Dream

Here’s a dream from last night.

My Saab is stuck in a line of cars. I’m in a black suit, stressed and running late. Finally, my car is waved into a parking space at Tavern on the Green. I’m told that because of an event, I’ll need to wait until morning to leave, when the valet parking is cleared. I’m ushered to an outdoor patio where others are gathered. Everyone is resigned to the situation and making pleasantries. Caterers come through with leftover food. I enjoy the crab cakes. Justin Vivian Bond joins us from the main party and as we talk, I realize my suit is torn and disheveled; no one seems to notice.

My wife arrives. I introduce her to my new friends. She asks, “What’s wrong with your suit?” She ignores everyone, rudely pressuring me to go with her. I make excuses and follow. We stop by a male friend’s apartment near Columbia, where I adjust my suit. We leave to meet family for our wedding. We arrive at a grand hall. I realize I’ve left some essentials—shoes, ring—in the car.

I’m dressing my eldest daughter. She is a toddler. She’s happy, then, when I’m alone with her, sick. I tell Dad to call the hospital. He rushes off. I holler to Mom to get my wife; she nearly tramples her mother to get her. I rush to bathroom to revive my baby.  I have to wait as a young girl has just gone into the restroom. Finally, I burst in and go to the tub. I undress my daughter, by now shrunken to a small rubber doll. I turn the facet and begin to wash her. My daughter returns to her old self, if a bit disoriented. I dry and dress her. We go upstairs to the wedding.

People have begun to arrive and are lining by association with the bride or groom. Everyone is in their twenties, look good, mingling as friends. I find Mom chatting with people and think, What happened to the emergency? At least my daughter is okay. I had carried her up the stairs and put her down. She smiles up at me. She’s Korean. “Where’s Mom?” she asks. I hold her hand to take her to her mother.

I’m searching the crowd for my wife in her wedding gown. Hannah runs ahead to another woman, her mom. I join them and meet the mom and her husband. “She really likes you!” the mom says. I shake the husband’s hand as the mom picks up my daughter, whom she calls by another name. They are an attractive young family. They decide that I should marry the mom.

We’re on a plane. I’m holding the little girl, at the back; her parents are seated further up. The child becomes sick, fading and shrinking. I know I need to get her to a shower. I rush her to a stall nearby. I turn on the water and undress her. She’s like a doll. I have to hold her up in the water. She begins to shit. Long turds fall and wash into the drain. Relieved, she asks for a cigarette. I reach back to our seats and get her pack. She lights one and smokes, standing in the shower. A stewardess watches, glad the child is okay.

We’re at the mom’s family house. Wedding preparations are underway. It’s like a big family dinner. I don’t know anyone. I stay in the urban rustic kitchen, crammed with empty or dirty dishes. I’m with the child, who is smoking. She and I are very bonded.

The mom joins us and we need to ready for the party. I begin washing dishes, seeing this as a hopeless task. I have no help, there’s no plan and people are arriving. I take up the baby and go to the roof. Family is milling comfortably on a homey rooftop with strung lights. The girl and I join her parents. “I’m very glad to marry you,” I say, handing back the child. We all wave goodbye.

I’m watching Sesame Street. I see the parents on the same roof, though now as a set. They are singing about reaching and as they do, they rise from a crouch to up, up, up and streeeetch out their arms! The girl is watching (away from them, on a tv, other roof or in my space) and imitating them. I’m happy. The mom’s mother joins the couple on the roof. She berates her daughter for letting go of an American husband to stay with “this one.” I laugh. It’s funny.

The girl and I are relaxing in a preschool. The kids are playing on the floor or with cardboard boxes. Two teachers are also sitting on the floor. The teachers are being catty and fun with the kids. “Look at her, she’s being a little dick today, isn’t she?” “You look like you’d rather be asleep, that’s so boring!” It feels like a really warm group. Everyone is happy.

The door opens and Michael Showalter asks me to join him. I kiss the girl’s head and follow. A group of young people is talking, making verbal jabs. It’s an improv group. I’m not a member but I’m welcome. Michael wants to talk about my script. He’s very taken with the idea of the little girl who smokes and my marriage to her mom. It’s a good story, he says, very funny. He encourages me to keep working on it.

Dream

Here’s a dream from last night.

I’m on set for a small movie project. The film benefits a charity so major celebrities are donating their talents; still, it is a very amateurish production.

I’m in scene that as an extra, a close up of small group jostled just at some kind of impact. I’m positioned at lower left of two lines standing in on risers. The group is supposed to fall on cue toward me as a gunman enters at right. The shot isn’t working because we fall at uncoordinated rates. As the director breaks to work this out, I suggest that Luna cue us by starting the fall from upper right. As everyone falls toward me, she can scream at noticing the gun. We try this and it works on the first take. The director is pleased with me.

I watch the next shot Denzel Washington stands at an old porcelain sink in his underwear, shaving. Two young girls, acting as his daughters, wear nightgowns and lean on the sink watching their dad’s face. The shot is focused on their faces and his lower torso. Their faces suggest routine morning rituals. Denzel pulls out his penis and pisses in the sink. He runs water and washes his hands. The girls’ expressions remain blasé. He turns to leave the sink. The girls follow. I’m struck by the intimacy of parent/child relationships.

