I follow so many remarkable writers and photographers and I don't shout them out nearly as often as I should. So, here's a little list of entries that caught my attention this week:

​1. Heather Cole's Vagina Antics - Nothing Was Supposed to Happen - Heather's story about a unexpected meet-up at a play party and that fiery sexy instantaneous chemistry you can have with a stranger was unspeakably hot hot hot hot! I follow Heather on her blog and on Instagram and she tops my list of people I 'know" virtually that I would love to know in real life as well. Plus she's a fantastic writer and her stories, well, *fans self*... I'll let you go read them for yourselves.

2. Mx Nillin's 30 Day Orgasm Fun, Part 5: Endgame - I discovered Mx Nillin during the February Photo Fest and fell in love with their honesty, vulnerability and lewd, funny, sexy writing and pictures. I've loved reading their journey through the 30 day orgasm challenge created by Tabitha Rayne for the month of April and in this Endgame entry, Mx Nillin writes beautifully about spending the day with their partner Fal exploring sensual non-sex pleasures and then posts the most adorable picture of them in the bath. Experiences that are both affectionate and sexual are my favorites.

3. Ms Violet Fawkes has a spectacular new meme called Lingerie Is for Everyone. Her entry Burned in Blue not only quotes one of my most favorite poets but also features a wistful delicate picture of her softness enclosed in blue lace. I'm a little biased since I have that same bra in burgundy but I particularly love the contrast of her red nails and her dreamy skin. The words and the picture go perfectly together. 

4. Speaking of Lingerie Is for Everyone, I've not been able to get Joe's picture out of my mind since I first saw it a couple weeks ago. The combination of strength and delicacy is captivating. I'm not usually one for pictures of men in women's panties but this picture has stayed with me and I love it. 

5. Lovely Missy over at Focused and Filthy had an incredible #sinfulsunday entry for last week, the one she calls Birthday Present. She has such a talent for photos that are startlingly focused in their subject matter and intent. Her eye for close-ups and clarity of detail is unparalleled and I take a lot of inspiration from her photographs. Troll through her photo archives and you'll see what I mean. 

This is just a taste of all the juicy deliciousness out there this week! And there's so much more that I didn't cover so I challenge my readers to go check out someone new and give them love and support by way of a comment or a tweet! 

Happy Saturday.  XO

I've been wanting to write more in this space and also participate in some of the weekly blogger memes. When I saw the "Risk" prompt over at Brigit Delaney's Erotic Journal Challenge, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to start sharing this particular story. I mention a few men who are peripheral to the story and if you need to know who they are, you can find a cheat sheet here.

I planned my trip to Thailand by myself. I had never traveled alone internationally and solo travel seemed terrifying but I wanted to see the world and I was tired of waiting for my friend’s schedules to align with mine. I also felt like it was an important step to conquer my fear, travel by myself and survive. Emphasis on the surviving...

But despite my solo plans, I wasn't opposed to other people joining me for this trip if they could make it happen. I told my lover, Daredevil, about the trip and he said he was definitely interested. Since he'd actually met me in Alaska and we'd had a really nice week, I figured I had a good chance of him following thru. But as time went on he wanted more from me than I was willing to give him and he was unhappy. I think it pissed him off that we weren't in the same place with our relationship but he didn't want to stop seeing me either. 

I saw him in April and things were ok but by the time I finished that weekend, I was ready to be done. He mentioned that he was still interested in Thailand and I said “ok” and left it at that. We didn’t talk much in the next few months. I felt like I’d been pretty clear that I wasn’t in a space for a long term steady monogamous anything and he was fine with that initially but then he wasn’t. Instead of having that conversation directly, he got passive aggressive and I got more distant and unreachable. I should have been more direct with him about our relationship and the trip but I wasn't sure what to say except that I didn’t want to be with him anymore and I didn't want him to go with me.  Instead of saying that, I just left the country... which is also pretty direct.

In June, I talked to a different former lover of mine, Austin 31,  and mentioned Thailand and he said  “I've always wanted to go to Thailand!” and I said, “You should! Come to Thailand...!!!” And this time I meant “Please cum to Thailand!” I thought he would be a great traveling companion, he's hot and the sex is amazing and I knew that if things went south he’d just take off and do his own thing rather than stick around and make me miserable. Plus I liked him and enjoyed his company. Between those two guys, he was the one that I most hoped would actually make it. 

But then... I met a guy. Or rather, I reencountered a guy.

Jack was someone I'd known for a long time. I'd dated his brother and his sister was one of my best friends so I was all up this family's business. At that point Jack’s and my paths hadn't crossed much though. I'd mostly heard about him through his family members and had met him only a couple of times. 

However, he joined Myspace and friend requested me around January and then emailed me and we talked on and off for a few months, nothing flirty just sort of talking about this and that. Then there was a long lull and one day in June I opened my email one day to see this message:

I know we are not close like this...But if you were here I would stick my tongue so far up your ass...

That’s a fucking bold statement to come out of the blue but he caught me at just the right exact moment and so I responded:

If you were here I might let you...
 
And it was on.

Things got hot and heavy quickly by email and IM. I was bored and not working and had plenty of time to enjoy the flirting. He had separated from his wife for reasons he declined to get into but it was clear that he was bored and lonely, deployed in the sandbox of the Middle East and we were both looking for something new and fun.

I remembered that he’d lived in Thailand so I told him I was going and asked for advice. He responded “I should just meet you there. I speak Thai and could really show you Thailand, the Thailand you wouldn't see otherwise...” That seemed like an amazing offer. I told him I would love to see him in Thailand. And so began the back and forth.

