When Venus Conspires

I’m driving up the interstate like a banshee, easily topping the speed limit by 20mph. In part because my new supply of Wellbutrin seems especially strong, which I know is not actually a thing, just my fucked up brain making facts up…and also because I got an email from the studio director that my art space is too messy.

It’s a freaking art studio! 

I pull into the parking lot of my old workplace because I figure as long as I’m here I might as well give R back his sweatshirt. I’d like to say hi anyways.

My growing-out pixie cut is arranged in a high punk style mohawk and I’m coming from work, so I’m in my tight dark jeans, a black longsleeve, and heavy eyeliner. It’s the character I portray these days. The girls think I’m cool to talk to and the guys think I’m some kind of punk sex kitten. They’re always still shocked at my vulgar sense of humor.

So I hop out and start walking up the pathway and of course R is outside the place smoking a cigarette because god knows he never actually does any work, and he’s talking to some chick…

But as I get closer I recognize that flash of red hair and phony laugh and–fuck me, you’ve got to be joking…what the?

It’s the vixen. The slut who said she was my friend and then took my job and fucked my ex. R and I lock eyes and communicate wordlessly, no way…

I double my strut (no backing out now) and walk up casually like I don’t even see her. R gives me a hug and looks at me questionably but I just flash my biggest smile. We talk about halloween costumes because I’m working the 31st with him to cover the new girl–my last commitment to that godforsaken place–and I say I want to be Amelia Earhart and he doesn’t know who that is.

I roll my eyes and the vixen laughs, and tries to say something to flatter me. I just look at her deadpanned and say I’m walking over to the studio.

Why is she here? Did Adrian invite her? Not that I care, but god after all of the bullshit he just calls in reinforcements when another ex leaves? WTF?

So I clean my studio and put another layer on my painting, which is coming along nicely and I get a text, Do you want chocolate cake and matte?

It’s from my bastard ex, who must have been working in the back and heard that both of his ex lovers showed up and ran into each other in the parking lot.

But dammit of course I want the cake (spoiler alert, I’d spend the next day running 12 miles to get it out of my body). So I text, sure the studio door is unlocked.

When he shows up, it’s really awkward because my studio is bare bones and there’s nowhere to sit and so we kind of just stand there exchanging small talk. He starts apologizing for Amy showing up saying it must be so hard on me and I get mad, because I don’t give a shit and why should he assume I would.

I have no clue what makes me say it, but “Do you want to grab a drink?” comes out of my mouth. He eagerly agrees and we meet over at the Irish pub across the street.

That’s where shit really starts coming loose, he has a double jack and a beer and starts crying, saying how much he misses me and how the memories of us haunts him and he’ll never give up and he made the worst mistake of his life.

Three months ago I would have given anything to hear this. But now it sounds like the sound is underwater. And I just…just don’t care anymore.

He maintains that he didn’t summon Amy here, and she’s with her new boyfriend whom she met online and hasn’t been around for six months. That’s a very bizarre coincidence, I decide, but still I don’t care.

I try to joke with him and bring up his spirits, and we do this retarded dance between us laughing at things and him crying in regret. It’s weird as hell. All of the guys keep hitting on me and I finally say I need to get outta here, and he pays for my drink. I almost protest, but whatever, I’m fine using guys to get free stuff right now. And he owes it to me right?

Outside I mention I’m going back over to hang out with R (and partially because I want to do everything but tuck my tail between my legs in the face of Amy Hoe-Bag) and he hesitates.

“I hate this.” He says.

“Yeah buddy, you need to leave this place. You gotta find a new workplace and group of people,” I encourage.

“No…I mean this,” and I’m an idiot.

“Oh…well Adrian I’m sorry. The problem is that you’re a boy.”

“Yeah,” he laughs hollowly, “I really wish you were a dude sometimes, or that I was a chick.”

I sigh, “No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Oh.” He looks down hurt, “you mean I’m not a–”

“Man.”

He says goodnight in a sad way that I know is supposed to tug on my heart strings and all I can think of is, shit do I have any left? Why can’t I feel anything?

I walk back to R’s and he welcomes me in with his typical riotous already-trashed-and-not-off-the-clock way and Amy’s there and says in a sweet voice, “What are you doing here?”

I let my eyes freeze over and stare at her without blinking, “Just hanging out with my friends. What are you doing here?”

She giggles innocently and offers to make me a drink (why is she working behind the bar she got fired from?) and I just ask for a coffee. She brews some and R insists I have a real drink on the house, which I know is more a statement of fact not a suggestion, no matter how I contest. Sure enough an irish coffee appears before me on the counter within minutes, about triple the strength of a standard pour. I taste it and set it to the side.

