Shelf Life

by Daddy X

Oh boy! Here’s where I get to show an aspect of my life in the non-literary arts. In fact, this post is pretty much how writing occupied my life before the filth. Momma and I used to design, cut-and paste (scissors and glue) my promotional materials and exhibit catalogs. I also did free-lance attributions, authentications and descriptive copy for auction houses.

Regarding this topic, the virtues of a minimalist lifestyle have been extoled. Although that’s good and fine for some individuals, there are others to whom objet d’art occupy a more important position. 

Consider living with: 

          A fragment from a Roman marble statue. 

  1^st century b.c. -2^nd century a.d.

   H: 5 inches

Turn this around, and there’s no doubt as to gender. A fragment yes, but what remains attests to the quality of the original piece, although we’ll never know if this gal ever looked any better than she does right now. Not a Canova tush, not a Katherine-Zeta-Jones tush, but a fine tush just the same.

Ex- David Hendin, private collection. Mr. Hendin, a noted Levantine scholar, has published numerous references on biblical numismatics. This piece occupied a spot in his private office for many years.

                     

                                                  

                                                         

A socketed bronze fitting from a Roman chariot or cart.  

3^rd – 4^th century a.d. 

H: 6 inches

 Ex. Richard Pearlman

Finely cast bust of a youth. Curved water bird necks form hooks for reins or tie-downs. Very little wear.

Below that, a small Southern Arabian banded alabaster head. 

100 b.c. -100 a.d.   

H: 2 inches. 

Momma X kept this on her desk for years as production manager in a publishing house. Note how the artist used qualities of the stone when considering how to carve this piece. Like war paint.

A Roman double unguentarium. 

1^st century b.c. – 1^st century a.d.

H: 5 inches

Swirled, light green glass, 2-reservoir vessel with contrasting dark blue handles and trailing. Such a pretty presence, most likely used to store and display cosmetics for a woman of very high rank. Absolutley perfect, no chips. This is the stunning iridescence that inspired Tiffany and later modern glass masters.

Ex- Merv Griffin collection

I had the opportunity to appraise the Griffin ancient glass collection. IMO this was the most attractive piece he owned. Nice to have first glance at it when it came to market. I knew I wanted it, and bid successfully at auction.

A Hawaiian Poi Pounder.  Red volcanic rock. Island of Kauai, Pre-European contact.

H: 5 inches

Pacific Islanders gleaned their carbohydrates from the starchy poi root. But Kauai is the only island in the Hawaiian chain that uses the ‘ring’ type poi pounder. In fact, this graceful example is in red tufa, from the little island’s northern end, where this type of rock is found. Quite rare.

Ex: Juaquina’s Antiques, Kauai. Purchased from a field worker in the 1970’s

Found Art:

Pleasing objects are all around us, and often may be picked up free of charge.

Mother and child?

H: 5 ½ inches

 

Found while walking in the woods in Northern California.

A friend has a 16^th century, life-size Madonna and child in his home. The features on both heads have been worn from five centuries of worshipers’ caresses and look pretty much like this. I think I’ll give it to him some day.  

 

                                     Momma X spotted this along the same path.             

                                     What an eye!

                                     H: 4 ½ inches

Years ago I took this dynamic object to the guy who mounts my art on stands. He gave me a funny look. When I got his bill, it simply said ‘mount stick’.  It’s more than just a stick to me.

H: 15 inches

                                                                “Salute to the Sun”

                                                          Karl Tutter   c. 1930 Germany

                                                                       H: 9 inches

Most Tutter porcelains wind up painted under the glaze. But I’m sure glad they left this one white. 

Rare as such.

A jade hair ornament.

China c. 3500 b.c.

H: 5 inches

Purchased within 20 meters of the China/Burma (Myanmar) border. The shop owner tried to explain that it was a ‘scoop for measuring grain’. Not only was this carved from one piece of premium jade; it’s also hollow straight through, with holes drilled near the base. Not very useful as a measuring device, I surmised.

There are pictures depicting ancient Chinese royalty wearing these on the top of their heads, hair hanging over like palm fronds. Under the hairdo, a tube like this held the coif in place with what probably resembled a chopstick, stuck through holes drilled in the sides.

Far eastern art was never my most confident area of expertise, but I do know how to field-test for jade. The price the shopkeeper quoted just about covered the price of the gorgeous stone. 