He didn't think he could actually go because of his deployment. He gave it a 20% chance at the beginning of June, but then his deployment plans changed and all of sudden we were up to an 80% chance at the end of the month. By the end of June, Jack started asking if I was actually serious about wanting him to come to Thailand and I told him I was. The opportunity to see the country with someone who knows it couldn't be passed up.

However, Austin31 was still trying to work it out as well. 

When I considered that I might have two men meeting me in Thailand, I actually thought I could juggle them so their paths wouldn't cross. In retrospect that’s completely absurd, obviously, but then it ceased to be a problem because Austin31 told me he couldn't make it. Money was the main problem and no matter how he finagled it, he couldn't make it couldn’t happen. This time I was relieved because I knew that juggling Austin31 and Jack was likely to end in some kind of disaster. 

Jack and I began to make serious plans and the longer we talked, the more things changed. In the course of a month, the trip to Thailand moved from sexy easy breezy fun and games to an epic love affair where we actually made plans to fall passionately, hopelessly, impossibly in love in Thailand. We knew it would be impossible for so many reasons but we decided to deal with the after effects later. To not let the fact that there would be consequences stop us from taking this big risk. 

Jack can be quoted as saying “I want to be so wrecked that I cry in the airport when I leave you... ”

If you’re asking yourself how in the world that escalated so fast, I would point you to IM and video chat and the ability to create a little online fantasy world inhabited by only two people who talk to each other for hours every day but whose real lives never actually intersect. He was the first person I talked to in the morning when I got up and he was finishing work and he was the last person I talked to at night when he was just getting to work in his morning on the other side of the world. We talked while he was at work and he even jerked off on camera behind his work desk when the office was deserted.  

The connection was about sex but we both craved something more. I wanted a chance to fall in love. I feared that the wreckage from my breakup with the Blacksmith had killed my ability to be close to someone. That I was walled up in a ivory tower, playing around with guys but never letting anyone get close enough to hurt me. The way I had abandoned the Daredevil haunted me a bit. I felt terrible about it but I still didn’t want to talk to him. 

IMing with Jack was the first time I understood how easy it can be to say things to a screen instead of a person. I could tell him how wrecked I was and how scared I was of getting close to someone and getting hurt again. He could tell me how deeply he regretted the way his marriage had ended, full of duplicity and cheating and lies. We both wanted a new start. 

He said  “I want to take this chance to do and say things with you, someone I really like. If you don't like what or who I am at the end of all this then at least once in my life I can say I really put it out there in way that was real.”

Jack knew he’d made mistakes. He spoke of atonement. He wanted to move on. He wanted what we all want but are afraid to ask for, to confess our sins and have someone love us for them and in spite of them. 

I found myself in the rare unexpected position of being able to really be there for him. To give him a chance to be himself, and in the process open myself up to possibility. He was very perceptive about my closed heart and said things like:

“Be mine for 2 weeks. Be my soulmate. Let me kiss you where the light never reaches and embrace the things about you that you thought were gone or you thought you did not need”

It’s a very odd thing to plan a love affair. But it’s a very great thing to be honest and truthful and ask for what you want. And then of course when we weren’t talking about love and light and broken hearts, we were planning all the taboo, insane, sexy, illicit things we could think of and get away with on this vacation. Thailand was the perfect playground for this kind of sacred and profane behavior and we wanted to cut the leash, go off the grid and see how far we could go.

The ultimate consequence of this madness was anyone's guess.

Little Switch Bitch recently commented on one of my pictures that I should write a bit about how I get certain compositions. So, go visit her page and drool over her sexy photos and when you come back, I'll talk about this one.

It's ok. I'll wait. 

...

...

...

Yeah, she's hot AF with that ass, right? You should definitely follow her,

So anyway, back to this shot. It's a simple one and a set up that I automatically see because I love to shoot pictures where the light is behind me. It's why I have so many pictures in front of windows. For mechanics, I only use my iPhone. Long ago I had a regular camera but smartphone cameras got really good and I got tired of carrying another camera around. iPhone cameras have limitations, especially in low light, but this new iPhone Xs has a portrait mode that works better in limited light and also allows for some manipulation of f-stops. I'm still playing with it but it's definitely the best mode for dark pictures like this where the only light in the room was the fire behind me. I have several others from this set but I haven't decided whether to post them or not. Let's see how the week goes. 

As to this quote, I've recently started talking to a guy I like. He's a musician and we met via this alter ego of mine but he knows me in real life as well. I'm pretty sure he doesn't read this blog, but he would be welcome to if he wanted. This quote makes me think of him.

In other news I'm still staying off my AnnieSavoyWrites IG page for now and posting instead to my backup account, AnnieSavoyTakesPictures. Both accounts are private so if you want in, just request me. The interesting thing is that my AnniePicture page has a much smaller audience and initially the idea of posting to so few people was discouraging because I had definitely bought into the modern idea that the whole point of social media is to gain an audience and accumulate likes. But my giant realization of the week is: What if it isn't?

It certainly wasn't at the beginning. Social media was a way of connecting with people I knew or people with similar interests. The whole point was To Connect. But Connection is not what's happening now. I can scroll through IG for 5 minutes and "like" 20 pictures and only remember maybe 2 of them a half hour later. It's extremely low effort and thus low in meaning and lasting effect. And more to the point, most of the people clicking on my pictures on my original Annie page aren't people I know or follow, unlike my backup page where most are people I have a relationship with. When they comment or like, they do so with some context. There's a relationship there that feels like I'm sharing with friends.

