Sick Chic

This is how I lost a lot of weight in a few weeks without trying:

Reactions to my new look remind me of a particularly awkward moment I was witness to in my friend's apartment in Brooklyn: a goddess-like female was visiting from Haiti, where she had been on a midwifing mission, determined to save the world, one proper birth at a time. Let's call her Hathor, after the Egyptian goddess of beauty and fertility. Hathor had had a rough time of late.

About a year and a half prior, she had a tough decision to make. She was in South Africa, the flagship country of her pilgrimage, and she got knocked up by a local man she thought she was madly in love with. As head midwife to the birthing program, she decided to set an example -- she kept the baby. The daddy then, predictably somehow only to Hathor's mother, turned out to be a dead beat. Single motherhood, in addition to being a power-housing saint, was really taking its toll and so she came home for a breather between godforsaken countries.

Hathor was once shining, bubbly, blonde, and as voluptuous as the clay sculptures of fertility totems with big hips and mesmerizing, pendulous breasts. Looking at her after, she had gotten skinny. The light had dimmed in her eyes, replaced by a dull luster and dark circles. Even her flaxen hair looked retired in its exhaustion. Every time you glanced at her, you somehow caught her in a moment of exhale.

That night at the apartment, our acquaintance joined us for dinner, arriving fashionably tardy. Upon seeing Hathor, the only aspect he noticed, unfortunately, was the weight loss.

A partial hug and a kiss on either cheek, the superficial city embrace.

"Wow, you look great!"

A brief silence in the room.

"... I contracted hepatitis." 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm calling it, time of death of a dinner party: 1 minute 32 seconds into the arrival of the relatively unobservant, situationally unfortunate guest. No other way to say it: that's awkward.

So! Looking to lose some? You should probably diet and exercise.

I absolutely do not recommend going to South Africa and drinking the water or somehow inducing life-threatening mental disorders to then medicate. You will be sick, and you will not give a damn what you look like. Compliments will seem hallow, and you will not know what to say to them because you will not feel grateful. Perhaps eventually, the compliments will stop coming from people you know. Worried glances will follow. Only strangers will still look at you and smile.

Scoundrel

by guest author Janx 

The writer of this blog and I are very good friends who love more than anything to sip fine beverages and share the filthiest stories we have under our belts. Time after time I am defeated in our pissing game of smut tales- so I am honored that she asked me to write a guest entry for her loyal readers- as if I might actually get a rise out of what I have to share. What I decided- since this is technically a traveling blog as well- to tell a small tale on how I earned my stripes as a certified scoundrel.     

When I left California to enter a four month artist residency in Prague, I had promised Ace that I would remain loyal to him and our love would be enough to satisfy all my sexual desires.

This concept was quickly swept under the rug the first night as I awoke next to my new favorite local bartender who slept with his half-smoked rolled cigarette wedged between his lower lip and unusually large mustache.

I could already tell it was going to be a great four months.

Wild Cats, Lady Beats

Everything in the world is hilarious. It's like a cosmic 'your mom' joke.

That's Janx for you. She spits this gem of acerbic wisdom with a slanted grin as we fly down a California highway at 90 mph, her bare foot on the dash as she fingers a gem she wrapped in copper wire the night before. We had a meeting, a caucus of lady hens in Santa Barbara where we gathered our supplies -- cheap red wine, crystals, gems, bright wire, cotton thread in every color of the rainbow, weed, tobacco, instruments, and stories -- we took a big sit with all these things and we rapped. No topic was off limits, no limit was off topic.

The thing about masturbation that really frustrates me is that I think: I am way too cute to be doing this for myself.

A pause in conversation as we all focus on our projects in a haze. Thin paper crinkles as a joint is passed, soft glugging as a glass is re-filled. Somewhere in the room, a bulldog farts and sighs.

I hate those fuckin' fox tails people are wearing these days.

Why? 

They have to kill the whole fucking animal just to parade around looking like an ass-pirate's bitch -- it's disgusting, murderous, and wasteful.

Hey, do you still have your old dreadlocks that you cut off?

Yeah? 

You should die them and make a tail out of that.  

What makes you think I want to look like an ass-pirate's bitch? 

