Scentillating.

About a month ago, my boss informed me that the janitor at my workplace would not be coming in to do his usual cleaning routine. Ever eager to be of help and to make a good impression, I volunteered to take over for him, and I cleaned up the shop. I think I did a pretty good job, and my boss was appreciative. Industrious Mariel is industrious, after all. What I didn't count on at the time, though, was that I'd still be doing all the cleaning a month later. I'm not complaining, exactly, as I actually sort of enjoy cleaning, but I still can't help but laugh at myself a bit for how I put myself in this situation. I should've known better.

In any case, the situation has resulted in me being alone in the store on Saturdays, and as cleaning doesn't take up the whole day and customers are few and far between on the weekends, I find myself with a lot of time to think, daydream, and hang around on Twitter, my friends' websites, and graphjam.com. While doing this today, I thought about my own foray into blogging. For no other reason than having been mentioned briefly in Jefferson's blog, I've suddenly found myself with an audience, and at a loss for what to say. I reasoned that if I tried to join the cool kids and turn this into a sex blog, it'd go defunct in the blink of an eye, for my sex life is every bit as lackluster as Jefferson's is sensational. No, I'd have to think of other things to talk about. Strike while the iron is hot, so they say. I did come up with something, so pull up a chair, pop open your beverage of choice (I'll take a martini, thanks), and join me as I feed you my past in non-sequential snippets.

Have you ever found yourself somewhere, smelling something that suddenly reminds you of something from your past? Something long, long forgotten? Of course you have. I think that's a pretty universal experience. You don't need me to tell you what they say about the sense of smell and memory. I had a moment like this today, as I walked into the bathroom at work.

No, no. Not THAT kind of smell.

The smell of the disinfectant in the bathroom here reminds me sharply of the smell of the bathroom at the preschool/kindergarten/day camp I attended as a kid. It was a large bathroom with absolutely tiny toilets, painted an institutional green color, and the walls were plastered with decals of Sesame Street characters. On the front of the door was hung a placard that read "Potty Room," surrounded with words that were supposed to be appealing to young potty-goers. "Happy!" "Fun!" "Super!" A great many memories of the school as a whole came flooding back to me as I thought about the happy, fun, super Potty Room. The school as I knew it is closed now, having been taken over by a different montessori organization, and that's probably a good thing, for when I attended, it marched to the beat of an altogether unusual drummer. Actually, that's a serious understatement.

It was run primarily by Miss Betty, a large, sweaty, tyrannical older woman with short-cropped hair and glasses. She reminded me of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, or the Trunchbull from Matilda. No joke. Boisterous and butch as can be, she was the kind of woman whose very presence struck fear into the hearts of the children in her care, and whom I'd probably still be intimidated by if I saw her again as an adult. Helping run the show was Miss Jackie, who was as soft-spoken and sweet as Miss Betty was obnoxious. The school was divided into two large rooms - one for the preschool kids and "tiny tots" (those kids under the age of 4), and one for the kindergarten children.

I started there as a Tiny Tot, with a woman named Miss Sheri as my teacher. I only remember one detail about Miss Sheri - her long, brightly colored fingernails. She put those nails to good use, too. You see, ever since I was a little kid, I have had trouble falling asleep. To soothe me, my mother and grandmother used to scratch my back lightly before bed. 2-hour mid-day naps at this school were mandatory, and I would cry and holler as loudly as I could to avoid having to go to sleep on my uncomfortable little cot. Taking pity on me, Miss Sheri would use her fingernails to work the same magic on my back, and most of the time, it worked. I would shut up, dry my face, and fall asleep. Keep in mind, folks, that these were the days before rampant reports of child abuse at daycare centers, and my teachers were not expected to take a hands-off approach (Au contraire, in fact. These were the days when you still got a sharp smack to the face for telling your parents or teachers to go fuck themselves, as I, for whatever reason, was wont to do).

The back-scratching was much appreciated my by 3-year-old self, and it continued on and off throughout preschool and kindergarten. It never struck me as "weird" that they were doing me that service. As a child, I was admittedly bratty and bossy, and used to getting what I wanted, so it didn't surprise me at all that I had several adult attendants doing their best to make me comfortable when I demanded it. Things didn't start to get awkward until I had graduated kindergarten and started going back during the summers for day camp.

