Too Fast To Live

By Lisabet Sarai

She was a preacher’s daughter. Maybe that explains her wildness, that bright, crazy spark in her that drew me like a moth to a flame. On the other hand, it’s not as though her dad was a Bible-thumping fundamentalist. He led a progressive Congregational church in a liberal New England suburban community. Her parents trusted her, too—they gave her a good deal more freedom than mine gave me. Perhaps that was the core problem—too much energy, with too few rules.

History abounds with theories.

I loved Rebecca from the moment I met her, which I believe was in tenth grade when her family moved to town. She stood out in a crowd, taller than many of the boys in our class, big-boned but curvy, with a shimmering mane of platinum hair that reached to her waist. Although she wasn’t conventionally pretty—her face was too long, her mouth too big—you couldn’t take your eyes off her. Or, at least I couldn’t.

Like me, Rebecca belonged to the “intellectual” clique, the ones who were smart but not necessarily popular or stylish. With her scarves and her hats, she created a style of her own. She was an artist, a poet, a gourmet cook. I admired her accomplishments as much as I appreciated her physical attributes. Somehow everything seemed to come easily for her. Her breezy smile suggested that she never worried about grades the way I did, that she never agonized about whether the boys liked her (they did) or about where she’d go to college.

We worked together on the high school yearbook and the school literary review. We played together, to the extent my over-protective mother allowed. After the junior prom, a dozen of us converged on her house. Still in our gowns and tuxes, we sprawled on the carpet in front of her fireplace while she fed us miniature cherry tarts and sparkling cider. I remember feeling drunk, though I’m quite sure no alcohol was involved. I think it was lust, lust for my date, and thought I wouldn’t have recognized it then, lust for her.

The yearbook includes a candid photo of us taken in the shower: Rebecca, me, my brother Larry (younger than me by two years) and a male friend. We’re not naked, though you wouldn’t know that from the picture. She’s shampooing Larry’s hair, obviously laughing out loud. I’m behind her, wearing a manic grin. The story behind that photo isn’t nearly as outrageous as you might imagine. It was a hot summer night. To cool off, we’d been running through the lawn sprinkler in my backyard, in our bathing suits. The grass had been mowed that day, and bits of it were plastered all over our skin. A shower was the only option.

Still.

Where was my mother that night? I can’t imagine she would have sanctioned our crazy shenanigans. My first lover took the photo. Given that he was six years older than me, perhaps Mom thought he was adequate supervision.

Hah. Paul wasn’t any more mature than us high school kids.

I don’t think I was a virgin then, though it’s a bit difficult now to sort out the time line. I wonder about Rebecca. She sometimes roamed around with a rougher crowd than our group of passionate nerds. For some reason, despite our closeness, I never asked.

In those days, teenagers didn’t talk about sex. Not in my crowd.

After graduation, we all scattered to our various academic destinations. As I recall, Rebecca went to Colby. Meanwhile, struggling with anorexia, I dropped out of college after six weeks.

I was in the hospital, living a kind of dazed half-life, when I heard the news about Rebecca. Home for Thanksgiving break, she’d met a bloody end in a car accident, on one of the back roads at the edge of town. I remembered driving those roads, the summer before, with her perched in the open window, hanging out into thin air, yelling into the wind.

At least that’s the picture I have now. Maybe it’s just my imagination. Anorexia really messed up my memory.

They let me out of the hospital to attend the memorial service, which was held in the stately gray stone edifice where her father presided. All my high school friends were there, a tragic holiday reunion. Anorexia numbs your emotions, except as far as food is concerned. I recall a dull ache of sadness, not the sharp pangs of grief I should have felt at the loss of a close friend. Perhaps in some way my pathological calm was a blessing.

What I didn’t feel was shock. Intellectually I knew Rebecca was much too young to die, but she’d been streaking through life so fast that I wasn’t surprised she’d burned herself out.

I’d always thought of her as a person who really understood how to enjoy life. When I went back to read the last poem of hers that I’ve kept, I saw that I might have been wrong. The title is “Desperation”. It’s full of dark imagery, much of it linked to the church.

She never showed me that darkness. I’m not sure I could have helped her, anyway. I was just blind, innocent, and in love.

Rebecca has been gone almost forty five years now. Still, she shows up every now and again in my stories. I’ve written a couple of heroines with her hair and others with her Amazonian build. More fundamentally, although she and I never had any sort of physical relationship, I recognize now that my enchantment with her contained a powerful sexual element. In a sense, every time I write a Sapphic tale, I’m drawing on my feelings for Rebecca.

What sort of person would she have been, if she’d lived? Would she and I still be friends? (I’m still connected with a handful of my high school mates, across the years and the miles.) Most tantalizing of all, would we have ever consummated the sort of relationship I craved but didn’t understand?

Probably not. She was, after all, a minister’s daughter.

But you never know.

With Love and Gay Pride

by Jean Roberta, roving reporter

Hello, fans of the LGBTQ (or GLBTgenderfuck2spiritwhatever) press. Remember when the fashionable way to sign any letter or email was “with love and gay pride?” That seems to have faded, but I’m proud to say that a pride has volunteered to be interviewed in their home in Africa.

JR: Simba, are you the only male in your family unit?

Simba: No, we have some male cubs, but I’m the head of the household. Every group needs a leader.
(All the females show their teeth while making a sound somewhere between a growl and a snicker.)

JR: So what does a typical day look like for all of you?

Nala: Lazy-ass here stays home with the cubs while we hunt. We still have meat from our last kill, so today we get a day off.

Simba: I organize the hunting parties.

Nala: As if! I’m the head female.

Lucy: Uh, Nala, that depends on what you mean by ‘head.’ Hello! We’re female lions. We know how to hunt.



Simba: Little human, we have typical mammal families. I dominate my harem and father all the cubs.
(More growling/snickering from the females.)

Nala (in a condescending tone): You’re a good lay and a good dad, Simba. That’s why we feed you.

Lucy: We like having a token male with us. He can babysit when we need time away from the cubs.

