Thanks for all the lovely comments on those last few posts; I have plenty to say about this crush, this long-distance romance, the desires of courtship, of getting to know someone.
But! Amidst the ridiculous sappy love shit, I have a new erotica story I am particularly excited about, and that’ll be up later today. It’s called The Houseboy’s Rebellion and it is, of course, written for Miss DD. Custom smut is so much fun.
I also want to make a few announcements.
#1:
Welcome my lovely friend Ariel? Ariel!; she’s posting brilliant rhetoric on things like radical love, where she asks: what do you owe the person you fuck? What to do with the friends with whom you have ambiguous boundaries or desires? Among other things:
I believe in lightning bolt love. I really do. Right down to the soles of my feet. I talk about polyamory and nonmonogamy but really if I found someone who lightning bolted my heart to the sky I wonder if these would become theoretical discussions.
… Oh I just love her turns of phrase. More over at Ariel? Ariel!
#2:
You may’ve noticed the facelift on Miss Avarice‘s lovely blog recently, I’ve meant to mention it, specifically the header image, which I designed. And I can indeed confirm that those are Miss A’s shoes – specifically, the shoes she braved New York City subways in when she visited me (ahem, I mean, this fine city) in October.
#3:
While I’m linking, I may as well mention that Miss DD made me a mix CD this week, complete with the cover image of my hands bound together in her leather wrist cuffs. (Yes, I sent her some of the photographs she took of me.)
The mix is really lovely (whole tracklist is posted over at her chronicles), and tells a story from the opening track “I’m Not in Love” (the Tori version, of course) to “Think I’m in Love” in the middle, to “This is Love” by PJ Harvey as the closing song. But? It also has “Come to Daddy,” “Nasty Little Thoughts,” “Smack my Bitch Up,” and “Crazy Bitch,” so clearly it is not all sappy ridiculousness.
Kinda like us. Go figure.
She wrote these things as her game-plan strategy, yesterday:
- let myself be excited about you while maintaining some realism
- enjoy the moment and not try to control or predict outcomes, but also not put any expectations on this (the “be present and mindful” strategy)
- date when i want to but not for distraction
- back off the emotional rollcoaster a bit and just focus on accepting this for what it is
And today, I keep coming back to that list, articulate and succinct, attempting to really feel it in my heart, not just know it in my head.
The Muse – my best friend here in New York, another femme spy, if you will, the one who keeps buying me amazingly fantastic ties, the latest being a hot-pink number that is flat at the end instead of pointed (is there a technical word for that style of tie? probably) – The Muse ran our composite charts, and we discovered that we are pretty much astrologically compatible:
… a feeling of “fatedness,” that this relationship is going to play an important role in your lives, even if it is not a long-term relationship. You will be exposed to the most basic and profound aspects of your own and your partner’s inner nature. Both of you will experience psychological changes through this relationship. In a sexual relationship, physical sex assumes an unusual importance. Sex is likely to be seen by both of you as an experience that transcends ordinary reality.
The composite Moon in the twelfth house requires the two of you to do a great deal of work that most couples are unwilling to do. … If you don’t seek out the truth, your relationship will give you the feeling that you have been defeated in life by forces you don’t understand.
In a love relationship, the expression of love will be quite intense, with a powerful quality that will transform both of you in some fundamental way. Your love will not be light and gay but something very serious that involves both of you at all levels of mind, body, and soul.
I wouldn’t necessarily let astrology make or break anything, but I think it’s an interesting tool to give articulacy to the feelings in a relationship, or one’s own sense of self. Strange how it can sometimes feel so spot-on.
She’ll be here next week (six days) for four days. And I’m sending out my own mix CD to her shortly – glad I got hers first, some of the songs actually overlapped.
In retrospect, it seems so obvious. Of course it’s hard to date while you’re falling for someone else. Of course you should work on that new relationship, get it to a stable place, before dating around, otherwise the foundation will probably be too shaky.
In making that other date, I think I was attempting to not acknowledge how much I’ve already fallen, how much I want to keep falling, how much she matters already. “Nah, it’s just a casual thing,” I was telling myself. “I should keep dating, keep seeing other people, this can’t really work, what can we do.”