Soon after arriving back in the states, I took the piece to several experts. It’s real! An auction house wanted to estimate this gem at many multiples of what I paid. But for the amount spent, even I can afford to keep it.

Also met up with Lisabet and her husband on that Asian trip. Double good fortune.

             

A Costa Rican Gold Earring c. 600-900 a.d.

Ex. Denver Art Museum

W: 2 ½ inches

Collectors often see these described as nose rings. Not so.

Yes, that’s my pink hand holding it.

                

                                                                  Coca de Mer

                             Seed casing from a palm that grows only in the Seychelle Islands

                                                                  H: 13 inches

 When the early Japanese found these washed up on beaches, they were considered sacred. This example has been smoothed and polished. I’ve always wanted one in its natural state with a tangle of thin vines… you got it. Right in there.

Questions anyone?

 Happy New Year from the X household to yours.

Dusty Shelves

Sacchi Green

I was brought up in a library. My grandmother was a librarian, my mother was a librarian (although not until my youngest brother was old enough be home alone, and I was in college by then) and my first job was working in a small-town library. I shelved books, dusted shelves and tables, vacuumed, buffed and waxed the floor, and my last summer before college I ran the place for several weeks while the regular librarian was on vacation. I think I’ve told my library stories already, but I may have omitted the part about playing strip poker way back in the stacks with a friend who thought he was Brett Maverick and let me ride his horse in exchange for doing his English homework.

To get to the point, my family didn’t need to buy a whole lot of books because we had access to them already. Most of the books we did buy were “seconds” from the major printing and bookbinding factory where my father worked, and where my first summer job during college was taking coverless books from the machines where the “signatures” were sewn together, separating them and tying off threads as necessary, and putting them on a conveyer belt on their way to be bound.

All this is an attempt at an excuse for the fact that I don’t have many books on my shelves. Well, I do, but more as a matter of storage than accessibility, and they’re mostly fantasy and science fiction accumulated for and by my now-grown sons (not that I haven’t read most of them myself, often out loud to the family.)

The books I do keep nearby are not on shelves. If the saying that you can tell all you need to know abut someone by their books is true, what you can tell about me is that I’m a terrible housekeeper. My books are either in boxes or in stacks on any available flat surface. The erotic books that I’ve edited, and/or contributed to, are mostly in boxes in my closet, trying to stave off the day when my nearly-eight-year-old granddaughter gets too inquisitive. I figure by the time she’s twelve or so I won’t bother to conceal them.

The boxed books that I keep accessible because I may want to read them are mostly on subjects that I might want to write about. I just dug out one called “Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor,” picked up cheap at some fundraising booksale or other, because I’m working on a story set on Dartmoor for an anthology named Daughters of Frankenstein. I have biographies and books on various periods of history; I’ve just been reading about the Mongols of the Golden Horde for a story I should be working on right this minute. And I just noticed one I’d forgotten about, Yoshiwara: Geishas, Courtesans, and Pleasure Quarters of Old Tokyo; I can only hope to some day have cause to use that as background for a story.

I do have treasured books passed down through the family; venerable copies of Louisa May Alcott’s books (she lived and wrote not far from where I grew up,) Alice in Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, Grapes of Wrath, Robert Frost, John Donne, and somewhere boxed away are Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Fanny Hill, The Pearl, and several books by Colette, all accumulated during my college days. There's also a goodly stack of books by friends on my dresser, a few that I’ve reviewed, altogether too many that I haven’t reviewed yet, although these days most such books are on my computer rather than in stacks.

I still depend on public libraries for much of my reading and research, and now I have access to two major college-town libraries and, through them, every library in the state. I’m still conditioned to regard all library shelves as my own, and these days I don’t have to be the one who dusts them.

Shelves and Inappropriate Elves!

Post by Lily Harlem

Happy Christmas to everyone, I hope the festive season is going well! I had some great books on my wish list and I've been lucky enough to get a few delivered to my Kindle from the lovely Mr H! But, as a little light-hearted fun, here's a few pics from Elf on the Shelf, captions welcome...

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And if you want a few bargains for your ereader, details on my blog.

Lily x

Giselle is not at home right now...

by Giselle Renarde's Christmas Elf

Even sitting on her mother's couch on Christmas night, Giselle can visualize the bookshelf in her living room.  It hasn't changed in years.  It's stocked with a good deal of fiction, but far too many university-era reads.  Why?  Because she revisits them every so often?  Nah.  She didn't read most of those books in the first place.  How she earned herself a degree, she'll never know.