The thing about these ladies is that we aren't your typical ladies, we're cowboys. We will fuck you up from the inside out and laugh while we do it. Rough, a little hard, and gone with the wind, we out west are more like tumble weeds and hardly "the fairer sex." We also represent the modern beats -- just like The Dharma Bums, we're only romantic enough to be pathetic, only revolutionary enough to be self-indulgent. We are vain, and not without sensitivity or desire -- what kind of poets would we be otherwise?

Each us of us are in constant conflict with ourselves; that is part and parcel of our self-indulgent vanity. We each contain a tarot card-like persona against whom we struggle, but it's these struggles that come to define us. Janx's impossibly long, thick dreadlocks in every color of the rainbow are a whimsical touch that attempt to disguise the fact that she is at heart the existential realist. Our mate and occasional ward, who is a brilliant crafter and dedicated boozer often prancing around as a middle eastern unicorn, is the drunken idealist. Sparky, who is here with us in spirit with her magenta hair and her wild eyes, is the emphatic. I, ever searching for sincerity in all the wrong places, am the romantic hedonist. We are each of us flesh hungry wild cats.

On this road trip plummeting back up California's coast, it's Janx's hilarity I'm exposed to at full volume. A realist she is, but humor is the spoonful of sugar with which she shoves medicinal observation deep past one's esophagus.

So I've been questioning my relationship with Man a lot recently, as you know, as I'm sure you are sick of hearing about, and so I've devised a new test, a relationship test. Here it is: if you have a baby and it turned out to be exactly like your partner, and I mean in every way, would you be proud of him or her? Think about it... would you?

Yeesh, I don't know. 

Yeah, well, think about it. That's what's going to happen. So thinking about this actually led me to come up with something else, which I like to call: The Dead Baby Method. I came up with this tactic because I don't use birth control or condoms. When my body starts to feel a little... different or when I sense my uterus go a-flutter, I simply meditate on dead babies. I say to it: Uterus, don't do it. If you make a baby, I'm going to kill it. These are all the ways in which I would kill it. Don't fucking do it. I figure, you know, you hear of those girls who convince themselves they are pregnant so much they start to blow up? Well, if they can convince themselves they are pregnant, I can convince myself I'm not. 

Brilliant.

I know... but sometimes I worry about my mental health.  

Yes, well. Her countering poignant depravity with questions of her sanity is why I can justify calling her a "realist" in my mind.

This bitch is resourceful. Give Janx some powerful hallucinogens and 15 minutes alone and she will return to you having solved all your problems. She will deliver you unto the sweet warbling voice of Jesus Christ and bring you handsome gentlemen cowboys who will play country music, provide you refreshing beverages, and keep you warm when the night turns cold. They will say things like "See that ther' coffee stan' over yonder? Built it. Take mah jakit, lil' lady. Kilt a buffalo in that thing. Hey, Woodrow! Come meet mah new girlfrien'!" and you will never stop giggling... Janx will get on stage and play a stranger's banjo, leading a crowd in a chorus of meowing until the sun rises, and she will purr like a hooker until she gets bored. She will lead you on powerful journeys and quests as an impromptu shaman, a spirit animal even, and she will blow your freakin' mind.

Full disclosure: I hated The Dharma Bums. Even so, in moments I find myself happy to be living it out less piously, and Janx is the Japhy to my Ray Smith.
Was that sappy? Well, you can go fuck yourself. 

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.

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. 

Hunting Bambi

“So, you come to these things often?”

What a line. Sparky clearly has a way with women. Bored and annoyed, I wrote my review of her off-handed seduction techniques in the form of bar snacks (çerez) thrown at her head.

“Ow. Ow! So... you’re a pianist?”

She ignored me and the flying pistachios admirably and kept on luring the wide-eyed little thing into her experienced bisexual lech. With that knowing smirk, she may as well have been asking, “Would you like to have your first lesbian experience, little girl?” To me at the time, it was disgusting. What could possibly be interesting to Sparky about this Girl Scout cookie? She was the kind of person who’s name I would forget before she even finished introducing herself, and the way she was dressed, it was as if she was trying to force me to underestimate her. She had her mousy blond hair back in a ponytail and was sporting a light pink sweatshirt paired with baby blue sneakers. She looked like a twenty-year-old infant. There were many things wrong with the scenario, but I got stuck on the sneakers.

“Sneakers? SNEAKERS?”
“Yeah, whatever, lots of people wear sneakers."
“Yeah, athletes and children. She didn’t look like an athlete, so that makes YOU a fuckin’ perv.”