I’m dancing at an after-party following the wrap. The party seems much better organized that the shoot. I notice Mick Jagger is on the dance floor. I try to remain calm thinking: how cool is that I’m dancing near Mick Jagger? As the party ends, Jagger passes me with two women. “See you in Chelsea, then?” he asks me. I don’t know the next destination, so I ask if he has the address. “No, mate, sorry,” he smiles, like Jagger never has things like addresses. He goes where he’s taken and that’s where the party is. They pass and I think, that was a missed opportunity but how cool that Mick Jagger invited me to join. I’m readying to leave when one of the women in his entourage returns to give me an address, smiling.

The last part of the dream was lucid. I’m woken and moan, “Let me dream, I’m dancing with Mick Jagger.”

Dream

Here’s a dream from last night.

The dream shifts when we get a rabbit. My girlfriend and I were young and dressed in seventies clothes, entertaining friends at home. I noticed our rabbit, which I hadn’t seen before. Soon, I’m talking about the rabbit with our friends. I pick it up and hold it, still interacting with people. I have a quiet moment with the rabbit and notice how small it has become: it rests comfortable in my palm, slightly larger than my hand. I’m holding it upside down, rubbing its belly. The rabbit is tickled and laughs, responding with surprising personality. I think of Thumper in “Bambi.”

Later, I find the rabbit nursing babies. I bring my girlfriend to see. We hadn’t known the rabbit was pregnant or even female. We’re charmed by the scene. My girlfriend is gone and I’m alone with the rabbit and her babies. The babies have reverted back to a larva stage and writhe in dirt and water. I watch, fascinated, then worry that some appear to be drowning. I scoop them up to dray land. As they grow, I see that there are now three or four of them (I can’t judge an accurate count), where there used to be more. I’m sad that I didn’t act sooner, but also think this may be the natural process, that not all births survive into childhood.

The younger bunnies are growing. I’ve outfitted the mother bunny in a dress. She stands in an accurately scaled dollhouse, still, watching proudly as I play with her babies. I them dress the young ones and put them in little rooms as well. More guests arrive and I return to the party.

Cheers

Meet Linda Lovelace

When I was twelve, my father did something I’d never known him to do: he acquired a best friend. This is not to say my father was not friendly or personable. In fact, I’d wager my father is the friendliest person produced by the American South in the twentieth century. But at that time, in his early thirties, he was busy with a wife, four boys, two jobs and a mortgage. Dad had no time to cultivate a buddy.

That changed when the bachelor came to work at Dad’s car dealership. The bachelor, with no family or obligations of his own, was soon spending weekends at our place helping Dad with various projects. The two of them built an extended back porch, put in a pool and transformed a perfectly good two-car garage into a den, complete with a brick fireplace—rarely necessary in Alabama—and an eight-foot wet bar, in which my teetotaler father stored the unopened liquor bottles he had received as gifts over the years. Soon, the bachelor had Dad drinking Miller Lite. It was really something.

Soon, the bachelor decided to upgrade his home entertainment system with a video disc player. My father acquired his now obsolete VCR, our initial foray into video technology. It came with three tapes. The first was Smokey and The Bandit, which became the first movie my brothers and I watched repeatedly. To this day, we can recite whole swaths of dialogue and sing every Jerry Reed song. The second was National Lampoon’s Disco Beaver From Outer Space, an unsuccessful follow-up to Animal House. The third was Deep Throat.

As the oldest son, I was afforded the privilege of a later bedtime than “the kids,” as I referred to my younger siblings. After they groused off to bed on school nights, I settled in with Mom and Dad to watch the television shows denied to children. I delighted in recounting Mission Impossible plots over breakfast as the kids sulked into their corn flakes.

We were watching television one night when my mother suggested looking at the third video tape. Neither of my parents had watched Deep Throat. They knew it was racy, possibly even naughty, but I was a mature young teen who enjoyed adult fare like National Lampoon, so why not try it out?

“Deep Throat” opens with Linda Lovelace in sunglasses, driving though Miami to the movie’s bouncy theme music. She drives and drives as the credits roll, then drives and drives more as the music plays on. She’s on her way to see her doctor with a very heavy concern: she’s never had an orgasm. She weeps her sorrow to the doctor, played by Geraldo Rivera. (The role was actually played by Harry Reems, but to my young eyes, the actor was presumably the guy on television with a bushy moustache.)

Doctor Geraldo Rivera gave Linda Lovelace a quick examination and made a shocking discovery. Many women orgasm from stimulation of the “glitterus”—or so the word sounded to my young ears—and by some abnormality, her glitterus was located deep in her throat. The only way she could achieve orgasm, he diagnosed, was by sucking a cock at least nine inches long. Linda Lovelace wept. It was hopeless. She would never have an orgasm, for where-oh-where would she find someone with a nine-inch cock?

Doctor Geraldo Rivera unzipped. Bow chicka bow bow! Ecstatically, Linda Lovelace set herself to the task of swallowing the good doctor’s cure.

I sat between my parents, watching. I looked neither left nor right. No one said a word.

We sat frozen for the duration of Deep Throat.

After the movie ended, my mother got up to turn off the television. “Okay, time for bed!” she ordered. I put up no disagreement, hurriedly mumbling “Good night, I love you,” as I rushed to my room, eyes averted.