Giselle wasn't always a bad student.  In fact, throughout elementary school she was an overachiever.  High school?  Even better.  She left her final year with a 96.8% average... or a 98.6% average.  She can't quite remember.  Her days since then have represented a slow process of stupification.

Or maybe "slow" is the wrong word.  A student's first year at university can be a difficult transition.  Giselle went from big fish in a small, coddling high school to an absolute nobody at a prestigious research university. 

Major depression hit.  She cried every day.  She cried all the time.  She cried on the subway, in the library, in the bathroom.  Nobody ever asked what was wrong.  Nobody.  Not once.

She sought therapy through the school's mental health initiative.  She cried there, too.  It didn't really help.

And so four years went by.  Giselle attended classes during the day and worked at night to pay tuition, rent, food... books.  When she arrived home at her tiny bachelor apartment, usually after midnight, she read her texts and wrote her papers as her little tabby curled up beside her. 

She tried hard, but not hard enough to earn the A's she saw in high school.  In fact, a B was cause for celebration. Mostly, she struggled to be okay with those dreaded C's. She didn't have time to beat herself up too much.

Last week, Giselle found a quirky Canadian TV show on Netflix.  Her sisters had told her "Being Erica," about a girl in her thirties who undergoes an unusual form a time-travel therapy, would appeal to her.  And it did.  There was an episode where the main character, Erica, expresses concern that she's one of those people who peaked in high school. 

Giselle feels that pain.

The Sorceress

My fingers skitter like spiders over the book spines as I look for the particular one I came upstairs to find.  “The Multi-Orgasmic man” by Mantak Chia, “Think on These Things” by Krishnamurti, “The Mystical Kaballah” by Dion Fortune, “Fire” by Lisabet Sarai (signed by the author), “My Secret Garden” by Nancy Friday, “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury.  I’m not seeing it, the paperback libretto of “Gotterdammerung” I wanted to read when I’m snacking on the DVD from the library.  I think I have another print out of it somewhere in a little binder.

Its been harder for me to find the books I want since I got these nice bookcases at Salvation Army for fifty bucks a while back.  I used to have all my books arranged by genre on their own shelves, but after unshelving and reshelving them at random I find its nicer to be out of order.  It’s like fumbling my way through a crowd of acquaintances and old friends and even some strangers looking for a certain person.  Its more fun to search and you discover things on the way.  Occasionally I toss a book behind my shoulder onto the guest bed promising myself I’ll look at it. 

I wonder what a guest in this room would think if they looked over my books.  When I visit people’s homes, which isn’t very often, I always sneak a good look at their book shelf.  If they have books.  A house without books seems somehow to me to be lacking soul, like a kitchen without dirty dishes.  You learn a lot about people and what’s in their head and heart by seeing what they read.  Any guest looking at my bookcases late at night while the house is asleep would get a good cross section about what I think about and who I admire.  I would love to believe that such a person might think I could be interesting.

The libretto will be on the lower shelf where all the tall books and printouts are piled, so I start thumbing through that stack. Between a stack of software manuals there’s an old looking manila folder.  Maybe this.

It’s a print out from an old computer dot matrix line printer, so old that the single staple in the corner is rusted.

“The Sorceress.”

Shit.

I sit down on the floor and read the first couple of paragraphs:

MAN

Quiet Down!  Quiet Down!

(all attention is focused on the man with the vase)

Pu Yi!  Li Chen!  You know this custom.  Pu Yi, you place the vase on your head and together take five steps without losing the vase.  If you complete the five steps your marriage will be blessed with good luck.

I remember this.  I wrote this late at night in the photo studio we had in the New Yorker Hotel in 1993, when I was a photographer, back in my religious days.  There was a celebration for some special holy day or other, God knows what, and I wanted to do something more than just take pictures.  I wrote a play, a kind of musical. One of the very first things I ever tried to write. I was so proud of this play.

Well, I can see all the little steals here and there, from Fiddler on the Roof and even King Lear.  My proud effort was received with a kind of embarrassed cough.  They never put it on, which hurt me at the time.  But in those days entertainers in my religious sect were very territorial; they had their own ways of putting on an evening. Photographers in the end are only house servants.

