Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Paradoxical, Freaktastic Adventure

I couldn't quite wrap my head around having a cold-blooded, unapologetic affair with a married man. So the first thing I did the morning after my first six-hour, marathon f*cking session with Velvet was refer to myself in the third person as a "hot, tired & well-f*cked b*tch."

With good reason.

We must have done it at least six or seven times. I had never been f*cked that thoroughly. And boy, did I ever need it.

"One freak f*cking another," was how Velvet described it.

Two nights later, he came to my apartment and f*cked me for 2-3 hours straight. He went so deep inside me, I could feel it all the way in my navel. He was the closest I'd ever come to being turned out – f*cked so thoroughly and so well that I lost all sense of time, disconnected my brain and let myself be at the mercy of his d*ck.

He asked about my sexual fantasies, and I bored him with beaches, bubble baths, rooftops and elevators. He said, "Those are all pretty normal. What about the kinky ones?"

I ventured that I sometimes wondered what it would be like to f*ck two men at once.

He answered that he had "done that sh*t, could arrange that sh*t."

Wow.

There were no barriers.

My capacity for freaky sex and nastiness was greater than I had ever imagined. Or feared. Or admitted out loud.

I was terrified at what I was learning about myself. There were two me's: the good, sweet me – who was dying – and the bad, little freak who was getting larger and greedier every day.

My libido was now locked in a blazing, throbbing "on" position. The next night, with no Velvet to put my fire out, I went out into the night, hoping to find somebody, anybody, to turn my switch off.

Slinky gold dress. Fishnet stockings. Gold shoes. Gold earrings.

No bra.

Fortunately, the club I went to had no available parking. When I ran over a big hunk of something in the parking lot, I took it as a sign and left.

Then, I decided I wanted to drink. Liquor.

Only it was Sunday night in Charleston County, and thanks to the liquor laws, there were no wine coolers to be had.

So I took that as a sign, too. I went home. To bed. Alone.

I'd finally let the beast out of the closet.

She was hot, horny and insatiable.

But she was also very beautiful.

I could look in the mirror and see so much beauty in my face.

And I was genuinely kinder to other people.

It was paradoxical.

I was actively embracing sin, but I felt closer to God than I'd ever felt as my socially acceptable, goody two-shoes alter ego.

High-Score Diaries: Part 8 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 TBD)

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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The Flat-Out Truth

I met Velvet six weeks before our first sexual encounter. He was a successful small business owner in an unglamorous field: He manufactured boxes or packaging of some sort. But he had a dream of launching a lotion line, and that's how we met. He was auditioning models to appear on the product's packaging.

Somehow, he came across my modeling comp card and called me in, expecting to see a light-skinned chick with shoulder-length permed hair.

The woman who showed up at his office looked nothing like her photos. In an act of liberation, defiance, I-hate-men & devil-may-care, I had chopped my hair completely off.

I didn't get the modeling gig, but my short yellow dress and bright lipstick smile must have caught his attention. We talked – or rather, he talked and I mostly listened – for three or four hours. He dropped enough sexual innuendo into the conversation to make me cautious. When I went back for our second interview, I ensured Nothing Would Happen by:
  • Bringing my brother along.
  • Wearing the tightest pair of jeans I owned. Getting into or out of them was such a challenge, I couldn't possibly get naked on a whim.
  • Making it a point not to call and then deliberately losing his address.
I did everything right.

Until weeks later, when fate stepped in.

On a whim, as part of my Artist's Way artist's date, I went to a comedy club on a lonely Sunday night. And he just happened to be there. And he just happened to run up to me as I was heading out the door. And he just happened to walk me to my car. And he just happened to tell me that he wanted me in his life "whether it's personal, professional, or both."

As if both of us didn't know that the only place our relationship could go was personal and horizontal.

First of all, the man was fine. He was a perfect physical specimen. Tall, about 6'3". Delicious, smooth, chocolate black. Chiseled cheekbones. Thirty-eight, looking 30. Handsome, successful, prosperous. I nicknamed him Velvet because he reminded me of a 1970s black velvet painting.