It's changed my thinking. I've realized how much I had stopped sharing and instead was posting to simply accumulate likes, an exhausting unsatisfying process with no end in sight like a massive black hole of need. 

I watched a sports documentary recently called "In Search of Greatness" (it's fantastic. Go find it) and this comment feels like a brilliant encapsulation of the social media problem:

"If the ultimate outcome of professional sports is always just to be #1, no matter what you pay to get there, then you begin to wonder if the spiritual basis of these games is being hollowed out in the process of winning a game that people are losing interest in."

That. That. That. 

That is my food for thought this week.

I will go back to my original Annie IG page but I want to stay off of it long enough to remember why I do this, who I'm doing it for and find an appreciation for my audience.

Perhaps I'll also learn to be a more appreciative audience for other people. 

I've been participating in the Smut Marathon this year. It's been an interesting experience, largely because I've come to realize how subjective good writing and erotica really are. I've written a few pieces I really liked and the jury really didn't like but this last entry of mine did well with the judges. And I found this picture by @enzosciotti64 that embodies it perfectly.

The assignment was to write a hot masturbation scene with one character and one sex toy in 300 words.

When I started this blog I wanted to be a secret sex blogger. Secret because I wouldn’t use my real name or show my face and sex blogger because I wanted a place to write about sex.
 
I picked a character from a movie I’ve always loved, started all gung ho, wrote a few things, posted some pictures, participated in Sinful Sunday and then… lost steam.
 
Why? Because there are REALLY good sex bloggers out there in the blogverse and finding that I was producing a pale not-great imitation of their stellar work was disheartening.
 
However, I also struggled with the idea of creating a whole new online character in Annie Savoy. Who was she? What did she want? Was she me or not? A part of me or not? Did it matter? Who cares? In any case, I couldn’t find a lane. I couldn’t figure out who I was on this site, why I was out here doing this and what I (or she) had to say, if anything.
 
I left this site for a year or so until October of last year when I realized that I was on the verge of turning 46 and I felt trapped in a cycle of negative thinking that was affecting my choices in men and my general view of myself.  I was sleeping with a man I wasn’t even sure I liked, I kept making resolutions to lose weight and then did nothing about it and I needed something to change up.
 
So, I decided to take some pictures of myself. It's an odd response, I guess, except that I've taken a lot of pictures of myself in the past, albeit mostly selfies and mostly for lovers. But I thought that perhaps if I saw myself objectively I could see myself differently.  
 
The first picture was terrible, from a photographic standpoint, and I would never post it now, but I needed somewhere to start and that was it. Then I made myself take another terrible picture the next day and post it. Then I moved locations and by the third picture, I stumbled on something else entirely.
 
After that third picture I realized that what I really wanted was to take really good pictures of myself, pictures that weren’t selfies and had some depth and focus. I decided to use my iphone, a tripod, a self-timer and the background of whatever environment I happened to be in that week. I wanted this project to be primarily about good pictures from an artistic standpoint and to push the boundaries of my photographic skills while I served as a photographer and model. And then because I’ve always been word focused, I paired the finished pictures with quotes and poetry and voila, there was a little story and a totally different kind of blogging exercise.
 
A few months in, creating these little stories is the highlight of my day and seems to serve it's mental purpose as well. I’ve stopped obsessing about losing weight (though I still would like to) or the prospect of never getting younger (which will never happen) and instead have tried to see my body as an object in space and let all my emotional attachments to it just chill out a bit. Creatively, it gives me a job every day. To find a place and an angle and a captured moment and some words and put them all together.
 
And now a page or two later I come to my real point: How much of this has to do with being Annie Savoy? How much of my creativity gets unleashed because I can express these things and post these pictures through an alter ego in a way that I wouldn’t in my real life? And more importantly (to me), is Annie Savoy a real character or just a blogging façade?
 
I follow sex bloggers who show their faces and write about their lives and I’m so admiring of their bravery. I also follow sex bloggers who edit out their faces and any identifying characteristics and yet write honestly about their lives.
 
Somehow Annie Savoy feels like a third category where it’s a blog that clearly shows a real person living in the real world and yet has very little in the way of personal details. What even is that? I certainly don’t know yet.
 
But I do know that I’ve had men approach me via this site and Instagram and want to know more about my “real life” and I don’t know how to answer their questions. I know they’re asking me but I feel they’re asking about Annie, who for the moment only takes pictures and reads a lot but doesn’t have much in the way of hobbies or eye color.
 
It’s a weird place to be, right? Kind of like blogging induced schizophrenia.
 
However, I’ve taken up the Lovely Rebel on her invite to be part of Smut Marathon 2018 and do some writing this year so perhaps this blog will develop more roundly and we’ll see if Annie has some depth to her or if she’s just sharing space with me for the moment. I’ll be as curious as you to see where it all goes.
 
Happy 2018 everyone XO

I'm so conflicted about the #metoo movement and all the current allegations of sexual misconduct against men of power. As a person who posts naked pictures on the internet and reaps the benefit and the whirlwind that comes along with that choice, I feel there's a blurring of lines here that needs some discussion.

To wit, a professor friend of mine posted #metoo on her FB page and a male student of hers commented “You’re the fourth professor of mine to post this. Plus most of my female friends posted it. I'm gutted to think I’m surrounded by women who’ve endured this and I had no idea.”
 