Patches: But not all of us want to be moms.

Lucy (insinuating): You’re good at something else, Patches.

Patches: You know it.

Nala: Human, you should spend a day with us so you can learn how real families function in the wild. You humans have such an unnatural culture.

Snaggle-Tooth: One male for one female. What’s up with that?

Lucy: I couldn’t cope. (All the females shake their heads.)

JR: Um, well, some of us have alternative lifestyles.

Nala: It’s about time. Do you hunt?

JR: Only for packaged meat in the grocery store.
(All the females look aghast.)

Snaggle-Tooth: What do you do with your bottled-up energy? Everyone knows females are more aggressive than males. It’s only natural.

Patches: But look at her claws. Useless, if you ask me.

JR: They’re not for hunting. I keep them short for mating.
(All the lions look at the interviewer.)

Simba (apparently clueless): Human mating habits must be very strange. I would like to meet the male of your pride. I’ve seen documentaries about human families.

Nala (sarcastic): You know so much, Simba.

Simba (to JR, as if this just occurred to him): I hope you’re not a Christian. We kill them.

JR: I’m not.

Lucy: There’s hope for you, she-human. When you tell the other humans about us, make sure you tell them to leave us alone. We’re not hurting them.

Patches: More species should live like us.

JR: I’ll pass it on. And thank you all for sharing your lives with me. Some of us had no idea.
-----------------

Pride and Joy

by Annabeth Leong

I first encountered her at the tobacco shop and wine bar on the downtown strip. I was technically too young to be in there, but no one questioned me. I smoked Gauloises in an effort to seem sophisticated, but I've always contained too much innocence to hide things like the way she made me feel. She was olive-skinned and tall, strong-jawed and gorgeous. All that faded, though, when the song came.

I was a little girl when Stevie Ray Vaughan first sang that song, so I didn't learn it from him. I learned it from this woman, and the sound of its opening bars is inextricably associated with the thrilling shock of hearing her belt out these words about a female lover. I've heard plenty of women sing songs that way now, taking the words written by a man and not changing them to make them "right," but at the time the audacity seemed incredible. Hearing her declare herself "her little loverboy" opened my eyes to something I'd never been able to describe.

I was obsessed and foolish. The town was small, and I could hear and recognize her voice from a block away. I could walk up and down the downtown strip and listen for it. I could hang out after a show and hope she'd say that I could ride with her to the all-night diner. I could wish for a kiss that never came, wonder if the truth that seemed to live inside her singing voice also lived within her heart. Was this all a ploy, or was there something being confessed here?

***

"You could be friends with women, but you sleep with them, too." The therapist's voice was faintly accusing, and my mind could fill out the rest just fine on its own. I was a slut who slept with too many men, but I was worse than that because I slept with women, too. Not only that, the fact that I wanted to sleep with women was ruining my friendships, making me untrustworthy.

This wasn't only the therapist's idea. I'll never forget the school trip where the girls protested about having to share a room with me. I remember the girls who wouldn't come over to my house and the places I wasn't invited. And before that, I remember other untrustworthy women—the aunt who was only whispered about, her name never mentioned except in tones of disgust, because she'd left my uncle to be with women; the friend of my mother's who had destroyed their connection by declaring her love.

And later, my constant feeling of being a spy. "What's there to worry about?" someone would say as she whipped off her shirt. "It's just us girls."

All that is shame, not pride. All that is grief, not joy.

They were mixed up together for so long. I remember the first time I woke up with a girl, my heart pounding in fierce celebration of everything we'd discovered the night before. We drove around and did ordinary things, but the world was no longer ordinary. I was in her car! She was breathing next to me! But then she almost hit the car in front of us, and it felt like a divine warning that we'd better not get too cocky.

After she left, I wrote in my diary, "I had real sex last night," and then I ripped out the page, tore it to bits, and burned it because I was afraid of my mother discovering it in the trash. It makes me sad to think of that. I wish I had the record of that morning. I remember the painstaking care I took trying to describe my fear and excitement.

***

I feel unqualified to take this twist on this topic. Apart from the gay sex, I've lived most of my life as straight. That's the punchline to a joke somewhere, right?

I once made a girl fall in love with me by buying her a bottle of her favorite scent, which was hard to find before the internet. She was on vacation, and I went to store after store looking for it. When she got back, I wrote her a note to go with the bottle, in which I said, "I wanted to tell the cashier, 'I'm buying this for my GIRLFRIEND.'" She melted and told me that was exactly the right thing to say. But a week later, I had freaked out and locked myself away with a boy.

I could be bold, but I was too cowardly for pride. I was sure that all my desires were wrong—not just the ones for women, but all the things I thought about while I got myself off.

If there's anything that does qualify me to write this way, it's this: I understand why pride is necessary. I have torn myself and others up with shame. I have let people use the word "they" around me, both because I was afraid I didn't belong and because I was afraid I did.

***

"She's shaking." People love to point it out, I think because it's cute to them. But yeah, I'm shaking. I'm on my knees in front of a woman at a BDSM convention.

"I'm shaking because I want this so much," I tell her. I feel like her little loverboy.

What nobody knows is that when I sit back down after it's over, I keep shaking for the next hour. The person next to me tells me, "That was sweet," and all I can do is nod. I go home and lie in bed and shake. For days, I shake whenever I think about it. I'm shaking right now.

***

I'm still not sure what to call myself. The first time I wrote about this subject at The Grip, someone on Twitter described my writing as queer, and I jumped all over that as if, like Adam, they could name me. That felt like permission, and I desperately needed permission.

To me, having a name does matter. If something is a pride and joy, it's got a name. The things I'm afraid to name are things bound up with shame.

And there is something about wearing a thing in public, which I still struggle to do. It was truly dangerous where I used to live. The girls I slept with back then—when we went out together, we pretended to be friends. Then later, I just pretended to be friends.