Twenty years ago, it was.  It makes me laugh - whatever would those very pious folks have thought of the kind of stuff I write now?

But me - I kept this.  Moreover, I kept the flame.

As I thumb through it I realize I’ve forgotten the story completely.  Twenty years is long enough for a cold reading.

It turns out it’s a story about a poor but good man named Pu Yi in ancient China (named for an actual poet).  The story begins with a wedding ceremony as Pu Yi is married to a young woman named Li Chen. He doesn’t know she’s a benign but fearsome sorceress.  On their wedding night she consults with her spirit helpers and tell them she is going straight and will live as a mortal woman.  She has a dragon bedspread with an elaborate design that is the talisman of her clan and has powerful magic.  Thinking its a dowry, Pu Yi sells it the next day to the evil Governor Chang in order to get cash to set up a family farm.  Chang recognizes it as an object of power and realizes Pu Yi is married to the powerful and beautiful witch he has always coveted for a wife.  He announces he is coming to their house for tea the next day.  Li Chen goes wild when she finds out he sold the bed spread and they have a falling out just as the Governor arrives. The Governor gets Pu Yi drunk and kidnaps Li Chen.  She spurns him and he imprisons her but she is freed by her guardian demons and the help of a thief.  Pu Yi thinks she ran off with the wealthy governor by choice and is broken hearted but still wants to see her.  He and the Governor fight with swords and the Governor is killed.  The governor’s attendant's force Pu Yi to secretly take his place because they want to keep their jobs and had privately hated the Governor for his violence and corruption. 

The emperor of China dies without children and the bird of paradise flies out and chooses his successor.  The bird lands on Li Chen and she becomes the new Empress of Heaven.

She summons Governor Chang for a reckoning, thinking that he has killed Pu Yi and tosses him into the dungeon.  That night she comes to the cell, intending to accuse him and kill him with magic.  During this nearly fatal encounter Pu Yi reveals himself and they’re reunited.  Happy ending.  HEA.

Okay, Shakespeare it ain’t.  But not bad for a beginner and much more ambitious than anything I write these days.

Sitting on the floor of the guest room, thumbing through these pages, time just goes right on flying by. In another twenty years I may know what to do with this.

What books mean to me

Ever since I was able to hold a book in my teeny hands I've been a reader. I suppose I was lucky in the fact that both my parents and both my sisters shared the love of the printed word. Our tastes of course varied greatly, but there was always a sense of sharing when we'd discuss the books we'd just read.
Although I poo-pooed my little sister's choice of Enid Blyton as her favourite author - I was more into Edgar Rice Burroughs and the adventures of Dan Dare  - I have to admit to pinching the odd copy of The Famous Five for a quick read. Nowadays Miss Blyton is considered by some to have been politically incorrect and even a bit racist in her observation of some characters, but in those good old days when we weren't aware of such things it was just rollicking good fun. Teasing Georgina because she preferred pants to skirts and wanted to be called George was just that - good fun. I've wondered since just how well adjusted Georgina would have been later in life.
Anyone remember Dennis Wheatly? He wrote stories with a paranormal twist which I enjoyed immensely, but if ever there was a homophobe it was our Dennis. At the age of ten I didn't quite get the inferences, but later when my own sexual identity became clearer to me, I worried about passages about "corrupt Nazi officers inflicting repulsive caresses on young men". For a while there I equated villains with homosexuals which I think was his intent. Oh well, you do tend to get over these things after a while.
Like Lisabet, when Phil and I made our move to San Diego recently, the apartment being smaller than our house, I had to ditch a ton of books - well, I gave them to the library or the Goodwill - so not really ditching them, but boy, it was hard to decide what to part with. The good thing is I can replace them with ebook copies on my Nook, so they're not entirely lost to me - but as cliched as this has become, there really isn't anything that can replace the feel of a book, the smell of ink and paper, even the mustiness of older copies. Books have been a major part of my life, more important than films or the telly certainly, and I get to work in a bookstore five days a week.  Life is good.
Sorry, this has been a bit rambly. Must be the time of year. Merry Christmas all!

Halfway Around the World, Halfway Through a Century

By Lisabet Sarai

I believe I've written before about my experience moving from the US to Asia. It took eighteen months for us to purge our houseful of possessions accumulated over more than twenty years, to decide what we couldn't bear to discard and had to bring with us. Those exhausting months made me vow to travel light for the remainder of my life, to avoid acquiring new material things and to jettison unnecessary possessions whenever possible. (A vow that's surprisingly tough to keep – but that's another blog post!)