The teenager who tried to fatally overdose herself at my house last year is sitting at the bar too, stealing sips from our drinks whenever she gets the chance. The new girl who replaced me looks weathered and weary, realizing I guess the caliber of insanity this job demands. The dishwasher I befriended who looks like a tattooed James Dean is there hugging me and hootin how he misses me. R starts hassling me to give him a klonopin, which is a class 2. Yep, everything’s the same.

Except Amy is pulling my sleeve and asking if she can talk to me in the back. I take one look at her glazed expression and shake my head.

“Pleassssssse, I just want to talk to you.”

R and I exchange amused looks and I roll my eyes. Fine.

She starts stumbling over herself how sorry she was and she didn’t know the dynamic Adrian I had and only if she had, she would have never have dated him, and she thinks I’m the chillest chick and she wants to be friends and Adrian and her were only ever friends. She says he still loves me. And always has.

I start tuning her out at some point. This is funny as shit to me. Everyone is falling apart around me and here I am, playing therapist to all of the goddamned people who fucked me over. Strange.

Back out in lobby Amy starts saying the new girl, her, and I should all hang out and do I have the same number? I nob but don’t mention I’ve blocked hers and that won’t be changing anytime soon.

Then I get another text from my ex saying he needs to say something else to me and can I meet and he “is not a boy dammit!”

Jesus Christ, I think.

I tell him if he needs to say something he can come here. So he pulls up and asks me to go outside, and he starts tearing up again saying he’s not a boy and I’m wrong. Well by this time I’m really starting to get pissed off, I can feel the Wellbutrin monster rearing it’s huge dark head, and I start throwing it back at him, stating all of the obvious reasons he IS a boy and that he’s an asshole and I deserve so much better.

He welcomes this deprecation, and I realize this is just another ruse to get me to pity him. Then he mentions some shit about being scared to tell me something…

Now the monster is snarling.

“What.” I hiss.

“I’m sorry…I was so scared to tell you…I just think I might still have an STD…I mean, I’m not sure of my symptoms and I wanted to make sure you get tested.”

My intuition is telling me this is just a load of BS to scare me, but still it’s the last straw for me. The monster’s furious scream comes out of my throat in a slew of swear words and insults and accusations that he is a coward and R keeps coming outside to mock-ask Adrian if he wants a water, a lemon, ice and I feel like kicking them both.

I compose myself and tell him to get goddamned tested, that I have a new partner and thus need to know (and I know that is the fatal blow because his face genuinely falls this time). And then I say, in a voice colder than i knew I was capable of, “I’m going back inside with my friends.”

And that’s it. That’s the weirdest night ever.

Everyone inside is getting progressively drunker except for me, I refuse any more free alcohol, grant R one klonopin in the wake of his endless addict requests, and say goodnight.

This is how I know I’m a different person than I was a year ago.

My bones are made of metal now instead of twigs.

These monsters inside me that once fought me have now put the fight in me.

I want another goddamned motorcycle.

-Saint

Can a married man fuck.

143.3

Okay. Remember when I said that sex fucks up everything? Well, let me revise that to say when I have sex, it fucks everything up.

I owe it to Jack Daniels and a long week training at the new bar. My nerves were frayed and I thought, great, divorced man will be home and we can just shoot the shit. Okay, I knew it wouldn’t go like that, but I’ve been so sexually frustrated as of late particularly when the new vibrator I ordered speed shipping missed me at my house and UPS decided to take it back to the customer service center. What? I need it now fuckers! HENCE the speed shipping.

Whatever…whiskey on the rocks transformed curiously into a foot massage…oh fuck was that arousing, and then a shoulder massage…and then my black lacy bra was in the way so–

God I hadn’t been kissed like that before. Even being lit from the Jack and the tantalizing massage I still would have been able to keep my legs closed had it not been for that kiss. The kitchen boy had always sort of mutely compressed my lips with his and it was limp and weird and usually I just pleaded him to move onto the hot and heavy stuff. But divorced man? God can he kiss. It’s a force and control and rhythm that no actual sex can compete with. I’m a sucker for kissing.

I think it may have to do with defining the difference between boys who play with girls and men who have married women.

But damn, soon after that he’s on top of me and my hips are doing their own thing without my blessing, gyrating into his crotch, my coaching words quickly bubbling up from the surface of forgotten sexual routine to guide him out of his hesitation.

After all, I am no fragile girl. When he bites I tell him harder, when he taps my ass I plead harder. And we go until both of us are panting and then he freezes.

“What?” I groan, like this is some sort of torture technique because it’s working.

“It broke.” He said this casually, like he was observing the pleasant hues of the autumn leaves.

“WHAT?!” Oh god you have got to be kidding me.

“Yeah, um, well are you on birth control?”

But of course I’m a fool and I’m not and I’m swearing but he gets up (it’s 3:30am) and drives to Walgreens and buys me a good old pal Plan B.