There was a woman I loved who was my pride and joy. Whenever people realized we'd showed up somewhere together, I wanted to grin and brag. Being in her car, her house, having plans with her—my heart grew larger from every little thing. But I didn't want to touch her. Not like that. I would tell you if you asked. I would cry and swear to it. It was only after I lost all claim to her that I had to admit what I wished the claim had been.

It is only recently that I have been wearing this out in public, making it clear about myself in various ways, spoken and gestured. I volunteered to run an LGBTQ meetup for an event a participate in. I may not be able to say which of those letters is mine, but I'm damn sure one of them is. I feel sheepish about all this, embarrassed to admit how the once-ordinary world is changing around me, afraid that if I confess to the perfect peace in my heart it might come out the wrong way.

It's not that I don't care about specific people, because I do, but it's also not as simple as being struck down by love. I wanted to walk down the street without hiding and being afraid. Pride and joy, even if I'm shaking again.

Him Being Proud

by Daddy X

A tall buck-toothed stranger clomps up to the bar wearing tight jeans, western shirt, boots, a cowboy hat and myopic-thick glasses. “Where’s all the poontang?” he hollers.

“Friend,” I say, “right now it’s mostly guys gettin’ off work, but you just made happy hour.”

“How much?”

“Dollar drafts. Till six.”

“Three, then.”

“Three beers? All at once?”

“Gonna cost me more in ten minutes?”

“Yep. Two-twenty-five each.”

“Line ‘em up!”

“Okay. Here you go. Three beers—three bucks.”

He slaps a roll of bills on the bar—a fifty in plain sight up top—digs in his pocket and proceeds to count out two dollars in small change. He then extracts a wrinkled single from the middle of the roll. “We’re square,” he says.

“Gee thanks, pal.” There wouldn’t be a tip.

“Any cunts ever come in?”

“Yeah, ladies do come ‘round most nights. Start filterin’ in ‘bout seven, seven-thirty.”

“They like to fuck?”

“Well, maybe. But you gotta have the right line, man. Else, go scare up one o’ them bony-ass hookers over by the bowling alley.”

“Me? Pay for pussy? I don’t think so.”

“And why’s that?”

“On account of cunts’s always beggin’ me to fuck them. I be famous for my fuckin’.”

So I go around back and phone a neighborhood gal. “Yo Delores. Wanna make some quick scratch? Got a humdinger over here.”

Sure enough, towards the end of the guy’s third beer, ‘ol Delores sashays her fine self through the door, girl all spillin’ out her halter and little cut-offs. I twitch a thumb towards the fool.

She slinks up to his sorry ass. “Hi handsome!”  

He says, “Umm… uhh… err… shucks, lady… uhh… uhh… umm...”

The Irrelevance of Pride by Suz deMello

This theme has been a tough one for me to write about because the subject has absolutely no relevance to me.

Yes, I know it's one of the seven deadly sins but I fail to see how it can be deadly.

Pride has to do with how one appears to others as well as to ourselves. A modicum of pride is really self-esteem, isn't it? And I require respect from others. Requiring others to treat me with respect isn't pride, but self-protection.

So for me, the term "pride" has been translated into other, more relevant terms.

It's interesting that I can't write about it because I do manage to put myself into the heads of characters that aren't much like me at all. I suppose that the two sheiks I wrote about for Silhouette Books (a defunct divison of Harlequin) were proud. One was so proud that he plotted revenge for fifteen years against a man who'd bested him. (Okay, maybe he wasn't merely proud but psychopathic). The other one was just kind of a schmuck, but of course, through the love of the heroine he was transformed into a pretty good guy.

To make up for my lack of inspiration, here are a few visual interpretations of "pride":

image by Marie-Lan Nguyen 

image by Benh LIEU SONG

Bosch's The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things - Pride
I have enough self-esteem (a.k.a. pride?) to admit I don't understand this artwork.

image by Alex Pronove (alexcooper1)

I hope you enjoyed the images and didn't need any insights into pride.

Pride and Passion

Sacchi Green

For a day and a half or so, I thought I’d be all set to hold forth here on the subject of pride, or at least to report something I could feel proud of, whether warranted or not. As it turns out, though, when I read the fine print—i.e. the contract—I realized that some changes needed to be made, and they won’t be made—or refused—until today (Monday) or later. Nothing really major, I think, but we’ll see. A contract suitable for a single-author book doesn’t always work for a multi-author anthology.

So, in spite of having been offered an editing gig that would once have represented the pinnacle of achievement to me (at least in my little corner of the erotica genre,) and still looks well worth doing, I need to seek out a different approach to the theme of pride. And, of course, the harder I seek, the more complexities I bump up against.

Is feeling proud fundamentally wrong, as we sometimes learn, or can you get away with it if you call it self-respect? Then there’s “Blessed are the meek,” and I really can’t argue with that. If “pride goes before a fall,” it’s better to be the observer of that particular dramatic scene rather than the lead character. Most of us can enjoy a bit of Schadenfreude, as long we’re not the butt of it. Still, if we can’t be proud of our achievements, where’s the incentive for achieving them?

Maybe the answer is that feeling proud of one’s achievements is okay, but the kind of pride that makes one person feel superior to most others is questionable.  I’m not proud of myself—there are too many things I haven’t done as well as I should have—but I’m proud, or at least not ashamed, of some difficult things I did step up and do about as well as anyone could.

But I’d rather talk about stories than keep on with pointless navel-gazing. From the earliest legends and traditions we’ve been fascinated by stories of pride, and by no means chiefly ones culminating in a fall. Gods, heroes, royalty, people with inherent pride, bred in the bone. Pride in their ancestors, their traditions, a noble sort of pride that includes responsibility for those under their rule. We may get a bit twitchy about the classism in books like The Lord of the Rings, but we still cheer for Aragorn to take up the proud role that is his by birth.

When it comes to erotica—you knew where I was going, right?—we can get hot for confident, strong, proud characters, mostly male, it’s true, but some of us can appreciate strong, proud women as well. Wait, don’t stop reading yet! The excerpt I’m about to include has both. I do write straight sex from time to time, and I know whereof I write. This particular story was published under my alter-ego’s name, Connie Wilkins, in Hot Highlanders and Wild Warriors, edited by Delilah Devlin for Cleis Press.