Velvet was married. With two kids: a 19-year-old and a five-year-old. I'd met his wife of many years in passing during my interview, when she shook my hand and eyed me suspiciously before leaving the room.

I knew all of that. But after months of abstinence and sexual frustration, I didn't care:
"I want him. I want to have a little fun. I want some male attention. I want sex. I want fun. I want excitement.

"The truth is, I don't give a f*ck about his wife, deep down inside. She's his problem. It's his marriage that he's jeopardizing, his choice, his risk. The only thing I'm worried about is the disapproval & disgust the people around me would feel if they knew."
And in the end, public opinion really didn't matter to me:
"I want him, I'll have him, I'll accept the repercussions of my lust, the consequences of my behavior."
I was predatory.

I wanted him sexually, and I wanted to leverage his business contacts to escape my horrible secretarial job.

With no apology and no shame, I took a wanton leap into the unknown.

And for the most part, I enjoyed it tremendously.

High-Score Diaries: Part 7 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 TBD)

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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Freeing the Freak

As my on-again, off-again, very-little-sex relationship with Nondescript plodded forward and lurched backward, a war brewed inside me.

On some level, I understood that Nondescript represented my last shot at holding my barely contained sexual beast at bay. I clung to the idea that we could be a real couple with unvarnished desperation. But in the long stretches between our rare phone calls and even rarer face-to-face conversations, I began building my life.

I went to psychotherapy and started taking antidepressants. Over night, my diary went from a tear-stained collection of laments to a catalog of things I was doing to make my dreams come true. I negotiated a raise at my draining job. I pursued my acting career. I took yoga classes and swimming lessons.

Most importantly, I started reading and working with the exercises in The Artist's Way, a book that changed my life. One of the exercises was to write about people I secretly admired. I scribbled:
  • Bad girls: For f*cking when, where & who they want to f*ck; wearing revealing clothing; smoking & drinking; fighting & cussing. Being real & telling the world to go to hell.
  • Good girls: For having genuine faith in God, genuine happiness. For being virtuous by choice, selfless by nature. For being everything that is stable and right in the world.
I wasn't that damn-it-to-hell bad girl, nor was I that pure-as-the-driven-snow good girl.

But one thing was clear. Good or bad, I was not going to continue being achingly lonely and sex-deprived.

There was one last date, one last round of mixed signals, one last humiliation as I begged for sex. This time, I clearly heard the Voice Within say, "Goodbye." I immediately tried to pretend I didn't hear, but this time, there was no turning back.

Four days later, an actor I met at a film-shoot rehearsal casually called me a freak.

His comment kicked off a flurry of terrified, confused, defiant and excited diary entries:
  • "What does it mean to be a freak? I am tired of pretending to be a respectable woman. If a complete stranger can see that, if I know it inside, why am I still holding on?" 
  • "I feel Wild Woman coming out to play, and boy is she scary. She is very libidinous, very horny. She wants to pick fights & kick ass. She wants to tell the boss & the working world to go to hell, she wants to f*ck any man that moves. I'm afraid of her. I don't know how much room I'll give her."
  • "A freak. A freak. It's ringing in my ears because I know it's true. I enjoy & crave & want sex. I have very, very few limits. I sometimes think I might even be bisexual. I've never felt attracted to a woman, but is it because I've never allowed it?"
I took an AIDS test so I could f*ck with a clear conscience.

And within days, I opened my legs to the man who freed my freak from her self-imposed cage.

I'd actually met him six weeks before and had initially rebuffed his advances.

You see, I knew he was trouble.

I also knew he was married. 

High-Score Diaries: Part 6 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 6 TBD)

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Friday, May 6, 2011

Nondescript

I met the next character in my cavalcade of lovers while performing in the musical Showboat. I played Queenie, the mammy character, and he was one of the chorus members. We were about the same age, we were both black, we were both Ivy League graduates, and we were both stranded in Charleston.

It started the way most of my relationships started. A night in the sack, followed by a flowery declaration of love in my diary: "You've heard this so many times before, each time with increasing certainty. This time, I know it's true. I've found the man I've been praying for & he's found me."