One may think my parents were freethinkers for watching porn with their eldest child, but in fact, we had no idea what we were getting into. It was the first time any of us had seen explicit sex. Before the advent of video tapes, the only places to encounter stag films were bachelor parties and adult theaters in seedy sections of big cities. My parents had no experience with such places. The only theaters they visited were cineplexes and drive-ins with four children in tow. The bachelor’s video introduced blowjobs into our family’s garage-cum-den-cum-grindhouse.   

The next morning, I ate breakfast with the kids in silence. The third video vanished, never to be seen again.

Years later, now an adult living in New York City, I visited the annual Tattoo Convention at the Roseland Ballroom. I don’t have ink of my own, but I like art and flesh, so I’m an admirer. As I toured the near-empty second floor balcony, I turned a corner and nearly tripped over an easel with a sign reading “Meet Linda Lovelace!” Two women were seated at a table some distance away, as if prepared for a queue that never materialized. I smiled and waved. They waved me over.

I introduced myself. One of the pair replied with her name and introduced her companion as Linda Lovelace.

“Nice to meet you. Big fan,” I blurted. I tried to cover. “You know, Deep Throat was my first porn movie.”

“Yeah, it was a lot of people’s first,” Linda Lovelace replied flatly. “Some firsts for me, too.”

I laughed at the joke. She didn’t smile. I pressed on. “Yeah, but how many people watched it with their parents?”

She nodded, unimpressed. “So, you want to get an autograph? You can buy a picture for ten dollars or the book for fifteen.” She indicated a stack of The Complete Linda Lovelace by Eric Danville. I asked for a book and paid her friend. “How do you want it signed?” Linda Lovelace asked.

“How about ‘To Jefferson?”

Linda Lovelace carefully creased back the book’s cover to the title page and took up a pen. She sounded out the words as she wrote:  “To . . . Jeff . . er . . . son . . .” Her companion and I exchanged glances. I wondered if Linda Lovelace had suffered some disorder that caused her to write so slowly. I knew very little about her.   

By the time I met her, Linda Lovelace was one of life’s walking wounded. As a young woman, Linda Susan Boreman emerged as “Linda Lovelace,” immediately cast as a national punchline. Although few people actually saw Deep Throat, everyone had heard of the film and its star. Johnny Carson got a reliable laugh from dropping her name. Woodward and Bernstein used the film title in identifying their secret informant on the Watergate scandal, certain readers would get the reference. The smart set enjoyed the era’s “porn chic,” opining that X-rated fare indicated a new direction for sex in mainstream cinema.

Linda Lovelace herself felt used by the filmmakers and her unsought notoriety. She had been paid flat fees and never saw profits from the film, its sequels or merchandise. She renounced Deep Throat, claiming that her abusive husband, Chuck Trayner, had forced her to perform. Coming out as a survivor led to her embrace by second-wave feminists. Linda Lovelace was pushed to the front lines of a campaign against pornography, speaking on campuses and marching through Times Square buffeted by Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug behind a banner proclaiming “Porn Hurts Women.”  She testified before Congress, “When you see the movie Deep Throat, you are watching me being raped. There was a gun to my head the entire time.”

Linda Lovelace came to feel used on all sides of the debate about pornography. She became a born-again Christian and retired into a private life about we which know little other than its continued hardships. Not long after I met her, Linda Susan Boreman would die from injuries sustained in a car accident at age fifty-three.

But that day, she was still Linda Lovelace, relying on her disavowed celebrity to survive by selling autographs at an uninterested tattoo convention. I quietly watched as she inscribed my book, slowly looping the “e” to the “l” in “Lovelace.”

“You have very nice handwriting,” I observed.

Linda Lovelace looked up. “Thanks. I’m proud of my handwriting. I learned cursive as a fourth-grader in Catholic school in Yonkers.” She returned to complete her signature. “I always say, you should always have something in this life that you’re proud of.”

Linda Lovelace smiled as she gave me the book. I shook her hand and left the pair at the table on an empty ballroom balcony. I carried away Linda Lovelace’s signature and life lesson: always have something in this life that you’re proud of.  

A lesson I’ve always tried to apply to my own life in pornography.

Lake Tahoe

Secret Cove. Lake Tahoe, Nevada. August 1, 2017.

On the rocks. Mohonk, New York. June 10, 2017.

World AIDS Day

From Lester Blum's series "I Still Remember," currently on view at the LGBTQ Center of Durham, North Carolina. I wore the leather jacket of my high school boyfriend Donnie, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1992. Paddles. November, 2015.

Twelfth Blogoversary

New York, NY. October 7, 2016. Photograph by Kenny.

Twelve years ago today, I posted my first story to this blog.

My wife and I separated in two-thousand-three, after fifteen years of sexless monogamy. I started dating and returning to my pre-marital roots in bisexuality and general sluttiness with friends. It was a time of extraordinary transition, as I adjusted to a new life, divided between time as a newly divorced father and a bold arena of sex in New York and online.

At the suggestion of a drinking buddy, I started this blog to document the surreality of it all. One evening, I sat with her, bourbons in hand, and created a new name for myself—“Jefferson”—never imagining it would stick. 