This excerpt comes from near the end, so a bit of context might be in order. (I think I posted a bit from the beginning a while back when we discussed some other theme, and maybe this part as well, so apologies if I’m repeating myself.) Ardzvik is the hereditary Lady of Aragatsotn in Armenia, and Yul Dharuga is the Mongol General appointed Governor of Georgia and Armenia by Batu Khan of the Golden Horde. Proud Ardzvik would prefer to fight to the death, but to save her people she offers the fealty of her Province, previously sworn to the deposed Georgian kings, to the Mongols, so that taxation can substitute for bloodshed. At this point in the story she has been hosting Yul, and felt drawn to him, but pride is still so much a part of her that a dramatic chance encounter shatters her self-control, and rage bursts through.
_________________________________________
 
A Falcon in Flight

The next morning Ardzvik rose early after tortured dreams. Never had she needed the solace of the mountain and her falcon more. Bakhshi carried her with Zepyur tethered to her leather hawking glove along trails and then trackless reaches until his mistress was sure they could not be followed, and then she dismounted, slipped the hood from Zephyur’s head, and loosed the bird to the breeze.

Today she had brought her bow in hope of flushing larger game than the falcon could hunt. Wild goats were often seen at this height, and even boar might come to root among the tubers of mountain flowers. She pulled off her leather glove and kept an arrow at the ready, but her mind was not focused as much on the outer world as on her inner one.

Why did she yearn so for a man who might well not want her, or, if he did, might value her title more than her body? And if he wanted golden-haired Leyli, how could Ardzik bear it? Their father had not wed Leyli’s mother, but he had acknowledged the child, and if Ardzvik bore no heir one of Leyli’s would be accepted as ruler of Aragatsotn. Illegitimacy was not such a barrier in the ancient traditions of this land.

It was the begetting of children that obsessed Ardzvik now, not the bearing of them. She wanted this one man and no other, foreigner, destroyer, conqueror though he might be. She had known a mare who would let no stallion mount her save the one of her own choice. The horse had broken out, gone to her chosen mate in spite of her owner’s different plan, and their offspring had turned out to be the finest the herd had ever known. Perhaps bodies knew things that minds did not. 
  
Ardzvik’s mind might be preoccupied by her treacherous body’s needs, but her eyes caught the hitch in her falcon’s flight and her ears caught the changed sound of the bells on the bird’s ankle. Suddenly Zepyur was not hunting, but fleeing. A great white hawk more than half again her size rose over the mountain’s shoulder. 

A falcon of the north! A female Gyrfalcon! Not native here, but the royal family of Georgia had possessed one when Ardzvik was a child, and she had seen it hunt. It was clearly hunting now.
Zepyur twisted and dived, eluding her pursuer again and again, but the other gained ground each time. Ardzvik shouted and raised her bow. Something moved below on the mountainside, but she had no time to look. Zepyur dived again, opening space between herself and her pursuer, and Ardzvik’s arrow sped sure and true—until another’s arrow met it in flight, and both spun together toward the earth.

Arsdvik whistled for her bird and quickly donned the hawking glove. Another whistle, yet more piercing, came from somewhere below. Zepyur soared to her mistress and perched, quivering, on the thick leather gauntlet. The white intruder glided down past the man whose dun horse raced up the steep slope, to land on the arm of a second rider following more slowly.

Yul Darugha gave a roar in a language Ardzvik did not understand, though the words were clearly curses. She swiftly hooded Zepyur, stroked her feathers to calm her, and set her to perch on a rock in a sheltered hollow, tethered to a wiry shrub. Bakhshi grazed nearby, the sounds of his browsing familiar enough to reassure the hawk.

Ardzvik advanced toward the approaching man, another arrow at the ready. Her heart still pounded from her sudden terror for her hawk, but fear had transmuted into a glorious, intoxicating fury.

He leapt from his horse, bow in hand, and ran toward her, coming to a sudden stop as she raised her own weapon in warning.

“You…if you…when I saw that it was you…” His deep voice cracked. “If you had killed my gyrfalcon, with my falconer as witness…” He stopped for breath. “I would have had no choice! You know that!”

“I aimed between them to distract your bird,” she retorted in a cold rage. “If she did not veer off the next arrow would have found her heart. And if your arrow had killed my falcon…”

“I aimed between them as well,” he said, his voice steadier now.

Ardzvik clung to her anger, reveled in it, allowed it to spark from ice into fire. “For the sake of my people I surrendered my province, but this is my own land! Here I will stand and fight!”

Yul Darugha’s eyes lit with a flame that was not anger. He set down his bow and shouted a command to his falconer waiting below. The old man shook his head doubtfully but moved away with the gyrfalcon on his arm and was soon out of sight.

“So there is a she-wolf in you after all! When I first saw you I thought--I hoped--but I could not be sure.”

“A she-wolf?” Ardzvik’s laugh was scornful. “Look higher. My name means “eagle” in the old tongue. I am Lady of Aragatsotn, and more. My mother’s line is said to be of those warriors from the lands beyond the Black Sea called Amazons by the Greeks.” True, only the oldest grandmothers said this, but Ardzvik still felt it to be true. “I will defend my own!”

“I see in you that warrior girl who haunts my memory.” Yul spoke now not as the Mongol Darugha but as a man who needs no title between himself and the woman he desires. “It is she I dreamed of, before last night, and then it was you. The only prize worth winning.”

The heat of Ardzvik’s anger flowed effortlessly into arousal, but she did not forsake her proud stance. “How can you be so sure of me? Was she not naked, that warrior girl?”

He stepped forward; she stepped back. Her own hand drew the rough tunic over her head and loosed the drawstring of the men’s trousers she wore for hunting. Her strong, slim body stood bared to the summer sun, and to his burning gaze.

