Reunited and Confronted

"I really like your boyfriend. He seems nice."
She sips her mimosa lightly with tightly pursed lips.

I smile and gulp my coffee as butterflies fill my stomach.
"Yeah. He's pretty great," I say, dreamily. I'm awash in my affections for a moment before I snap back to the present. "I mean, we haven't been together for very long, but we're having a blast."

"You've had quite a lot of boyfriends, haven't you?" Her nonchalant tone and dainty British accent almost conceal the pointed curiosity behind her probing.

I feel my entire body flush and instantly start to sweat. "Yes. As a matter of fact I have." Her question was bold for someone I haven't seen in six years. "What are you getting at?"

"Oh I didn't mean it like that, I just mean..."

Yeah. What do you mean.

She somewhat stutters, "I wasn't trying to shame you or anything. I just remember that back in the day, you were more described as... whats the word? I don't know how to say it."

Without emotion I offer the term, "Polyamorous Pansexual?"

"Yes! Something like that, anyway. You had this aura around you... like you were too cool to approach but it was also like a vortex that people would fall in and never escape."

It seemed like a somewhat sinister description, however she beamed in wonder and delight at being able to remind me of the personal power I once wielded.

Now I take a gulp of my mimosa. "Well, at least I used to be 'cool.'"

"If I could count the people who feel into your votex and never to recover... Danny tried to kill himself when you left him, remember? And Marc had it bad as well. And If I recall --"

"Ok, yeah, I guess I was somewhat of a heartbreaker back then." I wasn't really enjoying these tales of emotional obliteration that I had left in my wake. And no, I hadn't remembered these ugly details.

"Uh, saying that you were a 'heartbreaker' is such an understatement." She shifted nervously. "But what I was getting at was that you used to be with ... all kinds of people. Then something happened and you seem to be mostly interested in men." Cue nervous laughter.

Oh the boxes I get put in.
"I recently got my heart torn out by a lady, so. I'm glad to have gotten over that and now I can move on with my life."

She looked surprised. I hadn't really blasted what happened on social media, so I suppose in that sense it didn't really happen (if not in front of all eyes). "What happened?"

______________________

I was on one knee behind her in the kitchen. She wouldn't stop washing dishes, ever the excellent home-maker. She reflected, whilst rinsing and drying, that ever day we spent together was the best day she'd ever had. I gently took her hand when it became available and she turned around to find me there, looking up at her. 

"What are you doing?" She looked alarmed. 

"It can still be the best day, every day." And then I proposed we get married. 

She turned away back to the dishes, angry. "I can't believe you would do that."

"Why not? We're insane for each other. I love you."

"You think I'd marry for a green card?!" She whipped her body back towards me, and her eyes were livid. 

"No! No, sweetheart it's not like that. I want to marry you for you. And yes, I want you to be able to stay here with me, if that's what you want, and take care of you." And I really did mean that. 

Despite my sincerity, I lost the discussion. Not because she didn't say yes, but because I had embarrassed and upset her. She was not going to stay, and she likely thought that I was insane or worse, disingenuous. 

She left and days, weeks, months passed. I cried a lot thinking of her. I begged her to come back. I helplessly watched her fall into a pit of despair and drown in booze. She insisted during the day that she was happy, that I should be more supportive. But once night fell, there was a lot of sturm und drang in her phone calls and messages, and she drank like it was an olympic sport. Finally, the calls stopped coming. The last message from her I received was a post in the mail, containing a picture of her dancing. There was no return address. 

Over the months, I stopped playing guitar. One of my favorite songs to play only reminded me of her, and inevitably whilst playing it, the lyrics would become choked in tears. I lovingly put away things that reminded me of her. One day, it stopped stinging so badly. I stopped thinking of her all the time -- things she would like, how I could surprise her if she was here, our inside jokes -- and I even was able to get drunk without getting sad about her. And finally, I was able to move on. 

___________________

"Honestly, love, it sounds like you're really better off. It seems like she was a whole lot of drama." 

I glance at her sideways for this assessment. She doesn't know everything. It's impossible to relay the details of something so complicated, amazing, and heartbreaking with any accuracy in a short conversation. But with a sigh, I decide it's best for me to accept this judgement as having truth to it. What's the point in fighting it, when I've moved on? Formerly described 'Polyamorous Pansexual' little ole me was in a bonafide monogamous relationship with a straight man. And despite the contrasting comparisons of this notion with a portrait of who I have been in the past, I feel just fine. 

Sick

I'm sick. Coughing, wheezing, sneezing, and dizzy with discomfort. I seek respite in the steam of a hot shower.

