a good little redhead

"Be a good little redhead," said Gerard a few hours ago, right before he left.  He's going to be gone for ten days, off on a business trip.  His business might be finally taking off.  We don't know for sure yet, but there are lots of positive signs.  And so he's gone off to see if he can seal the deal.

Things are picking up in my world too.  It seems just about definite that I will soon be off of unemployment, and doing the kind of work that I love again, while still continuing the new initiatives that I've tried to start over the last year.  And, this fall I'm going to be going back to school.  It will be part-time as well, so I can continue the work stuff too.  I could actually be busy again!  That seems like a dream come true.

While we're not quite to the point where we can afford to buy new clothes or go out for nice dinners yet, Gerard and I are starting to feel much more optimistic about our respective career and financial positions.  It's a relief!  And it's also nice to know that we've been able to support each other through all of this.

When I started this blog, I felt that I was very in touch with the imperfections of love and long term relationships.  These days, I can acknowledge the existence of those imperfections-- but they feel less weighty.  Gerard and I rarely fight anymore.  I used to use a green highlighter to mark on my calendar each day when we had a big argument, and I don't even remember where I put that highlighter anymore.  Sure, we get annoyed with each other still.  We occasionally speak harshly with each other still.  But we haven't escalated into an actual *fight* in weeks and weeks.

We still go through periods where we definitely don't have enough sex.  Both of us are still really frustrated by the change in the way we relate to each other sexually (seriously, it was once our absolute strongest area!).  But we also go through periods where we have a very satisfying amount of sex, and a very satisfying quality of sex too.  It seems to vacillate, although I haven't noticed a pattern around which it does that.  I am trying to find relaxation and acceptance around this issue.

So there's not much to report, in terms of the theme and anonymity-assuring parameters that I set for this blog.  I just wanted to check in and let you all know that we're still here.  Even though I don't write very often, I'm still happy to have my connection to the interwebs and all the interesting people I've become acquainted with here over the years.

Here's what I want to believe: that one day in the near future Gerard and I will both be very busy and successful in our work.  We will no longer be confined to the tiny space together for so much of our days, and our finances will no longer confine us to very little beyond making dinner at home and watching TV.  Then life will become more interesting.  We'll be able to play harder, and we'll be looking to connect to each other more in sexual ways.  We'll be able to be more adventurous in day-to-day life, which leads to more excitement and more stories to tell.

Or we'll skip a bunch of the exciting going-out stuff and instead our next big news will be about baby-having.  I'd be okay with that too.  But it's still in the future ahead, not happening immediately.

Anyway, the point is that we're still here and we're still happy.  And hoping to be happier soon.  Thanks for reading.

distant family

Recently, my grandfather passed away, and Gerard and I flew out to a completely different part of the country to attend the funeral.  The trip meant an introduction to over a dozen of my relatives that he has never met (or even much heard about) during our couple of years together.  Before we left for the trip, I wrote the following few paragraphs:

I didn't know my grandfather very well, so the trip isn't emotional.  It will be interesting to introduce Gerard to members of my family that are more distant.  As far as I'm concerned, he's already met all of my family members and friends that have a very important place in my heart.  But on this trip he will meet enough people to fill in the blanks on the Aurelia family tree.  And something about that feels potentially interesting, like I'm letting him peek into a back corner of my closet.


I wasn't socialized to behave like this branch of my family-- in fact, I'm very different from them.  That's part of why none of them really fall under the VIP category of friends and relatives.  Even when I was a child, it was hard to relate to their different way of doing things and their different way of understanding the world.  I could tell that they didn't "get" me or the values that my parents instilled in me.


Here's just a few examples: I was taught to value a kind of uptight dignity, and this part of my family is always silly and teasing.  I was taught to eat healthy foods and carefully watch my appearance, and this part of my family always dresses sloppy and eats terribly.  Consequently, every last one of them is significantly overweight, unhappy about it, and yet also not willing to do anything to change it.  I was taught to appreciate art and culture and all the new things that there are to learn about the world, and this part of my family doesn't care about much beyond NASCAR and the birds that are stopping at the bird feeder.  Being around them is sort of surreal.  And since Gerard shares all of my values that I listed above and he's more rigid than I am in general, I'm a little nervous about the introductions.

And now we're home again, with the trip behind us, and I can report that I had nothing to be nervous about.  The thing is, even though my family members are strangely unlike me in a lot of ways, the main thing that Gerard noticed about them is that they are all "soooo nice."  And though I initially neglected to mention it, it's true.