Just as he reached for her she stepped forward into his embrace, rejoicing in the rumble deep in his chest and the arms far stronger than her own that raised her up off her feet to crush her against him. His mouth pressed hard on hers, then moved into the hollows of her neck and over her shoulders in a frenzy of hunger for her flesh. When he lifted her yet higher to taste her firm breasts, she gasped and cried out and forced his head and mouth ever harder against them.

At last, needing more, and yet more, Ardzvik scrabbled at the jerkin of overlapping leather disks that left his muscular arms bare but kept her from rubbing against his chest. 
“Are you more shy of the sun than I?” she panted. In seconds his clothing was heaped along with hers. They rolled together atop this pile or onto nearby tufts of harsh grass, scarcely noting the difference.

At first Ardzvik rode Yul, her long dark hair flailing across his body as she savored the exquisite joy of easing inch by inch onto his great length and breadth. Men were more like stallions than she had ever dreamed! Then he growled low, lurched atop her, and thrust deep and hard. Her hips arched upward to take him in still deeper. Her passage gripped him, yet let him slide in its wetness just enough to drive her to a peak of intensity close to madness. Sounds burst from her that were not words, and from him as well, until all she could hear was her own voice rising in a cry of triumph, her body wrenched by joy.

But Yul, she saw, when she could focus on anything outside herself, was braced above her on stiffened arms, face twisted, jaw grimly set, the cords of his neck standing out like tree roots. “I must…” he forced out the words. “I would not get a bastard on you!” He struggled to lift his great weight from her, to withdraw.

“Then you had better wed me!” Ardzvik cried. “I will have now what is mine!” Need surged in her again. She dug her hands into his clenched buttocks, gripped him close, and tightened her inner walls about his hardness until he had no words at all, only rough groans accelerating into a mighty roar. That sound, and the hot fierce flow of his seed, sent her into a second spasm of joy.
___________________________________

So there you go. Pride and Passion. Excuse me while I go change the title of my post, which wasn't quite as alliterative as this one.
 

Pride

Spencer Dryden

Pride

This will be my last post with OGG.

Two thoughts come to mind about pride. First is Proud. I am proud of my accomplishments as a writer. It's really been a delightful surprise. I expected it to take years to become a published author. I have been at this for three years. I was published in two anthologies the first year I started writing.

I have approached writing the same way I approached acquiring handyman skills-to learn as I go. I'm still improving as a handyman, but you'd be hard pressed to find one better. I started with simple projects. I've definitely grown as a writer. I'm writing simple little stories now but working on longer, more involved pieces.

 I've also followed the advice of my mentor who told me to write the stories I want to hear, the way I want to hear them. I stay pretty close to what I know. Thankfully, I have connected with a couple of great critique partners and later, two sharp eyed editors at Breathless Press and Fireborn Publishing. 

My first release with Fireborn, Hand Job, is about an aspiring erotic writer/handyman who fantasies about a barista at his local coffee shop begin to materialize. Today, Breathless Press is releasing my most likely last story with them (they are going to all print over 50,000 words).  The Substitute is the story of a plumber who discovers his buddy's business is about delivering more than plumbing services to an exclusive female clientele.
 

My other thought about Pride is something you swallow occasionally. The shift from writer to published author comes with the requirement of 'building a platform', promotion, marketing or what ever you call it. The skills necessary to build visibility, and hence sales, are quite different from those required of a writer. I have invested the last year working on building visibility by all the usual routes, including posting here at OGG, doing over three dozen guest blog posts and endless waiving my arms on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. But it has come at the expense of writing. Most of the material I have published in the last year was written before my ascension to the status of published author. Several of the stories languished for months at that Cave we have discussed here.

My writing regimen requires much more quiet and focus. I can't hear the muse above all the noise of the marketplace. I m so amazed by writers who can segregate their lives, continuing to put out quality material while tirelessly promoting themselves and others. The swallowing part, I can't work that way and there is no shame in it. It's just who I am as a writer.

I have found the biweekly requirement of OGG  too taxing to continue. The idea of designing, feeding and maintaining my own blog is out of the question. I'm not so sure the personal blog is a successful a promotional tool anymore. I think it worked well for established writers ten years ago, but it's not the present or the future of promotion. Lately my efforts have been at reaching potential readers directly though mainstream platforms like The Good Men Project. (A troublesome label but a noble effort. It implies a kind of superiority that makes me uncomfortable. It is, after all, a value judgment. There are editors and contributors there who think that an erotic writer is about the worst thing an 'enlightened' man could be.)

The other insidious thing about being a published author is the pull from internal to external validation. Handyman work is internally validating. Frequently, my clients don't fully appreciate the skill involved with my work. Writing for me is also internally validating. I write best when I am simply entertaining myself. As an author I have been too easily seduced by the idea that sales are the validation of my work— a recipe for self destruction.

It's been a great honor to be among such talented people, but I am anxious to make a bit of a retreat and reconnect with my roots. Thanks especially to Lisabet Sarai who has been a friend, promoter and gentle critic.

Best wishes to all of you.

 

How To Make Me Cry

by Giselle Renarde

If you've ever done Wai Lana yoga at 5 in the morning, you'll know she plays yoga sounds at the end of each episode. Every so often, she plays one that is, as far as I can tell, a variation of this verse from the Siksastaka (a Hindu prayer):

One should chant the holy name of the Lord in a humble state of mind,

thinking oneself lower than the straw in the street;

one should be more tolerant than a tree,

devoid of all sense of false prestige,

and ready to offer all respect to others.

The variation goes something like this (I'm working from memory, here):

One should approach yoga in a humble state,

thinking oneself lower than the straw in the street,

devoid of all false prestige,

and ready to offer all respect to others,

without ever expecting any in return.

Every time I hear those words, they just fucking BREAK me. Strangely enough, a later verse of the Siksastaka says,

Tears are flowing from my eyes like torrents of rain,

and I am feeling all vacant in the world in Your absence.

That's exactly what happens every time I hear that instruction in humility.

And why?

Well, maybe the fact that it's 5:30 in the morning and I haven't slept has something to do with it, but I think it's more about PRIDE.

