This morning, I woke up destroyed and dehydrated. Again.

With Gabriel, my body’s pushed past its usual rhythms. I can come easily with most people, and if I’m aroused enough, I can go on for hours and hours and hours. That’s rarely tested, and when it is – with Gabriel, it is – I realize that after a certain point, my body starts to do strange things. I’ll hover at the edge of orgasm for a very long time and then come without warning. Parts of my body become sensitized, others become raw. My body starts to feel sensations differently. As it begins to settle and throb, he’ll thrust again and that small stroke reverberates through my spine to my fingertips. Even when I’m limp, I want to arch and pull him deeper inside me, however weakly.

I fell asleep as some point and woke up with a jolt. I don’t like letting my guard down. And I sort of loved letting my guard down. Those who know me know that I don’t like sleeping over, for reasons of insomnia (occasionally) and vulnerability (frequently), so sleep, even momentary sleep, is unusual for me. It felt good; it left me conflicted.

This is where the blog/blogged relationship becomes complex for me, knowing he has access to this. Normally I would write about my interior self as well. I’d unpack and sort these disoriented, post-coital thoughts, which will probably distract me until I distract myself. It’s a little foolish because I just wrote a comment to the previous post saying that in an ideal world, we would read one another’s minds, and I suppose my blog leaves me open to having my mind read. But I’m not sure these thoughts should be audible.

So then, my body. My body’s raw. Excitable. A bit slutty and cock-hungry. I’ve decided that it requires discipline, so I’m going to return my body to a disciplined state (it could use the physical exertion) and perhaps, in the process, quell the restlessness of my mind.

*

I saw a client the other night and he’s someone I’ve seen for years. I’ve written about him in the past but never here, and I think that’s out of some strange sense of loyalty. And while we’ve known one another carnally for years and years and years, the sex has never lost its edge. I see him and we’re at eachother like teenagers.

When I leave, I’m always euphoric. I step outside, put in my headphones, and walk through midtown for a bit as I savor that post-coital rush – it’s a ritual of mine. It reminds me of how out-of-sync I am with the rest of the world when I wander through this area so late at night, after the tourists have gone home and the shops have closed and the streets have become empty and quiet. Long lines of black cars wait for the law firms to release their employees for the night. Freshly fucked, I walk along, alone, past the drivers as they stand outside their cars and chat with one another. I pass the occasional pack of suits roaming the streets for steak houses and strip clubs. My hair’s wild, my makeup’s smudged, my cunt is wet and throbbing, throbbing, and as I walk west toward Times Square, the streets start to fill up. Freshly fucked, I walk through crowds of tourists looking for the world’s largest T.G.I.Friday’s, I pass late-night caricaturists and vendors and the occasional cop until I’m surrounded by neon and completely disconnected from my surroundings. I’m addicted to this rush, part post-orgasmic throb, part thrill of the socially reprehensible (you’re right, GW), part rush of financial influx. I walk until I’m tired, and the moment that rush settles into a dreamy state of bliss, I throw out my hand and hail a cab.

I do this often. I see him and then I leave, smiling, ravaged, and wet, and I walk past strangers, maybe you, with this faint secret pulsing between my legs.

*

I had this boyfriend the year before last, before I got engaged (or “engaged”). Great guy, terrible relationship. And what I loved about him was that he was a little bit depraved, just a bit, just enough to make me feel secure in telling him that I slept with other men, though I never mentioned the transactional arrangement.

Each time I saw this patron saint of mine, I’d step out into that ghostly midtown, all rumpled and smudged, and take a cab down to my boyfriend’s apartment in the East Village, where he’d greet me by putting his hands up my skirt. He’d say, “Fuck, you’re wet,” but I’d be more than wet. My pussy would be swollen, my cheeks hot, and I’d be drunk on endorphins and lust.

Having my then-boyfriend throw me down on the bed and plow into me after I’d been thoroughly enjoyed by another man was endlessly exciting to me. It still is.

“I think we should fuck,” he says, smiling. I’m thinking we should too.

I’m hesitant to describe him because I like leaving certain things in shadow. He’s younger than most of the men I date, but he doesn’t feel young. He’s got a great smile; he makes me laugh. I’m not sure what’s happening inside his mind but he’s outwardly calm and incredibly lucid. T-shirts looks great on him, and jeans. He says they hide his erections.