I was shocked and delighted by his chivalry, my ex never gave a shit and I’d dished out a couple hundred dollars for those little fuckers…of course the next day divorce man tells me he’s in the market for over $1000 worth of plan b’s for all of the women he’s fucked, and I don’t want to be a prude because god knows I want to be a slut, but it makes me cringe.

We’re contemplating this whole friends with benefits. Afterall, I love sex and don’t want to do the whole relationship thing right now, but then he’s talking all calculated the next day, asking what I’ll do if this ends up being an accident and is an abortion out of the question and it’s my choice, and I’m just like FUCK don’t make me hit the klonopin! I keep looking at my menstrual phone app, it says I was out of the fertile window and I took the pill like 20 minutes after but Jesus, I don’t think I can handle the not knowing and the stress.

I call in a prescription for another NuvaRing, it’s the bc I haven’t been on for nearly 6 months when kitchen boy and I were falling apart. I figure even if I’m not going to further fraternize with divorced guy (who got really childish when I told him I didn’t want to lay in bed and watch a movie with him because that was too emotional) I plan to be chased at my new job as a bartender.

My weight says infuriatingly the same, but my body shape is changing rapidly. In fact, with all of this shit about my ex and new physicality and stress I went out and ran 12 miles yesterday. 12. Not even really recognizing it, my brain just kept whirring and after I had run the 4.2 mile loop for the third time, I thought…okay, that’s enough I think.

In summary, men are dumb. And my package came today, so fuck em.

Though not literally until I’m back on birth control…

-Saint

Blood Money

131.8

I haven’t been this incapable of sleeping since I was a skeleton. That was the only time I’d ever experienced the dread of insomnia, when there was no fat between my bones and they jabbed my organs all night with even the slightest shift. I only assumed it was the way skinny girls slept. The price you paid to be pretty.

Maybe I’m just so used to a body being next to me, having an extra heat source, or the strange sort of security that wraps around your unconscious form when you sleep with a man. Depending on the man I guess.

This is my recent torment despite being healthier than I have been in a decade, with all of the rage running I do now on a daily basis.

The endless-mile-routines are firming up my muscles, which protrude curiously from my otherwise soft contours, in a subtle but confident way. Like they are saying, wait until you see me run. Let’s go. Yes now. 

My thighs are big, but not doughy like during my depressive-binge-era and not stilts like when I was the walking Death incarnated. But I can’t sleep.

Maybe it wouldn’t be that hard to imagine, since I’m curled up on a bean bag under my childhood bedroom window, but normally I sleep really well in small animal-like spaces. Since transitioning back into my mom’s house into what she still insists on is my room, it doesn’t really seem like I’m allowed to own anything. It will tarnish her spotless adobe, her immaculate household. Living here makes me nervous to breathe.

I am a very chaotic person. I clean, but it’s not my religion like it is for my mother. So I just have a few boxes and my bean bag for a bed until I leave.

---

I sell my motorcycle on Sunday…I don’t think I’ve cried so much for a person. My dad doesn’t understand of course, he rants on and on about how it’s the responsible thing to do, to grow up and pay off my debts. I glower in the passenger seat, with the fat envelope of cash braced between my thighs.

With it, I walk into the bank and ask to pay off my loan. The teller looks at me startled, reexamining the tired looking girl in sweatpants he wrote off a moment before.

“Oh…Miss, well yes. And would you be interested in signing up for a union credit card today? Great for building credit and…”

He stops. I must be betraying my good sense to hide the venom in my eyes.

He says nothing more than a few stuttering attempts at “Have a nice day,” and I briskly leave, released from my monthly account withdrawals just like that.

Next is the fire station. The secretary and I have bonded during the monthly visits I’ve had to make here, always in varying psychological states. But this is my last stop and I give her thanks, for at least treating me human regardless of how fucked up I must have looked on occasion.

I tell her to take the rest of the balance remaining on my ambulance bill, and within seconds I’m settled up with the people who found me rabidly convulsing, unable to speak, and hallucinating on the ground of that shitty pizza place I ended up on when I overdosed. Not indebted to a damn soul anymore.

“Where’s your bike?” a heavy-set firefighter asks as he trudges down the hall. He’s seen me ride up on it occasionally. We’ve talked cc’s.

“Right here,” I say hollowly, holding up my debit card. He looks embarrassed.

The secretary smiles at me. Today I’m wearing Audrey Hepburn inspired makeup, a tight white tank top, and dark skinny jeans. I must at least look like I’m not going to let anything mess with me anytime soon. I know it must look kind of slutty, but I don’t give a shit.

“The best of luck to you sweetheart.”

I told her a few months back I was setting off for California. I don’t want to like her, but she’s been so fucking cool and I know her words are sincere. I seem to garnish a special kind of pitty from middle-aged women. Maybe they just appreciate that my situation, if anything, has made me quirkier than your run-of-the-mill 20-something bitch.