His response pulled me up short. Was he clueless enough to think that any woman in the world has avoided harassment? Or did he actually think that most of the women he knew had been raped? And even worse, were most of his friends, professors and acquaintances assault survivors?
 
While anything is possible, I doubt that it’s the latter case. But I’m angry that we even have to ask that question or investigate the depths to which our friends have been degraded because the current climate makes no distinction between harassment and assault.
 
There is a very important distinction between assault and harassment and I’m really disturbed that there’s no adequate conversation being had about that distinction. Even most of the recent allegations of sexual misconduct don’t make that distinction. 
 
This is a problem, right? 
 
If you categorize catcalling and unwanted advances as harassment, we can safely say that 100% of adult woman on earth have been harassed at some point. If we include some level of inappropriate but noninvasive touching, we can maybe drop that number to about 95%. The simple truth is that most of the women that most of us know have been harassed in a way that’s frightening or degrading or just plain disgusting.
 
However, most of these incidents don’t leave scars. I’m sure some do, but most don’t. 
 
This is VASTLY different from sexual assault, by which I mean violent and/or invasive non-consensual sexual contact of any kind. The kind of experience that any person who survives it will never ever confuse with harassment.
 
I don’t know the percentage of people who’ve been assaulted. I’m sure no one does, given the deep level of scarring that comes with that kind of violence and the shame that accompanies the confession. But I do know men and women who have been assaulted and I can safely say that they’ve never recovered from it. They’re permanently bent by the experience, forced down a road from which they’ll never return. And forced to inhabit bodies they have to relearn and come to accept and love again, a process that can take years. 
 
I assume that #metoo it’s a bid for inclusiveness and for safety in numbers but you can’t tell me that the experience of being assaulted and the inconvenience of being catcalled are the same things. I refuse to believe it and I think it’s horrendously insulting to actual assault survivors. Assault and harassment are two very different things that do not belong in the same hashtag.
 
Since I’m not an assault survivor, I have the luxury of being outraged on principal. If I were an actual assault survivor, I’d want to burn the internet to the ground as people discuss whether a guy brushing up against you on the subway consists of assault.
 
But here’s the other problem with what we call harassment, and I say this as a woman who voluntarily shows her bare ass on the Internet: compliments and catcalling are two sides of the same coin and we don’t get one without the other.
 
No one does.
 
I am an extreme example as I post naked pictures of myself publicly. And I’m also a lucky example as most of the feedback is loving and positive. But this goes for all women clothed or unclothed in the world: If we choose to put ourselves out there in the world as attractive women, we can expect compliments and unwanted advances. We will get a larger share of the love and a larger share of the hate as well.
 
Look at celebrities for this equation magnified times a million. 
 
But the internet isn’t real life and as a person in the world who wants to post pictures of herself online, I have to accept that with the light comes the dark. If I don’t want to be high profile in life or online, I can make myself beige. I can achieve maximum wallpaper capacity. Attractive women do this all the time so they don’t attract attention. But it is a choice not a sentence and in avoiding the lows, I would miss out on the highs too.

If I choose to be high profile, I must accept that I will receive attention I don't like. I can't pick and choose the attention that I get. I do have a choice in how I deal with it but I must deal with it. I must figure out a way to shield myself from it or deflect it or channel it into something productive; or I have to figure out how to live in a beige world. There aren't other options.
 
For me, the best solution is to live in my skin. But I think all of us should be wary of anonymous love, let the anonymous hate roll off our backs, be realistic about the world and be careful. Harassment will happen. To men. To women. To the naked people online and the clothed people on the street. But it isn't acceptable and it should be shut down and maybe it took this hashtag and these allegations to have this conversation at all. 

For me, I’m gonna continue to post naked pictures and deal with the consequences..
 
Why would I let someone take that away from me?

I just finished Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner. It’s fantastic and I highly recommend it. The book made me think about the social constructs and ideas that single women have to battle if they want to be sexually fulfilled by more than one man.  However, I read some of the reviews of this book after I read it and they made me want to pick a fight. So I’m writing this instead.
 
Here’s the basic premise: a woman named Teresa picks up a strange man in a bar. They have sex. She tries to kick him out afterwards. He kills her.
 
That’s not a spoiler. That’s the first chapter.
 
Then the book backs up and we meet Teresa in the midst of a seminal physical experience as a young kid – not sexual abuse for once – that forever separates her from her body. The whole rest of the book she tries to get back into her body, swimming through an ocean of self-hatred that she mitigates with work and men and booze and drugs and continual movement. We see her attempt to connect with her life in a deeper way and we also see the way that sex brings her into the body that she’s hated and has been separated from for so long. But she also uses sex to punish herself and her body.
 
Now, as a psychobiographical thriller, this book is fantastic. It’s tightly plotted (one reviewer called it 'penetrating" lol... sigh) and it's beautifully written without any extra unnecessary stuff or words or scenes. I read it in a day and was riveted for most of it. I really enjoyed how the book was written almost as if the author was Teresa herself – because there are so many things that only she could know – but also with an objective empiric eye for logistical detail, as if Teresa were being followed and interviewed by a biographer who also contributed their own perspective.
 
However.
 
The subject matter is rough – a single woman murdered after a casual sex hookup – it's based on a true story (? I'm going to look into that) and it caused an enormous stir when it was published in 1975.  I can understand that there would be controversy because sex always causes controversy, but it’s so aggravating to read reviews that miss the entire point of the book. Here’s one of the worst:
 
“A haunting compelling thriller, guaranteed to make any woman terrified of the next strange man that she meets.”
 