I've been missing Istanbul intensely. I miss my old roommate: a man who barely speaks but somehow just radiates. I miss my neighbor and best friend there: her company, her energy, her stories.

Almost as much as I miss these people, I miss the solitude. For three months at a time, two winters in a row, I enjoyed privacy of spirit. All the way across the world from most of my social habitat, I would hole up, sometimes for days. I would barely speak to anyone, happy to be mostly undisturbed in the dark, cavernous and warm room. When I occasionally did part the thick, green, velvet curtains, the light from the alley was sad and cold -- as it always seemed to be reflecting of the clean marble in Istanbul (only the sunlight over the Bosporus in the late afternoon was golden). Back then, I was able to be alone with the voices in my head, who muttered and hummed, made up stories to entertain us, and mused about things of little consequence.
These days, they won't stop screaming. It's too much, toomuch, toomuch... and yet.

I slip down in the tiny square shower to sit on the tiny square tiles. I close my eyes and let the warm water plunk on my face and knees. It sounds like falling rain. I curl myself into a ball and sink down to my side on the smooth floor. My long hair floats and waves a little. I let the sound and the warmth of the water take over and fall asleep.

I dream in memories. I dream that I am back in the rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico, where the rain was just as warm. I remember swinging in the impossibly thick vines, in competition with howler monkeys who, despite having the terrifying cry of a fierce jungle cat, are adorable, mischievous little things. I remember decorating the dreadlocks I used to have with hibiscus flowers. I remember the flavor of papaya water soothing my stomach. And I remember my lover at the time hugging a leaf that was bigger than he was. What different times! Nothing proves this to me more than thinking of him, the kind of person he was, and who I was in his reflection.

The rain slowly turns cold and I'm in Madrid. I'm delirious from jet lag and having slept all day, but now it's the middle of the night and I'm being dragged down the street by the hand of a different man entirely -- and what a different life we led together. We run through the chilly rain and seek refuge in a sherry bar. The amber liquid comes straight from the cask; we drink it from tiny flutes and it warms our shivering bones. I deliriously munch on oily, skinned almonds and he makes up little songs to amuse me and crack a smile on my paled visage.

Now the water is cold enough to drag me back into awareness. I laugh at myself a bit bitterly for being so sentimental, for missing so much, for being an avid adventurer who simultaneously: constantly craves, and yet is astounded by, change. It's the little things, the simple facts, the obvious conclusions that often seem so impossible to me.

I sit up, let the blood rush back to my head, and turn off the tap.

Lost and Found

The exhilaration of screaming my head off at 120 mph with only two wheels and a vibrating death machine underneath me sweeps it all clean. I am assured with a definite clarity that I am alive, if only because at any second I might no longer be. I scream until hoarse, not out of fear -- well, yes, fear -- but also because I'm so fucking happy to exist in these moments that it can't be contained. Igor chuckles evilly at my puny screams as we careen down the highway on his hot red CBR and, feeling generous, pops a wheelie.

_____________ 

"PREPARE TO DIE."

My proclamations are more ironic than anything as Igor and I lose to each other in chess. He grins at me from across the pathetic looking checkered battlefield and considers his equally futile counter-move, eventually choosing the rook.

"Thank you for coming with me today."

I finger one of my conquered pawns, a brave lost warrior, as I scan my options silently.

"You really mean a lot to me, you know."

I opt for the horse thing, which I move around his horse in a little waltz. Clearly, chess is my game. I sigh and bring up my eyes to meet his searching gaze.

"I'm glad I finally got to meet your mother."

We had paid her a visit, armed with a dozen pink roses for Mother's Day. He was uncharacteristically quiet, but I didn't wonder why. The weather was beautiful, clear, hot, I could smell the grass. After a long pause, Igor took from the bouquet a single rose, which he presented to me. I wiped at my tears and smiled. He is so brave, even in the face of grief.

"She would be so proud of the man you've become."

We held each other for a long time before we hopped on the bike and left the graveyard.

_______________

An impromptu hike led us to pad through the redwoods in search of cool water in which to bathe our overheating bodies. Neither of us were appropriately attired, he in his usual steampunk regalia and I in gothic biker leather, but the trees didn't seem to mind. They were too ancient to care and besides, their sentience knows nothing of fashion. It seemed like a good place to talk things through.

"I mean, he couldn't possibly be more compatible for you than me, so it's not that I'm threatened." 

Part of me accepts his compatibility assessment as truth without question, but the majority of me disbelieves the perceived lack of threat in his mind. I kicked a pine cone with a steel-toed boot.

We've known each other for so long, since before we were individuals, it's almost impossible for me to conceive of our relationship in it's entirety. We were kids when we first kissed, and now we have evolved into what Igor calls, "black-belt relationship territory." Sometimes we still act like kids, but I think the key is to be patient with each other, and to know when to say, "I'm sorry."

