Happy Halloween from Urban Roguery.

Panties and petroleum.

At the King Street border between the pretentious, yuppie, upstart Liberty Village and the historic, downtrodden, depressed Parkdale 'hoods of Toronto stands a high-walled, gated, ominous compound. It's the city's Road Operations and Transportation Services building, where the heavy machinery and working vehicles that maintain the city's streets are kept. Inside, boiler room dispatch offices respond to emergency calls regarding flooding, fallen trees, and other city problems.

My current work routine takes me past this building several times a day. And every single time, I'm reminded of the Grrl. It isn't just because the West Queen West pad that we shared is only a few blocks away; that happened later. It's because of the dark evening when we were inside that compound together and where I first saw her (mostly) bare body.

Flute was a friend of mine. A sometime handyman and fulltime freespirit, he played a charming First Nations flute when he wasn't helping someone put up drywall. He worked inside this compound at the time, handling dispatch calls to ferry emergency repair vehicles to Toronto homeowners who were freaking out over this thing or another. And he had access to city vehicles.

My situation was different then. I didn't own a car at the time. For reasons that escape me, I was unable to pick the Grrl up from the airport, and Flute was more than happy to offer me a ride with a van that he was using regularly. He and I had a bond about the women in our lives, and he was totally cool with helping me out when it came to Someone Important Coming To Visit.

It was the first time she had come to Canada, the first time we would be together. After our first meeting, we were touch-and-go for a while as she mediated matters with a previous partner. By the time we were planning her visit, she had left that boyfriend and I was excited to pieces about the all-clear signal.

I remember watching her stroll down the walkway at the airport. The roses I gave her. Our first, real kiss. Taking her and her luggage to That Van.

That Van was not exactly a chartered limousine. A bluecollar working vehicle, it was an awful shade of sky blue with countless scuffs and dents and marks and stains. The interior was packed with plumbing and electrical equipment, used rags, safety gear, hardhats. Flute was a smoker, so on the grimy dash was a mayhem of crushed Du Maurier boxes and snubbed filters along with the old Pepsi cans and dozens of torn road maps, fuel receipts, work orders, and the like. Both the seats and flooring were stained and worn. A side mirror was cracked. Rust bordered the double panel doors on the side. And throughout it all, the lingering, dense odor of old oil, gasoline, kerosine. It was a scent that was so deep that it almost had a texture, as if you could feel it entering into the pores on your face if you found yourself around it for too long.

Romantic, no?

I loaded the Grrl's luggage into a reasonably clean spot in the back, she found some acceptable space on the rear benchseat, and the three of us laughed as we pulled away from the airport.

She was hungry. I already planned on taking her to dinner, but as it turned out, traffic had kept Flute away from his duties longer than he had hoped. It became necessary for him to stop by the Road Operations compound for a short while. The Grrl smiled through the minor inconvenience. We decided to do dinner first, after this detour, and go back to my pad later.

It was growing dark. After we pulled into the compound, Flute secured a gate behind us and parked That Van in a small alley before he dashed into an office for almost an hour.

The Grrl and I relaxed, talked, passed the time. We kissed some more. I was feeling the first stirrings of what would become one of the deepest love affairs of my life.

Practical-minded, the Grrl asked me to fetch a few things from her luggage. Since we were doing dinner first, she decided to change clothes. Here and now. Then and there. In a dirty van that was parked in a narrow alley between two foreboding municipal buildings, on a stained and cruddy backbench. I fumbled a little in the twilight, but found and returned with some fresh pants and a very bohemian sweater.

Still seated, she smiled. Both of the van's center doors were wide open as I then watched her slowly remove the black Tshirt she was wearing to reveal a tight sportsbra. We talked, casually. She kept smiling. She removed her Doc Martens to lower the khaki camoflage pants she had on, leaning back into the seat as she reached for her belt buckle. She kept looking into my eyes, smiling as I listened to the clink of metal clasps, the zing of a lowering zipper. I smiled back as she raised her beautiful, broad ass from the dingy seat and started to wiggle the pants down her legs.