“Nothing.” My friend, the Musician, said to me. “It’s impossible. There is no possible way for it to work. Except when it does.” The Musician and her girlfriend spent fifteen months at the beginning of their relationship apart, in different states and then in different countries. And somehow, they made it happen. She & I are probably the most romantic people I know, kings of the big gestures in love.
The people around me are laughing when I tell them my predicament. I kind of want them to say, this can’t work, just give up now, forget it, get real, but they don’t. They get it, like the Musician. Cody‘s girlfriend is also long distance, and about to move to his city to be with him. Dylan is beginning to practice dating more than one person at once (is that public knowledge? I can edit this out if you don’t want me to say that). Molly, my fluffer femme spy, reminds me that she is also an IT department of polyamory. And I haven’t even started tapping the resources of Eileen & Maymay & Rona and other sexbloggers who date multiple people and still manage to love and commit.
Y’all are seriously rooting for us, aren’tcha? It’s kind of strange to feel so supported in this. Maybe you’re sick of the smutty Sugarbutch gallavanting? Or perhaps you’re mirroring my own enthusiasm? Maybe you’ve been following my heartbreak and loss and know how happy I was when I was in love, and just want to see me happy again? Perhaps some of you still believe that One True Love thing and want to see me settled and happy.
Sugarbutch will die when you’re all in love and monogamous, you know that, right? more than a few friends have said this to me. But I don’t think it will die – I still want to write smut. Perhaps it’ll be less dating, but there better well still be sex in my life.
“It just keeps working, until it doesn’t work,” The Musician said. It’s like that quote from Death, part of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, where she comes for a little baby and the baby says, “That’s it? That’s all I get?” and Death responds, “You get what everyone gets. You get a lifetime.”
I like a lifetime as a unit of measure. Same with a relationship. That’s what we get, DD & I … how long we can make it work, and how we’ll make it work, is definitely still To Be Figured Out.
“Will the grand gestures be worth it?” The Musician asks. “Who knows? I won’t know if all these huge gestures, flying across the country for my girlfriend, were worth it, until I’m on my deathbed saying, ‘holy shit, I’m dying, and you’re still here.’”
“Yeah, you’re right. And at the same time, I don’t regret the grand gestures in the relationships I had that have ended. And as much as I’m sad about the endings, or unhappy with how things ended, I don’t regret giving everything I could give, in them, at the time.”
“You’re such a romantic.”
“Yeah. But at the same time, what would I do if she was here? Is it only safe because she’s far away? Would things be totally different? Would I run?”
When I stop to think about it, I’m terrified. Second-guessing myself and my feelings, uncertain, unconvinced, unclear. I still feel so messed up from the two major breakups in my recent past, so particularly fucked by the manipulations of the unholy bitch that I have been trying to unlearn and unbelieve about myself. Somewhere in there I still don’t believe I’d be any good for someone in this state of flux. Too many unknown variables, too much changing.
But, on the other hand, I am closer to being who I want to become than I’ve ever been, and that is saying something. I’m refining, distilling, settling into a version of myself that is sustainable, solid but flexible, just good.
“Are you kidding!” The Musician says. “We’re alike, you & me. You squeeze your heart out in every direction you can find. You want her. You aren’t poly. You want the big love. You want to fall. And clearly, you want to fall for her.”
I still don’t have any idea how to make this work, but I think it’s beginning to sink in, a little deeper, to those inner layers, and clearly I have some new, revised choices to make.
So. Miss DD and I are talking and chatting and falling.
I sent her flowers on Friday. She called me at work and climaxed on the phone, let me listen. (I was immobile, unable to say anything or join her, torture, so fucking hot.) She’s talking about coming to see me, stay with me, here in New York.
And here we’ve run into a hurdle: I had a date on Saturday night.
I was tempted to cancel the date, scared to tell Miss DD that I’d set it up at all. It’s with someone I don’t know (yet), someone who answered a personal ad profile and who is intreaguing.
I am not sure how to navigate this dating-other-people-while-falling thing. Seems so dangerous, our hearts both on the line. I am (probably overly so) concerned with her feelings.
