Finally Friday

I woke up so happy it was finally Friday, almost forgetting that I actually had to go and work before the full benefits could take effect. Only slightly disappointing. Yesterday tlsd and SA came over for dinner which was nice. Made some pepper steak with an egg and also some mushrooms and also some spinach and also some rice. Tlsd and I watched the last episode of season three of alias. It was pretty violent and crazy. Just in time that I brought back season 4 from home.

Still waiting on test results thinking no news is good news so far. Still thinking I at least deserve to fail one. Realize how much this is bothering me when I've dreamed about it two nights in a row. Just put me out of my misery, please.

Looking forward to Broadway Market in the morning since it's been a bunch of weekends since I've been. Not sure that I have any plans for the weekend at the moment. There was some discussion with Mr.Aloof about meeting up but then, surprise surprise, he's gone AWOL at the moment. We'll see if he reappears by the end of the day, but I'm feeling fairly out of patience in that arena as well. Still talking to some potentials, though I've let it dwindle a bit and pulled my ad again. I'm just not in the right frame of mind. That, and there are a lot of annoying people out there. But we'll see. I didn't get rid of them all, just capped off where I was at. So I'll give it a bit of time to let things generally settle down and just see what happens.

I feel this intense urge to just be outside somewhere. Very unusual for me. Pity that I'm stuck here in the office.

Only Thursday

Can you spot the trend this week? Fuck is it but dragging itself along. I am still waking up a bit confused. I'm not quite back in the swing of things as it were. Though I am at least halfway unpacked now.

Still no word on my exams. It's been two weeks since the first and one week since the second. I hate waiting. Especially for an automatically graded computerized multiple choice test. Just give me my fucking results. On the other hand, it is so nice to be able to go home and not 'have to be studying'. Tremendously liberating. Frees up all that time to do.... nothing.

I am feeling the urge to do a major sort of spring cleaning. I started this process before I left, taking a few bags of old clothes to the donation bin. Of course I have more bags to go. I want to thoroughly thin my wardrobe down to just the things I really wear. This will enable me to buy more clothes, obviously.

My next big household task may be replacing the carpet. It continually disgusts me. I don't know exactly what is involved in replacing a carpet which is part of the reason I've been putting it off. For example, there are lots of things ON the carpet. Do they move that stuff all for you, or do they expect you to clear your floors? Tricky tricky. But it may be something that gets done by the end of this year. It is seriously driving me batty.

That makes me feel so...elitist. To have my largest troubling external influence at the moment to be my disgusting hideous blue office grade carpet. There is something not right about that.

Anyway. It's nice and sunny here today. I like that spring has sprung, even if it means I keep sneezing.

Only Wednesday

Back in London, life is busy, only half unpacked. Yes, that about sums it all up.

This morning on the bus to work an annoying fuck sat next to me. He stank sourly of stale sweat and alcohol and smoke. He mumbled to himself. He leaned into me when he didn't have to. I kept looking out the window to avoid his scent. When I got up to go, he wouldn't move so I had to shove against his splayed legs to get off the bus. I gave him the look of death. It's a surprise he didn't burst into flames that instant.

C is looking for a job elsewhere. This severely depresses me but is completely understandable. I selfishly do not want her to go.

I Heart Books

I saw this article linked through from a regular favorite of mine, Treehugger. I wish I could see all the entries. I wish I was that talented.

Fantasy

It seems to be a rather hot topic of late in completely different and unrelated places and under completely different circumstances, this nature of e-communication and the embodiment of fantasy. Now, I'm starting off this way because the alternative way to start off would be lies, it's all lies! But I think that's a bit more sensationalist and doesn't encompass everything that I think falls under the more general heading.

Once upon a time I got into an argument with my then flatmate C about the nature of reality. She'd taken some philosophy class and was doing a very bad job at explaining the philosophical theory of individual realities. Mainly, that your perception of the world is unique, and that two people will never have the same perception even if they stood in the same place and witnessed the exact same thing because perception is always tainted by personal experience, expectation, history, and thought. My argument was, if a glass falls off a table and breaks, the glass is fucking broken, end of story. Or rather, that some things were absolute outside of interpretation. But that's sliding a bit off topic.

The point is, some people come to the internet to free a part of themselves they may keep hidden inside, but some people also come to the internet to try out being a person that they really aren't. And that it's impossible for anyone to really know, if they have only met in this forum, one from the other. Of course the gut reaction to that supposition is to say to oneself, "Yes, but I know so and so and feel secure that they are exactly as they seem". Except of course, they aren't.