Somewhere along the line, I became Miss Betty's pet pupil. I was a very outgoing child, always looking to be the center of attention, and addicted to praise. When we put on class plays or productions, I always asked for (and always got) the lead role. In my schoolwork, I was successful (I attribute this to the fact that I was read to so much as a child, and spoken to like an adult. Thanks, fam.), but my boastful and pedantic ways led me to be somewhat unpopular among my classmates, save for a few close buddies. Thus, I learned to get my kicks from being the teacher's pet. It suited me.

Being Miss Betty's favorite did not work out to my advantage, though. When I was 6, she had a nasty accident at home that caused her to fall down a flight of stairs, breaking both arms and one of her cheekbones. She was only away from school for about a week, and when she returned, she was black and blue and covered in casts, and needed help with almost everything.

This fell to me, for who-knows-what reason.

Soon, I found myself cutting up her lunch into manageable pieces, fetching various objects, and holding the telephone while she made calls. Once in a while, she'd get an itch, and itches need to be scratched. Naturally, I did not enjoy any of this, but I did it, out of that same desire to be helpful that continues to bite me in the ass to this day. She healed eventually, but I continued to be her "helper" in many ways. One thing led to another, and before you know it, I was scratching her back for money, a back-rub prostitute at the ripe old age of 7 or 8.

Not kidding.

I'm happy to report that the story doesn't get any creepier from here. I never felt violated or anything, and in fact, that arrangement didn't continue for very long, but looking back on the situation with adult eyes, I'm able to say, "yep, that was definitely strange." I didn't think to tell my family about it until years after the fact. We laugh about it now. There were definitely many things I fully enjoyed about my experiences at that place, too. Like how I ended up making friends with some of the cooler, older kids, and 'earning' what looked to my young mind like a small fortune on poker winnings, collected while those children not favored by the teacher were forced to nap.

There were, however, a few things that I did voice objections about at the time.

Like Pea Shooting Day. Or Barrel Rolling Day.

You see, this day camp that I went to during the summers was a pretty awesome one, as day camps go. While other kids at other camps spent their days making crafts out of Popsicle sticks and taking the occasional group trip to the zoo, every day was a field trip for us Owls. Each day, Miss Betty would pack the 20 or so camp kids into her giant van and drive us to a different educational but exciting destination. We hit the zoo. We went fishing. We went to a corn processing mill. We went to a war memorial, where we climbed on real tanks and cannons, obliviously searing our bare legs on the hot, sun-baked metal. We went to the lake each Friday, where Miss Betty bought us ice cream and I was able to conquer my childhood fear of floating seaweed. We had our own annual roller derby, Olympic games and bowling tournaments (I usually won these). My personal favorites were the trips to forest preserves, where Miss Betty and the junior counselors would organize nature walks and a scavenger hunt, complete with real monetary prizes. Every day was a new adventure, and us kids loved it.

However, there were a couple of days that required me to fake sick and play hooky: Pea Shooting Day, and Barrel Rolling Day. Let's start with Pea Shooting Day, shall we? Once a year, the camp took a trip to a certain local forest preserve for pint-sized war games. Upon arrival and unloading, each child was armed with the following: one red plastic cup full of small black-eyed peas, one extra-wide drinking straw and, if they were lucky, their wits. The instructions were simple: place a pea in one end of your straw, find a target, aim, and shoot. Then, a whistle was blown and the children were set loose to turn on one another in the forest.

Now, I was a halfway decent shot, but this experience was hellish for me for several reasons: A) the weather was invariably 100 degrees and humid on these days, and the last thing I wanted to be doing was running around in the sun, dodging minuscule projectiles. B) Those peas fucking HURT. I'm a pacifist, and have always been. Why would I want to send a little food-bullet, covered invariably in spit, hurtling toward my friends' bare arms/legs/faces? C) I have a mother-hen type personality. It is just part of my nature to fret and mother over the people around me, if I care about them. My little 9 year old mind was positively reeling with the possibility of people catching a pea to the eye and needing to go to the hospital. I was convinced calamity was waiting around every corner.