I guess I’ve decided that all I can do is be honest and open, kind, as best as I can. It sounds like a simple strategy, like staying present, but is so very difficult to practice.
We talked about it. Miss DD and I both agreed that it’s a good idea to see other people, but that we’d like to know before the elaborate sex story gets posted on the blog, and would like to know if or when it gets serious. Seem like fair guidelines so far.
So I went on the date.
The girl was bold and sometimes brash. She’s new to dating butches. Called me a chauvinist. (Which, of course, is a quote out of context – it wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds.) Maybe I should have said, masculine is different than chauvinistic, but instead talked about what it means that I’m a feminist, how I believe in gender theory, and what it’s like to be butch, to date femmes. That was when she started stroking my hand, and giving me those smoky eyes.
She’d like to see me again. But here’s the thing. I kissed her, and went back to her place, because she asked me to, because I could. And that’s how I’ve been operating on these dates the last six months or so: taking the opportunities presented to me. But honestly, I’ve learned that there are more opportunities than I have time to take, and that I shouldn’t necessarily take all of them, though it’s hard to know which ones will be the most valuable. They’re all valuable in their ways, of course; but I’m finding some patterns, and I’m learning that I can, and should, be more discerning.
And right now? I am kinda into Miss DD. (Kinda a lot.) My head’s all aswirl with her and this predicament: she’s far away. I want her to be with me.
DD’s friends advise her that perhaps seeking out more than one person means you haven’t met the right person yet. Yeah, maybe. Or perhaps it means circumstances just aren’t quite right. You gotta make due with what you got, right? You gotta boogie where you are, you can’t boogie anywhere else.
So, for now, especially given Miss DD is planning to come visit me soon (eleven days), I’m not going to make any dates. This is my own idea, not hers, she is not pushing me for this. I just don’t know how to reconcile falling for her and dating other people in my head. There’s too much happening in there, I need to eliminate some of it.
We’re working on the beginnings of some conversations about being poly, and what that means, and how this will work between us, and obviously this will be something tricky to negotiate, but it is not impossible.
This girl matters to me. I don’t know how she did it, how we did it together, how we got our hearts into this mess, but she & I are problem solvers if we are anything: we can do this, talk it through, check in with ourselves and each other, figure it out.
Tonight, I’m feeling hopeful. And I can’t wait to see her again.
My bottom lip is still tender from where she bit just a little too hard.
My inner left thigh has three perfect bruises in rings of teeth marks, two new, one darker and faded; she bit me hard enough for me to gasp, wince, jerk my thigh away from her mouth but I could not slide out of her grip, probably wouldn’t really have wanted to if I could.
The handprint on my right thigh has pretty much faded completely.
She poured me a glass of port, brought chocolate truffles after we peeled ourselves out of bed.
Looking in the mirror, putting in her contacts, she said, “I came so hard, I broke capillaries in my face, look.”
In The Leather Daddy and the Femme, one of the characters said, “they’re the kind of couple you’d pay a million bucks to watch fuck,” and that’s what we are when we’re together. Chemistry palpable. Bodies synched.
We made lists of things we would do if we had time. Proper dates. Dancing. Watching The Secretary (“And then we’d reinact it. And you’d be the secretary, of course.” “Oh, of course. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Unless, of course, she was the secretary.). Take a tour of her personal history of Seattle.
I loved the way she said yes and don’t stop and baby. Loved her impulse to confess when my hand was inside her deep. Loved the look of nervousness in her eyes when I easily attached the leather cuffs – that were the week before around my wrists – to the restraints she keeps on her bed. Loved the way she slid her leg over mine sitting next to me at breakfast, the morning after. Loved her growl, her lunge, her strength, her tenderness.
Twenty-two hours. That’s what we had together on my way back to New York. I spent the night in her bed, shared her tub, her shower, coffee in the morning, met her cats, watched her problem-solve, undress, dress, sleep.
I held back. Bit her shoulders to keep from giving in, letting go. Left marks, teeth, fingertips, where I gripped her tight, held her close, for leverage and levity and lust.