We head up to his loft where we strip down, and there’s a quiet moment, of nakedness, in the daylight, loaded with raw and certain potential. Those loaded moments make me restless.

He wants me to sit on his face, and I do, but I lean forward so I can put his cock in my mouth. It’s the richest form of foreplay I can enjoy, like kissing but deeper, and harder, and thicker, thick enough to block my breathing and tighten in my throat. The more I suck, the more my cunt throbs, so when I’m flipped over to my hands and knees, the anticipation is dizzying. Everything that follows shifts from bliss to a primal, animal, urgent need.

With my hips in his hands, he’s deep enough to hurt me, nearly, but words can’t describe the sensation, of waiting and throbbing and fretting all week, sitting with tightly crossed thighs and a furrowed brow, torn between staying in and running away, to finally strip down to nothing, open my legs, and feel him drive in. I stop thinking, I become absolutely pliant, open to every conceivable suggestion. I stop weighing the pros and cons of my actions and focus entirely on the gathering tension at the heart of my cunt and the repeating strokes, which manage to be both satisfying and deeply frustrating. I want to be fucked past the point of tolerance.

*

You, Gabriel.

I woke up the next morning with sore calves.

So, I’ve decided to call you Gabriel. I like Gabriel as a name – you feel like a Gabe. You could be a Daniel, too, but I know several Daniels and you’re too unique for that. Gabriel, on the other hand… I haven’t known a Gabriel since junior high. I had a crush on one. He was a skater and a smoker.

My understanding of the opposite sex was a little different then. Boys were exciting and intimidating and completely strange, the way they talked and the things they’d say. Now boys are just exciting, sometimes inspiring. And when I lie with them, some of them, my calves get so tight that it stays with me for days.

(Maybe that’s why we wear heels. They strengthen our calves so we can wrap our legs around a man’s hips and lock his cock inside us. I certainly want to lock yours inside of me.)

I remember the daylight. Your loft. Your skin. What I remember most was deep lust in the pit of my cunt and the stress compressed in my jaw. I needed you to fuck me to state of neutrality, to relax the mind, reset the brain. And you did. My calves, my cunt, the upper part of my left shoulder are all very sore. You left come on my skin, which I like, and when I went home, I felt calm, worn, and wet. And that’s how I feel now. Ambivalent about writing, as always, but still very calm, and very worn, and shamelessly wet.

That much I knew, and I also knew that I was attracted to him. I was attracted to him when we first met in that cafe, but I told myself then that I couldn’t act on that attraction, for a number of reasons. Big reasons, the size of fucking billboards.

But I was having such a good time with him yesterday that when we were done with what we were there to do, I was reluctant to leave. It felt so easy to be with him, and he’s funny, and I just like him. I played with his cat, maybe to distract myself or divert my sexual energy, and then he kissed me.

I thought, fuck it, I want this.

*

I woke up this morning sore, famished, dehydrated. I can’t remember the last time my body was pushed like this, and my body tends to be pushed on a regular basis. I love how we fit. I love a lot about last night.

I was thinking about you when I woke up this morning. You were a string of flash memories, visual, sensory. I thought about how you rested your head against my thigh while I stroked your back, how your cock felt in my mouth and throat, how you held my ankles in the air. I love how you feel, how you fuck, how you kiss. Those fresh memories are frustrating.

Thirsty, hungry, and wrecked, I brought myself off this morning while I could still smell you on my body. It hurt a little but it feels good to be this sore.

When I breathed you in, I could feel it in my skin.

These are half-formed thoughts.

My fuck-addled brain.

This much I know: you’ve just deadened my appetite for the other men in my life, and I’m slotted to take part in this fling tonight with James. I’ve got a phone full of increasingly agitated text messages over my daylong radio silence, yesterday, sent while I was straddling your hips or while you were gripping mine. Now it’s Saturday and I’m enjoying some rainy day downtime before I tramp it up and head out for that orgiastic encounter.

A few days ago, I was looking forward to it. Now it feels off. I do need my ring back and I’m perfectly willing to fuck for my ring, but I question whether I can keep seeing James when my head’s already somewhere else.

Are we that fickle? Am I that fickle? I go along well enough – not too invested and not too distant – with a few men in my life, and then I fuck someone I shouldn’t and suddenly everyone else feels less interesting.