I really had no idea what a blog was. I thought of the Internet as a kind of safe deposit box, a place I could store my writing. I knew it was public but I had no idea anyone could unlock my stories without the magic code of its URL. Little did I realize that people might search for “orgy” or “blowjob” and wind up reading my life. The blog quickly became popular. Soon, readers wanted to meet me, even have sex with me, based solely on my writing. After spending half of my twenties and all of my thirties in a monogamous dry spell, it felt amazing to be desired.

Blogging changed my life. It led to romance, love, travel, community, storytelling and, now and then, controversy. Eventually, my ex-wife would discover this blog and use it to sue for full custody of our kids and out me to my entire family. To her chagrin, my family continued to love me. The State of New York was unimpressed by my ex-wife’s anger and sustained joint custody. In the process of venting her ire, she outed me in the expectation of doing harm. Instead, she gave me freedom: I was no longer anxious about leading a double life. My life became one of great transparency.

Not that this is without complications.

Recently, I posted a couple of stories from the time my freedom and my blog were new. One Life, Take Two was launched just two weeks after the reelection of George W. Bush, as recounted in Cockblock the Vote. Timeline aficionados may note: the story of March twenty-ninth,two-thousand-five, took place just days before Aprils Fool’s, when I first met Madeline in the flesh. The saga of our early romance, as described in our respective blogs, was compiled in Jefferson and Madeline.
 
I've enjoyed revisiting my blog, my beautiful, beautiful blog. I may continue. I may not. For now, meet My Celia. Enjoy!

My Celia                        

It’s been over a year since the break up.

For most of that year, I have hosted sex parties in Manhattan. I suppose I will need to catch you up on how that transpired. I’ve made great friends and lovers at these parties, and yet I haven’t often had the feeling of falling head over heels for someone.

Until my Celia.

I met Celia at a party at my place last spring. She arrived late with a guy who comes sometimes. The regulars were already naked, well fucked and relaxed.

Celia sat on a bed and chatted with us. She was dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt, worn backwards so that the logo was illegible. As we talked, Jane removed Celia’s clothes, and had soon stripped her naked. Jane kissed her torso as Celia leaned back, opening her thighs; we heard her gasp as Jane’s mouth reached her clit.

Being gracious like she is, Jane soon turned and offered me Celia’s body. I set to licking Jane's drool from Celia's labia.

As we fucked, as we did almost immediately, I decided not to stop fucking her. This is not the best form at a sex party, particularly for the host; one really should offer new guests an opportunity to work the room.

I doubt that Celia cared much for etiquette. She had gorgeous hazel-green eyes, focused intently on mine. I kept her gaze, noticing details at the periphery. Celia had a lovely face: aquiline nose, pre-Raphaelite features, framed in long black hair.

I was soon very curious to know more about the woman I was fucking, and so thought maybe we could take a break to chat.

"I would really like to talk with you," I said, meaning "Maybe we can stop and talk."

"Sure . . . what do you want to talk about?" she replied, as if I meant we should have a conversation while fucking. I was willing.

"So, where did you grow up?," I asked. I learned that she grew up in New England, she is an art student, and she would be working on a farm all summer. Within those first few moments, I gleaned that we had art in common, the sex was great, and I wouldn't be able to see her again for months.

I finally let her have sex with some of the others. Later we kissed, as intently as we had gazed. As she left, she stood in the door, giving me long, hungry kisses, as her date waited for her.

As it happened, she had an art show up, and as it happened, I was in the neighborhood the very next day. I was glad to see her art was good.

The summer passed.

Two weeks ago, I got an email from her, saying she was back in town and wanted to return to the sex parties. Cool!

I suggested we get together, and proposed we go check out the new Museum of Modern Art on opening day, as I had special tickets. It turned out she did too.

Later, we learned that the opening day was free to the public. So much for special access.

We decided to meet at an exhibition by Barbara Nitke at Art@Large gallery, get lunch, and see the museum--which we knew would be hellishly crowded. Nitke’s photos have to do with sadomasochism (SM). While not into SM herself, Nitke has an empathic insight into the lives of those who are. There is a strong sense of intimacy and care in her photographs.

Celia was late for our date, which was fine with me. We saw Nitke's work together. Celia says she knew many of the images, having seen Nitke lecture at the Eulenspeigel Society, a New York based organization for those into SM.

(I catalogued those details—Celia already knew Nitke and the Eulenspeigel Society?)

We lunched, and talked about out first encounter. It was her first sex party, she said, and her moment with Jane was her first encounter with a woman. She liked it, but she was taking downers at the time, which she regretted.

I referred to this as a pretty unusual second date. She agreed: first sex, then a lunch date. We were doing it backwards. She says she is surprised that she feels so shy.

She talked about her gaggle of girlfriends, and how she makes nude films of them, but can't imagine sex with them—though she really wants to be bisexual, as it's hip (it is?) and of course, there are more options for sex if you are bi.

She opines that the MoMA is going to be crazy crowded, and maybe we shouldn't go. This leaves her with two hours to kill before her yoga class . . . what can we do? Well, I suggest, we can go to my place and kiss. She looks at me like she can't believe I suggested this. I can't believe it myself—I am really getting bold.

"Okay," she says, "but I really am feeling shy about this. Is it too early to drink? Do you have any bourbon?"

"A girl after my own heart." I actually said that out loud.