"I love you."

"Love you back." 

 _________________

"Whatever happens tonight, don't fuck me with this."

I said this with a stern look on my face as I held up my wooden cocktail muddler. Old Fashioned's are my specialty and for this drink, a muddler is key. It did have a nice rounded dildo-esque shape to the handle, so I assumed it would have crossed his mind. Judging from the smirk that grew across his face as he stared at the tool, I began to realize that I shouldn't have said anything at all. I reasoned in vain.

"I don't want... splinters."

Hours later I found myself bound in industrial saran wrap and lain prone over a large ottoman. My mouth was gagged and I was blindfolded. I was bound so thoroughly in the plastic I could only futilely writhe like a pathetic fuck-larvae as I was being beaten by several hands and fucked by one of our guests. My blindfold was removed as Igor kissed my face. He had something to show me.

"See? No splinters."

He replaced my blindfold and proceeded to fuck my cunt with my cocktail muddler, which he had protected with a condom.  I giggled as much as I could in said state, and was awash with love for the insolence that can also drive me crazy.

More Igor!
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Other Girlfriend

I would have never chosen to get in bed with this person whose hands and feet I'm trying awkwardly not to touch as they wrap around my lover, but here we are for the second time. The middle man appears to be experimenting with sleeping on his back for egalitarian reasons and I clamp my eyes shut in futile effort to quiet my brain. Once he drifts off and shifts, whose body will he pull close? This isn't the loneliest I've ever felt in a bed with two other people, but it's pretty damn close.

It's been about a year since Igor and I got together, and I feel it's generally the right time to assess how things are going. At the moment, I'm annoyed and frustrated. I feel pressured to play along, to put in the "work" to make this poly situation function, but I'm realizing that I just don't like what's happening. He can date whomever he wants, but I don't want to be in a relationship with her -- not the kind that involves the intimacy of brushing our teeth together, anyway. She's actually a lovely girl with whom I get along just fine, but I resent feeling consolidated into a single outing or a single bed. I resent that every decision we make together has to be run by her, but then again I am rarely consulted about my feelings. There are a lot of double standards happening, which are hard not to notice when we are both considered equal partners, and it drives me crazy.

It's hard to resist the thought that even while I was doting on him from abroad, he was replacing me. Since getting back, we haven't been as intimate as we once were and he's started doing things with her that used to be our activities. I hardly get to see him, and when I do, she requires periods of extra attention to "make up" for it. I feel like I'm living in her debt, this forced family member, and unfortunately because she affects every decision I make with Igor, she also affects the decision of whether I fight for him, fight to traverse the distance that has come between us in the time I was abroad, or let him slip away, breaking my own heart in the process. 

Conversation with him quickly fluctuated from one extreme to another. We talked about the possibility of cohabitation, which is something that we both admitted to wanting, but when he talked to Other Girlfriend about it, she expressed a familiar and irritating, if understandable, sentiment: "Hey, wait a minute! She maybe gets that? I want that too!" I let him know that if it's always going to be like this, an endless tug of war between two "primary" girlfriends, if we aren't going to move forward, get to spend time together or be sexually intimate, then it won't work for me in the long run. Companionship is a great thing, and we always have the best time together, but frankly I want more.

"But you have to appreciate that there's another person who is really important in my life whose feelings I have to consider!"

I appreciate it. I appreciate it so much that if the greatest I can hope for out of our relationship is a sexless triad living situation, I want to let him consider her feelings without having to consider mine. I love him so much, but it wouldn't be the worst thing to acknowledge that our poly styles are incompatible. The worst thing would be living in frustration because we won't admit that they are incompatible.

My mind wanders to Slater and his chillingly perverted smirk. Him and I talk on the phone frequently and one day we chatted about future plans: maybe we'd meet up in this country or that country, maybe he'd come to California, what kind of work could we find him and how would we live. I'm not sure what's real or what's a fairy tale but all the same, it's intoxicating to think about and I do miss him quite a lot. Maybe hearing it in my voice surprised him, but by the time I got off the phone with Slater, Igor was sulking.

"You left part of your heart in Istanbul..."

Maybe. A part. 

"...and I feel like you are punishing me because I don't believe in getting married and having kids."

Nope. Not punishing. But at this point I firmly acknowledge clear relationship goals including cohabitation, abundant recreation, and yes eventually down the line, procreation. Some people might think that having all that in an open relationship is too much to ask for, which is fine, but I don't want to date those people. I'm confident enough to lay it all out on the table, not to be difficult or punishing, but because I'd simply like my lovers and I to be on the same page. If he isn't interested in the kind of future that I'm after, he shouldn't be surprised when I choose to invest in a relationship with the potential I'm looking for, because all the polytard justification talk in the world couldn't make this corner of the bed less lonely.

