This is a blog post

I am testing it for my students

Love Song for Mud

One time a girl fell in love with mud. She rubbed it
faceward, up the fat part of her belly and through the course
fuzz around her left nipple, lifted the tip of her finger

to the tip of her tongue and sucked tremendously. Mineral.

Maybe mud has a criminal past. Mud lasts and lasts
in the cracks behind her summer knees the way felons do
on the tollphone. On demand and utterly unreachable.
A love she would wear underwater, or inside out

should mud stick to her elbows; she wanted to share
a pH value, an acidity scale, a common taxonomy.
Biologically speaking, she envied willows and jacarandas.
She swallowed seeds spiritually hoping for roots. 

Whose Insides are Redder

The neighborhood bondage shop has a cage for sale in its display window. Four feet by three feet by three feet, cast iron, complete with velour dog bed the texture of a 90s Juicy track suit. Locking gate. The right size for a man if his ankles and wrists were tied behind him.

For days I dream of ropes. Of keys laced with silver cord, aluminum smell of the hardware store. I dream of dogs who dream of rabbits. Delicious green of summer yard. Like body after not feeling body, startled hungry.

My lover leaves the country. I sleep with myself for three weeks and think to devour my neighbor's henhouse. His husband calls it a "hobby farm" he tells me one morning, leaving tuna for the cats. That's love: Consenting degradation.

I think you should know I would shave your head in your sleep. Maybe your moles would bleed and bloom like food coloring inside your pillow. Whose insides are redder, I wonder sometimes. I get high and peer into myself using the backside of my lover's CD collection.

I spent an hour today watching women with eight-inch erections fuck each other on the Internet. Later, I walked around a flooded lake, put my face to the mud and inhaled that dead-worm odor. Rotting fish and water.

I know how something living smells after six months of winter let me tell you.

Who Says We Are Programmed To Love

This past month I've fucked at least five different people in some shape or form. The order is blurry, the contestants themselves of mixed categories. As an ex of mine says: man, woman, you choose. 

*

And we do. 

*

In a way, it was true, 

There was a series of choices.  

*

There was the straight guy who wanted me to blow him. He had a weird cut on his dick. 

"Too much masturbation," he explained. 

At one point he spit on me (is this a straight guy thing?), but was at least convivial when we discussed bipolar medication and family histories of schizophrenia. He read me some poetry in Russian. Puskin, of course. Very creative. We watched a Belle Knox clip he had downloaded off the internet together. He came on my chest and then I left. 

*

Apparently, I'm a pretty cool dude and we should hang out sometime for real.

*

But, seriously, none of this ever happened.

*

And that was that. 

*

Then there was Krista who orgasmed at least 8 times before I said I had to go to work. We got in the shower and I came on her leg causing a jarring moment when I asked her where the comb was. And she kept trying to look me deep in the eyes, so deep in the eyes, as if she was questioning if there was even for a second something there she missed during the initial inspection. 

*

A few weeks later she texted me saying she was a materialist, which was amusing, but things have moved past simply being over. 

*

I forgot to mention something. I didn't wear a condom.

*

More memorable was Ted. Ted with the 9-inch dick. Ted that I needed so desperately to fuck me that I sat through yet another board game (and I promised myself, never again) because it had just been a minute since I had been penetrated by something that mattered (size-wise at least). 

*

Worship my dick, he said, and sadly, for a moment, I was. 

*

At least didn't think about sex until three days later.

*

This morning I woke up next to a 20-year-old I've been seeing consistently, a photographer from New York. I told him I was in a bad mood last night after talking a friend out of suicide and drinking too much all day (he knows me well enough not to be surprised by either). I didn't even want our tongues to touch, even though I could see it in his eyes, that he wanted it. I jerked us both off in less than 20 minutes (most of the time was spent on myself). The worst of it was noticing that he was watching me condition my hair after we got out of the shower, that he was waiting for me to look up at him, that he was seeking some kind of meaning in our interaction.

*

Like he was framing a picture. 

*

Let me tell you how weird it was, on our first occasion, to look down and see myself fucking him, and him thinking somewhere in the midst of being pounded that I actually cared about him, that somewhere behind all this automation was a thought being simultaneously registered. 

* 

"The obsessional, I said somewhere, I was reminded of it recently, is something of the order of a frog who wants to make himself as big as an ox. We know the effects from a fable. It is particularly difficult, as we know, to tear away the obsessional from the grip of his look." 