I feel ambivalent writing about you, you know (you do know). It runs the risk of becoming some kind of meta, Warholian, PoMo mindfuck. But for now, this is here.

I think we should fuck again.

*

(For this post, the comments are off, just to minimize the aforementioned meta-induced mindfuck.)

And my answer varies. I am, or I’m not, or I’m only seeing the clients I trust, or I’m giving a new guy a shot, or I’m cutting everyone loose. When I stop, there’s a lot that I miss. I miss the clients. I miss the ritual of preparing for a gig. And I miss the strangeness of that drive to the airport, when I put on my headphones, review my itinerary, and then look out the window to think about where I’m going, and why. And I miss walking through a crowd of business travelers and feeling absolutely disconnected from the natural rhythms of corporate life. I like that.

Fuckbuddy’s second favorite question: “Do you really believe you can stop?”

He believes that I’m incapable of giving it up. It isn’t the money — it’s long since passed the point of being about the money — it’s the freedom and spontaneity. It’s knowing that I never get too attached to anyone. Which, I know, is a problem.

It’s funny, because what fuckbuddy’s really asking is, “Will you ever be marriage material?”

Presuming I marry a pervert, then I’m sure the answer is yes.

*

Fuckbuddy is the only one who knows everything there is to know about my past. And all of you (well, those of you who’ve read for a while). Nobody else knows.

“Fuck,” he says. “Why does that shit turn me on?”

The fact I fuck clients, and the fact I charge them so much, makes him hard, and this makes him restless and conflicted. I watch him cycle through the push-and-pull of erection and repulsion. He wants me to stop, but he loves it, but then he hates it. He wants me to stop the way I say I’ll stop: I might, I will, just not yet, just a few more, it’s just that I will eventually, maybe.

“Did you suck his cock?” he asks as he pulls his own cock out and looks me in the eye. “Did you get on your knees?”

He wants to see me on my knees.

And he wants to know who my clients are. He asks point-blank, pulling names at random, and while he does this, he paces around his apartment, sometimes pausing to scratch the back of his head while he looks at me.

“Henry Kravis.”

“You know I’m never going to tell you.”

“Yeah, I know. Mike Lupica.”

“Stop.”

“Trump.”

“Ick.”

“You know, I respect that you won’t tell me. I totally respect it. I know you’ll never tell me. Just tell me: Ricky Gervais.”

He like to imagine himself fucking this overpriced, off-duty whore, who may or may not be sleeping with the men he’s imagining. But when he comes, he slumps against the wall and asks again, “When will you stop?”

I enjoy seeing clients, but I know that as long as I see them, I’m hiding something from the men I date. Clients make it easy for me to hold everyone at a distance. I know this. In many ways, they’re a crutch. They give me an excuse to resist the faintest hint of commitment and emotional responsibility.

But I’ve just confirmed plans for Paris, and I’m just, I’m just not quite ready to stop. Almost. Almost. Eventually.

Last night, my period was in full force and it prompted me to cancel a drink date (we both knew it wasn’t going to stop at the drinks). I was in that no-amount-of-Aleve-is-going-to-help phase, so I planned to stay in and do some work instead. But then came the text messages, and I’m susceptible to text-message pressure, so I caved. I wanted to nestle against him anyway.

He’s utterly indifferent to my period, which is an excellent quality in a man, but my period had just started. I wasn’t feeling sexual. I just wanted to curl up.

What the designer had said was true. When I started to drift off, Matt stroked and petted and gently probed. Last I remembered, he was fucking me, slowly but very deeply, and the pain went away.

I should give him a name here, but he’s been my fuckbuddy for so long that it seems a little late for a change. Outside of Paul, he’s the only man who knows most, if not all, of my secrets. He was around before, during, and after I worked in fetish. He watched me develop my base of patrons. Every once in a while, he calls to make sure I’m not doing something reckless, usually by quoting clips from the New York Post as warnings (“Jane – slip up just once and that’ll be you!”). We endured a sexless friendship when I tried monogamy, and when neither of us was getting laid, he provided a hard cock for my enjoyment.