I aspire to compassion and humility, but those aren't really qualities that are bred into us in North America. Even here in Canada, where we happen to be particularly self-effacing, we're still raised to be proud and strong and to command respect. And if commanding doesn't work, you DEMAND it.

Having grown up in a household plagued by violence and addiction, I always felt like I had to work SO HARD to advocate on my own behalf, and PROVE MYSELF in a world that might otherwise write me off. I had to show my teachers how SMART I was, how GOOD I was, how I could SUCCEED despite every impediment I'd faced. I had to prove I deserved respect.

I've come a long way since then. I'm educated now. I'm self-sufficient, I have a career that I love, and I spent ten years of my life volunteering with children who faced the same obstacles I did at that age. I don't know if I'm respected by all (in fact, I'm sure I'm not), but I do respect myself. Maybe that's the key.

Even so, all it takes to break me down into a sobbing heap is the suggestion that I might give up even an ounce of my stupid pride. It doesn't take much to get my hackles up. It doesn't take much to get me feeling superior to others. Gee, it's tiring being so much better than everyone else...

I'm a pendulum swinging from helpful good intentions to steely self-righteousness when I feel like people are taking advantage. 

I don't want to feel challenged or threatened. I don't want to be angered. When I encounter someone with a dominating or demeaning personality, I only want to feel compassion for them. I want to show respect for their journey, and understand that they didn't arrive where they are in a vacuum.

How do I get from here to there? How do I get to a place where I can just abandon every drop of my pride?

I want to be lower than straw in the street.

But, man, it's not easy...

My latest release is Sapphic Confessions

The Thing Itself

I’m trying, at this moment, to imagine myself as a woman.

Not as a transgender, no, not as a female character in a story, no. I’m trying to imagine how life would be different if I were to wake up one morning and find that, without explanation, I had changed overnight into a natural woman. I enjoy being a man.  I take a certain pride in my maleness, which I find over the years is in danger of souring into simple, fearful vanity.  I’m curious these days as to the definition of manliness and what defines a man in his own eyes.

So I do thought experiments to take the thing in hand and run a light through it from different angles.  Let’s ask -

 How does my male body feel as I write this?

 I am sitting in my favorite coffee shop, with a cold cup of coffee, sitting on a beach towel folded under my tiny ass, placed on a hard chair with my legs crossed. Even my wife laughs at my tiny ass.  It is probably the least sexy male ass in the known universe.  It cannot be saved.  Sitting with crossed knees, if I flex my thighs a little I can feel the answering bulge of my balls down there, my friendly and familiar dick which would like to be scratched a little. My clothes are manly clothes, except for my tighty whities.  There is my wristwatch, metal, big, self consciously masculine in its brusque design as though I might turn it into a weapon. My full beard, like a Civil War general, which I have to color a lot, itches; I reach up and scratch it a little, run my fingers through it, savoring its beastly hairiness, wondering how it might tickle the inside of a woman’s thighs. The side burns reaching from my ears to my mouth are of a different quality from the hair of my chin, a trait which varies from man to man. My sideburn hair is soft and of the same material as what hair survives on the top of my head. The mustache and beard is thick, rough and wiry, like the beard of a schnauzer dog, made of pubic hair. I wonder, if when women look at my face, do they see a ring of glossy salt and pepper pubic hair under my nose and what would they think of that? I have an unconscious habit of twining my fingers in my pubic hair beard and twisting it in a Gandalfesque manner when I am reading or sincerely lost in thought. Women grimace and slap my hand away when I do that. Always, I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s because it looks like I’m playing with my pubic hair.  It sheds on my keyboard. 

I have a beard from male vanity because I have a weak chin like a frog and a beard gives me some jaw definition. I have discovered that male barbers cannot trim a man’s beard competently.  Only lady barbers can.  I will only trust my beard to a woman.  With a male barber you can sit down in the chair looking like a philosopher and walk out looking like a mean drunk.

I am conscious of my belly, though for my age it isn’t too bad. When I stand naked in the shower I look down to make sure I can still see my dick. That’s the standard.  I say if a man can’t see his dick, he needs to lose.

I’m not especially proud of my dick.  I do love my dick and feel sentimental affection for it.  No other thing has been such a constant source of pleasure to me for the past 50 years except the Beatles.  It is a friendly, handsome, non-threatening, circumcised dick, with a brown freckle under the frenulum which I was once worried was cancer but was not; an unassuming penis which sex books assure me ladies don’t care that much about the size of, which, nevertheless, according to a survey in Playboy magazine during the 1980’s is of perfectly average size when erect for an American male and slightly on the thick side which I think is more serviceable for a woman than mere length.  This same survey also noted that American men on average have far larger dicks than Japanese men.  During a time when the Japanese were eating our lunch in the export market, it was nice to know we still had them beat at something.

I wonder how a woman experiences her orgasm.  I’ve asked women about this.  I do know how a man experiences orgasm. There is first the dicky, iffy-stiffy process of erection. As a young man it was unpredictable and sudden.  As you get older it becomes unpredictable and treacherous. Once you’ve got the proud thing up and running, changing positions or an unkind word is enough to drop it.  What women often don’t know about a man’s erection is that he has no more control over it than a sneeze. It is something the body does, almost magically, not on command but in response. When a woman is with her man and he is becoming erect, his body, not his intellect, is making a statement about how he feels about her in this moment. Emphatic as an exclamation point, urgent as a knife, he feels it bloom and grow large beneath him as if it were a separate thing with a life of its own. If I were to stop typing and bring my imagination into the right place, it might bloom for me down there below the table, but it would never be a willful decision like making a fist or throwing a ball.

What does an erection feel like?

As it rises and swells, there is a sense of pressure, followed by a profound sense of presence.  It is THERE, right there demanding your attention, this thing you don’t think about much except when you have to pee. There is a feeling of pleasure when the pressure is touched or stroked, capable of being kindled into a kind of urgent flame that persuades. Persuades and seduces a man into feeling this hungry, needy pressure is more important than being on time for work, or cutting the grass, or going to sleep, or getting out of bed, or if he’s with the wrong woman, maybe worth throwing his life away for. 