But as I lie there, I try to tell myself to have faith. Give it more of a chance and don't make any rash decisions, rash decisions being my specialty. Play nice and stay positive. As the Shins sung, "you wanna fight for this love, but honey, you cannot wrestle a dove."

In a gesture of good will, I designed Other Girlfriend a cocktail. Mirroring the nature of our relationship, the drink is somewhat complicated and made with rare ingredients. It's a bit bitter and yet a bit sweet, musky, refined, and chock full of bourbon.

The OG
Rocks glass, fill with ice
2 oz. bourbon whiskey, stir to melt ice
Several dashes bitters - I use aromatic and orange bitters
1/2 oz. Firelit coffee liquer
1/4 oz. maple syrup, stir well
2 cherries, soaked in brandy

Flame an orange peel over your cocktail, rub around rim and drop into glass.
Add 1/2 oz. - 3 oz. of club soda, to taste.
Make a silent toast to your lover's lovers and suck it down, Cupcake.

Meet the charming fellows: Igor HERE and Slater HERE. 
Want more tough moments in polyamory? HERE YOU GO!
For something completely different, check out the post Bisexual Women and Cattle Fetish. 
And of course, the latest and greatest can be found on the main page. 

Flight

I stood there stupidly, just past Customs with my whole life in tow. It was only a carry-on sized load. All I could do was stare dumbly at the black screen of my phone.

"Miss, you have to move on."

Yeah, tell me about it.

"Connecting flights to the left, exit to the right."

I almost explained to the guard that I didn't know what I was doing, that I had a big decision to make and many factors to consider. But, too exhausted to find the words, I didn't bother. I went to the right and got in a cab.

I had knots in my stomach all the way into Manhattan. What was I doing? I had willfully missed my connecting flight out of New York and I didn't have any money to pay a cab. I was trusting the word of a man that I had never met in person who had told me not to worry about it. He was a good friend of a good friend, but still, was I insane?

When I left Slater in the Istanbul airport, we were both in tears. His were silent, masculine, and graceful, and mine were hot, messy, and snotty with terrible facial contortions and body convulsions as accompaniments. My expressions of grief only worsened as I passed the point of no return and headed toward the boarding gate, his smell still in my hair. It didn't seem possible that in the few weeks we were together that we could fill holes in each others hearts that neither of us knew we had, and yet... there we were. Ripping ourselves out again, cutting the cords, pulling ourselves away before the idea had fully formed, imaginations running wild with the thick spread of idealism and the glitter of day dreams. I took off with a barely brave face streaked with those tears.

Two glasses of white and a couple painkilling sleeping pills later, I woke up an hour away from New York, having processed nothing. And yet, in that time something emotionally significant had transpired.  I left Istanbul behind in an ancient dream universe and found myself literally plummeting forth into another adventure, another city, and another man.

Meet Slater in the previous post.
For more considerations of polyamory and the traveling lifestyle, check out Distance: Emotional Problems of Nomadism.

Doesn't Take Much, Does It?

Developing further intimate attachments wasn't part of the plan. But in the six weeks by which I extended my Istanbul trip, I lost people in my life back home who were frustrated by my extended absence and irresponsible decision making and I gained a community in Istanbul. Like that Burning Man saying: the playa giveth, the playa taketh away...

Like I said, attachment wasn't what I was in for, and here he was talking about love. Every other sentence used that loaded word and I heard them being popped off like BB's from a newly acquired air gun. Finally, I felt I had to confront it, though I felt silly for doing so.

"When a man loves a woman like this--"

"Are you trying to tell me you love me?"

"No...

I guessed I was paranoid and indeed, very silly. 

"...well, fuck it, yes. Yes, I'm crazy about you. I love you. Which is dumb because I know it's fast, and all it can do is serve to hurt you, but I love you. And I want to tell you all the time."

Not so silly after all. This was the last thing I was expecting to result from our beginnings, which for all purposes should have remained a one night stand. Now it seemed that some investments had been made. I'm not sure that either of us had bargained for that, especially just after my rocky road with Sweetie and my imminent return to the States. That we both knew I was leaving soon put an interesting immediacy on everything we experienced together, but I found him to be surprisingly emotionally forthcoming for an American-raised man:

"I feel like I have to show you every thing at once... I mean I want to. But I'm scared, darlin'. And I'm hurtin'."

