is damp from heat we’ve generated together. I run my hand beneath the sheets, over her legs, her hips, finding the lace trim of her panties before continuing up and across her body, coming to rest on her exposed shoulder, where I plant one more little kiss before trying to find sleep myself.
I was falling asleep the other day, thinking about our next move and I remembered the first day that I woke up in Paris. It took me a moment to grasp where I was and when I did, I was filled with an excitement I hadn’t had in a long while; I felt like I was on the verge of something wonderful. The other night when I shut my eye’s at daybreak, it reminded me of having done the same after trans-atlantic flights and my heart rose and sank a little at the momentary thought that I’d wake the next day already in a new place. I will feel that way again soon though, in earnest.
In the summer of 2005 I was enrolled in a film course in Paris. We (my ex and I) had packed up everything, including our little dog and headed across the ocean so that I could turn my love for photography into a career after we sold the restaurant and decided to try something else. We’d wanted to travel more, but that’s the thing about owning a business; you are almost always tied down to wherever it’s located, particularly in the first few years. My ex wanted to study massage therapy again; I’d decided on film. We hadn’t really profited from the sale of the restaurant, but we’d freed ourselves to do other things and studying abroad seemed like a good experience. It also seemed like the only chance we had of keeping our marriage alive and it worked, for a moment.
Somewhere along the way, we made the decisions that lead us back into adult entertainment, which is where we’d met to begin with. We used it to pay the bills and open up new doors for us, but that was the last one we walked through together. I made the most of the projects we worked on, but my heart wasn’t in them. I don’t regret them, but I often wonder what I could have done with something I’d really been passionate about, if I’d made it as far as I did for the sake of a series of compromises. That’s life though, isn’t it: wondering (if even just a little) what might have been?
I see huge advances in my skill level since I’ve stopped worrying about the success of the result and started considering the process. The result, as I’ve discovered, is what becomes of the effort you put into the process. I’m proudest of the work I’ve produced in the last few years, even though it’s been far less commercially successful.
Before me there are possibilities again; chances to get back to my roots as a photographer, opportunities to write, new places to discover. I’ve lived two lifetimes since the summer I spent in Paris, maybe three. I haven’t lived any of them perfectly, but I’ve lived them and I’ll live another soon. I’m excited for this next one, both because of what it is and who I get to live it with.
Before Mina finishes getting ready for work she wraps her arms around my neck, I lift her and she wraps her legs around my waist. I hold her there, swaying slightly as I press my face into her neck. She kisses me before she puts on her lipstick. I walk her to the door when it’s time for her to go and I kiss her on the cheek, watch her walk down the steps while she waves goodbye. We are happiest in those moments; in this is our little routine. It’s the one we’ll take with us wherever we go, because it’s not about where we are, it’s about who we are.
July 10, 2011
Blush
It’s been the topic of conversation lately; blushing. We discussed it while sitting around the table at the strip club we frequent on Tuesday nights. Some of the people at the table are known to blush instantly at the slightest provocation; others are known to do so only rarely, in exceptional circumstances. Mina blushes often, though she’ll deny it’s happening in mock protestation. The Brit was with us and he blushes all the time, but he also laughs just as easily, just as frequently. Orion rarely blushes, although when one of the waitresses told her that she had gotten herself off thinking about her, she blushed hard. I can’t remember when the last time I blushed was.
Mina and I, back home in bed, talked about the things that we thought about that turned us on when we have moments alone. Neither of us are really into another person getting into bed with us, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t thought it through. I’ve thought about making her come while she makes another woman come and I have to admit that the idea has its appeal for me. I suppose that what I should really have said was that neither of us are interested in the complications that having another person involved would bring, but we both find merit in the idea of it. When I told her about the two very distinct circumstances that I’ve considered what that would be like (prefaced with “on paper”), she told me it was very appealing (on paper) and she blushed brightly enough that I could tell that her cheeks were pink even in the dark, though I didn’t want to ruin the moment by mentioning it. Her hands rose to her cheeks and I knew that she knew she was blushing by their warmth, but we both let it go.
What makes you blush?
June 27, 2011
Appellation
I woke from a dream in which Mina had been bound. She stood, wearing a wooden yoke that kept her hands level with her face. Her hands were red and balled into fists; the first sign of her frustration. The tears in her eyes were the second. She was trying to look down at the metal restraints that were around her thighs and hinged together, but she couldn’t see around the wood and it kept her from lowering her chin. She was naked and as I approached her, I knew that I’d done this to her; bound her this way. The rounded hinge pointed up and would rub between her legs faintly if she moved, the cold metal sending a shock that she both loved and hated and she couldn’t figure out how to make it happen more or make it stop. I woke from the dream, wanting her, but she’d already left for work and I was alone in the bed, awake after only a few hours of restless sleep.
I don’t dream often these days, but as always when I do its vividly so and they are usually somehow related to what’s going on in my life. I’d dreamt recently of a friend who lives something of a double life; I was in a grocery store in a city I’ve never been to and I mistook a fairer-haired, slightly plainer version of her for the real Charlotte, only to find out that she was a twin that I’d never been told about when the real Charlotte appeared. I don’t have dreams that entail sex very often, but complication isn’t uncommon in them. I dream often that I can fly, but sometimes only a few feet above the ground, or that someone is taking elaborate measures to overcome something in their own life. My dreams are a puzzle, a problem to be solved and they very often have a connection with what’s happening in the waking world.