*

Or more petrifying, perhaps because of its relevance, "when it happens that he believes himself to be male because he has a little bit of a prick." 

*

And somewhere between all of us is this fucking. Us fucking ourselves, us sharing each other's bodies, hoping to to maybe to feel something slightly more real.

*

That is until the very second when we come. The too real moment. 

*

It's actually kind of terrifying how expendable we are, how expendable some of us forget we are. Each day hearts are exchanged while the body is transmigrated. 

*

I broke my heart. I'd made the mistake of being awed by the perverse complexion in the color of his eye, the azure feeling. Looking at him sleep was like tracing my finger on a lynchpin, but still never the explosion. No masochistic burst, no oceanic feelings.  

*

Now I just want him to come and get his fucking bed so I can sleep without his smell. 

* 

Then the poems. 

"Frank knows a butterfly who wonders about all of her caterpillar friends"

"roseate skin on wrist emerging from blue blouse"

"like doing angel dust in the kale section at the start of the world" 

"Tu est ma destinée, sans toi je ne suis rien"

Always the fucking poems. 

* 

We didn't do a lot of fucking. Once, in a hotel room in downtown Chicago, smoking e-cigarettes and looking down on the city. It's actually kind of marvelous to think that was the last time he ever wanted to touch me. And knowing that, focusing on it, holding it there. It kind of makes sense now that I just stopped wearing his sweaters, that I learned to sleep a distance away from his body. 

* 

Most of it wasn't cheating, and even if it was, he had already left in his mind. Checked out, isn't that what they say. After all, love these days is an institution. There is a bureaucracy, credits are assigned, and we must all pay our dues. Love is a costly exercise in safety, especially when we know so well that safety comes in one form: temporary.    

* 

With Andrew it was funny being so drunk and watching the condom slip on, knowing how much danger that could be passed between us. I remember when he slid on top of me and moaned. I remember being in the car and not letting him kiss me. I still love him, I said. Or maybe it was because it felt weird. After all, he was positive. 

*

You only started calling yourself transgender because of me, he said. 

At the time I didn't really have words to describe fucking someone, having my dick being hard, pushing through them, and then always the same word appearing in my head: elsewhere. 

* 

She called me. She said she couldn't remember. Couldn't remember what, I asked. 

*

"Couldn't remember if we had sex." 

* 

But it was in the morning. We were sober.

* 

"friends separated by thousands of miles are thinking of each other simultaneously but they have no idea and we have no way to reach them" 

* 

There was the time he crossed his leg on top of mine when we were at dinner with his mother and then he noticed what he was doing. Then she smiled awkwardly at us. He pulled his leg back.

*

What's funny is that she doesn't even care. He does. 

* 

I wonder if he remembers napping in the hammock under the stars and I asked him, does it bother you that you're bigger than me, and he said, honestly, yes it does. But more importantly, does he remember my response? Sometimes I wish I was bigger and more masculine. 

*

What an amusing thought. Honesty.  

* 

If we could only be other people. 

*

"Like a knife in a melon, Autumn slices summer.

It will be cold going back." 

* 

Except the lesson in love is this: there is no going back without the toll.

*

And currency only delays the price we pay with the flesh. 
The flesh itself never remaining whole.  

The Dos & Don'ts of Being Objectified Vol. II

Don's post reminded me of a thought that creeped into my head earlier in the week. A lot of my girlfriends have been going on these huge tirades about the men they sleep with, many of which are centered around the sexual performance of one of their male companions while others have had much more general complaints about finding good guys. I took their observations quite seriously and kept track of the details to see if I could find one continuous element of story that should be separated and placed under the scope of analysis. My response is such: why is it that every time we hook up with someone we have to be drunk?

Some might say this is a overly general statement and dismantle it on the grounds of its accusatory nature but I promise that there is something worth investigating in this pattern. I have so many female friends who have uttered the phrase, "I need to get drunk tonight so I can get laid." The next day they complain to me about the quality of the sex they had and its awkwardness. They more often than not identify the male as the problem without ever analyzing their tactics for acquiring for sex or sexual attention. If believed to be true, what does this trend of alcoholism to justify sexuality say about my female friends? Or even society as a whole? 