Soon, we are at my place, on my couch, sipping bourbon. Soon, we are kissing. Fully clothed. For a long, sweet time.

Soon we are nude, in my bed, kissing. Touching. For a long, sweet time. She is so into gazing, touching, kissing, and I am melting, melting, melting. As the time passes, and her yoga class approaches, I think it will be wise not to start fucking. But I do go down on her. And she cums. And she cums again as I kiss her and hold her very close.

I should mention that she does intense yoga five times a week. And she is a semi-pro athlete. She has a strong, lean body. When she held me firmly, she knocked the breath out of me. Mind you, I was pretty breathless.

I tell her to go, it's time. She declines to leave. We fuck. Like all the foreplay, it's slow, and intense. At one point, I'm on top of her, holding myself up with my arms at full length. She is about to cum. She sits up, putting her arms around my shoulders. She lifts her ass from the bed. She is clinging to me, hanging from my body in air, pushing herself down on me. She cums. I can scarcely believe she made my body work that way.

We are back to kissing, touching . . . she discovered my sensitive nipples, and slowly tortured them. Exquisitely.

I am laying on top of her, tracing a finger along her nose, her lips, her cheeks. I take a breath. "You are really beautiful," I say. "You don't have to be. I would be nice to you anyway. But it helps that you are."

She looks down at me. "Are you bi?" she asks. I say I am. "I do well with the bi guys," she says. Why is that, you think? "Must be my physique," she says, flexing a bicep that would give pause to Charles Atlas.

She said she was hungry. I went to the kitchen and produced Spanish rice, steamed shrimp, and fresh calamari sauteed in garlic. We eat nude.

As we eat, we talk about the Nitke photos. She mentions liking one in which a man is fully bound to a flotation board, adrift in a pool. I say that there was such a sense of risk in that position. She says she likes the feeling of being bound.

I recall how she came when I was holding her, on top of her, as she pulled me closer to crush her.

"I can bind you," I offer. She produces rope and ankle bracelets from her bag, saying they were intended for a possible film shoot later that night. I dig up handcuffs and other stuff. She is soon strapped to my bed on all fours.

I torture her nipples. I tell her I am going to verbally abuse her. "Yes," she murmurs. I ask her why, with all that we've been doing, she has not sucked my cock? "Are you bad at it or something?" I ask. She opens her mouth, wide. I feed her my cock, and fuck her face hard. She can take it very well, so I commend her. Then I slap her for making me wait for that.

We had already established that she is an ass virgin, and so I take her to task for this. How can I let her fuck my friends if she can't even do anal? So I move around and give her a hard spanking. I lick her hole, and blow air in her. She moans. She can't help but fart. I spank her for this, and do it again. "This will burn, but only for a second," I warn. I take a sip of bourbon, and blow it up her ass. I plug it with my thumb, and then a butt plug.

I fuck her pussy.

"Can you take candle wax?," I ask. Never tried it, she mumbles. I drip wax on her back and ass for a very long time. She squirms until I tell her to be still. (Later she asked: was I making too much noise? I can try to be less responsive. Oh no, I say. You did very well.)

In time, I release her and take her to the shower. I wash her body, and flake off the wax. We go back to bed and it's tender again. She falls asleep. I read.

We woke up entangled, touching . . . her fingers are never still when they can be caressing. We spend the morning in bed. There was a joy in this, so palpable, for me at least, that I had to take care lest blurting out, "I am so in love with you."

I had to remind myself, I really don’t know Celia so well. Not yet.

I make her breakfast—bacon, eggs, and her first helping of grits. We were both very sated. We talk about how she just broke up with her boyfriend, and she had broken with her other two lovers in the last month. I say I am hers, when she wants me. Her eyes fix on mine. “That’s right,” she smiles.

My friend Todd calls. He reminds me that we are going to fuck this woman from Texas that night. I had offered to host, and said I would line up some others to join us. I had invited Thomas, that was easy, but I was so busy with Celia all weekend, I didn’t do much more.

I asked Celia if she wanted to do a group thing that night. She pondered it but declined. She was already well sexed. So was I, really.

Around two or three, I kissed goodbye to my Celia. I had a gang bang in a few hours. I would spend that time in the thrall of my Celia, picking up flecks of candle wax, and writing to my friend Dacia about her.

The blog continues with Preparations.

Where's Jefferson?

Where's Jefferson? 

Costuming by my girlfriend's four-year-old niece. 

November 23, 2016. Port Kent, New York. 

Cockblock the Vote

With so many competing events on weekends, our gang had decided on Tuesdays as a good midweek pick-me-up sex party night. We’d been having our biweekly bisexual gatherings for a little over a year when we encountered a snag: we had an orgy scheduled for election night.

I sent around a note asking for a show of hands. Should we veto the party? Organize to watch the results? Or ignore politics altogether with sex as usual? Our landslide decision was to compromise: we wanted company for this nail-biter and we didn’t know how to be together with clothes on.

And so it was that on Tuesday, November second, two-thousand-four, we gathered on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to go down on each other as George W. Bush went down in flames.

We began as usual, having wine in the living room, catching up on the two weeks since we were last together. The election naturally flowed into the conversation. All but one of us, a non-citizen, had voted that day. New York would go for Kerry, no question, but the results from four years prior had left us all too jittery to be complacent.

