The romantic pornographer
We walked through the isles of the grocery store, taking turns pushing the cart. We picked out all the ingredients needed to make the things that’s we’d discussed before leaving the house, checking things off of our list as me made our way through the store.
“How are you doing” I asked Mina and she knew without needing any reminder what I was asking about.
“It took a little getting used to, because it’s been so long since I’ve worn it”, she answered as a faint flush of color rose to her cheeks.
At night, from my bedroom window I can see a million lights; so many that night feels only slightly less bright than daytime does. I can also see the place that I used to live from here; I think that was at least two lifetimes ago, maybe three. In the time since I’ve left, I’ve had three mailing addresses in two different cities on two different continents. I’ve fallen in love, out of love and in love again. I’m not the same person that I was the last time that I called Las Vegas home; I’m more optimistic, healthier and I have a greater appreciation for what I can do here.
Somewhere in the middle of all the places that Mina and I discussed when coming to terms with having to leave Amsterdam, Las Vegas became apparent as the right place for what each of us needs to do now. There are shows here and plenty of teaching opportunities, so she can dance. There are models that I’ve got a solid history with that I can photograph and many new ones interested in working with me. Las Vegas doesn’t give away opportunity, but if you are willing to work for it; you can find it.
The pace of life in New Orleans sounded something like “slow down” and it was what I needed when I left Las Vegas the last time. I did, too; I slowed down as much as I could while still making forward progress. It was needed; a welcome break after working very hard for a very long time and no longer being certain of if it was even what I wanted to be doing. I took that time to regroup and decided to move on to someplace else when I had. Amsterdam was someplace I’d wanted to try for years and while the moment that I acted on it wasn’t the most opportune I needed to try at very least. I had three months and a backup plan to go to New York or Las Vegas if it didn’t work, so here we are.
She came home from an audition this morning and crawled back into bed with me; she’d left early and was done before I woke. I’d slept late for a change; something I’d been unable to do since returning. We only have one set of keys at the moment and she’d left without them, so she had to call me to open the door for her. I went back to bed and she followed, undressing before she slipped under the covers and into my arms. I nuzzled her lightly and she told me how the audition had gone; she hadn’t gotten the part, but she’d gotten a lot of good feedback and met some new people who told her about another audition later in the day.
It’d been good for her to dance again, to move. I can tell the difference in her when she’s been holding still for too long. Today, she felt like movement and it appealed to me. I slid my hands over her firm legs and then between them, making her come once, twice, three times before deciding that I was too turned on to let it go at that. We fool around all the time; making each other come much more often without intercourse than with, but that means that when we do have sex, it’s because we are both in the mood, both want it and by virtue of the waiting, the wanting, it’s very, very good.
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.
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”.
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.
With a moment to myself, I’m catching up on my whereabouts and the like. I’m sitting looking out at Centraal Station as I wait for Mina to return from dance. She’d been eager to see what dance is like in Amsterdam and so we set off on separate afternoons. Mine, amidst the rain, brought me back to the hotel to think about all of it and make a list of what I still wanted to do here on our last day. What I did instead was start writing….
Her bangs swept across the top of her lovely dark eyes, bringing my focus down from the patent leather pony bridle that she wore. She smiled at me from the couch where she was curled up in my bathrobe, flipping through a magazine as I worked. It was a Sunday, which is her day of service to me and has become my favorite day of the week. She’d cleaned the house while wearing the headdress and I’d enjoyed watching her move. After she had been rewarded for her service, she sat quietly still wearing the shiny leather (which she’d adored from the moment I’d strapped her into it) reading as I tended to a few other things. She radiated so much contentment and pride that I didn’t want her to have to take it off when we finally left the apartment.
We’ve made a new tradition of this; starting off the day with service and then transitioning into other things. I’m enamored with how easily we move through the world together, having incredibly intimate moments followed by superbly average ones without effort or awkwardness. Sometimes the trouble with a relationship that has a specific nature in the bedroom is that you constantly have to keep that up in order for it continue to exist but It isn’t like that with us. For probably the first time in my life I’m well matched with someone who (like me) really likes things to be kinky but doesn’t need them to be. We can indulge continuously with servant sunday’s because we balance them out with all the other time we spend together so that it becomes a passion that suggests obsession but manages to toe the line.