Mina told me the day before that her father had asked outright what I do for a living. She’d been meaning to tell me, but for how long, she didn’t say. It hadn’t come up during our trip, so I more or less figured that it was only a matter of time. People who don’t know usually ask a lot of questions; people who have an idea usually wait for it to be brought up, until they feel that it can’t wait any longer. Once it’s on the table, the reactions vary from awe to revulsion and are often accompanied by curiosity (morbid or otherwise). I’d met Mina’s father during our trip to New York and I’d gotten his approval; we’d gotten along quite well. She’d got along quite well with my family as well when we visited them in Detroit.
She told me a few days ago that she’d told her brother and she told me yesterday that her father had finally asked. I don’t know if it changes things; Mina say’s it doesn’t. But when it does change things, it’s not always instant. The pressure of wondering when he’ll find out is gone now. Now the only thing that remains to be seen is if the approval remains or if I’ve lost it and if I have; what will it take to get it back. Mina’s father is a good man though and has the patience of a saint, which I’ve seen him exercise with the people who he cares for. He’s kind and accommodating and I think that even if this does give him pause (which I can understand why it might) it’s more important to him how I treat his daughter, that I take care of her and make her happy. I’m the first of Mina’s boyfriends to get his approval and it happened because I made an effort to meet him and when I did, he said that he could see that she and I looked at each other the same way that he looked at his own wife and it made him happy.
It might seem strange to read an adult entertainment blog where the writer worries over the opinions of others, but I do in certain circumstances. It isn’t in general; it’s very specific and it isn’t for my own sake at the moment, it’s for Mina’s. I want her to rest assured that her father is happy and is proud of her. I know how much that means to her. I also know that every time I schedule a shoot, every time I pick up my camera and point it at a pretty girl, I’m asking her for something like permission and forgiveness and it never, even for a moment, escapes me how much that might be to ask of some people and that some couldn’t (didn’t) give as much. This isn’t just a part of my distant past, it’s a part of what I do now and what I’ll be doing for the foreseeable future and that I have someone outside of it all who is alright with it impresses me constantly. It also doesn’t escape me that I’ve got an extraordinary woman or that i’m a very lucky man.
June 14, 2011
Course
Once upon a time, I lived in this house. It’s the longest roof I’ve ever lived under consecutively, as a matter of fact. I was brought home from the hospital to this little yellow house and it was my home until I was three. That’s how old I was when my parents divorced and I spent the rest of my childhood bouncing between them every six months as they changed jobs and homes and lives. As an adult, I’ve always felt like a gypsy or a nomad and while I’d like to say that people who claim their childhood has that much of an impact on their lives as adults are exaggerating, I felt a bit of undeniable truth in the notion as I stood outside of what’s left of this place.
I went home over the weekend, or rather; I went back to where I’m from. I hadn’t been back to the Detroit area in three years, when I’d gone back for my grandmothers funeral. I drove with Mina past the houses on the block that this one was on and took note that nearly one in three was boarded up. In comparison, the garbage bag covered windows and the collapsing fence made this house seem like a hardened survivalist.
I visited the elementary school that I’d attended and Mina was shocked when I told her that the neighborhood that I’d grown up in meant that it’s doors were always locked except for when we would line up to enter the building in the morning and the principal would hold them open for us. She told me that if she’d arrived early in her little Texas town, she’d just go to the cafeteria or the library. She had no idea what it meant to be bussed past three closer schools for the sake of desegregation.
We walked across the graffitied asphalt to the playground, where I hung from the monkey bars and she swung on the swings while I tried to figure out how much effect time had on my memory of the place and if it was greater than it had on the place itself. Had the paint on every surface always been so stripped, faded?
May 26, 2011
It’s complicated
My lawyer friend (Mr. Law), who over the past two years has become something like a brother to me, is leaving town soon for reasons I won’t go into here, but they are weighing on him heavily. He’s going back to the northeastern place that he’s from and he’s a little torn about it all. He called into work the other day, cancelled lunch plans with me and separate lunch plans he’d made with another friend. He’d blown me off five times in the course of a week and I was angry with him for the way he’d been acting, but I was also concerned, so I went to his house and stood at his gate calling, texting and having the neighbors yell into his window until finally he came out. We started the long walk to lunch in the hot sun, talking as though this was all very normal, which really isn’t terribly far from the truth.
We sat down to lunch and he said “I’m not sure when the last time that I ate anything was”, which judging from his figure wasn’t hard to believe. Despite having ten inches on me, he has the same size waist as I do.
He came with me to Mina’s apartment and we took a handful of things from her place to mine because she’s moving in with me. Circumstances and future plans make it sort of ridiculous for us to keep separate places and so in the middle of a warm afternoon, my friend and I carted things of hers the few blocks. I didn’t need his help, but he needed to leave the house, so we talked about nothing over sandwiches, while we walked and until I was left him in the company of Stella, who I knew he’d be safe with. I left to go and shoot with Trouble, otherwise I might have stayed to drink with them both.
Trouble and I haven’t worked together in quite some time. We’ve barely seen one another since she started working at another strip club and I’ve started seeing Mina. We’d had some very obvious, palpable attraction in the past, but it hadn’t ever played out because we were never in the same moment. I was a little nervous to work with her again and I could see at first that she was as well, but in the end it all worked out well. We shot a few clips, took a few photographs and then she gave me a ride back to where I’d left Mr. Law.
