Whores moaning...

According to Merriam-Webster Online a whore is:

1. an adulterer
2. a woman who engages in sexual acts for money (sort of like a married woman)
3. a prostitute
4. a promiscuous or immoral woman
5. a male who engages in sexual acts for money (gigolo and every guy who ever married Joan Collins)
6. a venal or unscrupulous person (advertising execs, sponsors, most of Congress and government at all levels)

In this puritanical society sex has become something to fear, to point fingers at, and to engage in in secret. Sex has become a sin and anyone who has ever enjoyed sex and pleasure tainted by association. This has not always been true, but it certainly makes things difficult for those of us who simply enjoy the feel, touch, scent, taste, and sensation of being intimate with someone. When did pleasure become so negative?

A friend recently mentioned they thought I was much more experienced sexually than I actually am, partly because I am very open and honest about sex and completely uninhibited about discussing sex. I am chaste now, but I have not always been. I have been married and I have also indulged in one or two intimate encounters out-of-wedlock (I'm being modest of course). I am an unashamedly sexual and sensual woman, not that I have exercised my pleasure options with anyone for a very long time, but I still love everything about sex and men and sensuality.

There are a few people on my friends list who know about my uninhibited past as a very successful and well paid phone sex operator. I'm not talking about the cinematic equivalent who sits in an office or in a cubicle and pretends to have sex with callers, but someone who worked from home and spent a great deal of time enjoying myself along with the callers. I have a very vivid imagination and an even more insatiable appetite for pleasure in many forms. Surprisingly, most of the men who called on a regular basis just wanted someone to talk to them, to acknowledge their existence and listen to them.

During my time on the phones I learned a lot about what makes men tick and what makes them hot and makes them squirm. I also found out that even jerks want the same things the rest of humanity want -- to be loved, cherished, and enjoyed. The shyest guy you will ever meet has his fantasies, too, and some of them are pretty wild.

The most common fantasy is being with a woman who enjoys giving oral sex and the second most common fantasy was being with someone who enjoyed sex as much as the guy did.

It's funny, an old friend told me that he thought of marriage like a meal with the dessert at the beginning of the meal. Personally, I like dessert before, during, and after the meal, but, like I said, I'm insatiable, especially when the dessert is so delectable.

So why do people with high libidos invariably end up with partners who don't care for sex or just lose their taste for it? I know opposites attract, but not that opposite. Both my husbands were more interested in sex with others, but then they didn't have to worry about that dessert cart that stays during the whole meal. They could get what they wanted and never go back for seconds because there was always a different meal at another restaurant to sample. Nick spent all of his time in adult bookstores shoving quarters into narrow, confined, and smelly booths watching grainy porn flicks and then shoving dollar bills into G-strings down the road before he finally came home drunk and unable to perform getting out of his clothes before passing out on the bed. My Romeo of the titty bars.

My first husband spent some of his sperm at home, but he didn't last longer than a couple minutes at a time and I was just getting up to cruising speed. No wonder I missed the orgasmic train until I was in my forties.

Despite being married twice and having two lovers in between my marriages, I was still fantasizing about sex and enjoying the sensual pleasures alone. That changed and I was changed. I finally understood what all the shouting was about and it only took me 44 years. At least I got it before I died.

But what is all this about? Why am I rambling on so and forcing you down memory lane? Because I still can't figure out why any woman should be afraid to enjoy herself with whomever or why she should be anathematized for her uninhibited enjoyment of pleasure.

I doubt we'd have as many wars if everyone was having a good time exploring all the pleasures available right here on earth. Sex is not a dirty word and pleasure is not a sin.

Humans are curious and want to try everything they can. I didn't mind my husbands sleeping with other women as much as I minded them not sleeping with me. And I don't understand women and men who have partners willing to give them every pleasure imaginable and ignoring them. Folks, if you won't jump into the pleasure orgy or find some time to be with your partner, someone else will. Marriage is a fine institution and keeping yourselves until yourselves is fine when it comes to the paternity of your children, but don't let the every day worries, work, and mundane details take the pleasure out of your life. The trash, the dishes, and the laundry will wait. Give up a couple nightly television programs, go to bed early, get up early, take a shower together, but don't forget the pleasure and excitement you knew when you first got together. If you forget, you will regret it. Pleasure isn't hard (unless it's a man). Enjoy it while you can and enjoy it at every single opportunity you can beg, borrow or steal.

On this subject I will not shut up. I will be back. Until then, disperse and go find someone to share your pleasure. Take the phone off the hook, get a sitter for the kids, sit in the back of the movie theater or your SUV or car and make out. Go have fun.

Quick ramble

thru the swirling thoughts in my mind. I know I'm being really posty today, but my mind has been whirling with tornadoes of thought and emotion and music. Always music. Like scent, music puts me in a frame of mind to evoke memories and engender thoughts and even author dreams.