For example, a close and incredibly smart female friend (who for the record is beautiful and booming with independent masculine energy) of mine recently confessed that she found me attractive. I found this comment fascinating because I had previously thought she wasn't into the type of guy I was. My own belief that I was not on her in a way allowed us to become better friends but I also think it brought about the question in her, "Why isn't he into me?" or more accurately, "Why isn't he showing signs of interest in me?" This is somewhat of a jump probably but it is a curious way to look at the situation because why else would she admit her slight attraction to me? For those of you who do not know me, I identify as bisexual and at the time when she told me this I was in a relationship with her good male friend so I found it even more interesting that she would need to assert her attraction to me even then. This makes the situation all the more interesting. If anything would it not have been more appropriate for her to respect the relationship of her friend and at minimum leave her attraction unspoken of? If we look at this statement she made as a projective question, a question wrapped in the safety of a statement, it could be understood not only as an attempt to grasp at why I had not shown her affection but also an invitation to the idea; she, in a way, gave me permission to be attracted to her. 

This same girl has fostered this habit of getting drunk then engaging in sexual behavior. In fact, I am tempted to ask her when the last time she had sober sex was. Actually, when was the last time any of us had sober sex. It's almost like our sexual symbolic order has evolved so that being in a relationship with someone means that you are capable of having sober sex with them and that every random hookup by a socially inexperienced person is just an attempt to come to terms with their body and search for acceptance. This might be somewhat of a stretch but I promise you this is an epidemic. 

To continue with this case, what can we say about the environment that engenders such behavior; not only does it create this behavior but it also literally genders it. The reasons why men and women use alcohol as a method for engaging in sex are fueled by the same chemical, alcohol, but the manner in which it manifests reflects the social training we have had all of our lives. While males drink to make it easier to hit on women, women drink to make to acceptable that they are being hit on or the lack thereof. 

The situation with women is so complicated because of this. We see women who engage in submissive behaviors in order to engage a male mate that they would otherwise reject or getting totally wasted to distract themselves from the unease that comes with not being the center of attention. The whole situation is a mess. What makes it worse is that they project the reasons for their unhappiness on young men when in reality they both are caught up in a terrible system. Probably the most disgusting part of it all is that we have all accepted these roles of interaction and many of us use sex as an exploration of our "identity" with the idea that our body will somehow reveal the secrets of our mind and soul. I promise everyone that this will reveal only more and more unfortunate and ultimately too real qualities about the body.

Happy International Women's Day I guess?

Evan 

ABUSE ME

A few months ago I went to a bar in Dallas with my Dallas wingman, Fabula. Fabula is tall young lady, dark haired, pierced (wherever you're thinking), mysterious and eats pussy about 6 months out of the year. The rest of the time she is, in her own words, "strictly-dickly." This is Fabula. Anyway, we walked into a bar I never heard of somewhere in the city on a ___day night. It was lightly crowded and quiet. It looked respectable. In other words, it didn't look like the kind of place you'd expect to find The Woman in White and her friends.

To introduce a theme… earlier that day, I RSVP'ed a polite "never" to the wedding invitation of a couple I knew in college. I had not seen them in years. The last I remember of them—this memory that, for my money, concluded our friendship—was sitting around a table drinking Aristocrat vodka sophomore year with the groom who delivered the textbook response of any man with no guts but a long-term girlfriend:

"Sooooo, aren't I winning the game?" he said. "I get laid more than any single guy. I get laid any time I want." He and his girlfriend (on his lap, seriously) shared a silly expression of undeserved superiority that has haunted me for years.

The Woman in White, a six-foot, black manslayer with tattoos down both arms and legs, shoot Fabula and I one long look of solar heat from the bar, then joined her girlfriends at a booth in our sightline. We grabbed drinks and joined them for cigarettes minutes later. After that, we sat down at her table. Her friends were all almost ludicrously cute, young, alt-blondes-and-brunettes and before we asked one said:

"Yes, we are Suicide Girls. We're on tour."

I went to the bathroom sometime after that and, on the merry trot back, ran into an old girlfriend and lost track of time. By the time I was back in sight of the table, Fabula had her purse in hand and was heading for the door.

"Where were you?" she said.

"Tripping to life nostalgic," I said, or something its equal in pretension or inanity.

"I'm going to meet our friends at [some other bar I don't know]," Fabula said. "That bitch is crazy."

"I'm not leaving," I said. Fabula was my ride.

"Good luck," she said. She pulled off her house key from its ring and put it in my shirt pocket. "Tell me what it smells like when you get there. The dog pissed on the carpet this morning. Don't wait up. I'll be out fucking someone sane."
Two hours later, I caught a cab with the Woman in White to Fabula's deserted one-bedroom.

"What do you think it smells like in here?" I said.

"I don't know," she said. "Cleaning products?"