Her radiant, slate eyes. Her thighs. Black thong. Her facing me, her legs open as her knees were level to my eyes as she took the pants from my hand.

The mound between her thighs. The bulge and the faint hint of seam, barely made out in the dark.

She put on the pants. Flute would return shortly after.

Changing into dinner clothes on the stained seat of a workhorse van, and all the while beaming with a wide, toothy smile as she watched me watch her. That's the kind of woman she is, and why it became so easy for me to go crazy over her.

Later, I would learn all about that mound, that bulge, that seam. I would learn all about the way the Grrl's outer labia would flush several shades of red when she got excited, hot, wet, and how that labia would swell like two crescent-shaped pillows. I would learn all about the way the flesh of her cunt would resemble a short-stemmed tulip, as if the flower were simply laid upon her body, the petals ensconcing the tender clitoris that I would enslave myself to for the next several years.

I really miss giving her head. And how she would do me too.

The sex we shared that night was extraordinary. We simply kissed and caressed for longer than I could remember. We smoked some dope, listened to soothing yoga music, and entwined for hours upon hours. I relished in her joy to be taken in her ass, and loved how she moaned deeply as she had me, her eyes crushed tight and her teeth biting her lower lip as she felt my calves to her thighs while I slowly and deeply thrust. She would breathe deeply and groan when I would stop to lay still on top of her back. I remember the soothing, complete pleasure I felt to have my bodyweight on her, holding her, my legs snaked around hers, my fingers massaging her scalp through her short, auburn hair as her opened sphincter gripped the very root of me tightly, snugly, warmly when I filled her with my total all.

Between wine and cannabis and sensuality and beauty, we didn't simply "see God." We became God. Kali and Shiva.

And it began with that moment of seeing her bare legs, her thigh, her underwear in that most unsexy of places. That unsexiest of places that, of late, I pass every day, several times a day.

Wow. That was at least seven or eight years ago.

Yeah. I miss her. Still.

In vino veritas.

I know that it's a shocking thing to suggest, but there actually is more to life than sex. Like, Ontario's Niagara region wine for example.

Which, you know, is kinda like sex.

Yeah.

Last weekend, sexy Kara and I enjoyed a surprise birthday party for a friend (a minister's wife, no less) featuring a wine tasting. It made for a deliciously sensual evening, even with a brood of birthday-cake laden kids running around.

I had already known that I preferred varietals to blends, so I was surprised by a 2005 Henry of Pelham cabernet sauvignon/merlot when enjoyed with some Quebec oka classique cheese. The resulting flavour came wickedly close to a hazelnut chocolate, leaving me to ponder its possible use during a sensual night of candlelit caresses. Their 2006 baco noir reserve (a varietal) brought out a more peppery flavour to the same cheese, and with its slightly earthy, almost tulip nose, struck me as being ideal for venison. A slightly sharp 2007 pinot noir possessed a strong cranberry nuance that seemed perfect for a roast turkey (despite being a red) if it were bulging with a rich cranberry stuffing.

Yum. (But Henry, what's with the "cheap prescription" stuff on your website?)

Lailey Vinyards' 2007 meritage (a 54% merlot, 31% cabernet franc, 15% cabernet sauvignon blend) disappointed me at first with an almost "plastic" bouquet. Blends. But its light, slightly buttery flavour compensated for it, especially when combined with some Quebec havarti or Ontario "comfort cheese," where its creaminess was richly enhanced. I could easily see Kara held in suspension rigging, swaying creakily under some heavy oaken beams, as I gently brought slivers of this cheese and the barest of sips from Baccarat stemware to her lips. After I'd had my fun with her bare, pert behind. Of course.