“This morning I had residue from the tape on my lips”, she said casually.
We were having lunch and skirting the subject of the night before. We don’t really discuss this sort of thing at great length after it’s happened, but we often acknowledge what’s happened in some way that let’s the other know what moment was particularly noteworthy. Others have asked us how the sex is, but we don’t really discuss it any more with them than we do with each other; a mention, a tease, a well placed word.
The night before I’d pulled the thick black duct tape from the roll, enjoying the sound that it made as it peeled away from itself. I ripped a piece neatly that was just long enough to cover her full lips and I approached the bed with it held taut between my hands. She looked at me, not certain what I would do with it because I’d used the first piece that I’d ripped off for something else entirely. I made her wonder on purpose, because it’s more fun that way.
I covered her mouth and pulled her clothes from her a little roughly before I turned off the lights. I came back to the bed and turned her head to one side and kissed her cheek in soft contrast to the rigid way I held her face. I slid my hands between her legs and she was already wet as I worked my fingers back and forth, slid them slowly inside of her. Her breathing was heavy and I could hear the first moans trying to escape through the tape. I laid down next to her and played with the piercings in her nipples, putting them in my mouth, rubbing them between my thumb and forefinger, tugging on them just a little as I continued to work one hand between her legs. I traced my fingers across her throat and saw her breathing slow, heard her little muffled moan. I closed my fingers around her delicate neck knowing that I had to be aware of the pressure, so I applied it slowly, backed it off, applied it again. Her body responded enthusiastically to my palm on her throat and she came moments later for the first time that night.
I traced my fingers all over her body as she caught her breath. I kissed her cheek, her forehead, her eyelids, slowly, calming her down, bringing her back to where we were. She looked at me in the dark, her bright eyes studying me to see what I’d do next. I kissed my way down her body, between her legs and it wasn’t long before I felt the quaking, saw the quickening . I’ve always appreciated that she takes very little time to recover before she’s ready to come again…
I slid myself inside of her while I looked her in the eyes. My progress was slow as it always is; I let her catch her breath as deeply as she could with her mouth taped shut. Her breath caught at the familiar point and I let her get used to me before I advanced any further. I moved my hips and felt her opening up, but I stopped just shy of being completely inside of her because it’s too much all at once; at least in the beginning. When she was ready, I flipped her on her stomach and clasped her wrists in my hands, so that I could hold myself at the appropriate angle and pin her in place at the same time. She moaned as I tilted my hips back and forth to hit the sweetest spots. When she came for the last time, the sounds she made brought on my own orgasm. I laid on top of her and we both breathed heavily. She feels tiny, delicate when she’s beneath me, wrapped tightly in my arms.
This is how it’s been. People ask and we allude, or smile or say nothing because it’s often more fun to let them postulate. The people who ask us know what I do for a living, though maybe not all the details. Mina has never had anything to do with my field of work and so they wonder what the chemistry must be like between us; a ballerina and a pornographer. They see a darkness in both of our eyes, a knowingness in our smiles and they wonder what it all means when we make the little comments that aren’t intended to answer questions as much as they are to dare them to ask the next.
I watched the sun rise over mountains as she slept in the seat next to mine. It’d finally stopped snowing and though I hadn’t slept all night, I was alright. She was curled up in the seat in a tight little ball, her dark hair spilling over her face, leaving just a peek of her eyes and slightly parted lips that I could tell that she was asleep. We’d spent the prior few days in Las Vegas, where I sewed up loose ends. She’d never been and had agreed to come with me while visiting in New Orleans. I was very happy to have her company, particularly on the long road home.
The night before we’d gone to see a show; one she’d missed while in New York and was being given a chance to see again that we felt she shouldn’t pass up. We sat in the dark theater listing to the music of Sinatra and I studied her face, which was serious as she watched the dancers move across the stage. She’s a dancer herself and the little smiles that appeared when form was correct or something difficult was accomplished while being made to look easy let me know that she was enjoying the show. The final number was one of my favorites by Sinatra and at the end of the curtain call, we were standing, clapping for the performers.