We drank Fabula's booze and watched Devil Wears Prada. I asked if she'd seen the Anna Wintour documentary and she said she didn't know who that was. She did a bump of cocaine and I did not. When the credits rolled, her feet were on my lap.

“No, you just have really cute toes,” I said. I gradually segued from kissing to sucking—as natural as anything. When she moaned that she was wet, I slid my hands up her legs and pulled down her pants. Then I kissed up her left leg and onward until she came. When the moment passed she pulled me to her face and we experienced our first kiss.

We coupled twice, first on the floor beside Fabula's dog, then on the bed. I was drunk by the time it was over—not even drunk, but upon a stage of deep sickness that comes from many slow drinks over many slow hours. She rolled onto me again and pointed to a long window across the room and said:

“You know what I really want? I've never told anyone this before. I want you to handcuff me to the curtain road in front of that open window and abuse me for hours.” I asked what she meant by abused. “Beat me. Shock me. Bruise me.” We'd attempted a conversation during the movie. I found her petty, materialistic and arrogant beyond the low bar of intrigue. Frankly, what she asked for felt like a lot of work and responsibility.

"I'm not going to do that," I said, I think, without judgment.

"Well, what do you want to do?" she said, still on an upper. I agreed to fuck her one more time, provided there was no "abuse" involved and that I could film it and text it to my friend, Chelsea, back home.

“You could fuck me from behind and film it and then send Chelsea the video,” she said as soon as I mentioned her name, for the woman in white is the petty, possessive type. It was fine idea that I secretly had first.
As it turns out, it is not easy at all to film yourself fucking on a springy bed drunk and in the dark. My cinematography has only improved.

I tell this story for just one reason: I want to remind anyone ever considering saying something as lame in their little lifetime as, "I get laid more than any single guy—I get laid any time I want," that there is a big difference between getting properly laid and having sex. Don't get me wrong, sex with a committed partner is an innumerable amount of beautiful things. It is a way of celebrating highest intimacy, exploring the depths of your sexual nature, and having fun and having a good time. You get to practice and master each other. In a sense, it is "better."

Getting laid, however, implies that there ever be a significant chance of failure. Getting laid is also about novelty, adventure, and triumph. Understand that I mean "triumph" here not in terms of one human over another, but of two-or-more humans over the entire frustrating nature of Earthly existence, even if only for a night or for even less. It is a triumph over human disaffection and insecurity every time you let your guard down with someone new, every time you say yes when you could say "no." That is when we charm each other. That is when we get a little weird. That is when you get a story worth telling.

The Dos & Don'ts of Being Objectified Vol. I

Story:

About  a year and a half ago I met a woman who used to work at the restaurant I work now; because of this we have mutual friends from work. I summarize what  you need to know about this woman in one simple phrase: she was a slut in the best sense of the term.  More specifically she was a power-slut, meaning she slept with powerful people to feel powerful herself. Now, is this wrong? Absolutely not. If  it makes you feel good, do it. Wrap it, tap it. Hit it, quit it.  However, please do understand the cost of your sexual transaction.