Another blend, a 2006 "red blend" (ooo, imaginative!) from Stratus Vinyards, would go superbly with my deepdish, Brooklyn-style lasagna. Its length was bitter and slightly salty, which seemed to bring out the better elements to provolone. Yet the varietal fan in me can't see enjoying this for drinking's sake if another option was available, being a dizzying (for me) fusion of merlot, gamay, malbec, cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, syrah (shiraz), and petit verdot. What, is this what became bottled from the slush barrel near the rear cellar door? Evil.

Truth be told, I'm not really a wine snob. But I am, so to speak, a wine symbolist. To me, wine can tell a story of a place and a time, like a pressed flower in an old book or a scrip of paper bearing an old note that's been slipped behind a framed photograph. I like to mark special events in life with the purchase of a new bottle, tag it with the date and a note about the event, and then save them in what passes for my cellar. I savour the memory as I savour the grapes when the time comes to re-celebrate or re-mark a connecting occasion, and then I uncork one in my personal, ritual way.

Two years after mentioning it here, I still have that last 2002 Boordy coastal claret that I picked up in Maryland. I bought two originally, and they marked when I met The Grrl.

"We drank its sister on (our) last night together," I wrote here then. "I've thought the bottle would make a fitting offering to Aphrodite but I have yet to uncork it for such a purpose." Somehow, I still haven't brought myself to do it, although I think now that that has less to do with attachments to my former partner than it has to do with the fact that I've held it for so long. Or so I tell myself.

Sometimes, in no less a personally sacred sense, that ritual and energy and symbolism backfires on me. I haven't had a bottle from Cave Springs in years, which is a shame because they're really very good. But it was at their winery where my betraying ex-wife, so long ago, and I had what passed for our honeymoon.

There was a bottle that marked Shayne, although looking back on this blog I find that I didn't actually acquire it until one of her visits to Toronto. My normal habit would have been to get one during our first meeting, which would have been when I drove to see her in Chicago. I think it's because, in some ways, that rollercoaster ride helped me persevere through some lingering post-Grrl attachments that gave me the timeliness to imbibe that bottle when our End seemed apparent. I enjoyed it as part of a pleasant dinner, as I recall, where I gladly and heartfully toasted both her and myself. Her, for the pleasures and personal gifts she had indeed certainly brought to me, and me for the recognition and ground to take those gifts with appreciation and kindness as I stepped forward from there.

It pleases me that we're friends now, and I feel perfectly at peace that that bottle was so "properly" enjoyed.

And no, in the event you're asking yourself, there hasn't been a bottle (to date) to mark when I met Kara. But I think the reason is solid, if it may change very soon now. At least, no wine has as-yet been specifically added to my cellar to mark her, although I do enjoy the memory that it was a 2008 Duboeuf beaujolais we enjoyed on the night of her first playparty, one of her first introductions to kink. We've also found a special relationship with Pelee Island's blanc de blanc, which I served with salmon during our first homecooked meal together.

In a very Buddhist way, I've learned a great deal through my myriad of relationships, and most usually about myself as I enjoy them. I've had a tendency to invest too much of myself too quickly. Since The Grrl, most of what I've learned is about the that kind of attachment, and the ability to Be At Peace with what comes, as it comes, without "needing" to impose preconceived ideas of what I think it is. I've learned, for my own mental and emotional health, to retain a small amount of objectivity in the early days of an affair, and it's a lesson that I didn't want to forget when I had begun dating this sexy, punky, high school math teacher I had met online.

To me, a relationship doesn't "fail" if, should it end, something can still be gained in learning a new element of yourself, how you perceive others, how you can do things better next time. In this way, and as I've often shared with friends, one's future partner(s) become the beneficiary of everything you've learned up unto that moment.

And so I didn't get a bottle of wine after I started dating Kara because I had learned lessons after drinking the one I had saved to mark the time when I had started seeing Shayne. And because that bottle from Maryland still lingered in the dark (both in cellar and in self) to remind me about where those attachment senses were coming from. I didn't get a bottle of wine right away to mark things with Kara because I didn't want to spoil it if things with Kara got spoiled. I had become tired of spoiled. I wanted some sense of longevity between us first, since previously I would buy the wine out of slightly rote habit and often before I really knew what investmentswere possible between me and 'the new partner.' Maybe I thought I was being practical, but in hindsight, perhaps I was just being overzealous and impatient.