I was being needlessly critical, I admit. Sparky sighed into a reminiscent smile.

“Didn’t you just fall into those big, doe-like eyes?”
“I wanted to hit her with a car.”

That’s how we came to name her, and others of her kind, Bambi.

________

Expat parties are an excellent hunting ground for Bambi’s -- those cute, fresh off the boat girls who just graduated college and came abroad to do the first interesting thing in their lives, which after getting their hearts broken once or twice by the charming locals, usually devolves into teaching English and hanging out exclusively with other expats. Lets get one thing straight: I am a traveler, not an expat.

What is an expatriate? And expatriate is a person who temporarily or permanently leaves their country and culture of upbringing to terrorize a foriegn one. As a function of their emigration, expats define themselves by their dissatisfaction. Most of them make a living teaching English and they seem to hang out mostly with each other, inventing incestuous little fuck circles in whatever country they infest. For further entertainment, they come up with other annoying amusements such as theater groups reeking of mediocrity and pub quiz trivia nights in all too expensive bars. They congratulate themselves on their internationality while never bothering to learn much of the local language or culture. Their adopted country is an organism off which they simply feed, all the while doing their best to recreate their homeland and inherently representing it, usually in an unflattering light with their bad cocktail of entitlement and cultural insensitivity. These embarrassing ambassadors come from all over the world, but when I find myself stuck at a loud and obnoxious pub quiz with drunk people spilling beer and arguing about George Lucas factoids while blank faced Turks look on with that same bored and slightly insulted lack of expression that I recognize from also having to serve people I despise, I can't help but sigh and think: "This is why the world hates Americans."

When in a sea of expats, hunting Bambi’s provides an excellent distraction from my fiery disdain. Besides, it’s good for me to maintain a certain level of sociability, even in “enemy” territory. Sparky has since illustrated to me that the pleasure in corrupting the innocent is like pissing on a freshly fallen and undisturbed bed of snow.

________

Several nights later, I stumbled into a bar to meet Sparky. I was two hours late and dragging in a girl by her tits.

“Whattya think of this Bambi I brought ya? I bet she’d fuck us both, the little slut.”

I slurred, not trying to flatter myself in the least.

“I dunno man. She’s not wearing sneakers. Sneakers kind of do it for me, Bambi-wise, remember?”

Wavering in my seat, I looked over my prey. I had already soul-slaughtered her and moved on to the victory parade wherein I offered her up to the scavengers as leftover kill. She was a hot mess with eyeliner was streaming down her face. I followed these black trails up puffy cheeks to two big wild eyes that expressed mixed emotions of humiliation and gratitude for the attention.

Most of the time, I work hard to be considerate of others, thoughtful, aware, and well spoken. But sometimes despite my efforts, I prove myself to be the most fucked-up asshole I know. On these occasions, I abandon my better, more articulate self and get in bed with a stranger to my standards who acts with wild selfishness. I don’t always get away with the crap I pull, but when I do, I wonder how. Amazingly, friends like Sparky have a high tolerance for my bullshit and chauvinism, even a certain revelry in it.

“You wan ‘er in sneakers? I’ll put ‘er in some fuckin’ sneakers. Let’s go, sugar tits. Daddy’s gonna get you some new shoes.”

For hot girl-on-girl action, check out the post Bisexual Women and Cattle Fetish.
The latest from Seduce and Confuse, here.

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.

Bisexual Women and Cattle Fetish

Istanbul: the stench of sizzling rotisserie intestine called kokoreç forces its way up my nostrils just as I lock eyes with a prostitute. She's draped herself on a wall by a dumpster, bored and smoking a cigarette to pass the time -- I'm grateful for the smoke's pollution as it does its best to mask the overwhelming scents coming from the buffet of hot flesh on offer in Tarlabaşi. Home.

Sparky and I power athletically down the street as she smokes her last and rants impassioned about the government's taxation of cigarettes:

"Those fucking bureaucratic assholes... how can those fuckers look themselves in the mirror? Their dicks are covered in prostitutes and their wives are covered in veils."