Decisions about some items were easy. We didn't have any furniture worth saving. Appliances wouldn't run here anyway, due to the difference in electrical standards. Lots of what we'd accumulated only made sense if we owned a house that would need continuing maintenance, and we were pretty sure we'd never be in that position again.

Books, though – we had thousands of books. Maybe as many as ten thousand, if you included technical books used in our careers. Of course books weigh a great deal and take up significant space. And you can't really consider them en masse, as a category. You've got to examine each title and choose whether you care enough to keep it.

There were some volumes, though, that hardly required any deliberation. I had books I'd been carrying with me since childhood, or at least my early teens, and I wasn't going to ditch them just because I was about to move 12,000 kilometers. They'd had a place on my bookshelves in my college dorms, in my first apartment, in the group houses where I lived during graduate school, in the apartments my husband and I rented before we bought our house. These books had made a huge impression on me when I first read them, and I didn't want to give them up.

They're still on my bookshelves, half a world away from my place of birth and almost half a century since that event. In some cases (I realized when I pulled them out to write this post), they're not in very good condition. But then fifty years is a long time.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Louis Carroll

With eighty-nine illustrations by John Tenniel and four color plates by Edwin John Prittie

The John C. Winston Company, 1923

My family acquired this very soon after I was born, as part of a package deal that included a dozen “children's classics” along with the Encyclopedia Americana (which by the way remained on my shelves until we left the US, despite dating from 1953). The binding is broken on this volume and the inside covers are moisture-stained, but otherwise this favorite from my childhood is in remarkably good shape. I read these two tales over and over, fascinated by the weird logic and nonsense verse. At one point, I could recite the entire first chapter of Alice's Adventures from memory. However, I always preferred the darker and more dream-like Through the Looking Glass. Chess is a far more challenging game than cards.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1953

The date on this two volume hardcover set makes me wonder whether it too was acquired when I was born. If so, my parents showed remarkable foresight, as I probably didn't start reading Conan Doye's stories until I was ten or eleven. Shared reading formed a strong bond between my father and me, and we were both dedicated Sherlock Holmes aficionados. Of course I admired Holmes' intellect, aspiring to the same acuteness of observation and deductive facility. In addition, though, the brilliant, moody, anti-social detective stirred feelings that I now recognize as prepubescent lust. All my life I've been drawn to men of dark genius. Intelligence has always been far more likely to arouse me than physical attractiveness. I wonder if it all started with Holmes.

The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan

The Modern Library - 1940?

This book actually belonged to my mother. According to the inscription, it was a gift from her older sister on the occasion of her high school graduation. Although it wasn't on my personal shelves as I was growing up, it was always available for reference in one of the family bookcases. I'm pretty sure I took ownership of it when I went away to college. By that time, my mother was a functioning alcoholic and I was on the down slide into anorexia. Nobody would have noticed it was gone.

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner

Ballantine Books, 1960

Most likely you've never heard of this book. It's a fantasy, aimed at what would now be called the "young adult" audience. The book is set in the Welsh countryside and features prophecies, wizards, ghouls, trolls, dwarves and a brave brother and sister battling to save the world from evil. I still recall my first reading of this tale. Colin and Susan, the young protagonists, flee across a snow covered land, hiding from the flocks of crows wheeling overhead, spies for the wicked creature trying to recapture the Weirdstone. I felt true terror at their desperate situation. I could vividly imagine the sense of exposure, the fear of leaving tracks in the vast, open expanse of snow, the black patterns of the ill-omened birds against the bleak winter sky.

I recently reread the book, curious to see if it still could affect me. Of course the reactions of a sixty-year-old will never be as intense as those of a child, but the story still managed to evoke flickers of excitement and fear.

Ghosts by Ursula Perrin

Bantam Books, 1967

The date on this novel means I couldn't have read it until I was in high school. I have no recollection whatsoever where it came from. Perhaps I found it at a yard sale; there's a price written in pencil inside the cover (40 cents).

Ghosts is a coming of age story, a dream-like reminiscence of a teen aged girl's sexual awakening. I haven't re-read it in decades and I probably should, for it left an indelible impression on me. I doubt it is sexually explicit, but I know it captured the thrill, the confusion, the doubt, that surrounds one's first love/lust (as a teen, the two are inextricably intertwined). I fiercely identified with Eleanor – I was feeling exactly the same things.