Is this a slight against her?

Nah.

An unconscious acceptance that maybe it wouldn't work out?

Ok, probably, although only at first, and in no way reflecting on her. I wanted to retain a lesson learned.

Because things with Kara have not become spoiled. So far, it has been working out. Kara is, hands-down, the most supportive, generous, kind partner I've known in years. I've been in some personal angst lately, and she's been incredibly helpful as I adapt and overcome. I've also learned that while some things can and will try her patience (as some things can and will try mine), we enjoy an enriching sense of communication that often floors me with how deeply it works, resonates, and nurtures. We've had disagreements, but they have yet to really become a problem. We don't have all the same tastes, but we still find common ground and have a blast. We relate, and where we don't, we listen and find space in ourselves, mutually, to take those moments as plateaus we can challenge ourselves with to grow and become stronger, better, as people.

That's really damned cool.

And next Wednesday, it'll be our first anniversary. Now, I think, it's time to buy a 2009 bottle of Ontario. Perhaps we'll buy it together, and from some online source since, again, we met that way.

May.

Many are the memories I have of the frolics around the sacred pole and the accompanying teasing and joy with the season.

In New York, we would gather for sensual potluck parties, and light candles for assage nights. In New Jersey, I would collect with comrades at the clothing-optional Gunnison Beach, where we would raise glasses of wine in praise to the warming sun as we enjoyed the sand in the nude.

When I lived in Massachusetts, we would awake before dawn and see the waltzing students, clad i evening gowns and tuxedos, dance over the Charles River. The morris dancers would summon the season with bells upon their ankles, and the hobby horses would chase the women with clacking and hungry jaws.

There, and here in Ontario, my friends and me would gather in the parks, and among the trees we would share old classic stories and pass forfeits, small papers with taunting and teasing dares inscribed upon them, among one another. "Give the person of your choice a kiss." "Whisper on someone's ear what you would do for them on a cold, winter day alone." "Tell your lover what your favourite memory of her/she is when you're alone and think about her/him."

The bonfires at night, sharing mead under the stars. The rustle of nearby bushes as partners excused themslves. The scent of roasted meat on the breeze. Laughter overheard from far away. The drums. The naked, bejeweled dancers. Embracing friends one had never before met.

I live for the May.

Sunday comics.

Happy Halloween.

How many secret nooks in copse or glen
We sained forever with our wild embraces,
No man shall know; though indeed master poets
Reckon one such for every eve of the year,
To sain their calendar.

But this much is true:
That children stumbling on our lairs by chance
In quest of hazelnuts or whortleberries
Will recognize the impress of twin bodies
On the blue-green turf, starred with diversity
Of alien flowers, and shout astonishment.

Yet should some amorous country pair, presuming
To bask in joy on any bed of ours,
Offend against the love by us exampled,
Long ivy roots will writhe up from beneath
And bitterly fetter ankle, wrist, and throat.


- Robert Graves

Ritual.

My parlour is misty with frankincense, the walls thrumming with brilliance, my black suit jacket waiting on the bed for me to select what else I will include in the evening's headmaster ensemble. A 2008 Duboeuf beaujolais swirls in the glass I hold to my lips. My cats swirl also, although they are around my ankles.

Soon, I would be selecting an arrangement of tools, toys, and other items of titillating torment. I intend to have fun tonight. My choices will go into a charming little backpack, that being so suitable for the evening's theme and my pet's attire.

It's fitting that the wine is young. Soon, my pet would appear likewise after she arrives here, makes herself up, and dons her new schoolgirl uniform for its intended use.

Before she met me, apart from a less-than-ideal experience with another, bdsm play was little more than a fantasy for her.

Kara attends her first playparty tonight.