I rented her apartment for the first month I was in Istanbul, that's how we had met. Foucault, writings about sex and addiction, and Indie-Art House DVDs were on the selves, art with a disturbing rawness graced the walls, the kitchen was stocked, I immediately felt at home in her space. When she came back from her annual hibernation / artistic pilgrimage in Canada (not unlike my time in Turkey), we met in person and discovered we were kindred spirits. We've been close since. She hooked me up with a room next door with Hot Chip, making us both friends and neighbors.

"I had never taken a shit that smelled so good, and so I had to ask myself: why?! Why did it smell so good? Tropical, even."

The thing about Sparky is that she is fascinating. I think most people are interesting, but she is fascinating. She has a power about her and a way of story telling that is all-engrossing, her energy is intoxicating.

"It turns out that we had been using coconut butter as lube. That explained everything."

She captivates a room with her hijink-riddled stories of misbehavior -- best that they should hear it. Let them live vicariously.

"So on Christmas I took it up the ass with greasy, chunky, coconut cream. Which brings me to my point: no one, I mean no one, can tell me that I am not a giving lover."

The first time I heard the story of surprise coconut lube, we were somewhere on the Asian continent. She was very excited about its telling and she often rested her head on my shoulder. Still, despite her marked increase of affection and enthusiasm, I didn't realize she was rolling. The second time, we were at a cafe club that looked like Barbie's psyche and we were both rolling. It looked as though teenagers had barfed pink glitter on the walls. We laughed a lot.

Sparky identifies as being bisexual, an artist, Turkish, but also very North American, having spent of her adolescent and young adult life in Canada. She has Pan-esque short, asymmetrical, magenta hair, a plethora of piercings, and a shaved pussy. She tastes amazing. When she's intimately aroused, a single exhale from her lips is enough to send shivers emanating from my root up my spine. She wears green eyeliner and celebrates in her distinctively deep, gruff voice. When she speaks in Turkish, the sound is rough like shark's skin -- like The Swiss Family Robinson, I want to climb a tree with her language on my thighs.

"So this Sultan, Osman... I can't remember which, Osman Whatever II, had his vizier bring him women as his lokum, yani, his little treat, whatever, that part is normal, but he made him bring fat women, the fatter the better, then after fucking them he would have them killed as he watched. Fucked up, eh? He wanted his women to be like cattle, so fat they looked like cattle, then killed like cattle, he insisted on it." 

"That's some fucked up snuff shit right there." 

"Cattle fetish, man!" 

Loud rants like these in public places are an example of many reminders that Istanbul is not Cairo. Thank God, il humdulilah. In this city, Sparky and I can go to LGBT events and get wasted without fearing for our lives. We dance together, gyrating closely to industrial electro music, and it happens to not be the most dramatic thing in the room. We end up in drunken strip tease induced group sex, and it feels natural. We don't have to stress ourselves out about it. But that last part, the ease of interaction, maybe has less to do with the environment and more to do with the individuals.

In California, my dear friend Texas had made somewhat of a habit of seducing me when she was intoxicated (and that she frequently was). I remember her Russian Hill apartment on the night of her birthday, an evening she had fiercely declared as LADIES NIGHT: she was prone on her couch and I was eating her, fingering her as she tried to silence her moans for the sake of her guests asleep in the next room. But it was her birthday, I had to do what she wanted. Though I had baked her a cake, I owed the pleasure to her, she said. She demanded an orgasm by my tongue, and she felt that due to it being the anniversary of her birth, she deserved it -- a reward for living as long as 24 years on this earth. That night a group of ten of us or so had gotten all dolled up in tight, short, glistening tubes of dresses, our unattainable bitch costumes, and we traveled in a pack. Now these slut suits were pushed up and pulled awry, she was begging for me to make her cum. Unlike my girl friend in high school, she clearly wasn't playing in an act to colloquially claim to experience or to arouse cocks inserting themselves in fantasy. This was her fantasy. She begged, and begged, until she came in my mouth.

She was always with some guy and she never considered herself to be bisexual. The only other sexual encounter with a woman that she had told me about was a steamy but abbreviated make-out session on a dance floor in Italy. Perhaps this gap in her self-perception and her inhibited desire, desire such as displayed on that moonlit couch and so many other grimy San Francisco street-side back drops, is what inspired her to push me away when she entered the corporate world of Silicon Valley, working at Google or YouTube or wherever. Perhaps, though we had been best friends for many years, perhaps I didn't fit in the portrait she held in her mind of her adulthood. Perhaps she suddenly needed to leave that phase of experimentation behind her, juvenile as it was, pissing in the face of her straight privilege and aspirations of "normalcy". I wasn't asking her to be with me, in fact I didn't want that, she is nothing close to polyamorous and we both love dick too much to give up. I was happy to please her physically and to be socially as we had always been, but now it is occurring to me for the first time that perhaps this was in itself the problem. Did she want more?