Sometimes, I tried to hide until it was over. This did not go over so well. Inevitably, those kids found crouching behind some dead tree were found, summarily called out on their cowardice, and given two options: save face and re-enter the game, or be seen as a sissy in the eyes of their peers.

So, really, there was only one option, and at the end of the day, I always went home covered in tiny pea-sized welts.

Nearly as bad as Pea Shooting Day was Barrel Rolling Day. This special occasion involved us kids being trucked out to a certain park, the most distinguishing characteristic of which was its very steep, grassy hill, the bottom of which was butted up against a fenced-in baseball diamond. This park was, of course, a prime spot for sledding in the winter, and Miss Betty found another use for it too: sticking children in open-ended plastic garbage cans and sending them on their merry way down this hill. The game, I guess, was to try to stay in the barrel until the end - when you would smash jarringly against the fence behind home plate and stumble dizzily out, looking for all the world like a drunken, disoriented fool.

Bowing out of this rousing experience was, like pea shooting, not an option, if you wanted to be well-respected. You only had to make one choice: go alone, or go with a buddy. Alone was better, as the presence of another person in your barrel almost ensured that you'd receive an inadvertent kick to the head. So you'd climb into your barrel, wincing at the tiny static shocks you'd receive from your clothes and hair rubbing up against all the plastic. You were positioned at the top of the hill, and sent down. Sometimes, you didn't make it the whole way. If you couldn't keep yourself in the barrel, kids laughed and cheered you on as your arms or legs smacked the ground outside of it on each turn. Sometimes you hit a rock and went airborne for a second. That was the good stuff.

Or so I'm told. After one or two of those outings, I learned to stay the fuck home.

After 5 years of having my mettle tested by these ridiculous sports, I finally began spending my summer vacations reading, watching TV, and hanging out with friends like a normal child. As I got older, the friends of mine that also attended the same school would joke with me about how crazy it was, but I think we were all secretly proud that our childhood stories were just a little bit more unusual than most, and feeling that we'd made it through some bizarre rite of passage together.

But how do these things apply to my life now? Well, I'll tell you. For starters, my talents as a back-scratcher are considerable, and luckily, my appetite for the practice was not killed by my strange and somewhat unpleasant beginnings. It takes me a little while to like somebody enough to want to touch them, but once I get there, any moment spent with idle hands that could be spent causing that person to feel pleasure is a moment wasted, and my hands do not tire easily. If there is any one ability I am proud of, that's it. I also attribute some of my modest skill as a marksman to my pea-shooting days, and I think that despite my reluctance to participate at the time, it did contribute to my eventual enjoyment of combat games. So if you need a back-rub at the end of a long day, can't fall asleep or you want to go paint-balling, I'm your girl.

The odds and the end.

Tonight, yours truly finds herself dusting her shoulders off after the fallout from the second failed relationship in a year.

Maybe that was a little over-dramatic. We found ourselves trying to hang onto something that just wasn't in the cards, and it did end tonight, but there wasn't much fallout at all. Part of what attracts me to my partners in the first place is that they're mature, reasonable adults, and this man in particular is as well-adjusted as they come. The truth may have been served up raw and cold, but we got past that course with a quickness and washed it down with our signature blend of sarcasm and resignation. I can't say I feel fantastic right at this very moment, but I couldn't have asked for things to go more smoothly, and things are looking brighter already.

New friends and fine footwear

The Back-story:

A couple of years ago, I was browsing MySpace and came across a man whose page caught my attention. His blurbs were witty; his photos appealing. I introduced myself in my usual long-winded fashion, and we hit it off pretty well from the get-go. We sent messages back and forth for months before we finally met. I was nervous about meeting him, as I usually am with new people, but it turned out my fears were unfounded. He had a charming, energetic way about him that made me feel more alive just by virtue of being in the same room. We became fast friends.