"Hey love," she emails me earlier today, "I have just finished spending about a half an hour carefully ironing my skirt, shirt and ties for tonight. It felt ritualistic, this preparing for my Man, preparing for an initiation into a new world.

"I am very nervous, very excited, very turned on! I am thinking out the day ahead: I'm treating myself to a spa day, getting my hair cut, shopping for new make-up since it has been forever since I've had a reason to do a "full-face." I will wax my legs ... and groom other more intimate places ... a day of pampering and ritual."

My pet has a lovely tuft of black fur upon her saucy mound. Within it, her beautiful clitoris stands like a proud pillar to Isis when erect, and her cushions swell like wild fruit around her. She's always well groomed, her dark tuft always a perfect triangle under her navel. In a word, Kara's treasures are breathtaking. For me, she has the perfect cunt.

I wonder: will I slither my fingers between her soaking folds between spanks as her bare little ass is spread across a horse tonight? Will I stroke her to cum before a crowd of fellow kinksters, my ribald friends and comrades at arms? Will the scent of her possessed quim add to the enjoyment of my drink as I raise it to my lips as easily as I raise this wine I enjoy whilst I enter this post to you?

We shall see.

Maybe tonight will be too much for her.

We shall see.

"It has been YEARS since I have been to a party that was not a family-event. This evening is different: it has a theme, it has stations, it has YOU, your sinful body and your wicked mind. I think I will have fun ;) "

You will, pet. We will.

Oh yes.

Kara.

The truth is that I hardly know where to begin. If I've seemed silent lately, believe me when I tell you that it isn't because I've been idle.

Clarity is a healthy and good thing, and while there will remain a great deal about what was shared (such as it seemed) between my last primary partner (such as it seemed) and myself that I still enjoy the memories of, I also know that sometimes it takes a complete redirection in the world before beginning to comprehend what was amiss prior to change. In these last few weeks, and in the last week or so in particular, I feel as though I'm getting fast-tracked into some bold, healthy, sexily glorious new awarenesses and opportunity. Aphrodite is being both kind and revolutionary. I have clarity, fun, and sextastic possibilities before me. Life is good. Really, amazingly, comfortably, finally good.

Kara, the Math Teacher, is a gentle, savvy, sassy, articulate, sharp, lithe, faerie whisper of a tomboi woman with short dark hair and eyes like small jade discs. I have to remind myself that she's in her early40s, because in both looks and spirit she is a woman of half her age and could easily pass for one of her probability students. Gracefully feline, I behold art incarnate when I hear her chant in the morning, or see her in natarjasana positions.

Her petite, dryad's form belongs on canvas adored by Waterhouse. With her shorn, straight hair, the nape of her lovely neck is always edibly available for me to feast upon (which she adores), and her skin, soft as oak moss in the wood, faintly tastes of almonds and spiced vanilla. Her deliciously charming, small faerie breasts are capped like candies with alert nipples standing proudly atop tiny, sensitive, pink areolae. Despite having brought a pair of excellent, delightfully golden children into the world, yoga and biking have left her with a taut, sexy tummy. Her beautiful, sensual ass is small, heart-shaped, and as pert as a split peach. A fabulously soft triangle of short, dark curls beautifully adorns her feral pubis. When aroused, her outer cushions swell and darken like ribald, wild fruit begging to be tasted slowly, its nectars a thing to be savoured.

It pains me that, as I am told, few past lovers have given her the bodily adoration a lovely waif such as she deserves.

This I have every intention to amend.

In my life, I've languished in the company of many bodytypes of women, and I've treasured them all. But if I were ever asked of what visage would make me happiest, as a man, as a lover, would I have no other choice for a playmate for the rest of my scandalous days, what I might share would likely surprise some people: mildly dykey, just slightly geeky, educated, shorthaired, petite brunettes. And I've found her in Kara.

She is the stuff of my fantasies.

