Or are you just happy to see me?

Well as it is my first week back I thought I would post some titillating material for you all to peruse during the weekend while I spend my hours sitting in the park reading freakin' Antigone for the 11th time ( "AND IT KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY TIME I SEE IT"). As they say, those who can't manage to have a summer fling, imagine one.

A "friend" of mine asked me to edit his novel this summer during my break, which involves a gratuitous sex scene. It is truly a precious gem of over the top erotica. I shall give you some highlights:

Bending her back and then curving herself as if to feel every inch of his member separately, and demonstrating to him the ultimate female pride in the suppleness of her spine.

Allowing her to pass a fingernail over his nipple, he thought he was the happiest and most fortunate man in the world.

Suddenly he had an orgasm...It was like a galaxy coming apart from the core outward, parts and chucking and globules of trillions of stars streaming in flaming swaths in all directions, his own surprised roar accompanying the explosion.

So I'm reading this at my usual coffee hang out desperately trying to repress my giggling and blushing and failing miserably. Bland Lawyer asked me to read the section out loud, which I did, and he bet me I couldn't write a better sex scene in two days.

Far be it from me to suggest that writing a sex scene is easy. It's one of the most difficult things to do-to balance being provocative and arousing without venturing into the cliche and ridiculous. I had several fits and starts (actually I discovered two "sex" scenes I had written for stories that actually I could have used, but I decided to take the two day challenge seriously).

I ended up developing two scenes; one scene is serious, and the other is satiric. I give you the satiric:

"He pressed his loins into her. Did you hear that?"
"You mean like pork loins?"
"No, like his throbbing love stick, his potent spear of virility."
"You're kidding."
"Is this the face of a woman who is kidding?"

She gave a lopsided smile in spite of her attempts to seem gravely serious. She handed him the sheaf of papers. After a brief examination he concluded, "You are not,indeed, kidding."

She resumed reading but a few minutes later threw down the manuscript and covered her blushing cheeks, a blush that was rapidly spreading down to her breasts. "I feel violated. I feel like I need to scrub my brain with a brillo pad. I need some kind of literary rape counseling type of thing."

He picked her up off the couch with ease and carried her to the bed. "Despite his sinewy appearance," he said, "her lover was really quite powerful. She knew she could not resist him, her lord and master." He dropped her on the bed, watching her bounce.

"But," she continued, "it was really he who could not resist her. He had tried to be a good and honorable man, but she was too bewitching-her eyes too moist, her bosom too heaving, her loins too fruitful-to resist."

Her hands were clasped around his neck. He took one and gently twisted it behind her back. She involuntarily arched against him. He began, with deliberate slowness, to unbutton her blouse, "He took his time undressing her, allowing her to feel the erotic nature of her powerlessness. His fingers tracing down from buttonhole to buttonhole."

She managed, somehow, to get an earlobe in her mouth. He released her hand which found its way under his shirt. "In clothes he looked average. Women rarely guessed at the chiseled beauty that lay beneath his shirt. He was all sleek muscle, like a greyhound, with the pounding endurance to match."

He pulled and fussed with her bra. Finally, the clasp gave. "He released her breasts."

"Released? What are they? Two wild animals?"

"He released her breasts which were soft and white, like two small rabbits out of a warren."

He gently pushed her back unto the bed. She took in the smell of him: good tobacco and sunshine. "He had the healthy brown of freshly baked cookies."

"And she the marble opalescence of the moon."

"Oh," she moaned as his hand traced down between her breasts, "How cliche."

He tongued her bellybutton, while sliding her panties down her legs. He kissed the inside of her knees. "He knew the art of the slow caress, the power of gentle fingertips against sensitive flesh He knew every secret pleasure point, every crevice of ecstasy no matter how forbidden." He blew under arm, the breathe alone making her giggle.

"He could wait no longer. He finally revealed his golden manhood to her."

"Could we thrown in some more adjectives there?"

"He revealed his throbbing golden rod of engorged manhood."