          This particular woman slept with a significant portion of  University of Missouri's athletic department. She dabbled in basketball players, football players, a couple of staff members, and maybe even Coach Pinkel (isn't he married because this might be a little more than maybe...). Many people we work with know about this. In fact, I think we all do. I also think we told all of our friends, who probably told all of  their friends and so forth. And this happens for some time, long enough for the good old word-of-mouth effect to set in and now too many people know. This girl becomes embarrassed about her reputation and transfers  schools, going from MU to somewhere in the West, maybe in the desert, somewhere outside of Phoenix. She basically went to a school where her type of reputation would be more acceptable and she could start again trading her flesh for athletic-political power. And anew she started.  She must have, in some way or another, rationalized that by moving away from her problem that she was paying off her social-sexual transaction debt (which was quite high, home-girl has fucked/was fucking all the basketball and footballers back in the day) because homegirl was up to her all tricks and her new tricks at the same time. She maintained contact  with her MU football player fuck-buddies (can you think about being Peen-Pals with this dude?)  and contrary to what those of you who believe in self-respect might  think, they still kept coming to her to get laid. She had gone from  being a power-slut to being her own booty-market. Trade was on the up and up. But once again, she forgot that all social transactions have a  price.
         Until her friends reminded her.
         One of our mutual friends, who for the purpose of anonymity we will call Jenny, went to visit this woman/power-slut/booty-market to catch up on old times and go see Lil' Wayne in concert (I'm pretty sure they set  up some kind of stipulated rule system to decide, in the event of Lil'  Wayne being sexually available and physically proximal to them, who got  to hit it first. That's just the type of power-sluts they are: organized). They started off in the quasi-Phoenix area, where Power-Slut had arranged one of her old buddies (ambiguous as whether this is  just-buddy v. fuck-buddy) to meet Jenny in person (the two had been introduced via internet beforehand to check for compatibility i.e. attractiveness, dick size, social status, etc.) so that they both had a  piece o' man meat while Jenny was still in town.
          Well, someway or another, Jenny slipped it to her temp-man that Power-Slut was the power-slut of power-sluts back home in good old Columbia and managed to suck and fuck her way to the top of the  athletic-political chain (i.e. provide orgasms to none other than Coach  Gary Pinkel). Being not only a good bro, but also a decent human being, he forewarns his brethren about the situation that has gone done with the power-slut's body (probably just tells them it will be easy and to wrap it if they don't want anything for keepsies). News spreads quickly  in the camp (men make sure all their buddies know who the easy girl is)  and Power-Slut notices a change in dynamic: Somebody knows.
         Actually, fucking everybody knows.
         The Lil’ Wayne concert is in San Diego (note: at least five hours from home-base in Phoenix) and once they get there Power-Slut and Jenny start drinking (note: power-slut ritualistic rite) and reveal their true selves to the world. 
        This is where things start to get a little bit  unclear.
        Apparently Power-Slut confronts Jenny and says something along  the lines of, “Bitch, you fucking told.” Jenny being a much more tactful power-slut keeps playing it by the book using the famous Deny-Deny-Deny technique (even though she definitely told and i couldn't have been anyone except for her) and instead turns the argument  against power-slut citing the fact that she did in fact sleep with all of those dudes, even as far as specifically citing the Coach Pinkel Situation (did I mention Power-Slut’s man-meat is in the room the whole  entire time this going on?) and the two erupt in hormonal rage against each other. They both are out of resources because their power-slut capabilities have been rendered useless by too much drinking and arguing (no one wants to touch the teary-eyed, pissed off girl) so they have no  way of getting to Lil’ Wayne's concert. And neither of them actually paid for their tickets (power-sluts don’t pay for shit in cash, it’s all pussy money), the decision is made that they should just not  go. And they don’t.
          However, the competition is not over. Jenny somehow manages to  get herself kicked out/locked out of their hotel room room and has to Apologize-Apologize-Apologize to get back in (Jenny always plays it by the book, she’s a pretty pro power-slut).  Hung-over and still not over  the previous night’s tension, the two decide that after this they will not be friends right before the five hour drive back to ASU… I mean Phoenix…Can you say awkward?


Synopsis:
          Power-slutting is not an amateur field. You have to know your shit. It’s like the economics of slinging your ass without really being a ho, but really being a ho. Power-sluts from the dawn of time have been passing their techniques down via oral tradition and cultural rites.  However, there are rules and things to be understood about the activity.  

First of all, ain’t no shit free in this process. Power-sluts objectify themselves and turn themselves into a commodity. Some do this knowingly, others on accident. If you don’t want to use your ass as currency, then don’t dress like a ho, don’t act like a ho, and don’t expect shit from  anyone. The feeling of entitlement is the first thing that will drag a perfectly good power-slut down. Remember: if you pay for your own shit with non-booty based currency, there is little chance for booty-based consequences to occur.   

Second of all, pay all of your booty-debts. This includes sleeping with the dude who  paid your expensive ass bar tab, the dude who paid for your expensive  ass hotel; just general things to keep your clients happy because, and trust me on this, they talk to each other. The only reason I know Power-Slut is a power-slut is because bitch wasn’t paying her booty-bills. She was just giving people a taste of the action when she tricked them into paying for her in real dollars .(You know people won’t say shit about it if they get what they want. And you know Pinkel hasn’t said shit.) In the social-sexual arena, the people are the market place  and the invisible hand is gossip. Gossip will correct that ass.

And  finally, if you don’t want people to know about it, don’t do it. You  wouldn’t open a fucking store in the middle of a downtown metropolitan area and be like, “Oh no, don’t tell anyone about my shop even though we have great products at discounted prices.” You know why? Because that  doesn’t make any fucking sense. If you use your body like a commodity,  people will treat it like so. Self-respecting power-sluts not only exist, but they understand moderation and knowing the key times and persons with whom to make a transaction.


Evan