But even more important than her appearance, and this to my own surprise, is the immediate ease in which she and I seem to be drawing closer to one another. There is no angst, no sense of struggle, no discomforts of note, no worries. There is no superficial narcissism or disconnects. There is no expectation for unyielding openness while retaining battened hatches. There are no hidden agendae. There are no yo-yos. We get along as easily as if we'd known one another since grade school, and every thought shared between us reminds us of the real, resonant, giving desires we each have come to learn about ourselves because we are each smart enough to have learned about ourselves.

Not that we don't have some differences. My sense of kink is almost entirely new for her, and that to the strong contrast to where my previous partner has since gone. But, much to Kara's delightful surprise, we're embracing this difference as a delicious opportunity rather than a liability between our sexual selves. My experience in kink offers her a pirate's treasure of sensual new possibilities that no previous man (or woman) has been able to previously share, leaving only in question of how deeply, how greedily she would wish to dig in the island sand... and her combination of curiousity and innocence delights my thickening cock with every fantasy I've ever had about corrupting young beauties down a wayward path to sensual perdition.

And for the first time in years, I'm not feeling a "need" to date elsewhere, at least for the forseeable future. Whether or not this new partnership will become monogamous remains to be seen (we both agree in the view that monogamy is fundamentally alien to the human animal), but for the first time in a long time, I'm much more interested in nurturing and exploring the possibilities ahead of me, building this foundation, rather than take time and energy away from that prospect. I suspect, if and when extracurricular play might happen, that it would more likely occur with us as the team we're becoming. That's a paradigm I've known and enjoyed before, and would be thrilled to see it in my world again. After all, adventurous sexplay is just so much better when it's shared with one's best and intimate friend, I think.

Kara's presence in my world is a fun, vibrant, feral, welcome change. I'm looking forward to seeing where the faeries take me.

Three lives conjoined.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Then said Almitra, speak to us of love.

And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you, yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you, believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant.
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor.
Go into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not, nor would it be possessed,
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart,"
But rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love.
To bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.
To rest at the noon hour and meditate upon love's ecstacy.
To return home eventide with gratitude.
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

- Kahlil Gibran

Banana Blowjobs and other May games.

I just couldn't resist sharing the picture below, but it comes with a story.

In the previous post, I mention a May Day party I had hosted in the past where bawdy games were part of the day's events, including simulated oral sex with bananas or Twinkies. Women demonstrated their skills as the guys held the peeled fruit at waist level, and the boys would tease the filling out of a halved Twinkie (without breaking it) as thier playpartner held the treat before them, often between splayed legs. Yes, it was fun.

Another game we enjoyed was "genital croquet," where players would insert a cue ball into one leg to a pair of pantyhose, use the other leg to tie it all around their waist, and allow the weighted leg to hang downward from their crotch. Players would then sway their hips to get the cue ball to hit other balls on a grass field and into the goal hoops.

A more sensual game included a basket I devised that contained small scrolls of coloured paper: white, pink, orange, and red. Each scroll bore instructions that the receiver was expected to bring to the person of their choice, gain consent to share it, and then engage in the activity written. White scrolls were kept away from the others and were for minors (because, believe it or not, these were family-friendly events) and might simply state Go give your parents a hug. The colours for the others revealed increasing levels of "hotness," with pink perhaps instructing Take your partner to the willow tree and read a poem aloud from the book you'll find there or orange instructing Bring your mouth to your partner's ear and share something about him/her that arouses you. Red scrolls would instruct to discretely... well, you get the idea. wink

This was all part of a way to express sacredness in playfulness, romance, and consensual sexuality. But, like Banana Blowjobs, it was also saucy good fun among saucy good people.

The merry month of May.

Well, my modem is pooched, and it'll be a few days yet before my ISPeople send me a new one. So, meanwhile, it's the internet cafes for me. I write to you from one such 'net emporium on Yonge Street, the Times Square of Toronto, right across the street from the famous Zanzibar stripclub. It's tempting to drop in after I submit this post, but the fact is that I'm not really in the mood for an overpriced bottle of beer at barely two in the afternoon. But the Seductions adult toystore just up the street, hrm...