Oh. My. God. That’s the takeaway lesson? Strange men are dangerous??
 
How fucking superficial.
 
I know that common wisdom dictates that any woman who has casual sex with a near stranger is courting rape and murder. Despite generations of women disproving this tropism, it still persists and I find it so disappointing. Especially when this book is so well written to prove another point all together, which is that people find what they seek.
 
Teresa looked for danger as well as fulfillment in her sex with strangers and she found those things, in the same way that women who want to stay alive and healthy generally do.
 
When healthy women have sex, it is an expression of their desire. If their act of sex is healthy, that has everything to do with their intent and the people that they choose, whether it’s someone they’ve known for 5 years or for 5 minutes.
 
In strict contrast to a healthy woman’s sexual expression, when I finished Looking for Mr. Goodbar, I wondered if perhaps this was the end Teresa had been seeking her whole life. Her sexual intent had been largely destructive and her end followed in the same way.
 
Looking for Mr. Goodbar is one woman’s story of self destruction. It’s not a parable or an educational myth. There’s no equation where casual sex = death. If anything, this story proves that self hatred = death. That how you do anything is how you do everything. If you hate yourself enough to let other people hate on you, bad things could happen.
 
And the worst part is that you might think you deserve them.
 
Read this book. It’ll make you think. 

I’ve published parts of this list at Nerve. This is an extended edition inspired by the Wicked Wednesday prompt a few weeks ago called My Fucket list. I originally read that as “My Fucked List” and then couldn’t get it out of my head. In writing this list out in it's entirety, I find the prevailing themes so interesting. Perhaps I'll write a post about those at some point. In the meantime, feel free to come to your own conclusions: 
 
Estrella
We met at a yearly festival and had sex in the back of his station wagon parked in the middle of a big field with the back door open to the stars and the night. I felt like such an American girl. We talked a few times after that but I never saw him again and I never learned his last name.  I was 26.
 
The Celt
7 months later, the Celt. A pagan uncut Irish man a few years younger than me. So good. So fun. So much sex. Also, my introduction to BDSM-lite because he had a thing for blindfolds and he made his own whip. One of the most open-minded men I’ve ever met and still one of my most favorite lovers. We broke up because he liked the idea of monogamy more than the reality of monogamy and we both needed to grow up and move on. But now, 20 years later, if I ever needed anything, I could call him and he would pick up the phone. I’m also friends with his ex(?)-wife.
 
Mardigan
A one off. He called his dick “Little Elvis.” The “little” was correct and the “Elvis” was just for style. I hardly knew him but he bought me roses afterwards and I still have his picture. He had shark teeth tattooed on his chest.
 
The Blacksmith
Oh Lord.
 
Allegedly in an open relationship but his girlfriend agreed to that arrangement just to keep him around. As a result, the parameters were never clear and it often felt like he was cheating. I had moral apprehensions and I was also friends with her, but I wanted him more. So for a year we talked on the phone for hours every week and had sex as often as he could get away. I fell for him really hard but eventually the sneaking around was too much and I told him it was her or me. He said, “It’s not that simple…”
 
The Body Builder
Post-Blacksmith, all I wanted from the Body Builder was a hook up but he was divorcing and wanted a return to stability. I was still in serial monogamy mode so we were together for a year while we tried to get our collective shit together. I finally left him when I realized I didn't want to be with him. Six years after our breakup I ran into him on a plane (literally), about 30,000ft above Texas. Our interaction was awkward and uncomfortable and I haven’t seen him since. Possibly he’s remarried? Probably. He always identified with being a husband.
 
The Blacksmith again
We knew it wasn’t quite over and when we started talking again he was still with his girlfriend but this time he actually left her. We dated for 4 more years during which time our sex life went from good to terrible. He was very distressed about it but I didn’t want to have sex with him and at the time I didn’t know why. In retrospect, I know that I never forgave him for choosing his girlfriend over me the first time around and after 4 years of denouement, we went through the ugliest break up I ever hope to endure. We recently stopped speaking to each other, more at my behest than his, but I’ll be in his town soon so he’s on my mind.
 
Simba
A South African actor I had been flirting with during the last days of the Blacksmith. I went to Simba’s apartment the night I broke up with the Blacksmith and we had rowdy athletic sex on the red couch in his living room. After a weekend together he stopped answering my calls and I never saw him or spoke to him again. He was the first black man I ever had sex with.
 
Austin31
Austin31 friended me on MySpace (remember Myspace?) and one day sent me a long strangely written email and told me it was encoded with a separate message. Inside the first letter was a filthy and glorious second letter about all the sexy things he thought we should do together. Having never had sex with him before, I flew to Austin to spend a weekend with him and (fortunately) had the most amazing sex I’d ever had in a 36 hour period. He could cum and stay hard. It was incredible. For the next 10 years we hooked up whenever geography allowed. We’re still friends now but we’ve both moved on.  
 
Harlem
A musician with whom I went to Central Park, smoked a lot of pot and had a lot of sex covered by the screen of bushes while people walked right past us. We could have gotten caught, but we didn’t. He was(is) intense and unpredictable, hot but mentally unbalanced and that combination was too much for me. I think of him fondly and occasionally Youtube him; but when I’m in NYC I don’t call him.
 