At first it was innocuous enough. Who seduced who we still quibble about. As he would describe things, I gave him a look that spoke loudly and clearly. He set his sights on me and I tested his persistence with off-handedness. We played a sweet game of cat and mouse and eventually we ended up at my place to chow down on some midnight mantı (Turkish ravioli in a spicy butter and yogurt sauce).

Next thing I knew, my arms were pinned to the bed. Though I hadn't begun the night "on the prowl", I was happy to play with him. He was handsome and charming enough -- he instinctively knew how to make me laugh. And though he had many physically admirable qualities, being tall, blonde, fit, and Danish, as he pressed into me I found myself distracted in admiration of his teeth. They had character. He was full of character -- he grew up in a traveling circus and continued the charade all the way through the Ivy League. His life had always been fascinating in summary, if lonely in practice, and as an adult he seemed to seek out his fascinations in... adult realms.

"Nothing says 'I love you' like semen on your chest."

I was relatively impressed by the perversion leaning towards violence with which he was forthcoming on our first time, and yet I was a bit put off: he was cocky and yet a little cautious in bed. "Can you take this?" he whispered. I rolled my eyes... if he only knew. Granted he didn't, in fact we barely new each other, it was perfectly reasonable that he was checking in and making sure I was OK. But I was hungry for abandon. I purred:

"It's OK, you don't have to hold me down."

He tentatively released my wrists. I smiled at him, he smiled at me, and then I slapped him hard across the face. He was stunned.

"If I have to piss you off to get you to fuck me like a man, l'll do it."

I caught a glimmer in his eyes as a hungry smile spread across his face.

"Well alright then darlin'. I guess I don't need any more permission than that, do I?"

His voice sounds just like Christian Slater circa True Romance. Our rhythm quickened and ferocity increased. Sedated with the pleasure of being taken voraciously by a Hollywood B-list daydream, I didn't hit him again.

____________

A couple weeks later, our story had evolved into that of star-crossed Istanbulus: a charming Cihangir guy fate had paired with a somewhat feral Tarlabaşhi girl. The irony of the situation didn't escape Slater: 

"Sometimes I think to myself: I want to show you off. But then I think: you're going to scare people. So then I consider: who can take it, and who do I hate?"

Some of his expat friends weren't so bad, I admit, but furthermore, Slater was not immune to my criticisms. He lived in Turkey for a year and didn't know the word for "apple" in Turkish, but I liked him anyway. Like I said, I didn't mean to get attached, but these things tend to happen, don't they?

However the stress from the time compression of our relationship began to express itself in tense ways. When the flame of my sex drive was more engulfing than his, he would make an offhanded "slut" joke or comment that, depending on my mood, would hurt my feelings. Once he asked me why I was wearing clothes and so in obedient response, I started to take them off -- to which he said:

"Doesn't take much does it?"

I guess it's easiest to hurt those who care. But why did I care so much? 
Igor has a theory which he calls my "super power", an effect against which mortal man is helpless. According to his observation, a person will fall madly in love with me and the "spell" will last two months. For that period of time, they will become enraptured and hopelessly enamored. After, they will wake up as if from a fever dream and back away with a self-protecting ferocity, as if to suggest I were akin to the deadly but alluring sirens sung about by bards such as Homer.

"By my estimation, Slater has about two more weeks. Then he's gone."

But of course this effect isn't one-sided. I guess Igor is sick of witnessing me get hurt. It seems like a bleak prediction, but Igor tends to be more accurately observant than I give him credit for. I'm willing to keep it in mind as I see how the long distance aspect of my relationship with Slater pans out, also keeping in mind that perhaps he is thinking wishfully. Whenever I mention Slater to Igor, his commentary is usually:

 "I want to punch that guy in the throat."

Despite the cattiness my male lovers exhibit towards each other, I'm fairly confident that if they met, they would get along splendidly. But regardless of that, the thing that gives me greatest hope for my distance-cleaved relationship with Slater is what he said to me when I couldn't find the words to return his professions of adoration:

"You don't have to tell me you love me for me to know that it's true. They're just words, after all."

 That is the kind of confidence that makes me in turn confident.

Who the hell is Igor? Meet him HERE (and get intimate HERE).
For more nihilistic relationship adventures in Turkey, read this post: Gypsy Love Curse. 
The latest from Seduce and Confuse can be found HERE, I promise. 

Distance: Emotional Problems of Nomadism

"You are falling in love, sweetie-heart, this is the issue."
Maybe Moody Poland is right.
"I can see on your face. But why you want to make so much problem for yourself with this?"

I take a gulp of my beer and reflect. A few more gulps and the beer is gone.
"Görüşürüz." / "See you later."

One long sigh carries me on my walk to Sweetie's. I feel powerless against his invitation. When we make love, he brings me closer to god. When we fuck, he reaches so far inside of me that he actually fucks the organ of my heart. I writhe, moan, and scream, high on his drug, the most powerful visceral pleasure I have known.