It's May. I adore May. There was a time in my life when I filled May weekends with barbecues, pool parties, and camping events where my good heretical friends and me would joyfully clamour to the resonant beats of drum and pipe. We would dance the maypole, back in the days when I actually had one, and taunt our partners with love games, sensual oil massages on blankets amid the grass, and share stories around the fire as we passed a skin of mead. It's a wonderful thing when one's sense of the spiritual can so easily and seamlessly blend with one's sense of the sensual.

Walking in the sunshine as I've enjoyed these past few days, my eyes and heart and spirit have soared as I catch glimpses of this city's ocean of alluring women. My chest tightens and my eyes involuntarily close while I deeply breathe in the passing scent of a freshly-showered businesswoman dashing to catch a train. The young sprites in camoflage pants and sleeveless Tshirts, holding hands as they cross the street, deliciously break my heart with their lightness of presence. Even the black woman in dreadlocks with whom I had an argument recently gave me pause when I enjoyed the fire in her eyes.

It's not simply about watching the passing tits, the swaying ass, the runner's leg, although those moments present themselves also with the better weather. It's not about ogling. Somehow to me, May brings out a more sensual, elegant, nuanced appreciation for the feminine form to my eyes, as if each smiling, laughing, proud woman around me is a constant and crowded reminder of the many faces of the divine feminine all.

It's a strange thought, in a way, to be recording here from the across the street from a stripclub. How many of the patrons therein relate the working dancers before them, sauntering sculpted hips just above the laps of their business suits, with the hetaerae of old?

Not many, if any at all, I'll wager.

In praise of love incarnate.

Leave Crete and come to us waiting where the grove is pleasantest,
by precincts sacred to you; incense smokes on the altar,
cold streams murmur through the apple branches,
a young rose thicket shades the ground
and quivering leaves pour down deep sleep;
in meadows where horses have grown sleek
among spring flowers, dill scents the air.

Queen! Cyprian!

Fill our gold cups with love stirred into clear nectar!

- Sappho


Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

One thousand days.

We had shared our final night together on the futon in the parlour. By then, you were uncomfortable about being in what was our bed, and somehow being in the main room helped you be at ease. We spent the previous night there also, although for several nights before that, we were apart. It felt strange, adjusting to the growing distances and your changing energy, but it was a confusing time for us both, and we were still doing our best to remain as patient and as elegant with one another as possible. You really tried hard, and I know that was a struggle for an Aries like you.

You were not my first love, and you were not my longest love, but you were my most crippling love. Even though you languished at my boots and submitted to my whip's kisses, yielded your generous and curvaceous bottom to my punishments and lovingly submitted your body to my shadowy hungers, it was to you that I freely and willingly gave the last of my innocence. I gave too much of myself; that was part of the problem that I developed later, after you were gone, after I was left with your possessions and your abandoned animals.

Then as now, they remind me of you, and they remain cared for with the love you knew I would give to them.

I gave too much of myself because I surrendered. I was wrong to. In you, I thought I had found everything I hoped for and desired in a woman, a lover, a partner. I neglected to look past your delicious faerie glamour (a mistake I had made before), or least past it enough to see those nuances of you that you kept under lock and key. I thought I loved your angst, your rage, your moments of sullen indulgence with your art, your offerings of puja, that wicked nighthag's laugh of yours which I still miss.

But, in the end, you were simply counting coup, weren't you? Despite all your efforts and beauty in healing arts and work, there always would be that cast-iron nugget in your spirit. It's simply a matter of time before your lovers have earned enough demerit points before you not only leave them, but abandon them, and in your zeal for personal re-incarnation, you also leave behind all that you were with them. Now I understand why, when we were together, you never discussed your past partners in depth and we never heard from them in any social, friendly way.

Alright... that's not true. After you left, and after you left so many of your goods for me to sort through or dispose of, I found the holiday cards and a letter or two. I was not, I learned, the first one whom you had left so 'cleanly,' and whom you had hurt so deeply with the sudden abandonment of your entire self. I grasped your modus operandi, and the awareness helped me heal.