Candyman
A hot black surgeon I met at the gym. The first time we had sex was nothing to tell stories about but the next time he told me that he liked girls to fuck him with a strap on and how did I feel about that? I was fascinated, so he brought out his big black strap-on and I fucked him with it. It was awkward and vulnerable and thrilling and hot and afterwards the world shifted on its axis a couple of degrees. For the last 10 years we’ve seen each other occasionally. I always fuck him and we both love it. We’re two smart people who always want the upper hand and our lives have very little in common except our history together. I think now we’re in the rearview mirror but we still talk occasionally.
 
Daredevil
A tall tattooed Bermudian stagehand who liked to be spanked. He was so smart and interesting but he was also a 24 hour stoner, which made me wonder what he was avoiding. After a few months he wanted exclusivity and I didn’t so we stopped talking.
 
The Skier
My best friend’s brother’s best friend. One night we had drinks and ended up making out in the parking lot. We had sex a few times after that but we were always better in fantasy than in practice. Over the subsequent 8 years we developed an extensive sexual fantasyland by text and sexy pictures. He eventually got married and had kids but somewhere there’s a place that only the two of us inhabit. 
 
Jack
The Celt’s older brother. Years after I dated the Celt, Jack friended me on Myspace. (I know, again with Myspace) and we flirted by IM for months and then met up in Bangkok. We went to sex shows, got sudsies, had sex in dance clubs and generally tore it up for 3 weeks. He liked water sports so I explored that kinky fetish and discovered that while I don’t mind peeing on someone or having them pee on me, it’s not something I want to do every time I have sex. I really liked him a lot. But he was still divorcing his wife and he wanted a girlfriend more than he wanted me particularly. So, I went back to work, Jack went back to the sandbox and we tried to do a long distance thing for a couple of months but it didn’t go well so I called it off. He has since remarried and we don’t talk but I hope he’s well.
 
Casanova
Casanova was a charming, good-looking world traveller who I met on a Caribbean island while I was visiting a friend. A month later he came back to the states and drove 1,200 miles to see me on my day off and then sent me 3 dozen roses after our first weekend together. I wanted to marry him. He was a whirlwind and the King for the Grand Gesture and it was the most romantic relationship I’d ever been in except the sex was always puzzling. He couldn’t/didn’t want to/wouldn’t let himself cum with me and in the months we dated, he orgasmed only a couple of times. He withheld emotionally as well and after struggling long distance for 3 months, I flew to Australia to break up with him because I was too unhappy to live in perpetual unfulfilled desire. He broke my heart and it took me years to get over him.
 
Libra 
You know those people where you have instant chemistry? The flirting is intense and sexual and every time they touch you it feels warm all over your body and you just know that the sex is going to be mind blowing but then you actually go to bed and you’re like “What the hell is happening?” because it’s all awkward and nothing they do is working for you and then they say “we should do that again” and you say “…probably not.”  
It was like that.
 
Long Island
An Egyptian/Puerto Rican tutor who was pretty and the sex was fun but it was the kind of sex you have with a young pretty person where it’s clear that they have no idea how great sex can actually be. We didn’t live in the same city and I got tired of answering texts that just said “hey” so we stopped talking...
 
The Brit
He had blue eyes, a pierced tongue and a history of criminal tendencies. He was also my instructor when I trained as a dive master. For 5 weeks the sex was amazing and continuous. We’d have hours of sex, wake up a couple hours later to have more sex, sleep a few hours, wake up and have a quickie or two and run down the beach to work at the dive shop. I never got tired of him and we never slept together without fucking. We both left the island to go work other jobs and occasionally messaged each other afterwards. I wanted more from him but he liked to be available to whatever might be coming down the road. He never followed thru on any of our plans to meet up so we don’t talk now.
 
Dancer Guy
Adorable, young, really good with his tongue, and one of the biggest penises I’ve ever seen. But it didn’t completely click for me. We’ve sexty texted since then but there’s been no repeat. If we were ever both single and in the same place at the same time there might be a repeat. Maybe?
 
Handlebar
Tall and tattooed with a handlebar mustache. Months of flirting followed by a couple weeks of great sex that all fizzled when I suspected he had lots of secrets and more than one girl on the side. He was more fun to flirt with than to be with because he only wanted what he didn’t have. We finally parted on friendly terms and he later married his third baby mama. I wish them well…
 
Lothario
Days of flirtation followed by intermission sex during our final show together. Strong like an ox, hung like a horse, wanted (and probably had) by all the girls in town. If you google him, his mug shot comes up first.
 
The Other Swede
My Stockholm liaison and the first guy I’d ever met in a bar and had sex with the same night. My friend Luminous took his friend, the handsome white supremacist drug dealer. I got the better end of that deal because even though my Swede had trouble staying hard, he made up for it with his tongue and excessive complimenting. I don’t expect to ever see him again but it’s 2016 so we follow each other on Instagram.
 
The Student
French speaking Belgian with very little English who I met in Brussels and saw again in Paris a month later. Big and uncut with a beautiful body, the sex was good but peculiar since he had a thing for choking me and I was thinking about someone else for most of the night. He did give me an entertaining last night in Europe though and we occasionally talk about a repeat.
 
The Trainer
Beautiful but emotionally shut down with a lot of potential and too much ego. We’ve known each other several years now, I like him as a person and the sex is usually fantastic because his stamina is unparalleled and he can be adoring and attentive. I used to want more from him but now I know who we are. We love each other but we don’t inhabit each other's worlds.
 