I'm often moved to try to capture the heady, terrifying, overwhelming experience of teen lust myself. These days, however, you probably couldn't publish a book like Ghosts, because the protagonists were under eighteen.

I consider this a great loss.

Lilith by J.R. Salamanca

Simon & Shuster, 1961

This paperback I've retrieved from the shelves can't be the original that so fascinated me, despite its age. The inside cover lists a price of $2.50, penciled in above another annotation of 40 (cents?). Obviously this book has been around.

However, I know I read Lilith as a teen. This haunting tale of obsession captured me from the first sentence. “I grew up in a small Southern town which was different from most other towns because it contained an insane asylum.” I've always been intrigued by madness, perhaps because my father was a psychiatrist, perhaps because some members of my family occasionally acted insane. Salamanca's schizophrenic heroine Lilith conjures an exquisite and terrible other world. Little by little, her therapist Victor finds himself drawn into the dangerous but seductive realm created by her brilliant, disturbed mind.

Did I have an intuition then that I'd spend months in a psychiatric institution myself, before I reached the age of twenty? This seems unlikely, yet I like to play with the notion. Certainly, the juxtaposition between insanity and eroticism appealed to me. I've always suspected that “normality” is a dull set of requirements forced upon us by society. Being crazy might be a lot more interesting (though I wouldn't recommend my experience in the asylum).

In any case, I guess I lost my original copy of Lilith somewhere during my peregrinations. When I happened upon a used copy, I snapped it up. Because the book definitely deserves a permanent place on my shelves.

***

These days, after I read a print book, I tend to get rid of it. I'm trying to keep my vow, for one thing. For another, very few books I encounter have the impact of these early reads. I know that's partly because I was so young. After six decades of non-stop reading, I am a lot more difficult to impress.

As long as I have bookshelves, though, the titles above will have a spot – at least until they crumble to dust. And then, I'll probably go out and replace them.

Swan Song

by Amanda Earl

The topic this fortnight is music so it is fitting that I begin with a song. This is my swan song to Oh Get A Grip, meaning that this is my final post.

When Lisabet invited me to join the OGG blog, her timing was perfect. I had just returned to writing erotica in the summer of 2012 after a five-year hiatus.  Writing blog entries on topics of interest to erotica and romance readers gave me the opportunity to read contemporary erotica written by my peers and to explore the subject of writer's craft more thoroughly.

I think the idea of this blog is exceptional: to ask a group of writers to contribute their thoughts on the same topic over a fortnight. I was fascinated by the different approaches people took: whether it was the imaginative fiction of C. Sanchez Garcia, Jean Roberta's poignant posts about her history, Giselle Renarde's simpatico Canadian takes, Sacchi Green's and Lisabet Sarai's notes in reference to current erotica and the publishing industry, Daddy X's filthy and amusing flashers, Lily Harlem's and Desiree Holt's excerpts from recently published works and their positive and playful attitude to their writing, JP Bowie's anecdotes about various mishaps and incidents. I didn't always comment on every post, but I was always listening and learning. I thank my fellow bloggers for their insights, creativity, warmth and friendship.

And I thank you readers for your close attention and interest in my posts. I'm going to go back to solo blogging in 2014. I'm using the opportunity to pump up the poetry posts on my literary blog and shall be exploring various topics relevant to contemporary poetry. Hope to see you there. I also blog about sex, polyamory, culture and art over on Tumblr. You can find me on Twitter @KikiFolle & I update my site with current publications in fiction & poetry.

Just so I remain on topic, I have to say that music is an important inspiration for my writing, just as art is. Here's a link to a post I wrote in response to the subject of playlists on the blog of Canadian writer, Dani Couture.

I wish you all lust and love for 2014. I shall continue to read and follow Oh Get A Grip and I'm sure I'll have a saucy comment or two to add. Thanks once again to Lisabet for including me in this adventure. It's been a helluva ride.

Keep on Dancing, Yeah...

Keep on Dancing. … Yeah…

I remember, as a little kid, asking my father why songs always focused on ‘mushy stuff’ like love and kisses. Obviously, this was well before my little boy libido became fully operative ;>). He advised me that music was all about dancing and holding a girl. And dancing often led to love. It sufficed as an answer, for a while.