Gerard sat with my grandmother for hours and asked her questions about my grandfather and their life together, essentially taking a kind of history.  She was absolutely thrilled to have his attention all that time, and he was genuinely interested in hearing her tales.  He took in information about my grandfather, and watched the slideshow of photographs from his younger years, his courtship with my grandmother, and the development of his family.  My cousins gathered around Gerard, charmed by his wide-eyed enthusiasm and interest in them and all things unknown to him.  And my immediate family, who of course has known Gerard for years now, treated him like one of their own, like part of our special clan.

So, the introduction to distant family members was nothing but positive.  They will all remember Gerard and seek him out at future family events-- I have no doubt about it.  And he will get to know them more too.  Introducing him to my weirdo family members did nothing other than make Gerard feel even more like he is my family.

a reality

Gerard and I think that what we're going through is probably not uncommon.  Probably lots of couples go through this, but probably most of them don't try to write sex blogs!

I used to write about us fighting a lot.  Well, we don't do that anymore.  We got over the strain of learning to live together, of being scared of committing to each other.  We still have arguments, but they are much less frequent and much less escalated.  Considering the amount of stress that we're under and the close quarters in which we're both living and working, I think we're doing awesome.

Yeah, we're not having any problem in the companionship area.  We love each other.  We're talking more often about our plan to eventually get married and have a baby, and we're both getting a little bit less freaked out by that every time we discuss it.  We support each other, we work together, we nurture each other... we spend more time together than probably either of us would prefer, but we're making the most of that (in most ways, anyway).  I can say this unequivocally: We're happy.

We're also affectionate.  We hug a lot.  We snuggle.  We touch each other.  Gerard likes to spank me a little bit every day.  We say that we love each other.  He sings me songs; I tell him why I think he's special.  We have no shortage of affection.

But what we do have a shortage of is SEX.  Sometimes I can't believe that we once had the most amazing sex I'd ever had in my entire life.  Yesterday my best friend told me this story about the mind-bending sex she had with her lover, and I couldn't even imagine what that might feel like.  It's been more than three weeks since the last time that I had Gerard inside of me, and sometimes I feel like I'm going to go crazy.

Turns out that he's sexually frustrated too.  He wants to have sex too.  But somehow we're not doing it.  I feel like I initiate with some regularity... but it doesn't work that well when I do.  We both like it when he's the aggressor.  We have better sex when he's the one doing the pursuing, and I'm capitulating to his desires (at least, that's the story we tell ourselves-- and it works!).  But he's not feeling it.  He says he just doesn't feel turned on.

I think some of the problem is intimacy.  Intimacy is scary.  Before he moved in, we always had the distance between our apartments to keep things from getting more intimate than we were ready for.  Then he moved in, and we had fighting to keep us from getting too intimate. But now... now we're here together all the time and we're not fighting.  We're more intimate than we've ever been.  Maybe regular sex would just be more closeness than either of us can handle right now.

But, presumably, we could both work on our intimacy issues and eventually it wouldn't feel so scary anymore, and we'd start having that crazy-perfect sex that was once one of our defining features.  That's the theory that I'm trying to believe in.

In the meanwhile, we have to come up with strategies to help us improve.  Gerard likes it when I explore with girls, so I hit Craig's List last night.  He also asked me to touch him in certain ways more frequently.  I gave him some feedback about the way that he touches me too.  And we're just going to try to be more open to each other.

Because, I'd like to say... having a little intrigue with other people occasionally is fun and titillating, but what I really want-- what I want more than anything else-- is Gerard.  It all starts and ends with him.

Anyway, when I started this blog I said I was going to write about the reality of a long-term relationship between two people who know they're sensitive and damaged.  You readers saw us overcome our fighting and my depression... so now we've got a new problem.  And here I am being embarrassingly honest about it.

I hope you see us get through this one as well.

postponed

Well, I have been postponed by my would-be part-time casual mistress, perhaps forever.

I have to respect her for being honest with me, and for her reasons for backing away.  She said that even though she enjoys playing around, she's realized that her real goal is to have a long-term partner.  So because of that she's not sure how she feels about casual play anymore.  She's also in graduate school, and she has a lot on her plate right now.  She asked me if we could talk about it again in a month, giving her some time to figure out what she feels and wants.

So I totally get where she's coming from.  Don't we all want that kind of connection in our lives?  It's true that casual playing around can distract a person from the quest for an actual partner, and I would never want to deny her that.  But wow, am I disappointed.