“Back at you.” I say, and slip out the back door. I hope to not see a goddamned fire station for a while.

With a couple grand still in my account I can breathe a little. I buy a new outfit and new art supplies, and save the rest for whatever the hell I’ll find myself doing after my summer contract.

Travel…moving to Portland…or staying in Cali…whatever I choose, I’ll need the funds. I’m trying not to focus on my crushed spirits for losing Zelda: the inanimate object that carried me through a hellish period in my life…and definitely made me more of a badass.

My anxiety is knocking on the walls of my skull and I’m horny as fuck for not having sex in two weeks…

I’m going to have to log some more miles tonight. That’s for sure.

-B

134?

I don’t know the number. And I haven’t not known the number in a long fucking time.

Where is Ana? I wonder in a near panic, Will she hear my uncertainty? Will it call her back like a snake’s charm?

It’s so cold these days. So cold. I keep putting things in my mouth without really knowing about it…like it’s something I do in my sleep. My weight has been teetering even when I think it should be sky rocketing, so I find an odd cynical reason for being thankful for temperatures that remain in the negatives all week. Maybe it’s forcing my body to work overtime keeping the furnace on. I don’t know.

Things are pretty bad with KB. I think my bitterness has been leaking through my smile these days. He worries it’s him, but how much longer will he continue to blame himself before he finds out it’s really just the monsters in my closet? Monsters he certainly doesn’t have to deal with. And now he’s grumpy. My passive aggressiveness will poison us I swear.

Sex is short. Uneventful. Sleepy.

And it hasn’t happened in a few days.

The onslaught of the holidays thickens in my liver too. I send alcohol down after it, perhaps to break up the lead dam building there, but it just makes my head thicker and my heart heavier. Krishna has been pouting because I won’t paint. I feel the emotions collecting in my chest, my throat, my jaw. But not enough to burst yet.

To paint it must burst.

The burst is the paint.

I feel like a withered but still young Scrooge trudging through the snow, my fingertips purple in a matter of seconds when exposed to the frigid air. I scowl at children, roll my eyes at affectionate couples, shake my head at shoppers rushing around with their empty pockets and climbing debt. All to nurse this ache in my chest.

I fantasize about traveling again, and speak it aloud to several people in front of KB. I feel bad, like I’m betraying him. But my heart is fluttering here, where I touch it, and it only beats out of hope. A small, ever questionable hope. I wish I could be good for him. I don’t think it is in me though. He can’t put up with it much longer.

I feel the splinters when he looks at me, the hesitant hurt, like he doesn’t want to conclude I really act the way I do. It must be the weather, it must be the miscarriage, it must be the meds. No. This is me. And I have been a practiced loner much longer than a practiced partner.

D hasn’t come in with his girlfriend. I thought Thank god, maybe he had no clue it was me.

But then out of the blue they text me to see if I’m working this weekend. It’s too close for comfort.

He updates his fetish list on the site, and says his draw to the world of kink was deep rooted in childhood, with two other little girls who acted like his subs when they played. Two girls? Is he insinuating something on purpose. DOES HIS FIANCE KNOW?

All the while I feel colder. And colder still. If you were to check the temperature of my thoughts, they would be triple into the negatives what it is outside.

I hear before you freeze to death you catch a sense of total euphoria. Do you think it’s true?

A Bang in the Dark

132.8

Before I rise from bed I stare at the ceiling and sigh.

Everything is fine, I tell myself, I love KB I love KB I love KB.

It’s as if I can hypnotize myself back into that happy, flowery, love blinded state I wrote in last. I knew it would fade into the background somewhat…I guess I just wasn’t expecting this slight complication.

My fetlife account holds pretty intimate information. It lists my freaky fetishes, my sexual history, and my embarrassing desire to find a partner to puppy play (in which the submissive party, me, exchanges all human thinking for simplistic canine mind space and the dominate becomes the handler of the puppy, with or without sexual exchange. It’s more about power.).

I know…it’s weird. But things have only gotten worse in that department since dating KB. He will NOT touch any of those desires of mine, nothing kinky, and though I said it was okay, I could get over it I guess, my appetite has gotten ravenous. I fantasize about scenarios  all day…of some other rough guy blindfolding me, throwing me in a cage, slapping a collar around my neck, and turning me into his little submissive.

I bought a beautiful fox tail online, and when I’m alone in my room I wear it. The suppression just builds and builds. I’ve lost all desire to have sex with KB, I feel so unsatisfied. I’m bored of the typical formula, and I can’t pretend to orgasm any longer.

On top of that…KB is driving me crazy. He’s so nice. He’s just SO DAMN NICE. He never takes control and still acts like a little boy. He’s let himself go quite a bit, and though that doesn’t bother me in and of itself, he complains about it and talks up his “glory days” when he was muscular and fit until I am sick in the ears. And he doesn’t do a thing about it.