 When touched, it wants to be touched more, but whereas women prefer a gentle touch, a man’s phallus longs for pressure. Pressure wants pressure. It wants to be in motion, to be active, a hunting hound dog, a pressurized steam engine of thrust. This rapid ascent towards something through pressure and motion persuades a man that this is what he wants, the sweet, sweet, sweet pressure which demands release and relief and there is something else too, an experience which is closed off to women. The experience of penetrating the offered body of another human being, to cross the abyss of the lonely solitude of the flesh we experience the world in and piercing that abyss like a lance.

 There is something about the act of sex which on the surface is so primitive, so undignified in its animal naturalness, so wonderful and so different from everything else that a man’s life is forever divided between life lived before that moment he experiences his first act of insertion and all of his life after. There is pride in taking up the manly posture and joining that elite half of humanity who can state with noble frankness – “I have fucked.”

There is also this other moment, if you are a man of some experience and not a boy.  This moment just when you are about to insert yourself into another person, it is a feeling of the most exquisite anticipation; you wait and linger to keep that moment for yourself, hovering before the hairy gates of paradise.  Then the beginning the act - the tip touches, maybe in the wrong place and if the woman is kind she will take that sweet high pressure pole in hand, give it a friendly squeeze, and guide it in like a ship to port. Then you acquire the offered place down there which you want so badly to see and admire your stiff dick disappearing as you hit the spot, there in the light of the nightstand lamp, or scented candle, or dashboard, or the moon, or the policeman’s flashlight, that spot which is the ravenous black hole at the center of your male universe, wet, snug, but it’s yours to love for a moment.  Because men want to see.  We want to see everything.

A little press and the sensitive tip goes in. You might hold it there, feeling it cradled in that wet hugging space, feeling the sense of openness and waiting and welcome. Holding yourself suspended while your heart thumps, trying to calm down to make it last, you don’t even want to come, you just want to feel yourself inside this woman forever, feeling the moment in the act of beginning. To see the woman’s breasts, you must see her breasts, if she’s turned around with her ass to you, you must absolutely reach over and take them in your hands and feel their heft and warmth, and all women’s breasts are gorgeous and succulent in that moment, to feel her belly or her ass touching yours, her eyes half closed, languidly if it’s that kind of a night. And as you press in, feeling the warm and easeful, endless deepness, slicking its way up the stiffened length of your shaft, not feeling the tip so much like the prow of a ship cutting the waves, as this snug embracing welcome taking you in and in and into that sweet mystery until your hairs meet and you come up pressing into the well of her flesh and can go no deeper, and that moment to me always seems like a miracle. If God almighty were to ask me what the greatest thing in all the world is, I would answer in a flash it is to experience union with woman.  To be inside.  It is that moment.  To press yourself so deeply inside her, and she maybe puts her arms around you, presses her hands against your ass to get that last inch nice and snug, all the way in, wanting all of it, enjoying you, and if you’re both having a good night, and if you’ve been patient and fired her desire exactly right with a manly seduction posibly carried over days, then a lavish and patient and savoring amount of oral sex for her, she may come when she feels you there inside and bestow on you woman’s great gift – a vaginal hug.  The lovely secret squeeze of her sex around your wanted penis.  There is a pride and thrill in being enjoyed so by a woman.

 The orgasm for a man, is of rising, building up, creating a scaffold of aggressive sensation, the monkey awareness of reaching that moment of no return when your head feels light and the explosion is rippling up the length of your shaft like a great wave rising fast to crash into the rocks of her pudendum and now this wave is pulsing forward and out, pulsing and holding you in the grip of that pulsing feeling of release slacking into relief. That explosion obliterates you for an instant, you can’t push it out hard enough, you can never explode violently enough, sometimes shouting helps but that’s all.

This thing, this one precious window in modern life in which a man can express instinctive behavior, to fully feel yourself as a man without shame, this permission, is the gift a good lover gives you.  Then after the unbearable intimacy at the commencement of the act, after the final release of pleasure, then comes that Biblical fall that drops on your spirit like an alien weight, returning you to your state of interior solitude, and you’re forced to be a civilized man again.

And then you feel like doing something else.

If you’re smart you’ll cuddle first.

Before the Fall

By Lisabet Sarai

I know I please him. Before me, he never kept a sub for more than six months. I’ve served him nearly two years now, and he’s never suggested he’s tiring of me. Of course, why would he? I’ll do anything he asks―absolutely anything. When it comes to my Master, I have no limits.

His training has refined me, perfected my submission, to the point that I can usually anticipate his desires even before he articulates them. A mere arch of an eyebrow and I’m on my knees, awaiting his next command. A flick of his finger and I present my ass, cleansed, lubed and ready for whatever evil incursion he has planned―his cock or his fist, a dildo or a cucumber, a beer bottle or a baseball bat. He knows very well that all my holes are his.

Master’s a true sadist, delighting in the pain he so expertly inflicts. I take everything he dishes out, willingly―gratefully. He’s taciturn and sparing of words, but even so he can’t help but remark on my tolerance for abuse. Tonight he used his belt, the crop, the single tail and the vicious cane he adores, while the audience gasped and applauded. I’m bruised and striped in the aftermath of his assaults, every inch of skin raw and burning.

I think I amazed even him this evening. “You’ve earned a rest, slut,” he told me, rare tenderness in his voice as he draped the blanket over my blood-and-cum smeared body and handed me the water bottle. He’s not done, though. The erection jutting from his sleek leathers and the manic gleam in his eyes tells me he wants more. I’ll give it to him―give him everything, more than everything. I know it sounds like hyperbole or some sort of romantic crap, but it’s true. Every instant, every breath, my only goal is to surrender completely, to be the slave of whom he has always dreamed.

The mood in the dungeon has lightened considerably after the intensity of our scene. Master circulates among his dominant friends, cracking off-color jokes, offering words of advice or appreciation, landing a random swat on some sub’s bare butt or flicking the weights hanging from someone’s clamps. He’s not far away, but I miss him already, miss the focus of his attention and the breathless uncertainty about what he’ll do next.