Fuckbuddy’s cock is unbelievable. It’s thick, incredibly solid and strong, and beautifully shaped. He’s wired with a little extra testosterone so he’s prone to roleplay and dirty talk and exaggerated male/female dynamics. In other words, he fucks really hard, he throat-fucks, he throws me around the bed like a ragdoll. I say he watches too much porn – he doesn’t care. If we weren’t friends, I’d probably treat him as some disposable thug.

The challenge we’ve faced has been our mutual selfishness. I like his cock – I like it in my hands and I like it in my mouth, but I especially like it deep in my pussy. But fuckbuddy is crazy for having his cock sucked, disproportionately so. And it’s good – there’s no doubt it’s good – because we’ve somehow orchestrated the routine to result in one swift thrust into the depths of my throat right when he needs to deposit his come and right when I crave a little asphyxia. It works well. It annihilates us both. But my pussy gets neglected in the process.

I remember throwing down with him one afternoon and wrestling over whether he was going to penetrate my pussy or my mouth. I’d roll on top and he’d flip me immediately, pinning my wrists under his shins with his cock poised at my lips. I’d have to bark my demands and refuse oral entry to get fucked, which would only raise his testosterone level and prolong our hand-to-hand, hand-to-cock combat. But then, he’s among the men I’ve actively aggravated just so I’d end up facedown in some highly compromising judo hold. It’s been a while since I’ve done that.

Well, it’ll come soon enough.

Andrew is quiet. Maybe, then, it’s this image I have in my mind of him first orgasming in private that turns me on. I imagine him hidden from his parents and sisters, tucked in the back of a closet or maybe flat on his back in bed, roughly working his cock under the covers while his family sleeps. I think of those dead-quiet spasms and twitches, the come flooding his adolescent fist and making him blush.

So when I’m between his legs lapping at his cock and I hear his silence crack with a soft moan, my pussy throbs. I want more from him. I want him to lose control.

He was moaning when I was stroking his cock with both hands, and I drew the experience out, maybe unfairly. I wanted to draw it out for as long as he could handle, so I alternated my rhythm and pace, using my hands and the deepest part of my throat, and when his heels were digging hard into the mattress, I reached for a condom, slid it on, and then put his cock inside me.

And then he was vocal.

When I go out with someone, with anyone, in the back of my mind I weigh the odds of traumatizing the man should I ever tell him all of my secrets. For example, if he tells me that his last girlfriend was a burlesque dancer or a dominatrix, or if he says something surprisingly brave about sex, or if he’s open about his kinks, I’ll feel like there’s a chance we’d be compatible. On the other hand, if he ever mutters something under his breath using the words “slut” or “whore” in vain, I lose interest. ‘Slut’ is for dirty talk, not the venting of insecurities.

I think I’m pretty hooked on Matt. The other night he tucked me under his arm and stroked my hair until I feel asleep. By morning, he had me pinned under his forearms, his long lean body drawing me taut while he drove into me. If I had my way, we’d do this daily and nightly in perpetuum. But then, I’d probably retreat with the panic that comes when I feel too much for someone, particularly someone who’s equally capable of stroking me sweetly and violating my body without apology. I’m feeling too much.

Hence the hedging. And the sidecars. And the new boy. I’m a flawed girl.

I’m usually only marginally aware of the power dynamics when I’m in the midst of fornication, but with Matt it’s very clear. He holds me down, and when he fucks me, it’s with absolute abandon – I wish more men were this feral.

He’s blunt, like my fuckbuddy. He doesn’t mince words or tread lightly on challenging topics. When we go out, he asks me where I’d like to go and invariably I respond with ambivalence, offering one or two suggestions. He responds with cool certainty, ignoring me altogether – “We’ll go to Smith, on 10th street.” If any other man did this, I’d be pissed. When he does this, I want him to bend me over and make me his bitch.

He’s tall. Lean. He calls me ‘kitten.’ When I come, he runs his broad hands through my hair and says ‘good girl.’ If any other man said this, I’d recoil from the condescension. When he says this, I purr.

He bucks during sex – when I’m on top, he nearly throws me off, but then catches me and holds me down. He throws me off balance and just as I start to steady myself, my momentum is used against me until I’m pinned with my thighs spread .

I’ve had men try to be dominant with me in the past and nearly every time it’s made me dominant in response – I want to flip the dynamic and take control. But Matt’s got me in the palm of his very strong hand.

This is something I’m not going to question.