But our conversations are frustrating. He says things like, "Of course I can't be your friend." Once I asked him why not, to which he quizzically responded, "Because I'm in love with you," with an implied "obviously" at the end. Statements like these are testaments to our future: either he'll hug me so close I can't breathe or push me so far I can't see him anymore. There is no careful in-between -- no part of our relationship is conducted without fervency.

_______________________________

I shouldn't be surprised that Sweetie has been pushing me away. He's been standing me up, leaving me waiting, doling out a chilly minimum of human acknowledgement. Predictable as this was, of course it hurts to see him suddenly act this way. It's as if someone has flipped a switch in his heart, but I don't wonder why.

The reality that I will leave has finally sunk in. When he convinced me to extend my stay, he had hoped I would get a residency visa. Maybe I was lazy, or maybe I just didn't want to, but regardless, I didn't even apply. A tourist visa only allows 90 out of 180 days in Turkey. My time is nearly up and now that my departure date is two weeks away, he's realized that keeping me close is futile: I'm leaving him, as he puts it. True, I'm not staying to meet his parents, decorate a house, or have his babies, not this time around. He probably thinks that I won't come back, or maybe that it won't matter by the time I do. And so the fire that once burned white-hot is now cold and sooty.

Traveling as much as I do, and for the extended periods of time that I prefer, I occasionally see this kind of emotional response. When I'm about to leave a place, the people who have held me the closest are sometimes the ones who quickly erect barriers and become the most distanced. They're trying to protect their emotional well-being, or they don't know how to express their hurt frustration that I'm abandoning them, or maybe they don't consciously realize their motivations, which I understand. However, it hurts me too. It's one aspect of lengthy international travel that I don't enjoy, being a puck on an emotional shuffleboard. But I'm not made out of hard plastic, I'm an organism. I'm beginning to trail a little blood.

Igor, Conquerer of my Heart

My birthday is coming up next month, as is my glorious return Stateside.

"I had an idea for your party, but I'm not sure you'll be into it."
"Lay it on me."
"Well, you know, it would just be a good party. Good music, some delish food, good company, obviously... but while all this is going on, I was thinking you would actually be bound in another room for the pleasure of the guests to use. Gang-rape style."

The following are 5 points on why I love my boyfriend.

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. 
Check out the latest from Seduce and Confuse and don't forget to subscribe! 

No Excuses

Despite how much I seem to congratulate myself for living openly about my lifestyle and conducting relationships with honesty, I also have something to admit: I fuck up. Sometimes a lot. Having more than one lover isn't all affirmations, orgies, and vegan pot lucks -- sometimes it's hard. When I have four people in my life to whom I'm emotionally accountable, it seems to follow that I quadruple my opportunities for fucking up. It happens.

Of course I don't want to hurt those I hold closest to me. Maybe it's inevitable that by simply affording yourself the closeness, any movement might jab someone in the ribs. Jab, stab, shank. German choreographer Pina Bausch said something along the lines of (paraphrasing): "We destroy each other, and we want to. When we can't destroy each other, we destroy ourselves." Perhaps it's an inescapable aspect of the human condition, whatever that may be. 

When requited love gets beyond a pair or a triangle and grows into a web-like matrix, well, things are of course complicated. Lines get blurred in a vast tundra of grey area, but some things remain simple. Here's one: don't tout your radical honesty and then lie. Of course any reasonable self respecting adult in meaningful relationships wouldn't lie to their partners... but it's tempting to forget that avoiding being forthcoming with the truth and telling a lie look and feel the same - another territory in the United States of Grey Area. It comes down to this: if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... it's a fucking duck. 

Yeah, I fuck up. I'm pretty upset about it, human as it may be. 

A friend was encouraging me the other day to be a little less hard on myself: "It's not productive to hate yourself." Tell it to Pina. She never said it was productive, just that we do it. But my friend is right, feeding the fire of self loathing will not alleviate whatever understandable loathing is directed at me by my hurt partners. Choosing to destroy myself because I see destroying them as very clearly not an option isn't helpful. 

The only things left for me to do are to live and learn... and try to do better the next time, if I am lucky enough to be afforded it.

For more relationship fail, stew in the muck of Disorder and the Cure or Distance: Emotional Problems of Nomadism. 
The latest from Seduce and Confuse is luring you with it's bedroom eyes. 

Secret Slave

The sound of the fierce slap I had planted on his face silenced the pub. It was the kind of triple exclamation mark that makes stomachs sink, like the sound of glass breaking in an expensive restaurant.