Whatever the problem, she created a seemingly insurmountable distance between us, characterized by an extremely frustrating absence of communication of any kind. Torturing as this silence seems, it's the best show of my love for her that I can offer by allowing the space for as long as she needs. If she feels like telling me about it one day, I'll gladly listen.

When I was in college, sexuality columnist Dan Savage from Seattle's publication The Stranger treated the student body to an interactive lecture. While it was mostly give-and-take, he stated at least one thing quite definitively that has since stuck with me: bisexuals don't exist. Men are either gay or straight -- if they say they are bi, they are simply doing their best to adjust to the truth -- and women's sexualities are so fluid that it's pointless to label their preferences at any given time as if they will be sustained for a lifetime. By the way, Dan Savage has since written columns revising his previously stated opinion on bisexuality, making a little more effort these days to tread lightly on the eggshell egos of the community and fight personal accusations of bi-phobia. Regardless of his current stance, at the time he brought to light for me the pressure to identify oneself with a sort of inferred judgement, even or especially within the LGBT community. Sometimes it seems to come down to the following questions:
"Do you qualify for straight privilege?"
Not quite.
"Do you qualify for homosexual acceptance?"
Not quite.
"Why are you so insistent on being so fucking difficult?"

I wonder if not quite being able to put a finger on the fluidity of female sexuality actually makes it easier for someone like me to accept, while this invisible pill is nearly impossible for someone like Texas to swallow.

Doesn't bother Sparky. And this isn't the first time I've been "with" a female in an Islamic country. Seems funny to me, somehow, but perhaps I shouldn't judge a country by its Qur'an.

For more antics with Sparky, check out the post Hunting Bambi. 
Curious about LGBT in Turkey? Read THIS. 
Find the latest from Seduce and Confuse HERE.

Gypsy Love Curse

Istanbul: A persistently lonely and desperate feline screech sneaks beyond the feeble barrier of my window pane. It disturbs my slumber and I groan, turn over. It's 6:30 PM and still I can't pull myself out of bed. I get so disappointed at moments like these, but on the bright side, I tell myself, when I move back to the other side of the world maybe I'll be a naturally early riser. Maybe I'll exercise more, I certainly could use the endorphin kick... thinking this, I hear myself grunt at the preposterous notion of running through these torn and crumbling streets.
Three months is a long time.

My whole house is on an insanely erratic yet surprisingly synchronized schedule. One day we'll wake at 9:30 PM, groaning our morning greetings, the next we'll be up at the the crack of dawn mopping the floors cheerfully. We call it "social jet lag". It's been a couple weeks since I've moved out of Sweetie's apartment and into a ground level flat in the slums, populated by outcasts, freaks, and all of Istanbul's cats moaning in heat, right where I belong.

I like this place. It's got all the decadent charm of the ghetto. I like my house mates. They are a Turkish electronic musician who aspires to be the next Hot Chip and his moody Polish girlfriend. We're all completely broke, just managing, subsisting mostly on the nutrition of beer and Cha Cha -- a fire water moonshine from Georgia, the country, that will disinfect your intestines as it burns a hole right through them. Our neighbors are two ladies who have become good friends of mine, a Turkish visual artist who goes by Sparky and a sharp-witted Jewish pansexual writer from San Francisco. Our neighborhood, despite being as terrifying as it is with dog fights, drug dealers, and open crime, it's home, and whether or not I should, I feel comfortable. All in all, I'm happy that I moved out of Sweetie's.

One night a bunch of guys were sitting around, drinking beer, asking of each other the greater questions in life.
"So, when you use the bidet, do you ever, you know... finger your asshole a little?"
"I dunno man, sometimes it just slips in there."
"Yeah, I mean... It's good to be extra clean. In that area especially."