Lately my dreams have been a jumble of sex and more mundane things, and yet they are not quite mundane. A vampire romance given to me last weekend created a dream of vampire sex, deep penetrating, dizzyingly orgasmic, and strangely fantastic vampire sex. I don't have a problem with sex or vampires, but I haven't ever been the recipient or the participant of such a strange conjunction of libido and desire. I know where the sex dreams come from and they are quite new. I had almost eradicated them from my repertoire, except for brief forays into momentary need quickly and efficiently relieved . . . that is until my whores started moaning when I came in contact with a very real and very potent sexual attraction. Call me shocked and hungry.

But to follow the sex dreams with dreams of taking over an English class because no one else can be found is something else again. Someone talked me into taking on an English class and gave me no idea of what the students (juniors in high school) would be studying or what was expected of me. I decided to have weekly spelling quizzes to expand the students' minds and vocabulary, especially since there are about 5000 words in the English language and most people barely use 250 of those. Even the more erudite among us use barely 1000 words, one-fifth of the total vocabulary. New words are adopted and used all the time and medical, legal, and technical language have expanded our vocabulary exponentially, but really, one-fifth of the usable language in semi-constant use? Sounds like parsimony to me. Would you believe most of those words are monosyllabic entries and comprise more than 60% of all communication? Check over this post and the posts of friends, neighbors and enemies and I guarantee you can figure out the 20 words that everyone uses most.

Anyway, I decided to base one-quarter of their final grade on the vocabulary and spelling quizzes each week and devised a way to make them thing without just reading off the words. The test would be comprised of definitions and the student would have to spell the word correctly and get the right word. Points would be deducted for spelling the word correctly but failing to put it with its correct definition.

I also decided to have the students keep journals of their thoughts about the class and their learning expedition and had begun to make lists of words I would use for vocabulary tests when I woke up with the urgent desire to find the bathroom and enthrone myself for a good long while. In fact, I was on the throne when the dream woke me. That's always a signal for me to wake up and tend to more immediate business than the dream. Reality intruding in the dream world and yanking me back thru time and space.

Could be my dreams are telling me I am in a teaching situation -- or about to be -- and it is tangled up in and among the sex, but it really doesn't matter in the long run.

Another thought has been nagging me as well--my next Grammar Goofs column: the preponderance of Os in certain words. I won't unveil my column yet, but if you go to Scribe & Quill you can sign up before the rush and get your free copy of the monthly newsletter, which is very late this month. You won't have only my column to read; there are lots of other poems, stories, articles, and information in which to wallow. My column is only one small part of the whole thing. And if you're really brave and interested in all things writerly and pagan, you can check out Pen & Pentacle and see what's up with the witchy set. Yes, I have a column there, too, but it's mostly history of the pagan holidays and a little bit of herbology in the form of incense making. Of course, the poetry and prose in P&P is worth the look-see and you might just learn something if you stay clear of my column, which is only for those who are not the faint of heart types. Wouldn't want to burn your virgin senses with too my information or history.

I guess it's time for me to shut up since I seem to have run out of things to say.

And no comments from the peanut gallery or I'll befriend you and put you on my list.

"I'm in love with a voice...

...Plaza oh, double four, double two." Judy Holliday sang that in Bells Are Ringing as Ella Peterson, aka Melisande Scott, and she was talking about playwright Jeffrey Moss, played by Dean Martin. This was also Judy Holliday's last screen role. She died of cancer five years later and we lost a beautiful, talented, funny, and wonderful actress and woman.

Although some critics say Bells Are Ringing did not translate well from stage to screen, I have to disagree. The luminous and brilliant colors, Judy's voice, and Dean Martin on screen was a treat for the eyes and the ears . . . and for the heart. Jean Stapleton played Sue of Sue's Answerphone who was taken in by J. Otto Prantz, a crook and bookie played by Eddie Foy, Jr.. You remember Jean Stapleton; she played Edith Bunker opposite Carroll O'Connor during one of the longest running TV shows in history: All In the Family.

It is strange when you look back at cultural icons like Archie and Edith Bunker and realize they were once young and coming up thru the acting ranks without a clue of what was ahead of them, focusing only on making it one more day, one more show, one more chance to own their hearts' desire. I always wonder what their lives were like, how they were able to put their own emotions to good use in making the characters they played realistic even when they were confused or distraught or just unhappy. But acting teaches you to lie and acting teaches you to dig into your well of emotions and pull one out to use for effect. I know. I did a lot of acting in my youth, on screen and on the boards, but I have lost the knack.

There have been times when my emotions ran me over like a Mack truck and I was helpless in their grasp, so I learned to shut up and suck them down into the well and cover them with a heavy lid. Living up here has changed my ability to cover my emotions and bury them deep in the well. Luckily, when my emotions are tangled and bursting out of me in great sobs or cries of frustration, fear, or pain, I am alone and only the animals hear me. I am safe in my mountain aerie far from civilization and people who can look at me with pity and concern or disgust at my outbursts.

