Monday, February 27, 2012

Pets


“Do you think this is cat meat?”
Sweetie leaned over my ambiguous meatballs in indeterminable sauce and sniffed.

“No, but mine is definitely rabbit,” he concluded as he shoveled another greasy spoonful into his mouth.

I’ve been learning a lot lately. I’ve learned that under a certain price point, the kebab is likely dog or cat meat. I prefer cat, as it turns out. I don’t know if I’ll be able to look my adorable pet feline in the eyes when I get home. Ironically, Sweetie is never phased by eating rabbit or dog, even though he has recused a cat companion, but he won't eat fish. 
"Fish aren't food, they are for aquarium."
Apparently tuna doesn't count, because it comes from a can. 

I also learned from my Turkish lady friend that Sweetie is seen as an Apaçi (as in "Apache", the Native American group). I asked Sweetie what an Apaçi is, he said that it's an insulting term that light skinned Turks call dark skinned (read: Kurdish) Turks. According to him, Apaçi hang out on street corners, get wasted, and rob people because they have nothing better to do than dance to techno music, gel their hair, and admire their white shoes. He was insulted, and silently went back to his food.
"I am the furthest from Apaçi."
I eyed his hoop ear piercing as we ate and watched the game on the overhead TV – it was Russia versus Real Madrid. The Spaniards had a new Turk on their team, the whole lokanta watched with abated breath.

Sweetie’s been keeping me fed 2-3 times a day, more than I was used to on my own. He likes to take care of me. I’m his pet, his princess. There’s no water or heat in the apartment, so I’m cold and filthy. Still, we find ways to keep warm. He's kept me placated with pleasure. Maybe he’s not taking care of me out of love, maybe he’s feeding me simply so I’ll stay alive. I’m beginning to feel like an addict, like all other activities besides fucking him are simply frustrating intermissions to the real act of living.

Sweetie loves to rape his little princess. Both of us report feeling the buzzing high and the injury, our respective parts throbbing from desire and sore from its frantic fulfillment. He promised not to fuck me for two days so we could both heal, but almost immediately that dark, hungry expression fell over his face. I squirmed in fear and discomfort, but he held me down and took me exactly as he wanted to. Having surrendered to pleasure, we collapsed on the couch as double-decker skin bags covered in cold sweat and other fluids. Exhausted, we managed to fall asleep this way, melting and sticking together.

I’m his pet and his slave. He doesn’t like when I go out on my own or with friends, he doesn’t like when I have a drink. He's told me that he doesn’t like my long hair, that I wear makeup, the sound of my voice, or my name. He doesn’t like the music I listen to or my jokes. He hates that I have other boyfriends and he hates my perverted friends, saying:
“At least murderers I can understand culturally.”

I took a pregnancy test and he was upset that it came out negative. Every fiber of my body and mind screams, “HE IS TRYING TO IMPREGNATE YOU: RUN!”

Sometimes he shakes me awake in the middle of the night to tell me that he loves me so much, he can't stand it and that I have to hear it again, to know it. In my head I scoff and think that he couldn't love me because he doesn't even like me. He's manic. 


He told me I looked fat in a picture. I slapped him across the face. I’m starting to think that perhaps we aren’t very compatible, after all. If the sex weren't there, maybe nothing would be left. 


Meet Sweetie HERE and drool at our hot moments described in The Golden Cage and Snapshots
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Thursday, February 16, 2012

Enterprising on Bigotry

One night recently I was out at Sweetie's venue. He zipped around the tiny place, weaving between tables, shaking hands and distributing drinks -- the man works hard. As I was chatting with some girls at the bar, I lost focus staring into the crowd: many people of different genders with the same haircut... just like San Francisco, I thought. But before long, the girls pulled me back into reality, and I heard my thoughts narrate themselves in surprise.
"Wait a second..."
It had suddenly dawned on me that I was being hit on my a small mob of Turkish lesbians.
"...Huh."
I hadn't expected that in this part of the world.

It was late in the night, early in the morning when Sweetie and I were arm and arm with his best friend: a middle aged homosexual Mexican-American expat with a strange sense of humor and a dehabilitating love for cats. As we stumbled down the street towards Cihangir, we entered a sea of young men loitering outside of a club.

MexEx could hardly contain himself: "Look at all these cute boys..." He purred, "Let's go in."
"Are you serious, man?" Sweetie whispered under a tense smile. "We need to leave this place."
"Just for a minute," he bargained. "Your girl wants to go in, too." 
"No... you don't understand. This isn't just a bar," explained Sweetie.
It was a meat market for transvestite hookers.

My elbows were being pulled in both directions. MexEx and Sweetie hissed at each other and the crowds of young men eyed us as they argued.

MexEx gave up on his physical approach. His next tactic, one particularly deadly to Turks, was social pressure. He broke away from us and sauntered toward a group of the young men. He inquired, "Hey boys, how is it in there?" in his most flirtatious tone.

Some of them shook their heads and muttered something incomprehensible. 
"They said not to go in. That it's a gay place," Sweetie explained.