Even when you meet people in person they can be duplicitous and sneaky. People keep secrets from their best friends, their lovers, their family. It's just part of human nature. I think the problem sometimes with this form of exposure is that it gives the incorrect impression that the strangers you meet and know and grow to care about are somehow more honest and real than the people you meet in your day to day life. Except they aren't. And what makes the likelihood of this miscommunication happening here, is that you often feel like you have an inside track, you feel that you know them better based on what they say, and ultimately, as you grow to 'know' or 'like' them- or at least, what you interpret them as saying, also sometimes known as and tainted by, what you want to hear. And so the fantasy builds about what someone's life is like, how they are in person, who they are. But to a large degree much of this is fantasy, both yours and theirs. A fantasy that can be prolonged and enriched and encouraged by the separation and the distance and the lack of all the other information we collect from our day to day surroundings and interactions that would give us valuable clues in our real lives about who we like and what we think of others. It's all missing here.

So the fantasy grows and builds and becomes this thing that captures all of our feelings and emotions. Which is why it is so painfully crushing to have it be revealed as an untruth, a lie, or a deceit. Perhaps the best thing would be to never become attached to the strangers you meet, and just accept them as amusing online entertainments. But who gets to do that? Everyone gets involved, and everyone cares. But that quickly escalates to caring too much, and getting too involved. And the carnage of those multitudes of revelations, of disappointments, of unmet expectations, and of peoples real and honest pain are strewn across and litter the internet.

Sometimes, it's enough to make you not want to come back anymore.

Another Year

And so tonight is the last night here, in the bed of my child hood, in the home of my mother until next Easter and another year has passed. I have bought too much and have too many heavy things to carry and will not remember much of it in my drugged out state when my plane lands on Sunday and I trek eastward to Hackney.

I sit by my mother and she doesn't listen to me. She talks at me and my mind wanders. I think, "She could die you know, this could be some of the last time you have together, she could cease to be as a person, one day she will only be a memory." And I feel sad. I often feel that I can't reach my mother. That we somehow stopped really understanding each other a long time ago. But that's probably not true. We just push each others buttons. Not even on purpose, just by being who we are.

Yesterday I was supposed to go out to meet a friend but she had to cancel, so I didn't get out at all. So I didn't take out the recycling she had asked because I never put my shoes on to go downstairs and outside. When she got home she said, "I see you didn't take the recycling out." then she said "Why did you leave dirty dishes in the sink!?!" And here I must point out that I left the rice cooker and cover because I wasn't sure if it went in the dishwasher or she washed it, but my dishes that I ate on were in the dishwasher and I pointed out as much. Then she started yelling at me about how I know she doesn't like to come home to dirty dishes and I pointed out that I didn't know what she did with those and now that I knew that was fine. She was being horrible really, so I got up and put the rice cooker in the dishwasher. Then she came back and started yelling about how I only did my dishes and not her two mugs she'd left in the sink. "That's funny," I said, "because if I'd gone out and hadn't eaten here then you still would have come home to your own dirty dishes sitting in the sink so what the fuck is your problem, stop being such a fucking hypocrite!". Can you see how we have problems?

But it doesn't mean I don't love my mother, of course I love my mother and she loves me. But we are very different sorts of people. And maybe that's hard on both of us.

It's my last night at home and tomorrow I leave. Funny how I call this place home when it hasn't been my home since I was 18. Do I mean the States 'home' when I say home? Do I mean this home? I've always said I never really feel like I have any sort of home. But if I were to think about it, I feel that my home is waiting for me in London. I guess I won't have to deal with these sorts of thoughts for another year.

One-Wing

Part of the make-up of my personality is a fairly strong sense of right and wrong. Not all the time, only some of the time. But when that side of my self is tapped into, it is just as strong and vehement and total as anything. I think in absolutes, black&white, and see clear paths. Seeing the paths and following the paths are not the same. So I am not a one, I am a nine- I understand options and choices and flows. But I add to that a belief in which way is the right way and which way is the wrong way. If someone chooses the wrong way, then at the very least, they should acknowledge that they are making that choice for what it is, and not try to play it off as somehow being better, because that just annoys me.