I know the precise amount of water that her body displaces in a tub. How her fist feels inside me to the wrist. The torture of her pure white lingerie peeking out from the low plunge of her dress.
We had a proper date. I opened her door, took her coat, held it for her to put on, ordered for her. Kept my hand on her thigh so I could feel the lace of her garter the whole way through dinner. I didn’t realize I was doing so until she said, “You like that, huh?”
My mouth watered. I wanted to see it, to peel that dress over her head.
Later, I did. Slid her boots off of her lovely calves and ankles and she said she felt particularly naked. I liked her exposed. I had longed to feel her body under mine like that.
She’s used to dating butches, trans guys, the female-bodied masculine quadrant in the gender galaxy. She notices all those little identity things that build me up, that have often been mysterious to the femmes I’ve dated. She notices and comments and has a context for them, a compairison. My clothes, body hair, gestures, chivalry. Makes me feel young, inexperienced in this gender, but I also feel recognized, visible, seen.
Probably, probably, I’m only this into her precisely because she’s so far away. But somehow she slipped under my radar, slid inside, sat down and made herself comfortable, poured herself a glass of wine, and had one waiting for me, too.
“I’m fifty-fifty, top and bottom,” she said. “What would happen if you were with someone who liked to top as much as bottom? Maybe you wouldn’t get bored?”
She has a point. As much as I love topping, bottoming opens up a different space in me, makes me more vulnerable, more exposed, more defenseless.
Yes, I had some sweet revenge, but those twenty-two hours were not a scene, like the hotel room was, not something with a beginning-middle-end concocted specifically with purpose and time management. These hours were fluid, thick and heavy with desire and lovemaking (there is, indeed, a reason that’s what it’s called). I loved the way she received me, opened for me, pushed herself. Wanted her to push me harder, and then she did, again and again. Curled around her like a vine. We both came & cried. Intense, intense.
Again, she took care of me brilliantly, I felt cherished. And then she left me at the airport. I haven’t cried on an airplane in a long time; it felt ridiculous, accidental, and I couldn’t stop feeling.
There is something here, between us. What a loss, what a great injustice, that we are so far apart that we cannot play it out the best way – in close physical proximity.
We are talking nearly every day. Have some ideas about seeing each other again, soon, and I don’t want to wait to have her back in my arms. Does this mean I’m thawing? Feeling through to my heart again? Still distancing myself from possibility? Someone told me yesterday that I have to prepare to get ready to be ready before I can actually be ready.
“How significant is she,” one of us was asked.
“Well … she’s not insignificant.” we answered.
Yeah. Ain’t that the truth.
There’s something here.
I slept on the plane and dreamed of us spinning, dancing on a slick floor. Heels and wing tips and she wore a light thirties dress with fringe, I was in slacks. I led her by her wrists, shoulders, neck; she twirled and brushed against my arms and body like somewinged creature barely touching down, gliding, humming next to me.
I was a better lead in the dream than I really am; in the dream it was effortless. I wore a fedora, suspenders. It must’ve ben salsa we were dancing.
Her body is smaller than mine, petite. I understand what it tells me. I read her hips like braille, bones and muscles and oh she’s strong.
She does the swing-out and a small hand flourish, crisp head snap and she gives me those eyes as I pull her back in, so I pause, she runs her hand up the buttons of my shirt, tilts her head so our mouths are close. I tip my hat onto her head and she laughs.
I twirl her fast, once-twice-threetimes and then catch her neck, turn her body, dip her one-handed, my other arm out, and my hat falls from her head to the floor as we kiss.
*
Also on this plane flight was, in my same row, but on the other side of the isle, the boy I first messed around with in high school, also going back for the holidays. He was traveling with his girlfriend.
He was The Casanova in high school. All the girls swooned over him, and he and his long, greasy hair, black trenchcoat, and flirting meant that he gave long back rubs to all of them in the drama studio.
As far as I knew, though, the only one he was messing around with was me. Our relationship was not public – we would not flirt or barely even acknowledge each other at school. But after school, in the park, in the cemetery, we’d be kissing, touching for hours.
I wanted to be him sometimes, wanted that kind of seductive power and desire over those girls.