We even got a nice gym membership together.

“Tsk tsk baby, can’t hold that all inside…sexual suppression leads to psychotic bursts,” Krishna is knitting by the window with these half moon spectacles sliding down her nose. She looks up at me in amusement as I stroke my tail.

“Even more than I already have?” I mutter.

“Oh yes darling, your sexual freedom is vital to your nature. I don’t understand American women and their shame about it…if you like leather you like leather, that’s all I’m saying.”

Guys have been coming into work recently and flirting the hell out of me. They wink and laugh at my jokes, and then leave me 200% tips as a token. Some of them stare at me unabashed, and are genuinely sweet, and I bask in the attention. One asked me about my necklace one night. I told him I loved elephants and really wanted to go to Thailand. He smiled at me and left me a twenty.

When KB sees this he swells with jealousy. I comfort him, “Baby I love you, I do.” which is true. I do love him, eternally. But I get this sinking feeling in my gut, along with a thousand other subtle things that tell my heart I’m not meant to be with him…

And this is all BEFORE THE INCIDENT.

I log onto fetlife to talk to a friend and I see I have a message.

It’s titled “hello”

I open it and start reading, hey, I’ve always wanted a little fox pet. Sorry…my name is D and I know my profile isn’t filled out yet. I’m a little OCD about that. Would love to chat.

A fairly standard message from a new guy on here, and I don’t talk to anyone with a sketchy empty profile. I examine his profile picture. Wait, that kind of looks like…

I click on the photo to blow it up and my stomach twists violently into a fist.

Oh my…gawd. fuck…no way…no…fuck.

It’s a guy from a couple I know as friends. KB and I have double dated with them a few times and become pretty good acquaintances. He’s engaged to his girlfriend. And somehow he found my fetlife account.

HOLY SHIT.

A thousand questions race through my mind: how did he find me, why is he on fetlife? does he know for sure it’s me? is his girlfriend looking at my profile together? is he doing this behind her back? is he mocking me?…is he serious?

I freak. If someone had a doubt if it were me, he could read my profile and confirm it with the information I provided. STUPID STUPID STUPID, I yell at myself in my head. What if he tells KB?! I even listed how I was miffed with my current bf for not being open to sexual expression. Dammit. 

In a panic I deactivate my account and sit there in the dark, feeling the dread spread across my face like a flame.

Wait…what if he is serious? What if he knows it’s me, got an account on his own because he has domination fetishes, and then just happened to run across my profile? What if…what if he actually wants to do things to me. What if he is cool with the puppy play thing and even seeks it out?

I feel a rush in my brain and a tingle in my tummy. I can’t believe I’m actually turned on by that idea. It’s so scandalous, so wrong. It would kill KB…and my body is betraying me right now.

I consider it rationally: This could be a trap, and knowing that this guy lost his grandfather a week ago and is drinking copious amounts of gin by this hour, maybe I can get him to think he might of imagined this whole thing.

I reactivate my account, remove my profile pic, erase the “about me”, make myself one year older, and write back to him:

Hi D, thanks for the friendly message. As a safety rule for myself, I typically wait for a profile to be finished before chatting if you don’t mind. Good luck filling it out, and welcome to fetlife. I hope you find what you seek.

I send it.

And wait.

Birth

132.4

The recent months have been a whirl. Slowly, oh so slowly, the weight has been peeling off. I think the Wellbutrin has kicked in full throttle, because I have to remind myself to eat, amp myself up for it, but more often than not it is unappealing and not worth remembering.

The vile taste in my mouth has gone since I last wrote. Winter is here, casting its equalizing white blanket over everyone and everything. I have laid to rest all of my resentment, anger, and plotting. I feel love for strangers now, I walk in the daylight with this sweet kind of melancholy that lets me look past people’s masks to the human beneath. And I feel this strong thing. Compassion. So much of it that it hurts my chest, it threatens to burst.

I suppose this began when I lost the baby.

KB and I had been back with each other for fiery sessions of passion, and a while back we had been quite stupid about birth control. You read stories of people getting pregnant and you think how stupid, just a few seconds of prevention could have spared you idiots.

But moments of passion have a way of hijacking your brain, making you forget reason and logic.

Anyway, I was two weeks late. I freaked. When mother nature finally crashed in, it was violent, gruesome, and so painful. The doctor confirmed my worst fears. I had been five weeks along.

A couple of months later I got drunk at work after hearing that I was going to be fired because the boss didn’t like me (Which I found interesting in a place where other employees steal alcohol, yell profanities in front of customers, and neglect to show for shifts). I had four shots of gin and talked with my coworker (who was stoned out of his mind) about the universe and other stupid shit.