Usually I find that my one-wing is most often engaged when it comes to behavior towards other people. This is something I'm extremely sensitive about. I don't like when people are left out, or excluded, even when I am the one doing it, I tend to feel bad. I will gossip like no ones business about people, but I'm not often mean about the people I gossip about unless a) I really, really don't like them or b) they have acted in a way that I find so abhorrent, I have no option but to speak badly about them because they deserve it.

Problems for me come up however, because, believe it or not, I don't always, or for that matter often, express what I'm feeling about situations or people. Because I know, from past experience that the way I see things can be pretty harsh. And most people don't like to be so exposed or laid out. I have the capacity to verbalize things that other people wouldn't dream of, and from time to time I find I have to keep a very tight rein on it. There are lots of times when this skill is useful, even cherished, by my good friends. They know I won't feed them bullshit. But the hand that gives is the hand that takes away, my friends sometimes want me to bullshit and get frustrated when I won't. But I don't really care, because I would never be dishonest towards a friend and I would never want a friend to be dishonest with me. I can think of very few obscure situations where I would lie to someone about something important, and most involve terminal illness or children.

Out of all the things I don't like about myself, my personality, what I view as my identity, has never been something I wanted to change. I have never had a shortage of friends- not acquaintances, but good close friends who I could rely on as they could rely on me. And really, I wouldn't trade that for anything.

V=(ZIC/Rw)W

This is the main thing on my mind for tomorrow. Along with some other formulas that will make no sense to anyone reading this. I've been to DC and back now. My dad had some fucked up set-up with no internet in his 'new' apartment that he's lived in since February. It's only set up in the 'old' apartment. So I didn't really have internet access like I had hoped.

And I'm not sure what I would have written about. On the train ride down to DC I wrote 3 pages in my paper journal. Something I haven't done since December. And I liked it. There are things I want to say, in a journal sense, that I can't say here. This blog has taken over my usual journal writing tendencies. But there are things I'm leaving out and not saying and they have built up now and so I need to address them. With myself. But maybe not with the blog world. I have an idea though, so watch this space maybe.

Oh, and I'm not going to not blog, so no panic for the handful of you who read this. I'm just saying I guess, my deep thoughts are elsewhere.

I've been taking lots of pictures here and there and so may post some of the American wasteland when I return.

Needle in a Haystack

Well, I managed to somehow reschedule my exam for Wednesday. Technically this should not have been possible. And on top of that, it should have cost me $35. However, I managed to talk to a real person who managed to reschedule my exam and didn't mention payment at all. Now I've had a good look at the material, and I think that I could possibly pull it together by Wednesday or at least have a fighting chance, if I study. And I will study. I learned both the method of joints and the method of sections for determining stresses in trusses this morning. So I'm going to get back to it, and see how it goes. I don't know why I am such a fuck up. I didn't want to pass, I didn't want to care, and now it's abundantly clear that I care very much and I do want to pass and I'm going to try very hard to do in five days what other people do in two months. So it's not a guarantee in the slightest, but it's better than it was maybe. We'll see. It's still an unknown if I passed the first one or not. Probably I'll fail both because that will be karma showing me a thing or two about being a studying-twat. I deserve to fail both. I know this. But I'm just going to try very hard not to. One I can no longer do anything about. Lets see about this next one then.

Giant Rats

I'll have to wait until I get back to post my camera phone picture. I sent it to tlsd today because it was strange and funny. Apparently there is some building going up that is using non-union labor so the union has come out and inflated giant rats by the building encouraging all the illegals to sign up to the union. In the meantime, what this really means is there are two giant inflated rats on Atlantic Avenue. How odd.

I always come home and I get in a funk, but I'm not sharing anything that is good or funny happening here and that's wrong. Because there is lots going on that is otherwise entertaining if I could stop being annoyed for five seconds. Like all you can eats sushi. And not BAD sushi, it was GOOD sushi. I shit you not. Spider rolls and everything. I sent tlsd a picture of that too, though when she didn't respond I followed up with a text that would have reached her around 1am. Teach you to ignore me and my sushi biznatch! I've only had sushi once here so far which means I'm a bit lagging behind in my quota.

But I've had a couple of bagels and lox which have all been excellent, and yesterday I got an icey. Which is maybe hard to explain and if I wasn't on this fucking mac I'd find a link for you to see. It's not ice cream and it's not shaved ice with flavor poured over it, it's integrated into the mixture, but it's not cream based. You used to get it from the pizza parlors when I was growing up and it always came served in folded paper cup/containers that you would squish and unroll to get the last bit of melted ice out of. Yesterday I had a cherry chocolate chip ice. Which was like a gourmet icey and completely sacrilegious, but also oh so tasty. The weather has been fab. Sunny and mildly warm with trees in blossom, though this has been making me sneeze quite a bit, or maybe it's the cats.

