The rhythm of fucking: when Karl is inside me and we are locked as one and he’s pounding and I’m holding on for dear life and it’s all one scream internally and my juices are flowing and my blood is running and I can’t believe it there’s nothing else, nothing better and we come, come to that place where there is no other place to go, it feels so damn good, when all thought is drained of me and I am an empty vessel in his arms—we are an empty vessel, one vessel, and we slowly, painfully, leave this.

Sometimes I want to fuck so hard, fuck so bad, I don’t know what I’m going to do. And I’m alone, and I don’t want to do it to myself because it will spoil it, I soon come down and realize what I am sacrificing for, why I have been celibate—celibate! For how long!—I eventually calm down to see the body of work I can accomplish if I just overcome these waves of desire. I can create! I can draw! But oh, that fat hard cock in me, I imagine that, and it is strong for a while.

I imagine Bobby riding me, I imagine him just taking me, his penetration, and how wonderful it feels: like rivers cascading, wave upon wave crashing against me, throwing me off somewhere wonderful. I love playing ball, I love playing with his balls, I love stroking his cock, I love watching his come fly in the air—spurt spurt spurt spurt spurt spurt spurt!—and the twisted ecstasy on his face and our eye-to-eye contact as he’s driving in! How I hold his sides with my palms extended, clinging to his cock with all my walls! I hold tight all around!

I am electricity and silk, with the softest mouth. Sometimes, it really turns Roger on, we sit alone and I make believe we’re on a bus, say the M15. We’re in two seats near the front and—so tired after a long day—I fall near asleep on his lap. I’m tired. I’m resting. And my mouth moves over and I unzip him and put his cock in my mouth. He’s stiff—rock hard—and I’m sucking and caressing and my electricity and silk is all over him and he’s coming and I lazily look up and no one’s watching!

I’ve been with 483 men. What if I have? If a man were making this claim, who would bat a fucking eye? But me—I’m a whore, right? Yeah, a bad whore. So I like it sliding in! To see ecstasy on the guy’s face. To see him creaming and cumming. I like him pledging his love to me as he’s desperately fiddling with my jeans. Who cares if it’s BS? It’s passion. I know it. I’m playing the game too. "Sure I like you, Tommy. You’re cute. Now come here and let me manhandle you. Mmmm." It’s innocent fun.

I’ve taken a survey. I’ve asked so many men what the sexiest part of my body—any girl’s body—is. And I’ve gotten so many answers. From the tip of the toe to the forehead—I swear. Lately, two men have told me it’s the area just above the pantline, which is so modernly exposed. That fleshy area just above the belt, that’s particularly exposed when we lean over. It makes them think of going down—or up! Tom told me he imagines palming me on my naked skin, just happening to as he’s walking by. And how I’d swoon!

Believe it or not most of the day I don’t think of sex, it’s just that here I’ve decided to do so, so to pick out these words and think they define me would be wrong. But I could see as how you actually would (wood). But I’m like any normal healthy girl who thinks about it being driven in once in a while—hard! Yeah! So? It’s a wonderful thing, sex, and maybe because so many people so long ago drilled it into me (figuratively!) that it was wrong wrong wrong do I bother ever defending what is natural.

Sexual note to self: don’t get hardened by activity so as to miss the sensitive parts. This is a theater in which one can be altogether vulnerable, where soft petting and ancient kisses can intermingle with private thoughts. Expose yourself! Be entirely open to the communication, through the bodies, and don’t take it as separate from your whole life’s adventure. It isn’t just about getting off. I know I go that way, or it seems to in my tales, but really what I love is the true closeness—even if fake, sometimes—that is better than almost anything else. There!

From Charles Baudelaire ("The Blessing" from "Flowers of Evil": "Since he finds me beautiful enough to worship, I will take on the profession of ancient idols, and like them I will cover my body with gold…and when I am bored…I will lay on him my frail and strong hand; and my nails, like the nails of harpies, will dig a path to his heart. Like a very young bird trembling and palpitating I will pull that red heart out from his breast, and, in order to satiate my favorite beast, scornfully I will throw it to him on the ground."

It was quiet tonight. We had the fireplace going, and Nat and I made sweet love on the floor. I was naked, and he cupped my breasts and in the heat of him and of the fire I felt my blood boil. It was so divine getting rug burns on my ass as he entered and pulled me back hard. To look up at his handsome visage, with his jet black wavy hair and his aquiline nose and black eyes and clear teeth! I took him down to me and kissed him! We read poems to each other afterwards. Cocoa.