KB was ready to leave and I begged him to stay with me. I had really been awful to him earlier, but he carried me to his car and took me home, where I fell into a panicked state of tearful devastation and confessed about the miscarriage.

The way his face softened…oh that image will forever haunt me.

He loves kids so much… and was equally devastated.

In many ways it was an act of mercy. I mourn that poor life and wonder everyday if it was something I did…they say guilt is normal. But they don’t mention that the ghost of guilt squeezes your insides for a seemingly indefinite time.

It was a couple of days after that my heart began to soften. I saw Ana following me, but I was indifferent to her. She began to dissolve into dust, carried away by the winter breeze. She started to scream at me…but though her eyes grew more vicious, the sound grew quieter…until only her parched cyanotic lips were moving in silence until they too turned to nothing.

Krishna was still there to greet me when I got home. I wasn’t sure if I would ever see Ana again, my loyal eating disorder, but I was happy to see Krishna’s blue smiling face light up when I returned home that day.

I realized that I truly loved KB. I always had. I always will. He is my best friend and confidant. And now he has seen my selfishness purged, and I want to show him love, endless love.

So my rebirth is nearing completion, nearly a year after I overdosed on drugs, alone and diseased, apathetic to every other human, convinced that my weakness and selfishness was my world.

I have friends, a best friend and lover. I love my family more than ever. The holidays seem bearable and even a reason for joy with KB with me. I have experienced the horror of a mother’s loss, and if the Divine can be both male and female, then she intended this gift for me, the feminine soul restored from ashes of a spiraling spirit.

Winter is falling over the city. Normally I would be under the covers hating everything. But I feel a Sun shining within, and I believe it is casting warm light on my world.

I moved away from my dreadful roommates and now reside in a forest home with a bunch of wonderful rednecks. There is always a fire crackling downstairs and they let me come and go as I please.  I stood up to my boss and got to keep my job.

And more than anything, I have fallen in love with my best friend.

I love you Adrian. You are always in my heart.

-B

Sobriety

Well the morning brings far more sadness than I could have expected. I wake up at 3am, wide awake, and freezing. I read for my phone and see that I have a text message. It’s from KB, who’s name I guess I finally feel less paranoid to write, Adrian.

Goodnight ******.

He drove me home after I threatened to drive myself, it was a long drive. I kissed him on the cheek goodbye, and goodbye for good. It was a kiss of apology and remorse, but set intention. Then I gathered my things and stumbled through my parents’ door. I did not look back until I heard the screech of his tires rounding the corner.

Thankfully mom and dad were out, and my sister was at the kitchen counter. I drank more, vodka and some nasty carbonated concoction, getting progressively more intoxicated and sounding off. I spout how I was happier, that I was over his shit, that he was pathetic and selfish and how I never wanted to be with him again. I was free dammit!

But this morning is so sober and harsh. My skull is pounding. Even in my drunken state, I managed to fall asleep wrapped in the fleece jacket he loaned me last night. I pull it tighter around me and cry silently, feeling sorry for myself. I already miss Adrian fiercely, I’ve often heard the first night stings like no other, and I wonder if he was struggling too.

My mom has to drive me back to his house to pick up my abandoned jeep. I cross my fingers, and thankfully i have indeed missed him. He’s already at work. I told my coworker we broke up last night, and she said she hoped work wouldn’t be weird.

I told her she was a heartless bitch.

I won’t make it weird. I’m going to get all of my tears out of the way in private, I’m following a set schedule I found to get over  breakup:

Day 1:Throw a pity party for one

I did that last night. I devoured a pizza with my sister, went on an absinthe bender, then vodka, then my soapbox. My poor sis.

So now we’re on Day 2: Live in denial.

So that one’s been going a little rough, seeing as I show up to the dentist and as soon as they’ve got nitrous oxide on my nose and bon iver in my ears I burst into tears. Yeah, I hate the dentist, it scares me back into my 7-year-old frame of mind, but I also was just hit with such sorrow and loneliness. After I no longer felt floaty or that I might bite the dentist’s hand off out of rage, I go to the bathroom and weep. With a goddamned numb cheek. Feeling sorry for myself again, pretty pathetic.

So now we’re doing a little better. I’m in a starbucks just people watching. There is this cute lesbian working, and I know she’s seen the equality sticker on my laptop. She’s really nice and flirtatious, sweeping way too long next to my table and I am secretly so grateful, it makes me feel wanted. I’m still wearing Adrian’s fleece…

My mom calls all worried, she knows I’m covering up most of this, and she knows I freak at the dentist. It’s quite embarrassing. I try to tell her, with a dumb voice through my sleeping cheek that I can’t really talk. She offers to pick up stuff from the store, movies from the store, do I want to bake, do I want to go to a movie?

“Mom, dhank you tha’s very sfweet. I need a couple u hours, okay?”

“Okay sweetie, text me.”