Mark joined our rally, arriving late as usual. This was our signal that it was time to get naked.

“It feels weird to have the television on,” I said as we undressed in the bedroom. “I can’t really pay attention to sex when Peter Jennings is talking.” I muted the sound. We stood nude by the light of candles and cathode, enjoying the familiar sight of ourselves glowing.

The yoga instructor turned to kiss her husband, the nurse. Jen and Phil were sweetly in love and always started off together. Lynn and I followed suit. Others began to touch and talk softly, in pairs and clusters. The matched couples always had the advantage of first call on the bed that wouldn’t be empty again.

Jen and Lynn lay back on pillows. I reached for a condom, not bothering to offer one to Phil. I entered Lynn, leaning forward to kiss her, lingering as we felt our bodies welcoming each other. I sat back on my haunches, holding her thighs as I gently fucked her. She glanced at Phil, smiling as he watched us. I leaned over to kiss him. He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me into a deeper kiss. My hand traced down his chest, his pulsating abdomen and down to his bare cock, soaking in his wife’s slit. Lynn groaned; I felt her fingers touch my cock as she worked her clit.

Mark put a hand on my back, stroking his cock with the other. “Hey, sorry to interrupt; everyone is so busy! But Lynn, you still look like you could use more.”

“Oh yes, I was just thinking that, Mark, thank you,” Lynn replied, twisting her body to receive his cock in her mouth.

“Pulling all the levers, eh, Lynn?” I joked, but if my voting booth allusion was funny, she was too busy to notice. I looked over my shoulder at the television: the northeast was turning blue.

Phil and Jen switched positions so that she could blow him. “Yeah, lick your pussy off my dick,” he encouraged.

I ran my hand along her pussy and brought my fingers to my lips. “That is pretty delicious. How about I fill that vacated position?”

“Actually, would you mind if I go first?” Phil asked.

Jen took his cock from her mouth. “You just did go first . . . ?”

“No, I’m sorry I was unclear: do you mind if Jefferson fucks me and then you, instead of the reverse? I’ve been craving a dick in me all week. Do you mind, Jefferson?”

“Whatever y’all decide,” I grinned, continuing with Lynn. “Plenty of me to go around. I’m here all night.” I leaned over to kiss Lynn, running my tongue along the cock in her mouth. “Honey, if you need me, I’ll be right next door.” She puckered her lips on Mark’s cock, blowing me a kiss mid-blowjob.

I pulled out of Lynn and flung my used condom toward to wastebasket. It landed close with points only for effort. I retrieved it on my way to the bathroom to wash.

When I returned, Mark was fucking Lynn and Phil’s face was buried in his wife’s pussy. His ass wiggled in anticipation. I picked up lube and walked across the bed on my knees, tearing open a condom package.

Mark was fucking Lynn, I was fucking Phil, Phil was devouring Jen. This would be my favored set for the night. I tended to fuck Jen as prelude to fucking her husband, and signaled my last dance by fucking Mark. Then I would relax with the remaining guests before crawling into bed with Lynn and a nightcap. For now, it was novel to reverse my usual order with this sweet couple.

I checked the room. Everyone was doing well, with some having repaired back to the living room. Beck was playing down the hall. A few more red states in the south. 

Jon stood on the bed next to me, steadying himself with his hands on the ceiling as he joined our cluster. A few moments later, he turned to the television. “Hey, is it weird that I’m the only Republican here?” I laughed so hard his cock nearly fell from my mouth.

“Guys,” he said. “My side got Florida.” Everyone stopped to look at the television. Jen and Lynn sat up against the wall.

I reached for the remote. “ . , . to repeat: ABC News is now projecting President George W. Bush has won the state of Florida. We add this to his wins in the Carolinas . . .”

“No! No, no!” Jen shouted. “You take that back. Fuck.”

“Pretty early, too,” Phil noted. Jen wriggled from our bodies and left the room. Phil pulled away to follow.

“Jefferson . . .” Lynn began, scooting forward to sit next to me. I wrapped an arm around her.

The room watched in silence. Soon, more results: blue hugging the Great Lakes, red filling in below. Texas, of course.

“I need a drink,” I said, rubbing Lynn’s calf.

“You and me both,” she said.

We found Jen on her belly on the couch. Phil was rubbing her back. She was crying. Lynn and I passed into the kitchen to pour bourbons, then repaired to the terrace. We sat nude in the still, cold night, watching the traffic.

Mark came to the terrace door, wearing his coat. “Hey, you guys, I’m heading out. A few of us are walking to the subway.” Lynn got up to hug him. I followed him to the door to say goodbye to our departing guests.

I returned to find Jen reclining on her side, her cheek resting on a hand. “Phil went to get our things,” she said. “A while ago. I guess he got sucked into the news.” She looked to the hallway. “He would’ve come back if any of it was good.”

I sat on the coffee table, listening.

“How is this happening?” she asked. “I mean, nine-eleven . . . he lied, just lied, about weapons of mass destruction, he’s stupid, he lies, this idiotic war . . . and John Kerry, he’s not perfect, I know, but . . .” Her voice trailed off. “It is impossible, impossible to imagine anything worse.”

“I hear you,” I nodded. “Nothing could be worse.”