Later, we became more than that for a brief moment and endured some major speed bumps before reversing into the friend-only zone where we find ourselves comfortably parked to this day. Sometime in between, this man introduced to me the music of an artist named Regina Spektor. I gave it a listen, and loved it immediately. Her voice was unique, her lyrics quirky, her music soulful and moving. There was one song in particular that I listened to several times, a slower song with a heartsick vibe called "Samson." Given my romantic ennui at the time, it suited my mood perfectly. One night, I decided to look up the lyrics. Keying a certain series of words into Google directed me to the usual bullshit lyrics lists, but one of the links on the results page stood out. I clicked.

My click led me to a blog by a woman who called herself Madeline, and the blog chronicled a weekend of exchanges between her and a man called Jefferson. I stayed up for hours reading it. I hadn't been an avid blog reader up until that point, and for the most part, I'm still not, but something about this woman's writing style and the passionate description of the chemistry between her and her lover kept me engrossed almost all night. I finished the entire blog, and I was hooked.

The following day, I spent some time reading Madeline's other, main blog, and Jefferson's as well. I learned more about both. They each had other lovers, and both seemed to be well-respected within the kink/poly community I found myself exploring through their writing. Given my appetite for smut, this all sounded very promising. Kinky people who also happen to be good writers, talking in lascivious detail about their awesome sex lives? Sign me up. After a short time of reading through archived posts by both, I found myself mostly focusing on Jefferson's blog - the accounts of "a parent and pervert in New York City." A sex blogger, to be sure, and a good one, but more than that also. Insightful, sophisticated, articulate, mysterious, erotic, and full of witty repartee, his talents as a weaver of words impressed me from the start, and continue to impress me to this day. He tells stories of his many romances, sexual escapades, friends and family, and never fails to entertain. If you check out his blog for yourself, you won't need me to describe it to you in detail. I'm not even sure that I could do a good job of it if I tried.

Time passed by, and I would check his blog occasionally. Once every few weeks or so, I'd log on, check in, and catch up on whatever stories I'd missed, becoming familiar with the various characters in his cast. Many times, when he mentions another public blogger in his posts, he will include a link to their blog as well. This is how I found Avah. Only a little younger than me, she was one of Jefferson's regular lovers. She looked adorable. Her blog read more like a blog, rather than a book, and I suppose I identified with the honest emotion of it. I enjoyed getting her perspective on Jefferson's life, and reading about her experiences outside of that as well. It seemed we had things in common. I bookmarked her site also, and commented occasionally.

I lurked around, keeping track of both blogs whenever I had the time, for months. I found myself developing the same sort of fascination with them and their writing that I'm sure most of their readers do. With Jefferson especially, it was almost like having a crush on an author, except with most authors, you at least get a press photo in black and white on your book jacket. All I had to go on with this man was a photo featuring his teeth, bared in a mischievous grin, and a few of his fingers. Nonetheless, I was intrigued.

During this time, I was driving to the suburbs a lot to visit my sister. Along the way, I would pass a pub with a large sign that read "Jefferson Pump." It was a stretch, but the grade-schooler in me can always be counted upon to imbue just about anything with sexual innuendo, and I would smirk and be reminded of the blog when I'd pass. I thought about taking a photo of the sign. Then, inspired by his other readers' submissions, I thought of finding a way to take a photo of myself near the sign. Perhaps an erotic photo of myself near the sign? I got imaginative. Unfortunately, this never came to fruition as last year, the sign was removed and the pub re-named. Plus, let's face it - I'm no exhibitionist (at least not yet).

Despite that setback, I decided not to just lurk anymore. Unaware of the protocol (if there was any) for introducing oneself to Jefferson, I wrote him a message. I'm sure I introduced myself (again, probably in my usual long-winded fashion), told him some basics, asked some questions, and mentioned my disappointment over the situation with the pub sign. I only half-expected a response, busy man that he was, but I got one fairly quickly. His message was gracious, he answered my questions, and he added in a joke of his own about the aforementioned pub sign. I'm fairly sure I responded once more, and received one more response in kind, later down the road. Not entirely certain of where I was hoping it would go, and not wanting to waste his time, I chose not to continue to correspond further, and went back to lurking as a reader only. I'd introduced myself, told him I enjoyed his writing, and made my relatively unremarkable first impression. That was plenty.