Really I haven't been enjoying the weather too much because I've been inside trying to force myself to study. Oh yes, and one exam is now over. This was the one I thought I may have a chance of passing. And, well, I may have a chance of passing it. But I also find that wrong on about a million sorts of levels. If I don't pass, then the world will be adjusting the karma factors correctly and if I do pass, then it will somehow reinforce to me that I'm a huge fake somehow. Don't ask. I never claimed to make sense.

Back to good things though... cable television is entertaining me, as well as American commercials that I've not seen yet so I think are funny. My bruises from last Tuesday are mostly faded now. There were a couple of close calls in the hotel room in Detroit with my mother which sort of added to my fun in some way. But she was none the wiser and now I am mostly unmarked again, and so that's all fine. Of course I'm not trying to think about my relationship conundrums at the moment. I will deal with it when I get back. Maybe. In the meantime I need to go study for the test I really will fail, because I haven't really studied for it yet at all. And it's not reasonable to study for an exam for a day and then pass it. I mean really, it's just not. And then it's down to DC on Friday where I'll have access to a real computer and might be able to do something about these haphazard posts I've been making.

Maybe I Should Work on This

I mean, that's not even a whole 3/4.....

You Are 70% Evil

You are very evil. And you're too evil to care. Those who love you probably also fear you. A lot.

How Evil Are You?

Unfulfilled Potential

I will run spellcheck on all of these, and maybe add pictures when I am not on a Mac. I hate these stupid machines.

Today is the day before my first exam. It is about lunchtime. I have not studied. I have not studied now for about a week. And the studying was spotty before that.

I don't really understand why I think I want to fail. Maybe if I fail I can get it out of the way and stop waiting for it to happen. Maybe I am tired of test taking and studying. Not that this exercise is doing me any favors in fixing that particular problem. If I fail both of these exams, which seems likely, I will retake them in August. And that time, with failure behind me, I will motivate myself to pass.

But why this self immolition? Why have I found this time so hard? Why am I beign so stubborn with myself, so unyeilding? If I had studied, during all the opportunities I let pass, I would likely be passing these exams. But I made deliberate and conscious choices to not do what I knew I should do. And now I will fail because of it.

Maybe I'm trying to work out if I care or not. I must care, because I see I will have to take them again, and I see that I will pass eventually. But why this? And why now?

It is something I don't like about myself very much. And I recognize that this injury that I have done to myself only fosters a certain level of self-hatred that is distant yet oddly familiar. I want to fail perhaps because then I will have tangible evidence that I am the failure that I somehow seem to myself. A rather expensive and pointless argument to be making it seems.

America Calling

Three flights down in so few days. One nice dinner, one family wedding. The first flight was okay. I took a xanax, I slept. I watched half a movie I'd seen before. I ate something that was supposed to be beef, but I have my suspicions. The second flight was surprisingly okay. I felt 'normal' on a plane, which is to say, I didn't feel anything at all about it, which is a good thing. The third flight, just earlier today, was so-so. I had some tense moments of feeling decidedly unpleasant. But no major panic. And no drugs on the two shorter flights, which was pretty good.

It was good to see my extended family most of whom I had not seen for three years and some for even longer. Apparently I looked well. Apparently I have an accent and sound funny. And I, amidst my family felt as lost as I ever have. Knowing I belong, but not belonging. My cousins wedding was a massive affair of about 350 people. A good American Jewish wedding. It struck me, throughout the ceremony and the celebrations, the small details that I take for granted. The massive amount of people there who all know how to dance the hora, who all know when to shout mazel tov, who knew to life the bridge and groom in chairs and dance them around. It's not like Christian weddings. The katuba, the broken glass, the drinking of wine, the simple ring of a band of gold, no stones allowed. S, my cousin is younger than me by about five years or so. And now she is married and people joke with her about having babies. And it's all so picture perfect suburban dream.... and so far removed from my world and my existance.