MexEx was delighted: young men in closeted denial are his target sexual prey. He approached them lecherously. "Would you like your first homosexual experience?"
MexEx waved Sweetie over to translate, much to his chagrin. 

I hung back and watched the people come and go from the place. Gaggles of glittering and overdressed, but beautiful women floated down the street into the club ("Those aren't natural women, honey") and occasionally one would emerge, dragged eagerly by the hand of a hurried man.

"What are these guys doing outside?" I asked Sweetie. 
"They're deciding whether or not to go in. I think they want to, but they feel shame."
MexEx licked his lips. "Maybe they too are for hire..."

Eventually we left, Sweetie's persistent reminders of the dangers hanging around that area of Taxsim at nearly 5am having overcome my curiosity and MexEx's erection. 

"I've been there once before, and it was a crazy place" MexEx explained, "No one was dancing except the trannies. The guys were all at one end of the bar, drinking, and eventually they walked up to one, took her by the hand, and left. That's it... It. Was. Fascinating! They just chose, and left."

At first I was surprised that such a place could exist in Turkey, but I was quickly reminded of the cultural differences which actually allow such situations to flourish
"It's not gay if you're on top."

I expected this point of view to be held by bigoted rednecks within my own country, but I had hardly considered its global acceptance. However, I had noticed that there are a lot of transvestite hookers in my neighborhood -- working the streets or calling to men from upper story windows, just like the Tenderloin ladies I'm familiar with. I suppose that in homophobic culture, their business thrives off of this idea: preserved heterosexuality of the active. 

Sweetie last week had been explaining to me the legal ramifications of this concept. 
If one is a gay man who would like to protest his mandatory military service citing homosexuality, not only is he required to provide the government with photographic evidence of homosexual activities, he must be the "passive," "receiving," or "bottom" party in said photos. In addition, he must go to a military doctor every six months to prove with physical evidence the veracity of his orientation. I can only imagine the horror of the experience: prostrated and subject to prejudiced doctors looking for or incurring anal fissures. Perhaps they conduct more abusive tests. After all, rape isn't gay if you're on top.

If all of this "evidence" fails to convince and he has to serve his military service anyway, a likely fate is for him to be beaten to death behind closed doors and listed publicly as a "suicide," a fate shared by Kurds, Armenians, and other marginalized groups of the Turkish population facing intolerance. 

And still, I'm acquainted with far more out gay and lesbian individuals here in Istanbul than in the rainbow flag-waving region from which I harken. Beautiful tranny sex-workers are a part of my neighborhood landscape and I've been frequenting LGBT community events. More investigation is needed, but so far it has been wondrous marveling both at the backwards and forwards nature of sexual orientation-related progressiveness in this place.

For more interesting observations on various treatments of sexuality in Turkey and other parts of the world, check out the aggregate post Fascinating Reads: Sexuality in the World
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Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Golden Cage

There was a sweaty pause punctuated by asthmatic wheezings. Sweetie leaned over  me, dripping and struggling for breath, grasping wildly for his inhaler.
"I don't want to die before you love me."

He had just been screaming. It was about halftime of one of our marathons. I don't understand how a man who is not on medication can go so long and stay so hard and hungry... but it's perfect. My delayed orgasms allow me to enjoy filth for hours before finally collapsing into a twitching mass.  He was forcing himself on me hard, interweaving nasty commentary and loving orders, screaming with pleasure when he finally came close. Our activities had become so aerobic, he had to stop, or else his heart would have stopped first. The wailing call to prayer sounded to score inappropriate melancholy under the moment.

I had been screaming too: he is so large that at his fullness, he is often either ripping me apart or punching me in the cervix. It's painful, but also wonderful. I love how he shoves himself into my narrower passageway, pushing in deep and fast... I struggle and cry out and he hushes me, saying:
"I know, I know... don't worry my love, it's ok...it's ok."
I take comfort and fly with pleasure, even in the pain. I think of sex and death, impermanence and it's counterpart.

"If you try to leave me, I just kill you and make [jumpsuit] out of your skin."
Şaka, şaka... jokes, jokes. 

I can see the shining bars falling into place... we are becoming slave to one another, to the insanity, wistfulness, and impracticality of our affections. He wants me to "belong to him" -- he in essence wants to collar me, without knowing that specific terminology or the BDSM culture aspect. If I told him about that, he probably wouldn't care. Despite the violence, love, and power play we do engage in, the emotional significance of "belonging" is enough for him, regardless of leather.

As a non-monogamist already involved in other relationships, this sort of talk is disconcerting. As per usual, I have no idea what I am doing. I enjoy being a slave to him, but I wonder if I should escape the country before the bars of gilded insanity and ownership become welded around me. I don't know at this point if I will stay or if I will go -- I have relationships to honor back in the U.S. and people I love. What keeps me from returning is a certain terror of my own disillusionment: I scoff at the idea that America is the land of opportunity (if anybody actually still believes that anymore). I don't know if I can swallow returning to my pseudo posh service industry job and all the bullshit that it entails knowing that I haven't yet achieved what I came to Istanbul for. Maybe the problem is that I don't know what that is, so I might never find it. Haunting questions come to mind: am I numbing this doubt with compulsive behavior bordering on addiction with Sweetie? Have I been doing this my whole adult life? (But is it such a terrible thing, anyway, to do so?)