I appreciate her fussing, but it’s not helpful in the sense of pushing forward. I’m kind of mad at myself for crying so fuckin much, I mean come ON. I’m reading all these articles online from these awesome women with suggestions on how to overcome this kinda thing. Travel, become a gym rat, don’t bend to nostalgia, remind yourself of all of his faults, get even, reinvent, etc.

Sounds good to me. I also resolve to stay off the absinthe unless I’m painting, which is pretty good motivation if you ask me. And NEVER EAT AGAIN. The heartache destroys my appetite, as well as this goddamned aching jaw and numb cheek.

I shove on my earphones, blast Moby, and pull myself together. Pull myself out of that fairytale turned nightmare.

I think he’ll try to get back together with me, but that’s what all unhappy couples do, they ignore the fact that they’re NOT RIGHT FOR EACH OTHER because they love each other, and enter the miserable make-up/break-up carousel. Of course I love him, but…

you know the rest.

-B

Fuck you, you Fucking Fuck

I broke up with KB precisely eleven minutes ago.

I have had approximately 4 shots of absinthe, in order to get to this point of clairvoyance.

You know what he is doing? Playing goddamned grand theft auto.

He drank the last of the absinthe, even though I said I wanted it. I paid for it.

I am too drunk to tell you how mad I am, save for the fact that I hate being stuck here with him. He is a selfish, absorbed, inconsiderate, cold, arrogant asshole, and I never want to look at him again.

Friends? Haha, no. You can be friends with the angler fish at the bottom of the sea, since that’s how you live your life.

And you know your roommate who blacks out all the time? How hides pain behind a bottle? I feel more sorry for him than you, he buries deep unhappiness, you create your own out of the world not being to your standards. And I think he’s sexy, and muscular, and mysterious, and more MANLY THAN YOU CAN EVER HOPE TO BE. He’s not a three year old in a 24-year-old body.

You just asked me to order a pizza, when I KNOW you will eat the majority of it. FUCK YOU. I’m waiting until I’m sober and then texting my sister, and I will order a pizza for us. And drink to your demise.

I’ll show you what you just tossed aside, I’ll show you, you fucking fuck. I hope you end up with a beautiful mindless docile bimbo, and reflect on it in your fifties, and realize you’re like every other sellout out there. The road is calling me, and I am all too happy to follow.

Hasta LAAAAAA Vista.

Fuck I’m going to be drunk here for a while.

A boy of a Man

137

My diabolical plan to ease my bf into light BDSM did not happen. In fact, far from.

I’m in his basement, holding him against me, while he cries and shakes uncontrollably. He is saying he’s scared. He hasn’t felt well…a lot lately. I am tempted to say because my natural response to “ill” people has been to immediately comfort them, to cuddle them, and to soothe. He’s observed this many times and I happen to know his mother never did that for him.

I sigh heavily as the man I’m dating once again transforms into a frightened little boy, and I into his mom. It draws immense compassion from my heart, and twisted revulsion from my brain. Subconsciously I know I resent his lack of strength, the kind of male fortitude I find so appealing in a mate. I’m also frustrated because I just told him I have a UTI and I feel like shit…

Of course he calls in sick, which means I definitely can’t. I have to pee every 15 minutes and the antibiotics are making me woozy, but looks like I’m powering through. I hold him as he starts verbally beating himself up for fucking that girl, saying he’s terrified that he’s given something really bad to me, but I detect a hint of falseness.

His shaking is inconsistent, he doesn’t have a fever at all…is this over the top acting? It’s just bizarre because we came across a lot of people not feeling well yesterday, including myself…

Anyways, I drive him to urgent care, knowing I’m going to be fucking late for work. I try to be nice to him, buy him water, order him to keep sipping, and fill out his patient forms. He’s an asshole to the nurse at the counter, just like he’s an asshole to every stranger we meet who he feels is inferior. I loathe how he treats people, how he treats me.

I smile apologetically at her.

They find nothing. They say he’s overstressed and has a cold. My insides twist.

I take another pregnancy test, just for fucking peace of mind, and know in my heart that negative sign has released me from KB. I will never have physical relations with him again. He mentions not having sex for a while, that we need to slow down and take a break from it.

I ask if we should just take a break period.

“No baby, you’re a good thing in my life.”

I tell him he needs a physical break and I need an emotional break. I leave it there and wonder if he’ll be in denial I said this, but I mean it. I care about this boy, but I do not love this man. Sex is pretty damn important to my wellbeing, and I’m losing my mind over his constant dramatic instability.

I feel like he’s faking sick to twist my motivation to take care of him. Exploiting the part of my nature that seeks to nuture. It’s is gutting one person into giving too much to the other.

It’s over…I’ll keep my birth control in for another week and then consider taking it out, but I’m done.