He pressed her into the bed. "He entered her slowly so that she could appreciate the full length of his inflamed scepter of passion. She trembled and shook beneath him like an abandoned house on a fault line. She quivered, like a finely tuned harp string, with pleasure."

She pushed him onto his back. "She arched so he could admire her perfect breasts, while feeling himself sink deeper into her bottomless love chamber."

Then they were silent. He pulled. She pushed. He gripped. She trembled. He tensed. She released. He exhaled. She withdrew.

"Later, as she was lying with her head on his manly but hairless chest, she thought that fulfilling him was the greatest goal of her life. She contemplated getting him a beer and turning on the TV."

"And he, being a man worthy of the devotion of such a beautiful and brilliant woman, refused to let her move. Satisfied, they both drifted into sleep."
Sky Clad

Apparently that is what some wiccans call it when they go naked, "sky clad."

Recently I have been undergoing physical therapy. My therapists, two men and three women who are on some sort of rotating schedule that I can not discern, have all been flashed by my panties. (I'm getting therapy for my hip which involves me wearing a patient's johnny, unlike the other patients who get to wear their own clothes. The flashing is essentially unavoidable, although I do my best not to traumatize the poor things.) They have witnessed the whole range of my underwear drawer: the red silk, the hello kitty print, the sunshine yellow with strawberry applique, the black lace, the plain white, the neutral fleshtone. I've never been uncomfortable about a doctor getting flashed panties because generally if I'm in that position I have more serious things to worry about than my modesty. Especially since I'm not sure I have any modesty.

Or so I thought, until recently one of the female PTs came in while I was changing. I had the johnny on already, and was simply taking off my jeans when she walked in. Now, she has seen in me a far more advanced state of dishabille, yet this made me uncomfortable. I finished taking off my jeans and jumped on the table. When I wasn't in the state of dressing or undressing, I was fine, but somehow the transitional state makes me embarassed.

Or how about the woman who spoke to me from outside the curtain while I was changing. Even though she couldn't she me, talking to her while I wa removing my clothes through the "privacy curtain" made me blush. Yet when she came in to conduct the examination, I was fine.

My male PTs are very good about trying to keep my virtue as protected as possible, but once the changing is out of the way, I am more focused on the tendon stretching or the ultrasound. If poor Brandon gets flashed, well, he's the professional, he'll handle it. And I'm sure Brandon has seen far far worse than my panties. ( Just based on the other patients I've seen)

I don't really have a point except it seems odd to me that I'm more vulnerable in the process of changing than in the "nude" (not that in my underwear with a patient's johhny I'm nude-generally I am more covered than I would be in clothes as a regular size johnny is basically the size of a small yurt for me). Anyone else on their feelings about nudity and vulnerability?


Why is Glamour magazine trying to kill me?

So I was casually leafing through my June issue of Glamour magazine, and I see in small print on the bottom of page 51 "Are diamonds the new penises?" I kid you not. I was going to make it the title to this post, but I didn't want to be responsible for some poor person snorting coffee through his nose or hacking up a furball of disbelief on her monitor or whatever. Needless to say, I was taken aback.

I've never been a fan of the "Men, are they the new woman?" or "Pink is the new black" trend in magazine writing, but at least there are some analogous relationships one can make between pink and black or men and women, but diamonds and penises? Did the writer (unfortunately a non credited staff writer) miss the analogy section of the SATS? Has he or she never seen the "one of these things is not like the other" segment of Sesame Street?

I should have stopped there, but I continued and ended up leafing through a very unfortunate article (p.219-221), written by Laurie Sandell. I suppose, considering the content of the article, I should feel comfortable enough to call the author by her first name. Laurie was writing about how to get out of embarrassing sexual situations. She begins her "advice" with the confession:

At 33, I've got 12 years of practice of sexual experience under my belt

you do the math

,so to speak.

What does she mean by "so to speak"? She heard about sex from other people? She was in the room at some point when other people were having sex? Is she trying to be coy?