And yet, like a moth (...or a dragonfly?) to a flame, something about you kept me from entirely forgetting you. In a spite, you even had sex with the one man on this earth whom I truly loathe, and a man who has been accused of child sexual assault no less and who has harmed so many spirits of so many people whom we love... and yet I still longed for you. Why?

It's true: more often than not, sex with you was fabulous. We were sensual lions, you and I, and I treasured all the build-up and all the epilogues to our heat. I miss the way you used my shaft and cockhead to jill yourself. I miss the way you moved and begged as I took you in your fabulous ass. I miss our daydreams of hosting playparties. I miss holding your sexy head of short hair as you sucked me. I miss your tummy. I miss your tattoos. I miss your hands in my hair as I sat on the floor in front of you.

Do you remember our torrid nights in the motels of Maple Shade? Do you remember the hot tub during the New Year's party with your SCAdian friends? Do you remember when we got lost driving in the woods? Do you remember being bent over the stair railing in Maryland, on the grounds where we met? And do you remember that sacred night during your first visit to me, when our embrace caressed with deity?

Have you heard the gongs at Millbrook Crescent that have called to you?

It's only been in recent months that I've come close to knowing as much love, desire, and passion in a partner. That feels good, and in the past year or so, that's helped me heal in many ways. It taught me that, no, you're not perfect, no, you're not The One For Me, no, it is possible to know deep and resonant love again. My head and heart already knew that, but in the past year, my body learned it too.

That's good. Because, in your own way, you were really pretty messed up too.

I still love you. I likely always will, even if it's different, even if it's ill-advised. But I'm also over you, and while I never wanted to be, that's ok.

I still have that last bottle of 2002 Boordy coastal claret. We drank its sister on that last night together. I've thought the bottle would make a fitting offering to Aphrodite (do you remember how incredulous you were when your reading with Her revealed how I would find love again?), but I have yet to uncork it for such a purpose.

That last night, you had told me how horny you were. I lit up. It had already been a little less than two months since we had last had sex. You seemed intrigued by my offer, made with my eyes and open hands and smile, for us to enjoy one another without the attached angst of our breakup, a casual no-risk fuck, but something in you kept you from crossing the line. I think it was your fear that I wouldn't keep it casual after all. I still don't know if you would have been right.

The January snow ticked at the bedroom window on that last night we had sex, and you mounted me in the dark and took me deeply as I held your beautiful, pendulous breasts. Later, I learned how that position was sacred to your patroness, and I enjoyed the irony and the knowledge of having loved you in a position so potent for feminine sexual empowerment. It seemed only fitting for you.

It was a Monday morning when we awoke on the futon. The cats were hungry, and I had to get ready for work. I was holding you close, and after I turned over, you caressed my back and scratched me there in the way you knew I liked. We barely spoke. I didn't want you to go, I didn't want to get up, but I forced myself to go ahead and make a nice breakfast for us. I knew it would be the last time we would break bread together. I knew you would be gone when I got home, and that our lives apart would really have begun.

You packed some of your things as I dressed. You were waiting for the moment to come, and then you would have our space to prepare yourself in privacy. When the moment did come, you were standing at the bedroom doorway and I in the hall. And it was there where, a thousand days ago, we shared our final deep and loving kiss. Your kiss was warm, your mouth open and giving, and I was glad for our embrace. After, you walked me to the front door and I took my leave.

For a while, in the later months that came, I made it a point to kiss future lovers in that same spot in the house. This wasn't because I was trying to relive that moment with you, but because I wanted to mark the change in what felt like a sensually seamless way. I wanted to remind myself that I could be ok without you in my world.

And I was right. In losing you, I gained a great deal, and all of my present and future lovers are and will be the beneficiaries of all that I learned.

I do love you, I do miss you, but in the end, it's you who has missed out... because, baby, I have a lot of love to give.