We’d arrived two days before, retrieved my car which is due to be returned and met with friends of mine from the industry. Mina got along well with Marie and her husband Ken, which made me exceptionally happy because they are some of my favorite people in the world. We all had lunch together and Ken asked about my current projects and made the small, kindhearted attempts at embarrassing me that he’s infamous for. Mina smiled, intrigued by his observations and the fact that he’s the only person who she’s met (so far) that can get a rise out of me.
That evening, we went to my favorite bar in Las Vegas and I took her to stand in front of a painting by Jack Vettriano that I always use as something of a Rorschach test. It’s of couple standing and a woman in a corset seated, looking down as the couple seems to argue. Everyone has a different interpretation as to who’s involved with whom and what’s happening in the scene. We stood on the fifth floor of the boutique hotel that the bar is in, sipping drinks in the hallway while we discussed who we thought was in trouble in the painting and why.
We went out dancing afterwords; something we seem meant to do together, fitting together perfectly. I couldn’t take my eye’s off of her. She leaned back against me and we moved together. I kissed her cheek and she smiled, turning around to press her lips against mine. When she turned to face me, I slipped my arms around her waist and she put hers around my shoulders. She moved in to kiss me and I moved back just a little, teasing her and then moving forward as she retreated. We moved back and forth this way, coming so close to kissing until the tease became almost painful for both of us…
When we got back to the hotel room that night, I made her get on her hands and knees on the bed. I traced my fingertips on her backside with one hand and slid the other between her legs. I spanked her while I rubbed my hand between her legs, alternating pleasure and pain, making her uncertain how or when or where I’d touch her next until finally it didn’t even matter anymore because coming was inevitable. She fell asleep in my arms and woke a few hours later, taunting me immediately toward further action. She dared me not to make her come again and while the satisfaction of denying her might appeal to me in some circumstances, so does giving her what she wants.
Day was breaking behind her giving off just enough light that I could see her beautiful eyes even though her back was to the window. Her hair, so very red, was a contrast to her skin and the white sheets that it spilled across. Her eye makeup was smeared and I liked it that way. The rain had started to fall and she needed to go, but I made it hard for her to leave by running my fingers gently across her bare skin.
Earlier she’d stood in front of the window with her back to me after I’d made her undress. Her palms were flat against the cold panes of glass. I stepped behind her and felt her flesh raise as I ran my fingers down the back side of her arms. She drew in a quick breath and I smiled. I asked her questions and wouldn’t accept evasive answers. I made her tell me what she wanted and standing with her back to my chest I could feel the thrill of being made to answer pounding in her.
I stepped back slowly; the sound of my footsteps deliberately unnerving just as the sound of my keys had been as we approached my apartment, which she’d never been to.
“It’s not much further”, I’d said, taking the keys from my pocket far enough away that every door we approached made her nervously wonder if we were there. She knew what I was doing…
I’d kept her on edge all night, pulling close and then backing away until I made her tell me, say out loud that she wanted me to take her home, make her feel vulnerable and submissive. Standing exposed in front of the window, we’d both gotten what we’d been looking for.
I looped the rope around her wrists in the dark, working slowly, meticulously, binding them together in front of her. I made her hold her hands above her head and I corrected her when she hide in in her arms, telling her that I wanted to see her face. I ran my fingers down the side of her body and back up again, feeling her shiver. I made her twirl in front of me so that I could get a look at her and then I pulled her arms over her head so that her bound wrists were behind my neck. I kissed her gently, almost chastely which was a stark contrast to the moment we were in.
After I found her point of breaking she lay in my arms, telling me that she hoped we could do this again and that she wanted me to push her. She buried her face in my chest, ran her fingers over my bicep. We didn’t sleep together; she didn’t have to tell me it would be too much at once (I knew). She slide her leg up my body and I ran my fingers down it. She told me that she liked the way that I touched her; all the different ways.
She dressed in front of me and called a cab. I stood on the sidewalk, my white linen shirt wilting slightly from the rain. The sky was gray and I listened to the sound the drops made hitting different surfaces. I watched the car pull away from the curb, watched her lips move as she told the driver where to go and I didn’t move until the last glimpse of her vibrant hair in the rear window of the cab was gone and she had been swallowed by the day. I opened the iron gate and stepped inside, letting it fall closed behind me heavily. I appreciated the sound and feel of the rain as I considered what I’ll do with her the next time.