With all that practice you'd think I could get through the act without embarrassing myself, but frankly when you put together two sets of expectations, eight flailing limbs, and one, I admit, a tambourine, there's infinite potential for awkwardness.

Ok Laurie, if a tambourine was involved, you had sex with a gay man or Sandra Bernhard (don't ask, obscure reference). Or maybe you got a bit frisky with one of those wanna be minstrels who play the medieval fairs. You know the really scary ones that actually have codpieces in their closets. The line kind of reminds me of a line from one of the worst films ever made Return of the Killer Tomatoes ( starring, I kid you not, George Clooney and John Astin-yes the original Gomez Adams-I guess his appearances on Night Court as Judge Stone's father just weren't enough) "So she does this thing with two lawn chairs and an empty milk carton..." Such lines make me feel like to put a condom on my face.

Laurie indulges in some very predictable humor:

You Fart in Bed: Make sure your passport is valid...

And some predictable advice:

...he's "prematurely" done...just reassure the guy with a hug or a smile so he understand that it's no big deal...

Having been with two, yes count them two, impotent men, I have to Laurie is very very wrong here. I was with a guy who was totally impotent for four months. FOUR MONTHS. And he kept saying "I have to see a doctor about this," but he never did. I have to think that my "everything is ok" attitude helped facilitate his denial of the problem WHICH WAS REALLY OUR PROBLEM AS I WASN'T GETTING ANY KIND OF SATISFACTION AT ALL. And that IS, I'm afraid Laurie, a VERY BIG DEAL. Ahem. In fact, it was such a big deal that I'm still a little bitter about it. (All I'm sayin' is that if I travel four hours round trip every weekend while I am in grad school to see your ass, you BETTER give me some sweet lovin'. If I take Amtrak, I want some quality ravishing. Just so we are all clear on that.) The point is when a man becomes impotent it impacts on the woman's ego as well. I know it's upsetting to the guy, we hear about that all the time, but what none of these magazines talk about is the impact it can have on a woman's ego as well. If a guy suddenly goes limp, or can't get erect at all, I wonder what I have done wrong, if I'm not attractive, or whatever. The thing is it's a difficult thing for BOTH people to deal with, and acknowledgement of that might be a refreshing, but instead it's the same recycled "Normalize the situation" tag.

I don't know how you all talk to each other during sex, but Laurie uses some strangely formal language for the communication in between couples:

You're lying in bed after sex. He says, 'I love you.' You don't feel the same....If you're just starting to feel the same: Reassure him by saying, "I may not be ready to say 'I love you' but that doesn't mean things aren't growing between us."

Not since I saw the last made for lifetime film have I ever heard such ludicrous couplespeak. I'm not going to make my predictable cheap "what are the odds of a man saying he loves you and you NOT returning the sentiment" shot. Mainly I am abstaining because I have had men tell me they loved me and not returned the sentiment. True most of them were clinically insane and/or on some seriously mind altering substances, but it has, even to me, happened. I wouldn't, if presented with situation again, try and channel Winston Churchill.

He wants you to talk dirty..you could try to be vocal when it does feel natural. "That feels good" can go a long way.

Right, right because any guy who wants to hear "I am your nasty little cum slut" is going to settle for "Oh yeah, that feels good." I don't know who Laurie has been with, but I'm fairly sure none of them have been nicknamed Superfreak.

Now certainly this article and the penis and diamond analogy are not enough to throw into a suicidal fit, but Glamour had one more secret weapon: an article on the sexiest things a woman can wear.

Now the entries were again predictable: a woman in a man's shirt and nothing else, a woman without a bra, and, of course, "dangerously high heels."

On page 251, Joseph Weisberg sings the praises of heels so high the chick can't walk in them.

Thanks Joe, because we don't have enough issues as it is we need to invite a small avalanche of health problems, including osteoarthritis, bunions, hammer toes, trapped nerves, shortened Achilles tendons, upon ourselves in the name of "being hot." Not to mention it makes all of us chicks who CAN'T wear high heels feel awful, which getting back to my original thesis, seems to be the point anyway.