I have never belonged in that world. And now I've moved to a different sort of world that I also don't enjoy. That of my mother's daughter. Where I am perpetualy twelve. Where what I say doesn't matter. Where my memory of events and her memory of events are not always the same. And that's hard. I find that I just retreat into myself. And I snap. And I'm mean to my mother. And I don't really want to be mean to her, but she annoys me so much it's unbelievable, and I can't help it. And then I feel worse and I probably snap even more.

Tomorrow I must study all day. First exam on Wednesday, then horrible studying for the next exam on Friday, and then I'm rushing to catch the train to DC. Where it will be Easter with another family I never feel that I fit into, but this time, my step-mother's family. If my time at home can be categorized in anyw ay, it wold only be a most desperate sense of aloneness, which is so very heightened by my proximity to things that I feel I should be a part of. But then what is it they say, you can never go home? I guess I just often wonder, if there ever really was a home the first time around.

Where is My Mind?

Full crisis mode achieved. All brain survival functions on auto-pilot. All higher functions in complete meltdown. I can't focus on anything. I can't concentrate on anything. There is too much to do. There is no time left. It is as if my brain were a barrel of fish that someone has dumped on the pier and they are flailing and flopping about, gills desperately flapping as they writhe and suffocate. I don't want to be at work. I don't want to go. I don't want to take these exams. I want to go hide in my bed with the duvet pulled over me and pretend the entire world doesn't exist. I have officially lost my mind.

Marking Time

Yesterday evening was a whirlwind. Getting a haircut was top of my priorities. I was very excited about this haircut, and it lived up to expectations. Of course, before I went for the haircut I had to go back home to pick up the green leather which I had not known to pick up when I had gone home at lunch to grab my overnight bag. So I rushed home, got the goods, and rushed out to get to the salon. Got there with ten minutes to spare, so all was going well, or so I thought.

Except the hairdresser was running late. So I drank a glass of wine and various fruit juices and got two free treatments for my hair as compensation, so I wasn't too irritated, but I did know I had another appointment to keep, so I was a little bit tense about the time. This was only slightly aggravated by watching said hairdresser start chopping at my head. I know how my hair shrinks, so I was very nervous watching those scissors get fairly close to my scalp, but really, it's a very good haircut, so all that tension was for nothing. Of course, after my hour and a half appointment, it was 9pm and I had to be at the warehouse for 10. Shit.

Hustling myself along to Liverpool Station, I made a snap decision on the fastest way to get to Vauxhall. I got the Central line for one stop, hopped the Northern line to Stockwell, and planned on taking the Victoria line back one stop to Vauxhall. Now, it was all going to plan, and as I waited for my northbound Victoria line train, I calculated I should arrive at Vauxhall just at 9:40 which, if the buses were friendly, should get me to the warehouse just on time. So when the train came and I hopped on, I was feeling restless, but secure. Until the doors closed and I looked at the route listed in black and realized I'd gotten on a northbound Northern line train. Fuck me. So I got out of the station at Oval thinking I would just catch a taxi. Think again. Three stoplights later and I was back onto the tube, going back to Vauxhall, to catch a taxi there. Thankfully I saw someone getting out of a taxi at Vauxhall, because otherwise, I didn't see a single one. I ended up arriving at the warehouse fifteen minutes late. I hate being late. Not to mention the tension that was there already after the days email discretions. Shit shit shit!

As instructed, I hustled up the fire escape and through the door, making sure it was shut behind me, then through the building to the internal stairs, and up to the loft where it was all very dark. Through the first set of doors I went straight into the bathroom to try and catch my breath, check out my hair, and prepare. Oh, and I had to pee like a racehorse. So I tried to slow my breathing and stripped down, washed up a bit, took my green leather out of my bag and put it on. I folded all my clothes and stacked them on my bag, taking that and my shoes back out of the bathroom with me as I turned off the light and found myself in blackness again. The only light came from way down in the loft, the television was on and perhaps I could just make out the top of Mr.Aloofs head on the sofa in front of it. Before that however, I saw a mat laid out with a ring of rope upon it, directly under the first beam.

Not leaving myself time to think about anything, I quietly padded over to the mat, and stepped into the ring facing away from the window, from the television, from the sofa, and back towards the door I came in through. And I closed my eyes. Luckily, he didn't make me wait so terribly long before I heard the movie go off and music go on. It's hard to stand in the middle of a room, naked, listening, wary, without fidgeting. My hand flexed for the five minutes or so I waited.