The Story:

Fast-forward to last week. Finding myself in something of a rut in my life and wanting to meet new people and experience new things, I once again focused on Jefferson's blog, reasoning that he was something of an authority on new people and new experiences. Motivated by my rut and my insatiable curiosity, I sent him a message late one night. Having spent a lot of time recently musing on attraction between people, I asked him a question about it. He responded early the next morning. I read the message as soon as I woke up and checked my messages, still lying on my bed in the dark before work. Yes, he remembered me, and what put such a question in my head? The last line stuck out the most, though. "I'll be in Chicago next week."

My mouth went dry.

I stared at the screen for a moment. I glanced around the dark room as if I was worried about being watched. He was coming here? What was I supposed to do with that information? Somewhere in the back of my mind, I supposed I had always had some vague plan that someday, when I was feeling adventurous and curiosity got the better of me, I might follow that well-worn path to his door to see if we hit it off. Someday when I was more savvy, more impressive. Maybe for a carnal rendezvous and maybe not, but at least to meet the man whose life I'd been attempting to follow for a couple of years. I found myself unprepared, though, for him to be in such close proximity, for surely he was suggesting we meet. Right? Or maybe not. Maybe I was being presumptuous. I asked what he was doing in the windy city, and did my best to play it cool, in case I'd misunderstood.

"I'll be in Chicago next week, too. What a coincidence!" I wrote. My comedic skill is the stuff of legend, obviously.

As evidenced by his response, I hadn't misunderstood. He was in Chicago for Shibaricon, the Japanese rope bondage convention, he liked the idea of us meeting, and the ball was apparently in my court as far as what the nature of our meeting would be. I'm pretty sure my heart raced all day, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was my boyfriend. We might be on somewhat unstable ground, and things may or may not dissolve on their own, but I care very deeply about him and wasn't about to end my relationship with, "oh, hey, by the way, you know that guy whose sex blog I read online all the time? Well, he came to town, and I fucked him, and it's over," for that certainly would be the end of my relationship, and rightfully so. That's not my style, nor was I ready for that step. I told Jefferson that the meeting, if there was to be one, would have to be platonic in nature, although I was very happy at the idea of it. He agreed, and said he was unsure of his schedule.

It's definitely an unusual situation for me where I feel as though it is expected that I become intimate with somebody right off the bat, and despite his experiences, I don't believe he really expects that sort of thing from anyone under normal circumstances. He seems, as far as I can tell, perfectly willing to move at whatever pace is mutually agreed upon, and he does seem to have plenty of friends with whom he does not have sex. Still, I couldn't help but feel as though I was disappointing him somehow by nixing the idea the way that I had, and I wondered if he would really go through with a meeting or not, since I wasn't offering anything. No, I didn't just wonder. I worried. I feel foolish for underestimating him like that, in retrospect.

A couple of days later, while reading through Avah's posts, I discovered that she too would be attending Shibaricon in Chicago. I sent her a message informing her that I would not be far away, and that I'd like to meet her if she thought that was a good idea. She wrote back, asking if I'd like to meet with her and Jefferson for dinner. I told her that I had already proposed a meeting with Jefferson, and that yes, dinner with the two of them together sounded great. Over the course of the next few days, she and I made plans and I grew the same kind of nervousness that I always do when it comes to meeting new people. Nonetheless, I was excited.

Sunday rolled around. It was a busy, hectic day. I'd spent the morning in Indiana, and on the drive back, I received a text message from Avah asking if I would mind swinging by their hotel to pick them up. I told her that was no problem, and that I'd meet them in the lobby. I was late, of course. I took a shower and got dressed in a hurry, fumbled my keys, and rushed out the door. I pulled into the parking lot about 10 minutes late, and got out of my car. Immediately, I regretted my clothing choice as my skirt blew up around my waist. I clutched it as best I could and made my way over to the hotel entrance. I entered through a side door, and walked on to the main lobby area. I was expecting them to be together, and I didn't notice any couples that could possibly have been them. I had a reasonable idea of what Avah looked like, but I was mostly in the dark about Jefferson's appearance, so I wasn't entirely sure what I should be looking for. I made eye contact with a few people who were seated in the chairs in the lobby, and propped myself up against a column to check my phone. My palms were sweaty. No messages. Were they running late? Were they not going to show? A man in a green shirt, seated in a chair facing in my direction, was studying me. I glanced at him a few times, not really registering his features from that distance. He didn't react. I suspected it might have been Jefferson, but I wasn't sure and was feeling a bit too tense to start introducing myself to total strangers in hopes that I'd find the right one.