Infuriated, I grabbed my things: a purse, a jacket, and a bag of nasty food and booze splattered work clothes. I delivered my next line from between gritted teeth, just before storming out into the cold:

"You're welcome, asshole."

It felt good. 

After a second or two, the stun wore off. He forgot to keep playing it cool and chased after me. "I'm sorry I'm such an jerk... I don't know any other way to be. I'm trying to stop... I'm sorry," pleaded the thickheaded man as he kissed my furrowed brow. I blinked my tearful eyes hard as I loathed myself for my feelings. A criminal record including two restraining orders for violent destruction of property as well as a DUI, the emotional maturity and communication skills of a child with Asperger's without the elevated IQ, dead beat tendencies, a sty of a room in his parents' house as a grown man, and lastly, painfully, an innocent unwitting monogamously programmed girlfriend? How much more evidence did I need that this guy was nothing but trouble and stupid to boot? And yet... maybe it was an energetic thing resulting from a past life of being torrid lovers... or maybe it was his freakishly mammoth dick... but in any case, the only way I could identify my feelings for this stupid piece of shit was, foolishly, love. 

Ever since I started working there, we'd been aware of each other, though we didn't share a word for months. I started out as front of house and came into the kitchen rarely. When I did, I could count on him gazing at me. Gazing turned into staring, then staring turned into meditative intent. Maybe on occasion I stared back.
We broke the ice awkwardly. A comment or two here and there, and innocuous question. I left for a month to travel - It was during this time he collected a girlfriend.

I came back and was promoted, finding myself flitting between the front and back of house - the difference being that the front of house required a certain finesse of politesse, and the kitchen required a sharp tongue.  In no time, I found myself barking acerbic teasings in a battle of wits. 

All the other guys saw something was there between us, and teased endlessly. Banter was silly, something like:

     me: "I just wanna do good"

     him: "uh, don't you mean do well? I thought you went to an ivy league school"

     me: "I thought you went to beer camp instead of school." 

OR

     me: "He showed me a picture of his girlfriend last night that he really shouldn't show to other people..."

     <moment of uncomfortable silence in the kitchen>

     me: "It was of her face."

     <moment of schadenfreude jubilation in the kitchen>

OR 

     chef: "Hear that, man? She broke up with her boyfriend!"

     him: "You mean there's a slot in her stable? No thank you..."

     me: "That metaphor's relevant because you look like a horse." 

...and so on. 

I started to get high on cutting him down. This guy took cuts like a champ, but eventually I started to see pain in his sad little face - it was then when I finally realized he had feelings that I resolved to be nice. I asked him if he wanted a beer after work, he accepted, and you know, he wasn't that bad. He even paid for my beer. Pretty soon it got to be a post-shift tradition, and it was alright. I even looked forward to it. 

Things got out of hand when we started talking about kink.

At first it was a casual discussion of sexual preferences and various city kink club scenes worth frequenting and our experiences there, as well as the ones we hoped to have. Soon after I found myself driving 45 minutes out of my way to a shit hole ghetto thinking: "fuck fuck fuck, what am I doing, fuck..."

Next thing I knew he was silently, solemnly, and even gently leading me up the stairs.

Next thing I knew he was carefully peeling my clothes off, with the tenderness and respect one would disrobe an expensive porcelain doll, a collector's item. 

Next thing I knew he was asking me, "What do you want?" My hunger to own him was so great, I allowed a clichéd response to slip from between my lips: "You."

Next thing I knew he was piercing my being. He held that familiar yet disarming gaze with me, a look of such unprecedented sincerity that I feared my heart my stop beating at any moment like a bunny that dies in the arms of the child who squeezes it too tightly.

After our little deaths we lay limp among the twisted sheets with the embarrassment of our sincerity, nakedness, and pressing guilt for our lack of regret seeping in, along with our sweat.
When we were finally able to move and enjoy critical thought again, the issue at hand presented itself: being tender with each other was kind of beside the point.

We went to a bar. He pissed me off. I dragged him back to his room. I tied him up and beat the crap out of him in a manner from which I am sure he still retains scars. Physical or emotional, it doesn't matter to me which. All that mattered was that he was, in that moment, my slave to abuse.

I finally unshackled him and ordered that he fuck me like a man this time. Such an erotic rage was unleashed, I thought he would split me, rip me apart. He violated me with delicious conviction and in doing so exacted retribution for his humiliation. "Is this what you wanted?" he hissed beyond his tensely veined neck, gritted teeth, and focused glare. Between my cries, I could only nod yes as he continued to forcefully ravage. (Heaven.)