Sweetie came over to check on me in my new surroundings and was hardly amused.
"What the fuck are these guys?"
"Chello, I am here too, don't forget," said Moody Poland. Her tiny arms were crossed over her chest  as she stared at him disapprovingly. She usually has a focused, intense, crazed look about her that makes me wonder if they cannibalize where she comes from (my experience of Eastern Europeans is that they are insane), and this moment was no exception.

As a dark skinned man and a business owner in a country quickly developing beyond its means, Sweetie is no stranger to hostile energy and so he chose to ignore her. Though there is a side of him comfortable with dealing with aggressors, incurring violence, and making death threats, he put on his syrupy sweet voice for me: "Tatlim, come home with me and drink tea and let me sleep on your knees..."

Given the way we had broken up, I didn't feel that I owed him anything. "I'm happy here. Why don't you stay and have some Cha Cha?"
He reluctantly accepted the shot Hot Chip's forceful hospitality pressured him into then left without saying a word.
After the slam of the door, Moody Poland tsk'd three times. "Such dramatic. You're better without it, honestly."

All the same, I was sad to see him go like that. His smell and the kiss lingering on my neck were a heady perfume and a burning souvenir. A few shots of Cha Cha, however, and my senses faded.

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. 
Find the latest from Seduce and Confuse. It's like vitamins for your groin. 

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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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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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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Face Soup

The first inquiry is usually: "Who's face was it?"
"I don't... sometimes I don't ask questions."
Followed by: "Well... was it good?"
"It was better than the stomach stew."

Istanbul: I'm in the modest living room of my handsome musician friend who happens to be Kurdish-Turkish-Armenian -- a politically volatile pedigree in Turkey. Turks and Balkaners say Kurds are "voodoo people," liable to be liars, gangsters, and thieves.
"Yes, but being Armenian is even worse..." he chuckles, deciding between his Persian tar and his Greek lute.
I don't have the experience or the blood memory to fully understand these kinds of aggressive racial-cultural accusations or to have their meaning resonate in my bones. I do know, however, that my friend is a sweetie -- he's good natured, good humored, talented, and clean of heart. As he plucked out haunting micro-tuned melodies on his lute in 11, 15 and 7 time signatures ("the ladies must love this guy," I thought), I tried catching on to the beat as best I could.
"Us Westerners are used to 4 or 3," I said.
"Ok, so we play something in 9."
3 times 3 is close enough, I suppose.
[As a passionate side note, I love beats divisible by three -- I've always been naturally drawn to waltzes and vals. There's a symmetry in trinity that I'm attracted to, though I didn't even notice it until I started drumming.]

After we played our fill of exotic odd meter, the subject of food came up.
"So... it is soup, made of face (tongue, cheeks, eyes, you know), and you put much vinegar in, and much boiled garlic, chili flakes... and all this helps the smells."
"What smell?"
"The smells of... face."
SOLD.  Garlic and offal? Perfectly monstrous date-food. I couldn't possibly imagine something further from my hungry imagination, so of course I had to try it.
"This is normally food Turks only drink when very drunk, so if you are to have to soup you must have some of this first," a swig of ouzo.
This guy is into Greece. Charming.

Now I'm not saying it was the face soup, nor am I positing that the rambling Benigni film that followed was the most erotic thing ever, and for the record, though strong, a single swig of ouzo isn't obliterating. Perhaps it was some gypsy voodoo from this guy's bloodline, but some kind of aphrodisiac ("padişa macunu" in Turkish) magic happened that resulted in the two of us making love like it was our call to prayer - roughly four times in 12 hours. And roughly. This guy is so sweet, with an extreme gentleness towards cats and a kind of soft fairy voice that at first had me question his orientation, that the impressive cock that hung below his skinny-man six pack and the perverse energy with which he wielded it took me by surprise, which was more intoxicating than the ouzo. I wasn't expecting anything from our date except for some music, but Sweetie gave it to me like man for hours and hours, somehow tapping into fetishes I wouldn't speak aloud and executing them with an unforgiving panache. All of this perverted exuberance was punctuated by peacefully entwined hugging naps, endless marathons of tender kisses, and quiet exclamations such as "My beauty! My beauty... you make me so happy."

What the fuck? What kind of sorcery is this? Where the fuck did this guy come from? He doesn't wear leather gear or bondage raver pants, or for that matter have anything about his demeanor, outward appearance, or media taste that would suggest that he is anything other than a sensitive, sweet, well-traveled musician. In fact, his Nepalese sweaters would make me think otherwise, but the fact is that not only is he one filthy-sick lover, he is also the king of aftercare! This guy should teach workshops, god damn it, and he doesn't even know what the subject's called.