After a minute or two of alternating glances around the room, at my phone, and at the man in the chair, I decided to step outside and call Avah. The lace hooks on the combat boots I was wearing had other ideas, though. They were stuck together, and I only very narrowly avoided taking a mid-lobby fall on my face. It was, of course, very sexy. I trip and fall more often than the average person, and it would have been par for the course for me to experience something like that at that moment. I escaped with only a minor stumble, though, dignity mostly intact, marched outside, and hoped that green-shirt man, since he had presumably witnessed that near-disaster, was not Jefferson.

I don't have such luck.

After a beat, he followed me out. When he got close, I smiled, and he smiled, and I forgot about my clumsiness. It wasn't the same mischievous grin I'd become familiar with, but I recognized his teeth. That sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? "I recognized his teeth." I did, though. I've been looking at his mouth at the top of his page for years, and I pay attention to teeth anyway. He pointed to his name tag. I said hello, and he gave me a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. It's not very often that people greet you with a kiss on the cheek these days, and I really enjoyed that. He looked more or less the way I had envisioned him - handsome and unassuming. He is not necessarily a physically imposing man, but he has a palpable quiet authority about him that I found captivating right away. He told me that Avah was not quite ready yet, and that we ought to walk to my car, come back, and pick her up. We began walking, but only made it a few paces before he checked his phone and saw that she was coming down to the lobby. We turned back, went inside, and sat down.

I chatted somewhat nervously with him for a few minutes, fidgeting with my fingernails. He spoke calmly and evenly, and his body language and casual, charming way of speaking began to put me at ease right away. After a few minutes, we stood up to greet Avah. She was beautiful. Taller than I expected, elegant, and curvy in all the right ways. Her eyes and smile were bright, and she was obviously giddy. "I got a corset!" she beamed, and showed it to him before turning to say hello. We walked to my car as she told us about her new prize, and when we got there I apologized for the size of my car. It was small, and Jefferson ended up in the back seat. Naturally, I nearly made a wrong turn during the very short trip to the restaurant, but luckily Jefferson had a better sense of direction than I do and we made it there without incident.

The restaurant did not seem to be aware of our reservation, but it wasn't crowded and they seated us quickly. I sipped a dirty martini and nibbled sporadically at my spinach enchiladas as I asked questions and listened raptly to stories. The dynamic between the two of them was alternately tender and amusing, and I found it was just as entertaining to listen to their back-and-forth as it was to talk with them myself. Both of their eyes occasionally wandered around the room, people-watching, but Jefferson in particular seemed quite comfortable making eye contact with me and holding it for a beat or two. I have some trouble with eye contact, and I'm sure it was obvious to him. It's something I really want to get over, and I felt self-conscious about it.

We remained at the restaurant until we were the last patrons in that dining area, and then got up and scooted out somewhat abruptly. My legs were asleep from having sat cross-legged for so long. I drove them back to the hotel, and when we parked, Avah made a comment about wanting to wear her corset. I replied with something like "it is a beautiful corset," which elicited a response from Jefferson somewhere along the lines of, "would you like to come up and see her in her beautiful corset?" Why yes, yes I would. I agreed, and we went inside, talking about bands while we waited for the elevator, or rather, talking about how I knew nothing about the bands they were talking about. It was decided that I needed to hear these bands. I agreed. Yes, let me hear the bands. The last thing on my mind at that moment was the music.