The Disinvited Guest

In early two-thousand-five, a friend, Audacia, asked to bring an acquaintance to our party. As I vetted her, she told me that she had genital herpes, adding how common that is and how many people have it and don’t know. “Thanks for letting me know,” I replied. “Just do with our group what you would normally do: let your potential partners know so they can give informed consent.” 

That was a problem, she told me. She didn’t want to inform anyone for fear of being rejected. It wasn’t fair, she said, repeating that genital herpes is very common, and many people have it and don’t know. She would be no different than those who don’t reveal their STI status because they don’t know it.
 
This was a red flag for me. She intended to lie to my friends and to deny their informed consent. I was very uncomfortable being complicit in her lie. However, Audacia argued that everyone should use safer sex on the presumption that people may be dishonest or unaware of their STI status.  This was a case in point of dishonesty; now, we would also label it a consent violation. Yet, I deferred to the insistence of Audacia, who would later reveal she knew this person solely from her blog. I invited her recommended guest into my home and didn’t reveal her dishonesty.
 
(Note: I have had partners with herpes. I know this because they disclosed honestly prior to contact. I was able to give or withhold informed consent accordingly.)
 
Per my clearly stated preference, the guest and I never engaged in kissing, oral sex, intercourse or sexual acts—despite her repeated requests, in person, in front of friends and on her blog. Our sole physical interaction involved a sex toy, witnessed by a room of people, at a party on March twenty-ninth, two-thousand-five, her third visit to my home.
 
Our guest had heard my then-girlfriend describe our use of the toy, a speculum, and asked to use it. I agreed to participate, wearing latex gloves. The interaction was negotiated and consensual. When she asked to stop, we did so immediately. In aftercare, she said that the sensation reminded her of something that had happened years before. Comforted by the many friends who had witnessed our interaction, she returned to the party.
 
Soon, as she discussed our parties in her sex blog, my friends discovered the dishonesty of her STI disclosure. On these grounds—her deliberate lie that put others at risk without consent—I was asked by my friends to disinvite her from future parties, and did so.
 
She responded in her blog by expressing sadness and loss, eventually describing our sole interaction in a negative light. Her blog comments were sympathetic, while regularly pointing out that she described a negotiated, consensual scene that ended on request, followed by aftercare.
 
She concurred that the scene was negotiated and consensual. However, she maintained that once consent was withdrawn, the scene should end immediately. The toy had, in fact, been removed as quickly as was safely possible, requiring a trigger mechanism to disengage. I engaged it the moment she wanted to stop, asking, as I did so, if she was okay. She repeated the request even as I safely removed the toy. The scene had stopped immediately.
 
Duress can cause time to feel frozen. In her blog, she began to focus on the moment between asking to stop and the completed execution. The scene had ended immediately, but she wondered: how did I have time to speak if I was acting as quickly as possible?
 
Her blog commenters weighed in. One pointed out that a rope top packs safety shears so that it a scene must end, it can end as quickly as possible, though cutting rope will take a few moments. A commenter noted that if his girlfriend is on top during intercourse and he asked to stop, it would take a moment for her to move away. Compliance to consent withdrawal should be immediate. It may not be possible to be instantaneous.
 
Her replies turned against me personally. She posted that she knew my home address and parenting schedule. She could direct anyone who wanted to crash our party or worse, to do harm to me. She darkly joked that it would hurt me if my then-five-year-old daughter was raped.
 
She said this of a child. The child of a father who had himself been violated at age four.
 
Until this time, I had remained in contact with her. I expressed concern and apologized that the scene had caused her distress. I had enjoyed her company and felt bad about the necessity of removing her from our group.
 
Her threats lost her my sympathies. She had lied to my friends and put them at risk without consent. She had threatened my children. I cut her off entirely. I was angry at her threats and grateful to live in a doorman building.
 
A few years later, in March two-thousand-eight, my ex-wife discovered this blog and sued for full custody of our children, claiming that my sex life endangered the children. I ceased all parties and took down my blog. After a year in court, and an extensive review of all submitted material, including this blog, the State of New York ruled in two-thousand-nine that the children were in no danger and joint custody remained intact.
 
Per court order, I made no detailed public statements about the custody case during its duration. During my year offline, a pair of bloggers conjectured as to my silence. I had dated one of the pair briefly before ending our relationship to focus on the custody case. Seeking to cause mischief, the two bloggers contacted the disinvited guest and encouraged her to repeat her story, suggesting she leave out her shifting accounts and threats, referring to our sole physical interaction as “assault.”
 
In August two-thousand-eight, as a precautionary measure, I backed up all blogs that may have proved pertinent to my case, including that of the disinvited guest (no blog other than my own ever came up in court; the State of New York was concerned with the welfare of the children, not with the blogs of people who had no knowledge of my parenting). Her many blog posts from two-thousand-five concerning myself and the March twenty-ninth gathering had been expunged, leaving voids in a blog that had been updated daily. At no point prior to summer two-thousand-eight was the word “assault” used.
 
When the case resolved, I restored my blog and wrote about the events of that year: the custody case and the online flame war of sex bloggers, including the disinvited guest. Since two-thousand-nine, this writing has been continuously available here and linked at my FetLife account. I have often told the story onstage, for many years, to large and small audiences, in multiple cities. In two-thousand-ten, the story was also compiled and published as Feverish, Sad Drama. Anyone who knows me closely has heard the detailed story privately. It’s no secret.
 