He stops to talk to a petite, brown-haired girl huddling by a spanking bench. He’s so tall that he has to stoop in order to look into her face. Her silly schoolgirl costume identifies her as a sub, presumably unclaimed since she wears no collar or other insignia. I sniff. I can’t help it. She’s pretty enough, though she doesn’t seem to have much of a body - certainly her breasts are much less opulent than mine – but what really annoys me is her aura of uncertainty. She only half wants to be here, drowning in the scent of sweat and cum, surrounded by gleaming, punished flesh, hearing the slaps and the screams. Part of her wants to flee. The extreme activities unfolding here in the club both draw and repel her. She clutches her left wrist with her right hand, as if imagining bonds, and gazes up into my Master’s eyes.

An inexperienced newbie, obviously, probably someone who read Fifty Shades and wanted to sample the real thing. Why is Master wasting his time on her? Clearly he’s turning on the charm. He can be lusciously seductive when he wants, as I remember well. When he touches her shoulder, apparently casual, I see the shudder of lust coursing through her skinny frame.

I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I can imagine. He’s wooing her, seducing her, telling her of the exquisite pleasures to be found in submission. He won’t mention of the agony she’d have to endure to earn those pleasures.

The tilt of his head indicates he’s asking a question. She nods and drops to a kneeling position. God, but she’s awkward! I recall the hours I spent practicing that move, until my muscles screamed and the skin scraped off my knees, determined to demonstrate the perfect grace my Master expected. How can he even look at this clumsy creature?

Yet he’s feeding her his rampant cock now, and she’s opening wide, clearly eager to receive it. He begins with a slow, shallow rhythm. I know he won’t keep that up for long. When it comes to fellatio, Master likes it hard, fast and rough.

Sure enough, within thirty seconds he’s ramming his cock down her throat. She chokes and tries to pull back. He seizes her by her limp, mousy locks and holds her so tight she can’t move. Her face turns an unflattering scarlet as his bulk cuts off her air. Oh, I know what she’s feeling! The terrible fear, the gathering blackness, the weightless sense of release as you trust him with your very life. I can almost feel the swollen flesh blocking my throat as he pounds into her mouth. This girl, though, doesn’t seem to understand about trust. She’s twisting in his grip, trying to escape. Finally he gives in. He pulls out, just as he’s coming, to paint her face and her chest with his cum.

Her expression combines arousal and disgust. She fumbles helplessly with her jizz-stained blouse. Master laughs, leans down, and rips it off, baring her modest breasts. He gestures for her to rise. She scrambles to her feet with all the elegance of a baby goat.

He seems more amused than angry at her willfulness. When he whispers in her ear, she nods again. Isn’t he done with her yet?

He leads her to the spanking bench. She stretches her waifish body along its length and allows Master to bind her wrists and ankles. When he flips up her brief plaid skirt, I see that that she’s naked underneath. I guess she has at least some idea what goes on at a place like this. Master circles her bound form, talking to her in a low voice, telling her, I have no doubt, of all the things he wants to do to her. (But why her? Why?) He’s building suspense, stoking both her excitement and her fear. By the time he picks up the crop, her inner thighs are damp, gleaming under the harsh dungeon lights.

She wails at the first stroke, though it’s light enough that it doesn’t even leave a mark. Master’s trying to go easy on her, at least at first. But once again, he can’t deny his nature. Before long he’s slashing at her creamy ass and the backs of her legs, leaving clean crimson stripes in the wake of each blow.

The girl moans and yells―music, I know, to my Master’s ears. A crop is hardly a severe instrument, yet the wannabe sub acts as though he’s branding her. I can’t help feeling slightly smug. If I were subject to this beating, I’d be completely silent. He’d have to lash me a lot harder to wring any cries from my throat.

“Red! Red! Stop! I can’t bear it!” All at once the girl is screaming at the top of her lungs, thrashing against her bonds and crying real tears. My Master halts the whipping immediately, of course. He’s sadistic but always responsible. I can sense his disappointment in his stance, though, as he unclips the cuffs from the girl’s limbs and helps her to a sitting position. In nearly two years with me, he has never heard me safeword.

She collapses to the floor. He sinks down beside her, cradling her slight body in his powerful arms. After care―it’s just after care, I tell myself. She’s way out of her depth and now she knows it. He’ll send her home, then take out his frustration on me. I glow with anticipation at the thought.

He’s headed back to me now. I gaze up at him, beaming my love and gratitude. He strokes his fingers through my hair and gives me a strange smile.

“Bow your head, Simone.”

Of course I obey. He fiddles with the clasp at the back of my collar. Sudden panic seizes me.

“Master? What are you doing, Master?”

“I’m setting you free, my pet. You don’t need me any more.”

“No, no! I don’t want to be free.” I flail wildly, trying to grab the collar from him. He stuffs it into his pocket. “Please, no―I need you. I can’t live without you! What did I do wrong, Master?”

“Nothing, pet. You never do anything wrong. You’re the perfect submissive.”

“Then why―why...?”

“I’m wasted on you, love. It’s time I trained someone who really needs it.”

He’s already on his way back to the skinny little wannabe slave, who’s still sobbing in a ridiculous pile in the middle of floor. I watch, appalled and disbelieving, as he fastens the collar―my collar!―around her scrawny neck. Then he helps her to her feet and leads her out of the dungeon, in the direction of the private rooms.

I shiver under my blanket. Suddenly the dungeon is freezing. I want to run after him, to beg him not to leave me. I want to choke that filthy slut until her eyeballs pop out of her head and her tongue hangs out like a dog. I want to yell and scream, to throw a tantrum, to curse him for his cruelty and ingratitude.

I don’t do any of those things. I don’t allow myself to give in to those baser emotions. I’m the perfect submissive. I must obey my Master, even if he casts me away. I just sit on the bench, watching the kinky scenes unfold around me, empty, despairing, desolate, with nothing left but my pride.