I waxed poetically about how we spent the whole weekend together, talking for hours and hours about everything. And then I got down to the details: "We had the most relaxed, wonderful, comfortable sex I have ever had in my life Friday night after the show. At my insistence."

Yep, I went there.

As we were walking down the street in the wee hours of the morning, with an unbearable warmth radiating from my groin, I took a deep breath and said very clearly, "If you don't think it would be too forward and if it won't turn you off, I'd really like to spend the night with you."

Initially, he turned me down.

But when I'm horny, I can be very convincing.

I ended up having my way with him.

And there, laid out in one weekend encounter, was the central problem of our relationship.

He was an uptight preacher's kid who was convinced that our fornication was a sin that would lead him away from God. So we had long discussions where he expressed his desire for a platonic relationship, and I expressed my utter disdain for the stupidity of that idea.

"I can't and won't abide by it," I scoffed to my diary. "If he didn't want me, I'd concede. But he does, so I won't."

I was ruthless and relentless. The next day, I showed up at his apartment wearing a knee-length red jacket and almost nothing else. The sex started out very, very good, and it ended with him being very, very angry because I kept urging him on to greater feats, not realizing he had already climaxed.

Talk about humiliation. He told me in no uncertain terms whatsoever that he would not have sex with me ever again "unless I marry you," and he even went so far as to tell me he would never let me in his apartment again!

This is probably a good time to mention that for all my ardor, I barely remember this guy. Everything about him was nondescript. He was 5'5" and not particularly good-looking. Except for the unforgettable Cat on a Hot Tin Roof sexual politics, I can't remember the contents of a single conversation or the details of a single shared activity.

Based on my memories, or lack thereof, I figured that I probably dated Nondescript for two or three weeks, tops.

But my diaries tell a much different story. I pined and whined and obsessed about this guy for four-and-a-half months, blaming myself the whole time for being greedy and manipulative.

High-Score Diaries: Part 5 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 TBD)

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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Heartbreaker

Three-and-a-half months of celibacy and loneliness followed my one-week stand. The one bright spot was that I finally succeeded in buying a brand-new car. It was a shiny 1994 Ford Aspire with no dents, no dings and no rust. I named her Junie, and in December, I drove her 880 miles from Charleston to Detroit.

It was my first trip home in more than three years, and while I was there, I ran into an old friend. We had never formally dated, but we had fooled around once as teenagers. We were grown-ups now. An afternoon of flirtation led to an evening at Belle Isle, which led to a night in a motel, which led to my first long-distance relationship.

I was convinced that he was the Man I Would Marry, and I would get warm and gooey thinking about him. We were friends. He knew me. I didn't feel shy around him, I didn't have to pretend to hold it together. I could basically be my true, neurotic, crybaby, chronically depressed self around him, and he didn't care, because he already knew all that about me and liked me anyway.

We would occasionally have two-hour, long-distance phone conversations that neither one of us could afford. And the rest of the time, I would fantasize about him and what our lives might be like together if there ever really was an us.

In the meantime, I was celibate, lonely and horny in my one-bedroom apartment in South Carolina. Which unconsciously placed a time limit on how long my lovey-dovey feelings could possibly last.

They lasted about two months.

When he failed to call me on Valentine's Day and to reimburse me for our long-distance phone calls, I broke up with him. And something happened that I never expected. As I told him in no uncertain terms that it was over, I heard genuine anguish pouring from his end of the phone line. He told me how much he cared about me, and that all of our mutual friends knew how much he cared about me. He was hurt, and he was humiliated.

I realized, with surprise, that I had broken his heart.

It didn't change my mind about breaking up with him. But it did make me feel tremendously guilty.

For the first time in my romantic life, I wasn't the wounded one who had been done wrong.

I was the powerful one who had heartlessly inflicted the wound, on a good guy that I genuinely liked.

A month-and-a-half later, I was in a new pseudo-relationship with a guy who lived a few miles down the road. I didn't have to worry about breaking his heart. He was, frankly, not all that interested in me. I knew it, and I didn't care. I chased him relentlessly, without even an ounce of pride or shame.

High-Score Diaries: Part 4 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 TBD)

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