She emailed me after that last meeting, you know, and said that there were a lot of things she was interested in doing with me.  Oral sex, she mentioned, and fucking me with her strap-on, and discipline-related stuff.  Being with her was so exhilarating; I was imagining what I would wear when next I saw her, and fantasizing about what she might want me to wear.  I didn't even try to imagine what it would be like to be fucked by her-- I was saving that until the moment when I could actually experience it and know.  I loved our age difference-- she's nine years older than me, just like Gerard-- and I loved our complementarity and the electric attraction between us.  I wanted to be with that a little bit longer.

In her most recent email, the one where she explained her need to table me for now, she asked me to go to her blog to read something she'd shared, and tell her what I thought of it.  The topic was something intellectual that we have in common, but it was all written on the blog that she uses for her professional dominatrix persona.  In other words, this intellectual, academic piece was surrounded by dominant fantasies and words and the general presence of her extremely attractive dominance.  Oh, and photos of her.  So even though I knew she was appealing to our intellectual connection rather than our D/s connection when she asked me to read and share my thoughts on her piece, I couldn't get through it.  It was too distracting, and maybe even a little bit painful, to be in that virtual environment.

I had this yearning, you see... I wanted to go to this part of my sexual self.  The bisexual part, and the submissive part.  I wanted to try it out again.  Gerard used to play the dominant role in my life a lot more, before he moved in and "us" got more complex and messy and emotional.  I thought if I experienced it with her for a little while, it would help me figure out just what I wanted with that kind of sex within my relationship.  My main relationship.

But anyway, I can't blame her for her choice.  I want her to be happy.  I don't know her that well, but I know that finding a long-term partner is more important than getting off with someone that you know will never be serious about you.  I'm crossing my fingers, though, that she wants a little bit of casual playtime now and then while she's on the road to finding her love.  And I told her that I want to stay in touch even if we never end up in her bed together again.  Sigh.

exploring

"You should come sit over here," she said, patting the bed.  She lives in a beautiful, well-kept studio apartment, and the bed was on the opposite side of the room from the couch, where I sat.  I stood up and walked over, sat where she had gestured.

She looked at me for a moment, then commented, "You said you were going to take off your top."

"Oh.  I did, yes."  I sat there for a moment, and then I grabbed my top and pulled it off quickly, dropped it in a pile on the arm of the couch.  I looked up at her, waiting to see what would come next.

I feel this jerkiness and lack of flow as I describe these events.  And I felt that in the moment, too, although it didn't feel as awkward as it now sounds.  I knew I wanted her, so I was propelled forward by my desire, and by the fact that there was no reason not to.  But it was kind of new for me.  Unfamiliar.  I'd never had this kind of rapid meeting and ending up in bed before.  And I'm still pretty inexperienced with women.  And I haven't explored more than Gerard and I's fairly tame version of dominance and submission in years-- but here I was with an experienced dominatrix who wanted to have her way with me.

She stood in front of me and smiled broadly, but not at me.  It was more private, as if she had her own personal joke that I wasn't in on, as if I wouldn't be able to understand it if she told me what it was anyway.  She pushed me back onto the bed, and then climbed on top of me so that she was straddling my waist.  She pinned my wrists over my head and, from her overhead position, regarded me thoughtfully.

She pulled my arms down to my sides then, and pinned my wrists under her knees.  That was the moment when I was reminded that she is experienced and skilled-- I have been pinned down in painful ways more times than I can remember, but this particular method of restraint was entirely comfortable.  I didn't even wonder if I would eventually lose feeling in my wrists, because I knew I wouldn't.

It's hard to tell the story in a linear way after that, because I really let go and just experienced it.  I know that she went quickly to my breasts, grabbing them and pinching my nipples, enjoying my sighs and yelps.  I know that she put her hands on my neck, and I know that she tapped my cheek with that in-between level of force that isn't quite a slap but would be with just a little more energy in it.  I remember gazing up at her face, admiring her until she told me that it wasn't polite to stare.

One of my favorite moments was the one when she moved to my side and grabbed me by my left elbow and left knee, then easily lifted me up on to her lap before flipping me over to my stomach.  Strength and confidence-- they just ooze out of her.  So hot.  By then my jeans were off, and she unclasped my bra once I was face-down, and later pulled my panties off too.  She ran her hands over my back, but paid most attention to my bottom, spanking and grabbing and generally exploring.