At this point, I'm reminded of one of the exchanges from the film Heathers:

Dad lights up cigarette and inhales.

Dad: Will someone please tell me why I smoke these things?

Veronica: Because you're an idiot.

Dad: Oh yeah, that's it.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't why I continue to read glamour, I suppose it's because I'm an idiot.
The Second Worst Day in a Teacher's Life

Mr. Kotter: The first day of classes is the second worst day in a teacher's life.

Washington: What's the first?

Mr. Kotter: Pay day.

-Welcome Back, Kotter

I tried to go in with a positive calm attitude. Really. I did. I didn't meditate or anything, but I tried to believe that not EVERYTHING was going to go wrong. But if G-d himself had come down and blocked the way to my class room yesterday, my day could not have been a more hellish howling maelstrom of emotional torment. Although I am a non believer, my ability to get through such a day at least gives me pause in terms of considering divine intervention. If it was not for a dear friend arriving with tea and madeleines at a pivotal point, I shudder to think what would have happened. At one point in the ever unfurling awfulness, I was reminded of a story I heard this weekend. This friend of mine's sister got a dog in high school. Turns out her parents bought her the dog after she broke up with her boyfriend. (I am not going to delve into the symbolic content of that exchange.) A week later the dog was hit by a car. So they bought her another dog. That dog died after a month of some undiagnosed wasting disease. So they bought another dog, and another. Around about the fifth dog, the sister asked that her parents not buy her any more pets. It was just too painful. ( But at least she was probably no longer thinking about her idiot ex boyfriend.) When I heard the story I thought to myself "At what point does it become enough? At point do you walk away?"

Walking away has never been a strong suit for me, so I made it through my first day of teaching and now I have returned full force to entertain you with my wacky bunni hijinx. Let me say that it has not been uneventful few weeks (alcoholic agoraphobics not withstanding) I have managed to get a tan and learn the word "sun bunny" in Russian. I am in the process of scheduling my trip to Paris in August and scheduling the GRE. And, most importantly, I have been working on my writing.

Unfortunately, like the twit that I am, I forgot my notebook at home so I will be forced to give you a few highlights from yesterday. The Bad Buddhist, ever resplendent in his new crew cut, (oh yeah show me some scalp baby), which makes him look even more like a baby wombat if possible, walks up to me casually at the copier and says ( mind you after a 6 week hiatus)"So my mother is a hospital uptown. She just went into OR. It's going to take 2 hours to do the surgery. My brother and sis are already there. Should I go?"

Maybe I've been away from here too long, but I was totally floored. I wanted to channel Sigmund Freud and say, "Well, how do you FEEL about your mother?" But I was terrified about what traumatizing childhood memories might coming spilling out of him.

Later, at the copier again, a five year old girl walked up to me. She asked me how old I was. I told her I was 29. I asked her how old she was. "Five," she responded. She chatted with me a little bit about her birthday and her aunt's birthday. Finally she concluded, "Are you really 29?" I assured her,"I'm really 29." "When are you going to grow up then?"

It's a good freakin' question. I ask myself that often. When I am going to stop being such an idiot and GROW UP? But there seems to be no answer in sight. I continue to act like a degenerate 16 year old.

"Well, I guess some people don't ever really grow up. Like Peter Pan." "So you'll never grow up?" "It looks like that may be the case." I talked to her a little bit more. Finally her mother came, and it turned out her mother was one of my students from my first year of teaching.

I received an email from a new student, who could not attend the first day of classes due to a family emergency. Interestingly the email was addressed to Mrs. Bunni. How reassuring to know that I am married. That on a horrifying day like today I could look forward to going home and having a nice shoulder rub and hot well prepared dinner from Mr.B. OR, at the very least, falling asleep next to someone. As it is, the best I got was my cat licked my face while I was asleep.

And those were the good points about yesterday.

Somebody get me a bucket of martinis. I'm feeling a bit parched. In the time I've added some of you new visitors with comments to my links section.

And I have seriously considered blogging about the bad date, but I have many more adventures I have to fill you in on first.