If someone I trusted called me a fool, I would be inclined to agree. Scales of optimism are tilting: I hope I'm learning the hard way, otherwise my life will just be "the hard way" without learning. We'll see. All I want is to be free, and to learn to love the people in my life without destroying them. Maybe for their sake I should be kept in a cage after all. (That sounds awfully narcissistic -- what to do?)

Meet Sweetie for the first time HERE and enjoy more sexy anecdotes HERE
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Thursday, February 2, 2012

Snapshots

Istanbul: My whole body is sore. I move slowly down snow-packed cobble stone streets, walking with the caution of an old lady. This is partly because I hurt, I'm dizzy from endorphin overload and lack of sleep, and partly because I've already fallen twice on slippery hard ice. Still, those slips can't account for all the bruises decorating my knees, thighs, and ass. People on the street look at me like I'm insane for walking around in an area like this by myself -- I'm living in Istanbul's equivalent of the Tenderloin.

I get to my place and thankfully the keys work smoothly this time, before the gypsy teenagers who are always hanging out on the corner can saunter over to my doorstep to intimidate.  Even the starving street cats keep their distance. I melt into the heat of my foyer and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror -- limping, battered, wild mane of piled knotted hair, a dull stare, and a stupid grin from ear to ear: "ohhh..." it sets in. I look totally fucking insane.

I spent the night with Sweetie again. We've made love eight times in two consecutive days, sometimes for hours each time, and yet it doesn't seem to be enough. I'm not surprised I look like a nut case. After several attempts of getting up, getting dressed, and greeting the daylight (all of which ended in ever fervent fucking turned loud consensual rape on various furniture pieces in various rooms) we finally made it outdoors. By the time we finished breakfast, it was 7:30PM and he was late to work by several hours. But he didn't seem too concerned. I was more than happy to gaze at him over our Turkish style scrambled eggs (menemen) as he spoke passionately about social activism for disabled children in the tea-growing region near the Black Sea. Dreamy.

I make it up the stairs to my bathroom and spend the next half hour liberating my hair from it's dreadlocked state. I'm thinking of Sweetie, our conversations...
"You look so unsuspecting but you're so kinky..."
"What is 'kinky? What is it meaning?"
"Well, it's just... everything that you do in bed."
----
"Tell me what you want -- teach me!"
His pleas were met only with whimpering moans of pleasure. I was enjoying myself thoroughly, he wasn't in need of instruction. Besides this, I had decided that I didn't like to speak to him in bed. Next to his accent, thick and sweet like grape molasses, my own voice sounded clumsy and boorish, inseparable from it's Americanness, and it turned me off to hear it.

He responded desperately and energetically.
"I want to learn, I want to know how to please you! Don't you understand? I want to be with you... Can't you understand that?! I want to be with you."
He stopped making love to me and put his head between his hands. He breathed hard, reached for a glass of water, spilled it, and jumped up to protect my notes and papers from the liquid. He forfeited to the mess that he had become and sunk to the ground, placing his hands back on his head again, a position that seemed to quiet the voices of doubt and anxiety.

He is naked, hard, muscular, and thin, with coffee-and-cream colored skin and wild black hair that stands straight up from his scalp. Even while prostrated, reaching out only with a shaking velvet voice, he is powerful and masculine. I'm a little terrified of this man, notably because he is insane, and that is exactly why in this moment I felt love for him although I still do not pretend to understand him. I reflected on my thoughts: that he does not know me, and that of what he does know, I could not possibly be impressive to him. And yet I don't judge him loving what he have, regardless of our not understanding each other. In fact, I admire him for it, though I'm aware that I probably shouldn't.
----
"Why you were so cold to me last year?"
A year ago we met at the alternative workshop and performance space he runs in an underground cave in the city. I didn't even know if he liked women, but I just thought he was the cutest and I had a big fat crush on him. Naturally, as my selective anxiety would dictate, I didn't give him the time of day.
"Why you didn't hug and kiss me to say hello?"
He recounted to me in detail everything about our few interactions, even down to what I had been wearing. He told me that we had exchanged some long eye contact -- I remembered it too, but had dismissed it as a mirage in the hot desolation of my loneliness at the time. He had been waiting for me for talk to him, but when I did, I had said:
"Hey man, where's the bathroom?"
I wasn't quite the seductress then. I had fled to Turkey for the months following an escape from the burning broken shambles of a serious monogamous relationship I had left behind in a small country in Eastern Europe. First thing I had done in Turkey was rebound with the exact wrong person and I fell on my own sword again. I didn't feel good. Even though I liked and was fascinated by him at the time, my heart, trying to heal itself, wasn't open. And I didn't know how to reach him in that state, or how to want to.
I explained to him that I was shy. His only response was to kiss my face, hug me, and we fell asleep like that.
"I like holding you this way... it make me feel you belong to me. That you're my women."

Meet Sweetie HERE, and read more about my experience in Turkey HERE
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