It occurred to me at some point in the seduction process that perhaps this guy's voodoo power was from sheer slutty experience. The persistent thought arose, that sex as an end-game shouldn't be rewarded -- that's how girls are taught to protect themselves, that their sex should only be doled out to those worthy by seemingly arbitrary factors. But who am I to guess what Sweetie's end game is? Even after his second orgasm, even after MY second orgasm, even into the present, he's made me feel cherished and loved, and I love sharing pleasure with him. Whether his endgame is the love or the sex, and the other is simply a part of his emotional/sexual "slut-style," I'm into it!

What's the punch line here: Don't judge a Kurd by his soup? Offal the name of love? Hey baby, I want your face-soup? Now accepting entry related pun submissions in the comments...

Context for Clitori

We sit on the floor of an apartment in Brooklyn while I drink tea and watch my friend get more and more stoned. She takes out yet another match from the box, handling them preciously.
"These are from Egypt, you know."
She's dressed in the same clothes as last night at the bar. They flatter her curves but somehow seem wrong in the daylight. She is voluptuous, with a spark in her that makes her even more attractive, magnetic even. Every match she lights seems to borrow a bit of her fire. The light in her eyes has been dulled from her habit and from a hard few years in New York.

We met on a plane to Cairo, where we spent the first six months of 2007. That was before the magazine features, before the people were applauded for their nationality, before the political situation was a dinner table conversation topic in America, before the majority of the western world cared. It was during a time of restlessness and buzzing discontent that would eventually lead to revolution. An instance of mob violence had just occurred where men were raping women in the streets, provoked by a celebrity seen belly dancing at a movie premier. The women begged shop owners to let them in and lock the doors behind -- some of them were protected, some of them were left to be ravaged by the dogs of men who couldn't seem to help themselves and assumed blamelessness for their hate crimes.

She holds the smoke in her lungs for a moment, then croaks:
"Don't you think there is anything positive about the gender dynamic there?"
"No, not really."
Her brow furrows as she concentrates on blowing rings.
"But in their homes, the women run the show - they're matriarchs."
"I'd rather have a clitoris."

Female genital mutilation is one of the unspoken horror stories of our time, categorically akin to acid-throwing or foot-binding. It's brutality and prevalence seem impossible to me, impossible that even one person would do that to another, but the fact is that such an atrocity is widely permitted and occurs to millions to this day.
"Over 95% of women in Egypt."
"Yeah, I've heard that stat before," she says.
"Maybe because it's true."
"I dunno man, I had a great time."

I did too. Her and I ran around the feral terrain of Egypt -- from Cairo to Aswan and from Sinai to Siwa -- with the brand of carelessness particular to students abroad, as if it were our playground. For six months we studied music and languages, slept on buses, and haggled for cheap pashminas. We rode camels and horses, went scuba diving in the Red Sea, obsessed over Nubian trance, had boyfriends and girlfriends. We got in fights, went to clubs, smoked hashish, and galavanted in the Sahara until the sun rose from behind the pyramids. We climbed Mt. Sinai, learned folk dances, wrote papers, set things on fire, spent and made money. It was an intense half-year, from which she hasn't quite recovered.

"It was great... but I went off the deep end, man. I stretched myself to every corner of the extreme... and I wish I could have that back. New York's kicking my ass." She coughs smoke, drinks water. "It's too hard to swim here, and too easy to sink."

I can appreciate my home in the west coast with a fuller gratitude in this moment, it's healing and permissive environment that helped me transform my experience of that time, with all it's triumphs and terror, into a context from which I can lead the rest of my life. The contrast between my current experience, vibrantly colored as it is by exercised sexual freedom, and the experience of that 95% of women in Egypt seems too great to exist side by side, but they do.

It's from this awareness that I conduct myself. I drink every droplet of freedom with thirst, and though I'm not particularly religious, I thank God and the universe every day for my clitoris.

For aggregate posts on reproductive and women's rights, check out the posts Slut Shaming and Fascinating Reads: Sexuality in the World.
Read about my misadventures in Istanbul, Turkey in Gypsy Love Curse.
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