Depressed today, seeing all my competition. There was this hot, I mean hot, chick on the subway with dark glasses and a plasticine nose, I mean a nose you couldn’t touch it was so glass and smooth, and lips painted like the sweetest glistening cunt, and mocha skin and a fine boilerplate frame, and she was reading something. Another one, small, Hispanic, belly exposed, dark hair, pretty, the kind truckdrivers and street people stop to ogle. And that blonde, with no back-covering, tanned, chocked ass, holding boyfriend’s hand. Even the pocked one with the lustful look: this city’s on fire!

A look around my apartment: light pastel blue walls, gold modern smooth-framed hall mirror, bathroom nicely furnished with long white monogrammed towels. Blue-carpeted bedroom, with lush thick purple quilted king-size bed, nice mahogany dressers, large reproduction of Van Gogh flowers. Kitchen: fully equipped, with large hanging bronze utensils. Living area: plush crushed velvet blue couch, cream carpet, black-and-white pole lamps. Amazing fireplace. Large picture window. Now orange drapes. On glass black-framed coffee table: "Live and Learn" by Baker, a large picture book on New Mexico, the "World’s Hardest Crossword Puzzles"—and Balzac. Coffee table with laptop and some scattered papers.

Plans for the future: harness with pulley to lower myself down, onto greased solid-silver pole-stump. Writhe in ecstasy. No men needed. No, seriously: real-life man doll, $5000, all parts intact!

I sound jaded. No, let’s replace it all: real man, no doll, no pulleys. Settle down, off the crazy dyspeptic run!

Imagined conversation:

Me: Hi, no names please.
Him: John’s my name.
Me: What else is new?
Him: Are you not content?
Me: Are you?
Him: Could be.

Now what’s the point? Can there be one conversation that’s good? One that doesn’t make me puke?

Come on, guys. Do better!

I took John in my ass tonight. He plunged in so far, I was so scrunched with pain, and then I let loose! I didn’t care if I was murdered, I lost everything and he was howling! God, does it get better than that? (Get the butter, Marlon Brando said, and get it she did, that fascinating doll like unshaved creature! Where is Maria Schneider today? An old bat? Or still lusty and desireable?)

After we calmed down, John and I smoked reefer. I punched him in the chest, playfighting hard. He squeezed my nipples till I screamed—for real.

I asked this guy at the Old Town Bar—I went with Jen, with no opportunity to do anything about it, we were just talking—what exactly makes you want to fuck a chick most? Her eyes? Her body? Her attitude? He says: No, no, you don’t understand. I said, Englighten me. He says OK. Then: Look, it’s like this: the more horny I am, the less attractive the girl has to be. I swear. I have wanted old women sometimes! Then other times, there are maybe two or three chicks in the whole world who could get me up.

The full-flowing cunt in utter passion: a mind-boggling heretofore unexplored kiss-me rosebud, with a whole organ of being being quite naturally stimulated. There are passions—and flavors, and unexplored folds. It spreads wide, and invites with its moistness and simplicity and urgent message of need, the mouth of the lover. Slap your ass in my face and go down on me! Darken the lights, smash all the clocks, and bury ourselves! The drama is intoxicating!

Then again, I could read Stendhal. Explore the inner workings of the human psyche. Let drift the aching desire.

Run for the hills! I’m confused.

Let me tell you why I appear to be distant—or jocular—about sex at times. Let me tell you about a woman with whom I felt too deeply…

She had pools of the blackest eyes that sought to capture me—and succeeded! When we were lovers and when my hand was intoxicatingly slathering her pussy and our mouths were locked in powerful intimacy, I’d glance at her eyes and gasp at the vastness of communication! When we’d part, the fear of not having that again wounded me deeply. It was too much to go on! It wasn’t worth it!

A little more: You see, I had a way to zone out the rest of the world. When my hands would slip down her pants, and feel the fat, cream fat of her beautifully hewn buttock and I’d look and see the smile on her face, and the way her mouth would open and ask for my finger, and when I’d easily imagine that same joy—I couldn’t see!--when she’d mouth my sweet cunt—and when she’d put a whole banana into my ass, deeply lubricated and smelling sweet—Oh I can’t tell you what a joy it was!

But I’d be aghast at the separation! Where was I supposed to go for comfort? How could I recapture the depth of the pools of her eyes and the catch they had on me? I was broken! It wasn’t that she disdained me. She just was herself, naturally separate. She did—lucky for her!--have the sentiment to take it better than I did. I don’t believe she even once howled at the moon! But I’d wait too eagerly for her to call. I was a mess.

It’s easier to take things with less investment. I get close—then retreat.

Still troubled by the memory of X., I spoke with Thomas today. He bluntly told me there was no way I could pursue—or expect to get the ultimate satisfaction—with a partner like that. I asked if he was referring to gender. He would only say "Forget dependence. You can’t have it. Look elsewhere." Yeah, like I’m going to find that. What do I have to do? Keep someone under lock and key? Or just have less intensity?