I feel so sober inside as I go to work. KB was on the couch playing grand theft auto as I left. Selfish little boy. It’s the kind of resentment I have for him when he complains for an hour about work, I tell him to communicate to the boss, and he says no. He just likes to kick up negative dust everywhere.

I’ll ease him out of it too. He asks me to please come over after work, and though I’m dead tired I sneak downstairs where he’s snoring. I lay with him for a while, and he won’t say anything to me.

“Baby, lay off the marijuana, D has a friend who had the same kind of symptoms from too much of that stuff, for a whole week.”

I lay with him for a bit, but my mind is made up. I’m never spending the night again. I tell him I love him and that I’m driving home. He sighs and goes back to sleep.

I climb back into my jeep and blast the heat, it’s fucking cold now. Winter is at the door and I fucking hate it. I have to be back at work in six hours. I drive like a banshee home to my house.

But really I’m just a worn out jaded lover.

Bad Girl Blues

138.0

You’d think I’d be screaming but I’m not. I’m sure it will go back down by the end of my slew of double shifts, because I’m running around like crazy and not eating anything but an egg white Subway sandwich in the morning, and coffee. It was mostly because my gay friend and I caught up at fucking Red Robin and gorged ourselves. Total loss of control. IAMAFUCKINGIDIOT.

I have to lose five pounds before Wednesday to keep on track…ouch.

No, I’m not screaming, I’m sitting in the doctor’s office because I think I have a UTI. It hurts to piss so fucking bad, and the doc is sort of looking at me suspiciously. I told him my boyfriend gave me an STI at the beginning of the summer, so he hands over the pills for the urinary but is sending it out to cross check for FUCKING CHLAMYDIA too.

Which I can only say I will throw myself on the ground in a fit of childish sobs because KB and I had the full round of treatment, which means in order to give it to me he would have had to fuck another girl again, this time when we’re “committed” and all I can fixate on is how he just spent time in Denver…

Goddammit.

On that front we were actually doing better. I started to let all of his deprecating behavior go, actually I started to enjoy it, because I began to fantasize in the BDSM realm again, like I’m his little slut and I love when he punishes me and neglects me.

After two shots of absinthe last night I give him a full massage, asking him to tell me what to do, instruct me. He’s too polite at first, but starts to get it, gently telling rather than asking. I refuse to let myself stop until he orders it of me. I ask if I’ve been a good girl.

“What babe?”

“Have I been a good girl? You don’t need to thank me, just tell me I’ve been I good girl. I like that more,” and this is definitely the absinthe talking.

“Yeah baby, you’ve been a good girl.”

And my body feels a warm rush.

Granted, I told him about my kinks when we first were having sex and he would have none of it. He said they’re wrong and mentally ill and not wholesome (what is exactly his definition of wholesome?). But…since then he’s warmed up to the idea of spanking me and biting me hard and flipping me around the bed, which is great, but it only makes me want more, harder, sharper.

I still have teeth mark bruises all over my thighs and my left butt cheek is freckled with broken blood vessels. I love them. They are proof I’ve been marked. Taken.

I walk around the local sex shop for hours yesterday, challenging my Catholic learned insecurity, I’m just so fucking horny. I used to be so ashamed of even thinking about sex, but now I just see it as a full extension of myself. I imagine having casual intercourse with a bunch of random people, men and women.

But my plan is to slowly find out if KB can dominate me, if I can convince him to like bondage and restraint and pain play and all of the things I love.

I buy a pair of leather chain cuffs, although I know he won’t be up for that for a long time. Still I like to collect them. I already have a couple of toys, but I grow more and more curious about all of the gadgets and such as I browse the store. Just shopping gives me an animalistic rush, I mean they have an anal plug that looks like a fox tail. How cute is that?

He loves underwear, so I decide to pick out a few naughty pairs and a tight corset. I want to play a little hard to get, so I’ll withhold sex for a few days and then when we’re watching a movie or sitting on the couch I’ll kneel in front of him, look up with my big blue eyes, and innocently ask if I can service him.

I’ll ask him to please bend me over the couch and take me hard. And I plan on slowly inserting my submissiveness from there, I’ll keep you updated…

[THAT IS OF COURSE UNLESS HE CHEATED ON ME.]

I have a profile on Fetlife, which is essentially facebook for kinksters, and there are plenty of local Dominants who are dead gorgeous. I’m so tempted…just to feel the high, just to know what it’s like to be with another man. Maybe it would be so much better. And my vixen like resentment grows, saying of course you should give yourself to another more masculine male, he most likely cheated on you kid. Why are you in denial? He’s done it before!

But my test isn’t back yet, so I don’t have the proof…I’ll wait.

So for the rest of the day I think I’ll shower enough to NOT look ill, and maybe go back to the sex shop to have more me time. I can’t call into work because I’m the only fucking bartender and the place is dependent on me…I should really get a raise.