Nothing about that experience could change the fact of "the girlfriend" matter. She was as good as he was going to get in terms of serious life partners and I applaud her for swallowing his hot load of royal fuck up with a relatively impressive amount of grace and acceptance. I owned my slave for a hot afternoon, but I knew that in the end I would have to let him go.

The thing that strikes me again and again is that monogamous people (that is: those seeking fidelity in singular partners) don't realize that to satisfy their curiosity with more open "non-monogamous" people (those who seek fidelity whilst enjoying the freedom of multiple partners) is to crucify them. I was hurt that I was good enough for that one misstep, but not enough for more - a waltz of affairs that might have lasted in a lifetime the analogous length of a song in a movie. However transcendent the event felt to me at the time, feelings were trumped by security, something I can never be able to offer as long as security equals static. I have endured a handful of lovers walking out of my life tearfully on this account, and that is something I have come to expect. People say I'm a heartbreaker, but the reality is that openness makes me raw and vulnerable to the core. Because I have multiple lovers, it's hard for people to appreciate the sutures sewn in my own heart, and yet I don't expect them to. It's just the way of the world. 

Also, his dad came home early and saw me fully nude. (That was fun!)

In the end, despite the face-slapping at the bar, the half-assed apologies and platitudes, and finally the lingering question marks, things are still jovial between us. Our secret is now the greatest thing we share. In a moment of confessional disclosure, I did tell the foul-mouthed bartender. His reaction was: "I can actually see you retards being good together."

I'm glad I had that experience, satisfying a number of burning curiosities in doing so. I'm happy to have realized that in discovering my adulthood, I have become a person who is willing to be vulnerable, to risk by saying "yes".

For anecdotes of *functional* and sexy debauchery, go HERE.  
Check out the latest from Seduce and Confuse. I dare you.  

Labeling Humans

Some time ago, I found myself snuggling in bed with a very peculiar man. In addition to the three first names he rotates through rather capriciously, this man calls himself many things, including a polyamourist, a kinkster, a vegetarian, and a burner. The man likes to know what and who he is, and he likes to talk about it. Of course, his peculiarity made him all the more attractive.

During a blissful moment of post-coital calm, that glorious haze of endorphins was unfortunately disturbed by his compulsion for naming things: it was time for "the talk". Perhaps sexist stereotyping gave me the illusion that I would be spared embarrassing prematurity when discussing the perimeters of a relationship as long as I, the lady, held my horses, but in this case the inquiry was the whim of the gentleman. Understanding his emotional vulnerability, and wanting to be delicate, I still couldn't help but be annoyed when I was asked:
"So... do you think of yourself as my girlfriend?"

We had been on a few dates, and I liked him. I imagined that we would keep on having dates, and that I would keep on liking him. But try as I might to tell him how I felt with sincere, honest words, my efforts weren't as satisfying as what he was looking for: the word "boyfriend". That was the one word to assure him that my interest in him was real, despite the fact that I was telling him straight in the face the realities of my interest. Without the word, it just didn't do the trick...

I embrace all kinds of culture/counterculture, but labels don't turn me on. Polyamorous, bisexual, hetero-flexible, genderqueer, submissive, vegan, lacto-ovo-vegetarian, democrat, libertarian, girlfriend, boyfriend, secondary lover... these types of words make me instinctually uncomfortable because I find that en lieu of using these words to accurately portray what might organically exist in a person's life, a person might intentionally create their lifestyle to be within the parameters of the label's constructs. And as a person full of essential contradictions (I was born this way), I believe that because of this, conscription to labels is disingenuous. Furthermore, for people without an intimate awareness of the label or what it might specifically indicate, the lingo can be alienating rather then helpfully descriptive:
"Poly-what?"
"Polyamorous"
"What the fuck is that?"
"A polyamourist is a slut who likes to talk about it a lot."

So, if I agreed, was I then his girlfriend? What exactly does that mean to a polyamorous person, what are the expectations involved? What does the word "polyamorous" mean to the conventional and unsuspecting family of that person? How do they feel when he and his two girlfriends go out to lunch together? And what does it mean that each of those relationships are called the same thing, but are nothing alike?

I've spent the last six months discovering these questions and seeking drafts of the answers, and reasonably enough it's been a roller coaster. A happy one for the most part, each discovering and exercising our freedom as well as celebrating our attachment. I would still rather call him my gentleman caller, or my secret agent lover man, or something of equal panache and accuracy, but I'm not so caught up in my opinions to rob him of the wide grin that spreads across his face when I call him my boyfriend. I love that smile. 

And he can call me his girlfriend, but we both know that I'm not "taken".

For more of the boyfriend, check out Igor: Conqueror of my Heart and Distance: Emotional Problems of Nomadism.
The latest from Seduce and Confuse can be found HERE, for your reading pleasure.