It was all teasing, really.  Just stimulating me ever so slightly, physically and mentally... she kept laughing, again like it was all a joke that I wasn't in on.  At one point she leaned down as if to kiss me, and then stopped just before our lips met.  I had that sweet feeling of yearning, where I wanted to feel her lips on mine so badly and yet was afraid to initiate.  Eventually I tried it ever so slightly... she let me kiss her lightly before pulling away and then coming close again.  She allowed the slightest little kisses.  I enjoyed the feeling of being deprived, of being subject to her limits, and of yearning and vulnerability.

She draped my beaded necklace into my mouth, and I felt the silliness of its presence there, but I soaked it up... like a very gentle type of erotic embarrassment.  I heard her doing something over my head-- she had me pinned in a different way now, such that I couldn't see anything that was going on.  It wasn't until much later, after she let me up, that I saw that she was wearing black latex gloves.  They were really striking in appearance.  With them on her hands, she began to explore my body more intimately.  She never exactly penetrated me, but she poked around quite a bit, making me feel objectified and incredibly aroused.

Oh, and she never let me come.  Just teasing.  The whole time.

Later, she told me that she'd been very close to getting her strap-on out of the closet.  We've decided to meet soon to discuss limits and desires.  Gerard says he's happy to be able to give me an adventure that fits into his comfort zone... we've also had a lot more sex since that night than we've had in quite some time.  So this seems to be working well for everyone.  I absolutely can't wait to see her again and explore some more.  How lucky am I to have a skilled, sexy, attractive dominant woman be into me, and a loving boyfriend who welcomes me to go out and explore?

a date

"I feel bad about Gerard-- canceling the original plan, you know, and excluding him."

"Oh, don't feel bad about that."  I waved my hand dismissively.  

"Well, I don't actually feel bad.  I just wanted to acknowledge him, say something to let you know I acknowledge him."

I laughed.  "He has no problem with it at all.  He likes it.  I never really explored anything with girls alone before I met him-- it's really only with his encouragement that I've started to realize that I'm bisexual."

"I don't really want to do the photo shoot anymore," she said, "That was sort of an excuse... to get us talking.  I used to use photo shoots as an excuse to play with people, back when I was in a relationship and I wasn't really allowed to play with people but I was allowed to have photo shoots."

"Well," I said, emboldened by wine, "you really don't need an excuse with me."

***

She and I just have a sexual connection.  We met through a mutual friend... a friend of mine who is kinky and who frequents local BDSM events.  The two of them met in that scene, and then she and I met at a party he hosted.  My eye had been drawn to her as soon as she walked into the room.  I thought she looked perfect... beautiful, fit, confident, sexy.  Later, she asked our mutual friend for a picture of me.  The next time I saw her, she admitted that she'd wanted the picture as an aid to fantasizing during masturbation.  I was more than intrigued.

Gerard isn't attracted to her, which amazes me since her physical appearance is completely his type, and beautiful.  But I think it's just because she's so dominant... he's attracted to vulnerable, submissive girls like me, and she's probably the opposite of that.  So even though Gerard would love for us to get involved with a third person together, he's happy to let me go off alone with her.  He imagined that I might have some submissive fantasies fulfilled with her-- the ones that go farther than what he's interested in.  And I've imagined that too.  She's worked as a professional domine, after all, in addition to being dominant in her private life as well.  How could my fantasies not run wild?

In the week before I met her for a drink, I had three or four sexy dreams about her.  And when we were there in the bar, sitting next to each other, after we'd discussed the non-kinky subjects that we had in common for half an hour or so, I got what I thought of as confirmation of our complementarity.  I mean, I'd been thrilled to come meet her.  She'd made it clear that she was interested in me, and that alone was exciting.  But then she started to talk in more detail about her kinky interests.

I already knew that one of the big things that she is into is the feminization of men.  I don't have any real connection with that kink... in fact, I know very little about it.  But she mentioned that her "twink" had recommended the bar that we were sitting in.  "What's a twink?" I asked.  She explained: it's a man who is interested in allowing her to feminize him-- to make him wear high heels, stockings, panties, and eventually to let her fuck him with her strap-on.  She told me that she'd always been into more feminine men, and that she just loves to dress them up.  

"How is it different with women, then?" I asked.

"It's not really different," she told me.  "I like to do the same things to girls... I like them in the same stockings and panties, really.  I've got this thing for objectification... it's just really arousing for me.  And I like very feminine women, just like I go for feminine-- or gender-neutral-- men."