And now look. Here I was, so freshly fucked I could still taste her, still feel her cock inside me, and here he was, with a sweet girlfriend, no doubt, but still doing the same things he used to, the same silly flirts and methods, I saw him do it, he was barely a grown-up version of his high school self, really he was the same, just with a better haircut.
He told me later – we went out for drinks – that he didn’t lose his virginity until college. That he had a lot of trouble with girls, with relationships.
Not that I haven’t, certainly. But I’ve had big loves, I’ve had big romance, big heartbreak, beautiful women who have shared my bed, shared my life. I’m so grateful for the influence of the women in my life, of sexuality, of exploration, of eagerness to play and learn and just be.
I wanted to tell him about my adventures, wanted to tell him how much I appreciated messing around with him and how fun and safe that was for me, how grateful I was that he showed me his soft underbelly when the other girls thought he was this tough guy, how great it was to look up to him, to wish I was him and now, to realize the ways I’ve surpassed him, the ways I am on the way to becoming my own Casanova.
I didn’t say any of that. Funny, sometimes, what you know will be too much to reveal. Thank the blog gods for, finally, a space to (over)share.
The results of the poll, asking you, my favorite, loyal readers, how the sexy DateDyke and I are hooking up, are in.
But you already know what I’m going to report, because you were the ones who voted. (Traitors.)
You voted:
DateDyke tops me: 86
I top DateDyke: 50
We wrestle: 23
And we have two write-in votes, which were:
- Wrestle for dominance, and loser gets to rule the day on your return flight
and - I just want you to win!
Someone also commented, “I vote for your vote,” and I wondered, does that mean they’re voting for me to top, or for me to get topped? ‘Cause clearly, I’m not even sure what my own vote is. I had hoped not to lose by a margin that fucking huge, but, well, readers, I get it. I hear you loud and clear.
My two consultants told me a few days ago that I should’ve threatened not to write about it unless I won. Now that, I bet that would’ve worked.
Ironically, after the Sugarbutch Star contest this year, one of the things I took away from that was just how many submissive femmes were out there who were inviting me to top them, often in ways that were (note the past tense) beyond my topping capabilities, I felt – lots of force, domination, coercion. I was surprised, and extremely validated, that there were so many of my type, at least upon initial inspection, out there, and so excited that they felt I was capable of taking them down.
But this time … seems the tables have turned a little, eh?
I know, slightly different scenario.
I am managing myself well, I think, inside the flirting, the submission, the bottoming, in my chats with DD; I’m a bit nervous about tomorrow, but trying to re-frame that into excitement. Tonight, she told me, “I’m not nervous, not now. I’ve worked that out. I have a solid idea of what I want and what I need from you.”
Mmmm, when you put it that way, I have a solid idea of what I want and what I need from her, too. I think. But that still doesn’t quite make me feel ready … this territory is just new, I suppose.
And … then there’s the reality of what’s going to happen tomorrow, of that first kiss when I walk into that hotel room, of the spreader bar she’s threatened, of my ass – my ass, lord, it has been a really long time since my ass has been fucked by anyone other than me, years – in the air, of who knows what else, being exposed, being taken. I’m thinking, do I have pimples on my ass? When was the last time I did some hair grooming, down there? Will I, as they say, break? Cry? Or will I be able to take it, to submit actively, intentionally, to push back against her topping, to hold my own, in my own way, in a butch and boyish way?
I’ve also been thinking about the responsibility of bottoms lately, not only because I am faced with this (gulp) new scenario – it seems there are many ways to bottom, and if you’ve read the Topping and Bottoming Books (which I highly recommend), then you know something about that.
One of the common misconceptions is that bottoms don’t do anything – that “pillow queen” notion. The Topping Book calls these folks “bottom-less pits,” those who want and need and take and don’t offer anything up, don’t match their top’s energy and hold their own.
I know this feeling as a top, but I am not as experienced of a bottom, these days – I want to avoid this, if at all I can.
It’s the difference between this active submission, intentional surrender, and some other form of just taking from a top … and I can feel it, energetically, but I’m not sure how else to pinpoint. This is reminding me of this post of Dacia’s over at Live Girl Review and that look in Legs’s eyes … clearly, though she is submitting, she is very powerful, present, active, working just as hard as her top. Gorgeous.