I was wary of course, because the last communique I'd gotten had said, "Having stepped just a little too far over the line of what I consider an acceptable degree of emailing of offensive photos...........it might be better if you don't present yourself. Because otherwise.........you will be hurting in the morning.........." Oops. Me? Cross the line? Er...... uh-oh. *smirk*

So there I was, trying not to fidget, waiting, waiting, waiting. When a hand gently touched my shoulder, my back, and suddenly I was embraced from behind- gently, slowly, snugly. I could feel the roughness of his clothes on my goose-pimpled skin, I felt his hair brush my shoulder softly, I could smell it's clean scent. No words were spoken. I didn't open my eyes and that was quickly not an option as a blindfold was knotted neatly and firmly in place.

For some time he toyed with me this way. Only gentle touches, caresses, embraces, kisses. He would come to me, and then leave me. Sometimes approaching from behind, sometimes from in front. Sometimes I could hear as he changed the CD, went to the kitchen, drank something. During this time of comings and goings my left wrist was pulled away, a rope threaded through the cuff and over the rafter, but my hand was placed back at my side. And then the right. And so the anticipation built. Then, eventually, the ropes were pulled and tightened until I had little room to shift. The keys, our agreed upon signal for when I had enough were pressed into my left hand, and I slipped the ring around my finger, knowing that even when the keys were dropped there would be more to endure. And still he toyed with me using softness. Heightening the anticipation of what I knew was to come. Kissing, hands and fingers roaming, but staying well away from the wetness that betrayed my fear, and only serving to heighten a different sort of anticipation.

But the niceties had to end. Even though I knew it had to happen, it was sudden and without warning when the whip slammed into my ass. There was not to be a warm up it seemed which was quickly brought home by him wrapping the strikes so they peppered me from knee to ribs, not neglecting the particularly sensitive region in the middle which made me twist and try to jump away to no avail. The strokes rained down bringing a warmth and tingle to my skin. And then they stopped. And he was softly beside me again, and now I leaned into him, trembling, skin warming, as he ran his hands over welts then again stepped away. This pattern continued a number of times, certain areas on my hips now slightly stinging. I yelped and leaned away on particularly hard hits, I needed his support more during the time in between.

Then, in the middle of this pattern, a change, not the multitude of snapping teeth or the thudding mass of the whip, but a single burning mark and a loud snapping crack. This was new. This was different. This was intense. I could not stand still from either the searing impact or the sudden sound. And when he hit the same spot twice, I moved the keys from my pointer finger to my thumb, toying with them. And then respite. And then again alternating between the whip and the mystery item. Perhaps it was three or maybe four periods with this new brand when I flung the keys which had now moved to simply being held in my hand as far away as possible. A pause perhaps, a small acknowledgement, and then, continuation.

Pain which overrides other thoughts, except perhaps a reminder to breathe, to try not to tense, to try not to strain so hard on my wrists and arms. And respite, again. And this time as he lightly ran his fingers over new and angry welts and I sagged towards him, and he held my weight firm against his body, then did he reach for the wetness, that still through the pain betrayed the conflict and the need. And of course the body responds, and so he held me while I trembled against him, crying out for a different reason. And when he knew that I could stand again, he set me down and again the strokes rained down. Now the pain mixing with the after-glow of pleasure. Still twisting, still moving against the bonds, but somehow easier. The next respite was more of the same and then the sensation of warm soapy water rushing over heated skin and hands slipping after. The whip on wet skin blowing coldly before leaving it's burning marks. They mysterious item leaving final brands on skin already sore. Then silence. Then slack. And I flexed my fingers to make the blood return faster, favoring one leg, as standing on the other renewed the inflamed skin.

Then arms, guiding me down, to the floor, to the mat, to lay upon it. Luckily most sore spots seemed to be on hips and sides. Cradling me there, one hand intertwined in mine, he touched me again, and again, and again. Perhaps intrigued by my then sensitive responses. There was no counting or distinction of pleasure, it was constant, continuous, intense. Until I was squirming away from his persistent touch instead of towards. And he would let me rest a moment, and begin again until I was exhausted. The bath that had been running was turned off and he said softly to me 'lets take a bath' and I heard him move away as I slowly removed my leather, and finally the blindfold to see him checking on me and stepping into the tub.

I got up less stiffly than I would have thought and came to the edge, splashing water on him, running my hands on his now naked form. 'Come in.', he said. And I looked at him and felt the warmth of the water and said I thought I was afraid of it. 'It will be fine, come in.' And so I slipped into the bath, and the water didn't sting as I thought, and I settled back between his legs, on his chest and he wrapped his arms around me and lay there like that for some time, soaking.