I laughed.  I couldn't help it.  It's so funny to me how our instincts draw us to people who match us.  Objectification of femininity has got to be one of the main themes of my fantasies.  I shouldn't have been surprised that it was her fantasy too.  Plus, I know that I'm extremely feminine, and it was exciting to know that I fit her desires.  I felt my panties getting a little bit damp as she talked about it.  The idea of being alone with her was so exciting-- and strangely not intimidating, even though I've had very few experiences with women and zero experiences alone with an experienced dominant.  

I let my interest in her be clear.  I don't think of myself as being any good at flirting, so I stumbled through it.  It was probably an odd combination, my usual nonverbal, mostly-inadvertent cues with my very direct blurtings about how compelling and sexy I found her.

Foreign forwardness aside, I think it's fair for me to make this judgment: Flirting with a woman is so different than flirting with a man.  Most notably because I had to try a lot harder.  I still felt like my girly and submissive self, even though I had to initiate a lot more, and put myself out there a lot more than I've ever needed to do with a man.  She kept calling me on my inadvertent flirtatious behaviors-- the subtle batting of my eyelashes, the way I touched my hair.  But I was direct, too.  I told her outright that I'd had sexy dreams about her, and I made it clear that I wanted to be alone with her, although these revelations didn't make her jump to her feet and try to rush me off to her bed, as I know a man would have done.  Also, I kept waiting for her to touch me.  With men, it's so easy.  They're always dying to touch you, and they always initiate touch quickly.  Not so with her.  In fact, she told me there was no assurance she would ever touch me at all.

"If we go back to my apartment, will you take off your top?" she asked at last.

I didn't hesitate (and by the way, this is so unlike me).  "Sure."

"Do you need another drink?"

"No."

"Well, then let's go."

getting hot again

He pinched my nipple-- not very hard-- and I yelped.  It had been aching since I'd gotten up that morning, and Gerard knew it.  I didn't bother opening my eyes to see him smile.  He doesn't necessarily want to be a sadist, and he hasn't acted like one in months.  But it always amuses him to see me just a little bit tortured.  Even if the initial torture wasn't at his hands.

With one swift motion, he removed my jeans and panties.  Then he flipped me over to my stomach.  I was lying horizontally across the bed, my eyes looking down onto the hardwood floor.  Gerard smacked my bottom and I cringed at the sting.  It hadn't hurt last night at all... I hadn't even thought that she had spanked me that hard... but when Gerard gave me a friendly smack earlier in the day, it hurt a lot more than it was supposed to, and I realized that I had taken more than I thought I had.  Or maybe my bottom was just out of practice.

Gerard pulled me up onto my knees, and I felt him pressing himself against me, then pulling away and smacking my bottom again.  "That hurts, doesn't it?" he asked condescendingly.  "This is what happens when you let other people do what they want with you... aren't you embarrassed?"

My face flushed.  He knows that this type of gentle humiliation is erotic to me, but he has rarely used his knowledge.  I buried my face in the bedspread.

"I'm waiting for your answer, Aurelia.  I said, aren't you embarrassed?"

"Yes!" I relented.  Through my arousal, I marveled at how much he was nailing it, saying everything right, being so dominant, and clearly having so much fun.  We hadn't had sex like this in months.  It reminded me of how hot we were when we first got together.

He spanked me some more and I whined, "Ow, it hurts!"

"And do you deserve it?"

"Yes!"

His clothes were off, and he was inside of me.  He moved me so I was flat on my tummy.  The palms of my hands laid against the floor, supporting me against the force of his body over me, and I rotated my hips so that my bottom lifted up to meet him.  He slammed into me.  "Does this hurt your bottom a little bit, having me fuck you so hard?" he asked.  It didn't, but I told him yes anyway, because it was hot to me to think that it could hurt, and I knew that was what he wanted to hear.

I had two amazing orgasms, and then Gerard flipped me over to my back and lifted my legs over my head.  This position hurts me if I'm not aroused enough.  I haven't tolerated it for a long time.  But tonight I complied-- maybe because I was feeling really submissive in a way that I haven't for a while, or maybe because Gerard was feeling dominant in a way that he hasn't for a while.  I was turned on enough that it felt completely natural.  I screamed with pleasure until he came inside of me.  

And I was on cloud nine.  Suddenly, we have found our sexual connection again.  After months of meaningful lovemaking, full of intimacy but lacking the sexual oomph that defined us for so much of our relationship, we are HOT again.