By the time I reached thirteen, having a girlfriend meant something quite wonderful. I was talked into going to my first school dance about then, and lo and behold! They encouraged us to hold each other. Holy shit, this was a pretty good deal. I figured I’d happened upon just about the greatest pastime in the world, and set out to become the best dancer I could be.

Throughout high school, I won quite a few dance contests. Girls who liked to get up on stage and shake what-she-got often wanted me as a partner. Even if we didn’t nail first place, we’d always make it to the finals. It served me well with the young ladies; I must say my dad had something going after all.

San Francisco’s party scene during the 60’s and 70’s almost always included dancing. I kept up my chops, out there showing others how it’s done. Well, speaking of done—yes, now that’s all done. The mind wants to jive, but the body says no.

I have to wonder how much our taste in music, or for that matter any art, relies on nostalgia. Earlier discussion around this topic explored synesthesia, the phenomenon that intertwines color, touch and auditory sensations. My memories tend to carry something I can only call a ‘flavor’. I suppose sense of place, sights, sounds, temperatures and drugs ingested engage our receptors as all-encompassing textures, moods, impressions, combining into a sensory mélange attributable to a particular time in life.

With that in mind, I offer you:

                        Aftermath, 70’s Style         Copyright 2012 Daddy X

The dancing had been spontaneous. Donny Hathaway laid out his soul in “The Ghetto.” Marvin Gaye, was givin’ it up on the vinyl 33’s. Havin’ a party. Boz Scaggs with his class band. King Curtis and Champion Jack Dupree, Live at Montreaux.

Sneaky Pete, drinkin’ water, get in the groove. When you gets ready everybody move…

The smell of pot permeated the apartment. Bottles of all sorts lay about in various degrees of empty. Many revelers had abandoned accepted social decorum and entered free-form dance expressions—raging, rocked-out hormones, swaying and jiving anywhere offering room to dig it. Somebody brought some Quaaludes.

James Brown told it like it was.

Get up! Get into it! Get involved!

Everybody rockin’.

A tall guy in a ponytail and tweed jacket caught my libidinous attention, though he didn’t appear the dancing type. I heard he was a poet—Evan something. He spoke with a natural confidence, conducting conversations of various topics with numerous revelers. An engaging presence, seemingly far beyond the others in intellectual acuity. Evan wore no facial hair. For all these things the man stood out.

Over the course of the evening, Evan had become, if not the life of the party, its soul. He’d engaged easily with strangers, interjecting common sense whenever the conversation became too far-out. I’d been lusting after him all night, my pussy moist and swollen with his words, concepts and chiseled looks.  

He’s a poetry man...

Dancing and flirting long exhausted, maybe eight or ten holdouts lay around in various stages of nodding off. We’d explored esoteric, important and poignant subjects for hours. Now we’re on the sofa, my legs across Evan’s lap. He and I the only ones still conscious, speaking in hushed tones so as not to wake the others.   

But now I sense his touch under my skirt, fingers pressing into my slick mound. Peering around to see that everyone’s still asleep, I push back into his hand.

‘It makes me fee ee ee eel …. aa alll right…’

He stretches alongside me, turning my face to the sofa back. “Shhh,” he whispers. “Bite into the pillow.”

Lifting a knee allows him access. Undies pulled aside, he slides into my grateful pussy from behind. His arm circles my waist. Gentle fingers find their way between my labia. We engage in a slow, silent challenge of a fuck, trying not to alert anyone of our indiscretion.

I emerge from my orgasm to the sound of a phonograph needle skipping regularly at the end of an album … thup … thup … my dry, whimpering mouth full of soggy cushion.  His breath warms my ear with his own release.

 

To our surprise, the music begins again. Boz Scaggs.

Angel Lady … Come just in time… 

Behind us, a pattering of applause erupts unexpected.

A 200wc version of “Aftermath 70’s Style” is in ERWA’s 2012 Treasure Chest. There’s very little reference to music and dancing in that version.

For this version, I’d like to thank:

Donnie Hathaway (deceased)

King Curits (deceased)

Champion Jack Dupree (deceased)

Marvin Gaye (deceased)

James Brown (deceased)

Phoebe Snow

Boz Scaggs

For the sound and feel of their lyrics, no matter how badly I’ve fucked them up.