Married Guy
I liked the attention, he liked having his marriage and me. Weeks of glorious flirting and kissing in abandoned hallways at work was hot but the whole thing felt inevitable and unstoppable and ultimately destined to end, which it did when I left town. Seeing him again is a terrible idea but I still think about the kissing.
 
The Sweetheart
Sweet, shy and unassuming, none of which I usually go for but looked really good on him. I met him on Tinder in Rochester and we chatted for 2 weeks before I asked him out for a drink. It took several beers in the bar to loosen him up and another one in my hotel room before he kissed me. Dark smooth skin, big arms and a luscious dick that curled like a comma, the sex was really fun so we saw each other again a month later. I liked him but our lives are very different and there’s no long-term potential. The texting has since fizzled but I think of him fondly.
 
Southern Comfort -
Tall lean Memphis boy with a thick country drawl and a girlfriend. It started as really really good texting on Tinder and progressed to an afternoon in my hotel room. He was great with his mouth and so grateful to be touched and kissed that it was clear his current relationship was light on affection. He’s the first black man I’ve seen with an uncut dick. He hits me up every now and again but he’s still with his girlfriend so I won’t see him again. Too little to gain and much to lose.
 
Dragonfly
My kissing date for my 43rd birthday. We spent a week making out and he made me squirt, which I found intriguing but not all that appealing since it didn’t come with an orgasm. Penetrative sex between us doesn’t work that well but he’s an extremely comforting person to be around and whenever I’m in his city, I call him. The kissing is always outstanding.
 
Anakalakoa
The only hot man on Tinder in a remote area of the Southwest. We had one night together in a town neither of us lived in. We are both gypsies with no homes and I thought perhaps we had more in common but after a couple of months of trying to meet up again, I realized that his gypsy life came from not knowing who he was and my gypsy life is an expression of all the things I know about myself. Through him I learned that I need men with passion and purpose even if they don’t come with a permanent addresses.
 
Jean-Claude
A gorgeous Canadian I met in Berlin at an experimental theatre show. We talked for hours with an honesty only possible between two lonely travelers who know they won’t meet again. He was a great kisser, dominant and affectionate. We spent one night together before he left town and it was the best sex I’d had all year.
 
The EMT
A 27-year old I met off OK Cupid. I set up a fantasy scenario and he fulfilled it, fucking me in a public parking lot in the middle of the day. I saw him a few more times after that afternoon and we always had short intense sexual interactions. We’ve never talked much but we have a strong connection where we recognize each other on some kind of primal level. 10 years from now I could text him and we’d meet up and have exactly this same connection.
 
Baby Face
A sweet 26-year-old who wanted a casual sexual relationship. I was looking for something fun for the summer and we texted for a long time before we met up so I thought he’d be more mature than he actually was. Despite that, we hooked up a few times and the sex was always passionate and sensual and lasted for hours. He was an attentive lover but we had literally nothing in common and nothing to talk about. Our relationship ended when I left town and neither one of us got everything we wanted out of it.
 
Karmic Payback
Is there’s anything worse than a good looking charming man with enjoyable conversational skills and a hot body who is only interested in his own pleasure? I can’t think of anything. All this guy wanted was for me to suck his dick until he got off. Everything else we did put us right back at his dick and my mouth. I tried to salvage the evening but minutes after he got off, he was putting his clothes on and saying “You were a delight. Hit me up if you get bored.” To which I said, “I don’t get bored.” I had a lot of sex that summer where it was been all about me. This guy leveled those karmic scales.
 
The Fisherman
A delightful end to my summer of sex, The Fisherman was better read than me, perhaps the first guy about whom I could say that. We met on OK Cupid and even though his pictures weren’t that alluring, his conversational skills were stellar. We met casually at a bar for a drink and he was much more handsome than his pictures indicated. We talked for hours and the kissing was epically delicious. The sex wasn’t that great at first but it got better and then I had to leave town to go back to work. I really liked him and wanted to keep the relationship going but distance got the better of us.  
 
The Carolina Biker
The guy who helped me get over The Fisherman. He brought me flowers, we had sex and we both wanted more from the night than we got. He’s a sweet soul with a soft spot for abandoned cats and I think he’d do well with a full time girl. We text every occasionally and I wish him well but I wouldn’t call him again.
 
The Boyfriend (but not mine)
On our first date, he drove across town to bring me dinner after a long day of work. We then had an uneasy week where he wanted a girlfriend and I wanted a hook up. The sex was… good? It was much better than the Biker and my body responded to him. I squirted when he went down on me but my mind resisted him. He could sense the divide, that my body wanted him but my mind couldn’t give in, so he pressured me. I wanted to like him but I didn’t want to be with him full time and after a week I left him unhappy, which is the main thing I remember about him.
 
Black Mamba
A one night stand in Houston. This young 23-year-old had the longest dick I’ve ever seen. My gay boyfriends estimate him at 10 inches by his picture. It was like being punched repeatedly in the cervix. Occasionally I bring out his picture like a party trick and tell the story of bedding him. You can’t see his face in the picture and now I only barely remember it.
 
Loverboy
A 22-year-old bartender I picked up on a travel day when I realized he was flirting with me even though I had makeup smeared under my eyes and I was exactly twice his age. I left him my number with my check and he called me. The sex was stellar but afterwards he was… whimsical. I tried to see him again and it didn’t happen. He’s one of the ones that I wonder what story he tells about me.
 