In public accounts shortly after the custody case, I generally avoided specific details about the disinvited guest for a simple reason. As bloggers conjectured about my undisclosed custody case, they were unaware that while my ex-wife’s case rested solely on my sexuality, the state was concerned only with the welfare of the children. Opposing counsel wanted to prove that my sex life put my children at risk. The disinvited guest’s online threats could be used in an effort to prove them right—she had offered to provide my address and parenting schedule to anyone who might do harm, specifically targeting my five-year-old daughter for rape. It was not in the interest of my family to draw attention to her threats.
 
Over the years, the disinvited guest has sought to interfere with my opportunities and relationships, no doubt bolstered by my reluctance to address her reception during the two bloggers’ smear campaign of two-thousand-eight, while I was offline and my custody case remained active. She could be confident that I would not respond. And rightly so: I could afford lost opportunities, but I could ill afford to return to court with my ex-wife.
 
However, she references events that occurred over eleven years ago. I have long since left the address she visited. Two of my three children affected by the court’s custody decision have passed the age of maturation. I do not foresee my ex-wife returning to court. If we do go to court, I’m confident the threats of the disinvited guest would no longer be relevant.

For the record, here is how she described the incident in a blog post dated June twenty, two-thousand-eight, over three years after the fact. At the time, the interaction was of new interest to those behind the smear campaign accompanying my family's custody case. All of her earlier accounts and their comments had been deleted. 

For the first time ever he decided to play with me, and he decided to use a speculum as a sex toy. I wasn’t comfortable with that but in the spirit of trying new things I figured if I didn’t like it I could just ask him to stop. After all, that had always seemed like the un-transgressed rule of the parties—no means no. So he put it in and it hurt. And I told him, ‘That hurts, take it out.’ He not only ignored my request, but when someone else reiterated what I said he shook his head no and shifted the speculum inside me, which only served to jab me further. I started to panic, looked at a friend I had there that night for help, unfortunately said friend was otherwise engaged and I panicked further. I decided that this was going to stop right then and there and shouted out my request for everyone to hear. That stopped the guy in his tracks. After he removed the speculum, I slapped his arm (not as hard as I should have) and ran off to the bathroom where I burst into tears

Her account focuses on the time between her first request and my reaction. Only she can say what was going on in her head in that moment. For my part, I removed the toy as quickly as was safely possible. 

The detail about reiteration wasn't included in earlier accounts. It was added in this version when an eyewitness recalled that she may have interjected, although she wasn't sure. The disinvited guest then added it as fact, creating the impression that it was among reactions that happened sequentially rather than  concurrently. I don’t recall shaking my head. If someone else spoke, I may have been responding to that. I certainly didn’t refuse to act on her request. I was focused only on that task. I can’t speak to the attention of others in that moment. There were a handful of people in the room and they were understandably interested in watching; all eyes were attentive as I narrated each step, by way of explanation, throughout the brief interaction.

I have no interest in revisiting this story. I regret that recent events compel me to do so, reluctantly.
 
To reiterate key facts:
 

• She knowingly lied about her STI status, refusing to reveal that she had genital herpes, and put others at risk without their consent. I was complicit in her dishonesty. When her lie was revealed, she was disinvited from future parties. I apologized to my friends.
   

• Our sole physical interaction was negotiated and consensual. Her request to stop was met immediately and followed by aftercare, including weeks of conversation.
   

• Following her dismissal from our parties, she bitterly offered my address and parenting schedule online to anyone who would harm me, my friends and my family, specifically targeting my then-five-year-old daughter. I immediately severed all contact with her.
   

• Her early accounts of our sole physical interaction confirmed a scene that was negotiated and consensual, ending on request as immediately as was safely possible. Three years after the fact, in two-thousand-eight, she created a new account of the story, deleting her own contradictory and shifting original accounts as well as all comments. She did so with the stated intent of negatively affecting an active custody case. Once more, her target was my family.
   

• She never had any direct contact with my children.

Our narratives do not neatly dovetail. Our memories of a moment over eleven years ago are not in exact concurrence. I’m sure she has replayed the memory many times since it occurred. I know I have. I know she has told the story many times. I have as well. I’ve read her shifting accounts. Now, she has read my account. We are unlikely to fully agree.
 
Research demonstrates that revisiting a memory in mind, words and/or images, gives it form and shape that move it further from fact, not closer. She can hold fast to her facts. I can hold fast to my facts. We can call in the surviving eyewitnesses to learn their facts. Everything that is known about the mind and memory indicates that the more views we add, the further we will be from a firm truth—particularly, as in this case, concerning a traumatic experience of fleeting duration. (To be clear, I don’t mean to diminish trauma with the word “fleeting.” Much research on trauma focuses on limited moments of time with lasting durations of impact.)
 
I’m immensely grateful to my extraordinarily patient partner.
 
Comments are closed. Anyone with questions or concerns may contact me directly at onelifetaketwo@gmail.com.

Nude Storytelling

Performing nude storytelling on the opening night of the fourth annual Nude Art Weekend. Muchmore's. New York, NY. June 3, 2016. Photograph by Joshua Iowa.