The rest is more routine. Out of the bath. Dry off with towels, though I was careful to gently pat and not rub anywhere. Some juice to drink and off to bed, where we entangled ourselves again and had some mindless talk of nothing and twitching of toes to the music until I realized I had just woken up from obviously sleeping for a while. And that was all there was. No sex. Though I did not feel as much the lack of it as the time before, I can't say that it doesn't confuse me, but I'm not really complaining. And in the morning more cuddles, some breakfast, a look in the mirror at the devastation of my skin. A hideous train ride to work.

Two nights and I am on the plane. I don't understand myself and why I make the choices I make sometimes. But I also don't regret.

Preparations for an Evening

"Keys in hand...
probably ignored for a while when dropped...

Enter the building using the rear fire escape.
Third floor door will be open.
Close it when you are inside.
Walk to the fourth floor, prepare yourself, and enter my main quarters.
Preparations are to include- undress completely, and, wearing only your own green adornments, quantity- five.
Stand within the circle of rope that lays beneath the first beam with your back to the round window.
Close your eyes and wait.

No words.
The ritual of offering.
Or abandon."

Loose Ends

God how I hate flying. And I hate taking exams. My thoughts seem to be slipping around my brain in a sloppy fashion. It's hard for me to concentrate. On anything.

No more dates, obviously, until I get back. So until then, it is all in cyber-land. Am talking to a couple of people who all could be interesting. Who all are interesting, online. The question is, is that all there is or can it step up? Must put my energy into 'dating' when I get back. Such a pain in the ass. It's all a lot of energy and effort for what seems like very little outcome. Of course, saying that, it worked out well a year or so ago, there's no reason to assume it won't work out well this time either. I just need to be patient. It's not my strong suit.

I'm getting a haircut tonight. I know it's not time, but my hair is driving me nuts. My last cut was not good. So I've waited as long as I can to let it grow a bit, and I'm trying a new place. Could be a disaster, could be a good thing. Hopefully it'll be a good thing. Fingers crossed....

It is always how things get added when I'm writing posts. *sigh* And I think I am going over to Mr.Aloof's tonight, after the haircut. For a rather impromptu play session. I must be mad. I know the million reasons this is a bad idea, not the least of which will be hiding substantial bruises from my mother as we share a hotel room on the weekend. Or rather, explaining them to her. I know he's been a complete tosser who doesn't deserve my time. I know I should be studying. I know all these things. But... I want a release... I want a scourge... In the face of all my fears, I want to feel... alive.

Itchy Itchy Itchy

My skin has been pissing me off these past couple weeks. My skin condition has always been aggravated by stress, and I am very stressed, so there's that. It also seems to be aggravated by changes in the weather, cue spring. I'm pissed off because one of the drugs I use works for a while, and then it stops working. And that's only if I'm meticulous about using it twice a day. Miss even one application and it all goes to shit. But then it just stops working anyway regardless. My steroid creams seem to be doing fuck all, and so I really don't know why I bother putting them on, except I don't have anything else I can do. I hate when my skin gets all crappy. It really puts me in a bad mood.

Countdown to Implosion

Yesterday was a fun day. I can't believe today is Sunday now, half gone. As usual started with good intentions that slowly got the better of me and slipped away. Yesterday I went to C's house with some others to look at her mothers fun jewelry and make everyone some quesadillas and guacamole. That was good entertainment for the early afternoon. Then in the evening went to SA's housewarming/birthday. Except I didn't know it was his birthday, so that was bad maybe. But it also turned out to be a less painful experience than I anticipated, so by default, was good.

Of course while making the food at C's house, I managed to get some chili oil on my fingers. This was unfortunately transferred during a bathroom break to a part of anatomy that I don't recommend getting chili oil on. Unless of course, you're a masochist, which I guess it's a good thing I am, because I found the discomfort more amusing than upsetting.

Today tlsd and I had some dim sum an then did a mondo shop at one of the Vietnamese groceries down Mare Street. I got all sorts of good stuff and then I remember that I'm only here another five nights and then it's America-bound.

And I am completely freaking out about flights, about exams, about not wanting to leave, about spending time with my family who have the infinite capacity to bother me..... But it's the flights and exams that are currently holding number one and two by leaps and bounds beyond the others. I feel like death is awaiting me, in one form or another.