Their room was sort of an odd triangular shape, but well appointed. I used the oddly triangular shaped bathroom, checked my makeup in the mirror, took a deep breath, and went out to take a seat. Jefferson poured himself a bourbon, and offered me one. I declined, thinking to myself that I had just had a martini and that they'd not want me to linger around their room very long, and I didn't want to be more buzzed than I should be for the drive home. I watched intently as Jefferson laced Avah into her new corset, a black damask number with small, vaguely Asian flowers. Classy. Avah remarked that they had done things a little bit backwards; now that she was corseted, she wouldn't be able to lace Jefferson's boots. The very same boots I had seen in a photo on his site not long beforehand. He looked at me and said something to the effect of, "well, luckily I brought a spare boot-tyer!" I grinned.

Finally, Avah was completely laced up, and we all admired her figure. She and Jefferson admired it with their hands, and I admired it with my eyes. She put on some music for me to listen to, which Jefferson clearly enjoyed and I must admit was very catchy, and we watched and giggled as she worked her way somewhat comically into the rest of her very flattering outfit. I felt significantly more comfortable in their room than I had in the restaurant, oddly enough, and the conversation flowed pretty well. I witnessed on several occasions the same mischievous grin I'd come to expect from Jefferson. We talked about the use of honorifics, "sir" and the like. Jefferson and I have somewhat different opinions on the topic, and Avah seems to be somewhere in-between, but it made for good chat. Avah needed her corset adjusted at one point, and I stood in front to check to make sure it was even and placed well, and that her breasts looked good. They did. Despite my having little to no experience with women in a sexual sense, it was not, of course, the first time I'd ever seen another girl's breasts in person. It was, however, the first time I didn't feel like I shouldn't be looking at them.

Eventually, Jefferson looked to me and instructed me to fetch his boots from the closet. I did. Knee-high, black, steel-toed. Impressive. I admired them a little bit, and instinctively got on my knees at his feet to put them on. I was very focused on my task. It took me a good few minutes to lace up both, and I apologized for taking so long, since I didn't have much experience lacing boots from that angle. He replied with, "No problem. I'm enjoying the view." I looked up at him and saw him looking down, straight-faced, sipping his bourbon. It occurred to me that he probably had a bird's-eye view down my already low-cut shirt at that angle, and I guess I'll never know if the view he was referring to was that, his lover stretched out on the bed in a tantalizing corset ensemble, or something else entirely, but in any case, I didn't ask and I didn't make any effort to adjust my shirt. I finished, checked on his comfort, and then returned to my seat. He joked that I was free to call him "sir" now if I wanted to. I giggled nervously, and he definitely caught that. We were only joking around, but had the situation been different, I would have wanted to.

In the few minutes or so that I spent attending to Jefferson's boots, something occurred to me. I think I've made it clear, at this point, that I tend to be nervous around new people. Despite that, though, it felt perfectly natural to me that I was kneeling on the floor in a relative stranger's hotel room, lacing up his boots. When he reported that I'd done a good job, I felt a sense, however small, of accomplishment. And arousal. I feel more than a little ridiculous admitting that part. It's probably just due to my extreme sexual frustration, and perhaps also to my being turned on by people in boots, but my mind had assigned an erotic element to that task and I had enjoyed it, and it was the first time all evening that I hadn't felt at all nervous. I marveled at the fact that all it had taken to elicit that sort of response was to put on his shoes. My imagination turned over the possibilities while I engaged once again in conversation.

After that, we hung around the room for a short while longer, yawning. By this time, it was getting late, and their dungeon would only be open for a couple more hours. They decided to head downstairs. We walked back to the lobby together, and said our goodbyes there. I thanked them, hugged them both, received another kiss on the cheek from Jefferson, and told them that I'd like to visit them sometime in New York. Jefferson said something to the effect of, "we'd like that," to which I replied, "you'll regret saying that, because I really will do it." He said, "no, I don't think we would regret it." I smiled, and walked out.

To be continued?

Think of it as a mission statement.

Whether or not this new blog endeavor will amount to anything remains to be seen. As my profile says, I'm looking for inspiration. I'm looking to have experiences that might teach me more about myself and all of the people I meet, and I'm looking to share those experiences with all who care to read about them. I have several blogs, though, and have had several more in the past, and I typically become frustrated with my inability to express what I'm thinking in a way that satisfies me and quit writing, so this may turn out to be the only post I ever share here. With a little bit of good fortune, though, maybe I'll reach some goals and there will be much more to write about in the days to come.