The Spartan
Another young one. He was my second choice in that city and I was a consolation prize for a girl he loved who had abandoned him. The sex was ok for me because I know how to take care of myself and good for him because I’m old enough to know such things. We saw each other a couple times that week, and months later he wanted to see me again but I declined because I couldn’t think of any good reason for a repeat. According to facebook he has a girlfriend now, which is great.
 
Black Irish
My god, the sex was so good! If ever there’s an argument for biology and how some bodies just fit together, this guy is it. He was only 23 but he drove across town at 1am to meet me at my hotel and we had an amazing night together before I went on vacation. We text occasionally now but I’m rarely in his city so I think we’ll mostly be a really good memory for each other.
 
The Dive Master
My hookup in the South Pacific on vacation. We didn’t come from the same culture and I knew I might be getting into deep tricky waters. Plus there was always the chance that I would be jeopardizing his job. But after a week of flirting on a remote island, we had a better chance of stopping a tsunami than our affair. We had sex on the beach one night and it was good but he didn’t handle it well the next morning. He was emotional and felt abandoned when I left the island. I feel bad about fucking him even though I know he liked it.
 
Rolf
I met this American in a foreign country and we embarked on a strange affair of public sex around a European capital, acting and fucking in a way that was out of character for both of us. I’ve written more about that here. We haven’t spoken since we parted even though we’re facebook friends. It was vacation fling for me but again, I wonder what stories he tells about me.
 
The Paramour
A guy I met at a party and found out afterwards was in an open relationship. A real one this time. I decided to keep seeing him despite my gut feeling that I’m not good at being the third party to a twosome. I really liked him and we had a deep emotional and mental connection that went beyond sex but I couldn’t get into his fetishes – especially how he wanted me to be his submissive slut – and even having really good sex with him wasn’t enough for me to keep our relationship door open. We had a brief fling and I occasionally hear from him now but it’s always uncomfortable, mostly because of the possibilities of what might have been.
 
Sid Vicious
We worked and flirted together for a year and then tried a relationship. It lasted a few passionate months before flaming out because we couldn’t agree on what we wanted. Very few people we work with knew what happened, which made it feel like perhaps it never happened at all. But we both know it did. We’re currently in the space of not speaking to each other but I expect to get over that soon. We were friends for far longer than we were lovers. And sometimes I get the feeling that it’s not completely over? We will be working together for a lot longer so who knows.
​

Not the we're-in-a-long-term-relationship kind of sex but the we-just-met-and-we're fucking kind of sex. The spontaneous kind. The risky kind. The kind that no one who lost their virginity after the year 1980 is ever allowed to have because it's UNSAFE and "Safety First" is supposed to be the slogan of our generation. 

I just got an IUD placed and when a friend asked me how I was doing with it I flippantly said, "Well I've had sex without condoms and I'm not pregnant so I guess it's working." This friend  loves me and knows my lifestyle and reads my writing and she still couldn't help herself from asking what my Ob/Gyn thought about that. She didn't know the context of the sex but she heard "sex without condoms" and assumed I was being UNSAFE and a doctor should take me to task. 

The story is that I met a guy in Europe a few weeks ago and less than 12 hours later I fucked him without a condom. And also without any kind of conversation about it. We had both gone thru an exhausting exhilarating kind of day. He was jet lagged and we were drunk. We dragged each other thru public spaces, making out, feeling each other up, I sucked his cock in an alley way, we fucked in doorway. People probably saw us. I didn't care. I felt naughty, guilty, exhilarated, concerned, like I shouldn't be doing it and oh it's too late. Doing it. 

The morning after I thought it was a good story. I hoped I didn't "catch anything," and quite truthfully I was much more concerned that I'd had a tampon in while we had sex and I couldn't find the tampon afterwards.... I eventually found the tampon with much effort but that was a harrowing adventure. Perhaps it overshadowed my emotions about the condom-less sex? 

I saw the same guy a few nights later. This time we were sober. We found a (less) public place that was (probably) not quite as visible.

He unzipped his pants and pulled out his cock. 

Him: I should have asked if you were on birth control. 
Me: I am

He positioned his cock at my opening.

Him: Of course I'm clean, I hope you are too
Me: I am

Thrust.
​
It's all so very 21st century, isn't it? First night hysterical euphoria, second night calculated risk taking and the token "are you clean?" conversation because all our training, all our education, everything we hear and see says sex without condoms is wrong. It's UNSAFE. And we should be SAFE. Always. 

It's why we have toddler car seats and bike helmets and temperature warnings on McDonald's coffee cups. For our Protection. For our Safety. 21st century rules of American life say that without Protection and Safety there's only Injury. Blood. Disease. Lawsuits. Anarchy. Death.   

But despite the rules and the lawsuits, here we all are, taking chances and figuring things out, making spur of the moment decisions and catching up later. So where are we all if we're not protected and safe? What does that space look like?  

My space looks like this: I'll continue to mostly use condoms. I'll also continue to sometimes not use them. I expect I'll have a few mornings of "oh shit, that wasn't smart" and God willing I'll mostly be smart. Because I'd rather be healthy. But I also want to say yes to things that are fun or that scare me and see what happens.

I should now go get tested but that's just a consequence of actions. It's not a conclusion. I don't have an easy conclusion because society says that I should feel bad about condom-less sex but I don't. And writing publicly means that I might have to defend my actions. Call them CHOICES—the biggest defense of any action in the 21st century. Maybe excuse myself or rationalize.

But the reason that I'm writing this is because it happened. And I'm still thinking about it.  ​