Less intensity? Why! Why settle for that which, during, you imagine better? NO!

Oh Jesus save me this is fucking ridiculous!

I got my check today. $2,355 for the last month. I can make ends meet and don’t care that much as I have more free time and more time to think. The drapes are beautiful and I’ve held off on further improvements for now. Now, now I gingerly masturbate, light incense, play some spooky New Age, and stare at the mirror trying to see someone new.

I took an old book out, "The Price She Paid" by some guy named Phillips. Something about a fatuous man who gave his family a good life and shafted them upon his death. 100.

Thank God for forgetting! My troubles were washed away by the bright morning promise. I was part of this act! I went food shopping—all full-package sexiness, with a cute dark cap. And oh, there was one guy our eyes mesmerized each other and his lips were so fine! Trained as I am, I felt the weight of his eyes return again and again to me. In a perfect world we’d immediately disrobe in the large frozen food aisle and— But instead I primly went about my shopping, enjoying the weight of my basket not cart, and walked home happy.

I wanted to reflect a bit on the guy I "met" yesterday: I’ve totally forgotten him. I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd. Yet at the time he was all I craved, for that microsecond. But he’s replaceable. As a matter of fact, every day he is—and is! Why even a guy I intimately regarded from an actual state of joined loins, in time, I’ve forgotten as well. What does this say (other than about my memory)? I may not really want what I think I want? Or the moment passes? Then what do I hold on to?

I met a most distinguished businessman at a hotel I was sitting at for a distinguished break. He was completely bald, attractive and thin—middle aged—and very well dressed, with a crisp dress shirt, white with thin black stripes, a business suit, light-weight, uncreased. We were sitting near each other. He spoke: "Hi. My name is John Wentworth. How are you today?" He said it cleanly and crisply, and I reached out and demurely shook his hand. "What brings you here today?" He smiled. "Oh, I don’t know. Nothing much." "Would you like to go for a drink?" "Yes."

We’d gone to the hotel bar, got a nice small table in the low light, and John ordered two whiskey sours. (He’d ordered one, then looked at me while the waitress was waiting and said, "Make that two?" I nodded.) We sat back. I was eternally comfortable while we waited without talking. Somehow I felt at home. When the waitress put down the drinks, he smiled at her, nodded—and there we were. "So, Melissa. I’m here on business. I’ve been looking forward to coming to New York for a long time. Have you lived here long?" "My whole life."

"That’s funny," John said. "I’ve never been anywhere for that long." He looked wistful. Then he turned, smiling. "But you know something?" "What?" "I’ve never been happier to be here than I am just now." I felt a thrill, but really, it didn’t have to have anything to do with me. A moment later: "Melissa?" I looked. "Tell me something. Did you ever think life would take the turns it has?" "No! No! A thousand times no!" I responded. I laughed, suddenly feeling unburdened. I felt compelled to spill myself. I couldn’t stop. I went on and on and on.

Pardon me for going on. Each day, though, as I feel such a joy about something special, I have to relate each detail! Each day now I dwell on the one event, the long first meeting, in all its extraordinary detail… Frankly, I might write about this for months!

Greatest was the sense of no judgment. It was such a relief. I felt that to explore my inner self, to talk at length, to touch base with parts of me I hadn’t touched in so long—if ever!--was no problem for John. No, his mere presence served as encouragement!

We sat in the bar, not rushing through our drinks. By the second round, I was well underway: "John, I’m a whore. Not one in the traditional sense, but one in the sense of not being sure of myself but throwing out my confidence. It’s demoralizing. I’ve been such a fuck-up. I don’t know. It probably started with my obsession for attention. Always wanting to be the first.

"Wanting to stick my ass out so people would notice!

"And God! I love sex so much. I play with myself! Fuck myself! Fuck anything that walks all the time!"

I laughed.

I looked up at the crowd, a small crowd, but couples, groups of four, one or two solo flyers, sitting amidst the smallish tables in the comfortable upper east side hotel bar. It was free association time. John seemed to have all the patience in the world. He was wordly, to me—handsome, with big black eyes that seemed to soak up my words, with ceaseless interest. Oh God I wanted to ride him! It would be so much fun! But that would come, or at this time anyway I was satisfied to press on with this agenda: the spilling!

"My mother was a dog, my father a hat rack, my friends appendages. Myself? A brooding mess of tears, a laughing, gay, unrepentant fool! I wanted to do so much with my life! I wanted to run faster than anyone, walk more slowly in my thoughts than anyone, be the greatest lover! Now, now I’m careful to dress and put my make-up just right! Each thing must be in place. Oh, it’s so nerve-wracking! I’d like to get away." Here, I stopped and dreamily—forcefully!--looked into his eyes.

He would be giving me time!

Boy had I caught something!