Now I wrestle with my emotions for the page, pouring out my heart and venting my spleen onto the virtual page or the printed page and sending my emotions, dreams, beliefs, and pain into the world as fiction. Then along comes someone who gives me music that touches my soul and my heart and wrings tears and smiles from me. I can't believe I am developing a taste for country and western singers. I was taught better than to fall in with the truck-driving-crying-into-a-beer-drinking set. Gods forbid. But he knows me so well and doesn't realize how well he knows me because he is showing me his heart and his pain in the lines of the music, touching off emotional fireworks I have so carefully sealed in the well.

I enjoy looking back thru my life from time to time to figure out what I've learned and where I should next head down the path in front of me. I have stirred the emotions at the bottom of the well from time to time so I can let them out into the light and let them go. So why does this gift of music and emotion come now? I haven't stirred the well, but he has plucked off the lid with deft and gentle fingers to show me we are not so different and that our hearts have traveled a parallel path. So much between us and circumstance keeps us at arm's length like males and females at a Civil Air Patrol drill when the genders are not allowed to get too close. I ask again: Why now? He is in pain and I have been thru the fire. I can help him find his emotional footing and support him when he makes his ultimate decision and every time I want to reach out and put my arms around him I have to be careful because he is not free to accept what I want to offer.

My heart and mind scream, "DANGER," and I know I'm walking directly into the heart of the fire and yet I would not change the happiness I feel connecting with the shared moments of our past.

There is a scene in The Thorn Birds when Father Dane is swimming in Greece and has a heart attack. At first he thrashes around, postponing his death and avidly seeking survival and then he becomes calm and realizes that if he is true to himself and his god that he will accept the judgment and allow the sea to take him. He drowns with a smile of peace and contentment on his face, the water filling his lungs and pulling him into the depths. He knew his fate and gave himself willingly to it without fear or struggle.

I don't know my fate, but I have a good idea where this will lead and I'm willing to accept that fate and drown. Being this close to happiness and being unable to clasp it openly is hard, but the alternative is to walk away from these moments and I will never do that again. Whatever fate has in store is still partially hidden, but if these are the rules then I will follow them happily even if I drown or end up impaled on the thorn trees like the birds for which Colleen McCullough's book is named. I have taken much in my life and it's my turn to give something back.

Down for the count...

I'm still reeling from the past weekend and from my embarrassing show on Saturday night. No, I did not take off my clothes and dance naked on the kitchen table . . . there were children present. But I did give elementalmuse and her daughter a shellacking in Monopoly even though they teamed up against me. Her son sat out the Monopoly game but came and played iMAgiNiff and we were laughing so hard I wet myself. There, I said it. I embarrassed myself. I can't say when I laughed so hard before Saturday night . . . and it wasn't the mud slides or the strawberry margaritas. It was just a fun game. We used some of your names in the game to fill the spaces: impropaganda, drjeff, mentalfuse, and a few others who shall not be named. I guarantee we had a good time deciding what kinds of things you were likely to do and I think we did pretty well, otherwise I wouldn't have ... well, you know.

Last week was a very full week for me and I haven't had so many guests in all the time I have lived up here. I could have happily accommodated many more. There's plenty of room. And I can guarantee a good night's sleep the likes you haven't known in a while. Even elementalmuse with her insomnia couldn't believe how deeply and easily she slept. I'm telling you, the air and atmosphere out here is conducive to a good night's sleep, but you'll never know unless you come to visit.

My old friend came up on Sunday and we spent a few hours chewing on old fat and reminiscing about the good old days in school. He told me some things I didn't know and I told him things he didn't know, which is part of the magic of old friends with different friends and perspectives. I would certainly love to hear Sara's version of the hiking trip from Hell and I'll bet it's funnier than my old friend's version, especially since Sara is the one who feels she was in danger.

There is a warmth and comfort that comes with someone you have known for years and not seen in decades, an instant familiarity even when you have drifted apart. I found myself wondering why I couldn't have been bolder and told my old friend I thought of him in that way before we were battered and beset by time's winds and fortunes. But neither of us can change the directions we took away from each other and I'm just glad we found ourselves in the same place at the same time this go-round. I didn't realize how much I missed home and of course you can't tell my phone bill. I talk to my mother and father once or twice a week just to let them know I'm still alive and kicking around. They should know by now I'm not going to fall off the edge of a mountain or die too soon, but they still worry. Parents!

But having someone with whom I share so much history and happy memories is a gift I never expected. He has promised to come visit again and I hope he makes it soon. We still have a lot of catching up to do and a lot more to learn about each other. I will say he has turned into a remarkable and wonderful man who is sensitive and honest and honorable. He had the glimmers of those attributes so long ago, but it is so good to see how they have flowered and I hope to take the rest of our lives growing together instead of apart. Friends like him are hard to come by and too precious to waste.

In the meantime, it's back to the grindstone and cranking out some real writing instead of spending all my energy telling all of you, my friends, what you already know. Life is a grand journey and I'm glad to share it with all of you.