I’ve had a lot of comments, emails, and conversations, on & offline, from folks who follow Sugarbutch, about the notion of bottoming and butchness, especially for those of us whose butch identities are intertwined with a top identity.
I am not stone, have never been stone, and usually like and expect to get off during sex in some way. But that’s not to say that my sexual satisfaction is defined by my own orgasms – in fact, that’s not usually what makes me feel satiated after an interaction. Usually, it is the pleasure of the femme I’m with.
And, I’ve often said that just because I bottom, it does not have to conflict with my butchness. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, I’ve never felt that they are. I’ve been loud & proud about this, in fact, insisting that those two things can in fact go together and compliment each other quite well. I know butch bottoms, male subs, trans guy switches, all sorts of a range of masculine- and bottom-identified folks, and yeah, sure, have at it! You get on with your bad selves.
But … I guess the thing is that I’ve never quite occupied that space myself. And even in the past few years, when receiving or bottoming I guess I was doing so to women who did not go there, to celebrate the things that my boyishness brought to our scenario.
Certainly not in this way.
Interesting, how I thought I’d gone here, thought I’d played with this, and yet, these past few weeks has opened up whole new places to explore, new passageways, new ideas. I like that. I’m grateful for it, thankful to DD that she’s giving me the opportunity to explore these things, gender, submission, my own intersections.
Some folks have asked me about reading DateDyke’s dating chronicles, which are so steamy that she keeps them locked – she told me that she’d most likely grant permission, you’ll just have to ask nicely.
Also, to clarify – though both Red and DateDyke read Sugarbutch, I met them both offline, through friends. I have yet to sleep with someone who met me through Sugarbutch.
Want to be the first?
- I got a replacement copy of The Leather Daddy and the Femme and read the first few chapters on the subway. The writing is smooth, eager, tumbling. So hot. I have more to say about this
- I stopped at Babeland and picked up primarily supplies – gloves, condoms, lube. Both by bucket of boy butter and my bottle of lube broke recently, the containers actually shattered. I also bought a softie sock and a leather cockring that fits around my wrist, which I like wearing as a bracelet. I played with the cocks (ohh, Vixskin) and whips and leather floggers and harnesses, looked curiously at the new bendy beads and that cone thing that is getting notice.
- I attended the reading for Best Lesbian Erotica 2008 and listened to sexy erotica read aloud. Words formed in mouths in a roomful of people.
What on earth was I thinking?
This was all entirely too much sex. Overstimulated, oversexed, I could think about nothing but getting off, which she had asked me – ordered me – not to do.
I went home and paced. Bit my lips. Walked briskly from room to room but with no recollection of my intention. Preoccupied with a glimpse in my mind of her, boots, heels, standing tall, looking up at her, she’s looking down at me, the way her voice breaks with a timber of callousness.
My body hummed, vibrated.
Everything was sex. The higher functions of my brain have been overridden by the animalistic urges, the desire to be fucked, give over, get off.
I tried to watch tv. Tried to do some freelance design work, to write some overdue articles. I continued to find myself staring into space, glassy-eyed.
I dropped to the floor. Began with push-ups, then sit-ups. Ten and ten. Ten more, then ten more. Crunches, then all the way up, until I was groaning and the muscles in my stomach were screaming and taught, breathing heavy, body tense begging for release.
Begging.
I beat my face to the floor until my arms couldn’t hold me up anymore, until I was panting.
When I collapsed, and my dick twitched against the hardwood. My hips wanted to buck against anything, everything. Thrusting and I put my hand there, just for some friction, some traction, and pressed my forehead to the floor, grinding against my palm through my jeans.
Too much, too much.
I could feel my clit through my jeans. Hard and slick already, eager against my hands and I let my hips wander, find rhythm, thighs clasping hard.
I couldn’t stop myself. I feared I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.
I stopped, throbbing, thrusting, frustrated. Beat the floor with my fist.
Twenty-four hours until the layover. I can make it.
Lust Demon on 
Lyn on 
Kelley O on 
