Lead with your heart and soul. Logic will follow.

It's all the inhuman acts we do, that make us the most human.

Midtown

This is a familiar situation. Paper wristband sponsored by some poor tasting light beer. A doorman with a cigarette telling you to have a nice time "Hun" and a courtyard surrounded by three different, but equally smothered and horny bars filled -- with legs in glittery shorts and boots, and clean shaven baby faces buying bottles of Budlight. To the left, the Irish-themed bar. Instead of your seasoned bartender flooding shot glasses full of whiskey, properly pouring a Guinness Stout, or shouting at some googly kid for ordering an Irish Car Bomb, we have three young female kittens. No more than 21 wearing what they think would be considered sexy. Hot-pink low cut tank top. The other in a see-through white tank top, showing off her hot-pink bra. Deep pinks are in now. The color of lust, attraction, and street walkers. There was an older woman in an old worn t-shirt: the goose mother. Have I just stepped into a brothel? Made me wonder if she had been under pressure to hire other sultry barmaids for an attempt to attract costumers clients. Do 20-something's need any other excuse to drink besides just wanting to drink? I guess we need something interesting to look at while we get ignored for 7 minutes waiting to order a poorly made rum and coke. Thanks "Stephanie", this is definitely worth 7 dollars.

The new wave of bartenders seem to all agree that the longer the we wait, the better the tip. More time to look at their perfectly round tits and flat ass. Yes, "Stephanie", so worth it. Nothing but a lost kitten waiting on the decent man to look up from her chest, scratch her head and ask her "why are you here?" A man to wrap her cleavage up in a dirty bar towel and take her away for a rehabilitating love affair for her to rediscover self-worth and love. I'll be on the lookout "Steph". As soon as I spot a concerned old soul, I'll point him to you. It's the fake flashy smile that will give you away. His name will be "Steve" and he'll be longing for you, just as much as you long for him.

We recognize this longing for love at a young age. Perhaps we present it through 2 naked Barbie's tangled atop of a hard-plastic bed. Perhaps it's spurned on by the loss of a first baby blanket or plush toy, or more than likely, a distant or disturbed parent who didn't offer enough hugs. For me, it was the Barbie's. I can't say how I knew about sexual intercourse at 8 years-old, but to watch 2 perfectly proportioned human representations was something that made a kid feel safe. Yes, this is what any person strives for throughout their entire life -- minus the hard plastic bed and lack of genitals. Every seed of the heart waiting to sprout, to grow and transcend into the pure metaphysical level of love. But as a young child outgrows his clothes and toys onto adulthood, this idealism quickly becomes muddled through the smoke and red fluorescent lighting at a popular bar. And this desire for love becomes twisted between 4 legs and a couple shots of vodka, a broken heart, a recent death, boredom, or all of the above. It becomes to be too much effort, too much time wasted, and too much lost out on that thin line of a real connection. So instead, the poor kitten continues to spiral downward, feeling inadequate when the man ignores her bright glowing chest. When really it could be a respect thing. Or most likely, he just prefers big sloppy tits and doesn't feel the need to waste his visual energy on b-cups.

The next bar's name is unimportant. It's another bar. Boys in buttons downs and brown loafers. Poorly dressed girls competing for the best boot and shorts combo. Miami flavor boots and junior sized jean shorts. The top half is irrelevant. Some sort of crop top or transparent blouse. Squeezing in and out of dude bros. Each catching your eye contact. Deciding in the .3 second gaze whether or not they would fuck you. Lingering an extra 2 seconds deciding whether or not you are down to fuck them ("hey do you want me? I want you. Oh, you don't? I don't want to either." Keep walking ).At least it will save one of us from a shameful rejection that we both don't want to endure. Especially after prepping ourselves physically for such a night to display our prideful bodies. Flaunt our feathers --  partaking in it all for a seemingly good time. 

The Bunny Ranch

Every time I'm down on them, my mind wanders. 

Do I remind them of an old crush from social studies class? Do they fantasize that I'm an old girlfriend’s sister, or  an old girlfriend’s mother, or even an old girlfriend's father? The list can go on: an old waitress from some diner off route 10; the girl from the shopping mall, the lady from the gas pump with the heels and red mustang, the married co-worker, the busty cashier graduating high school. I can be many women, but most likely clients are content with me being who I am: a grey-eyed blonde prostitute. 

I wonder what parts of me bring them back 25 years. Is it the goose bumps on my breasts? Is it my waist, my shoulders, the vanilla scent between my thighs? Is it my pink, spidery hands? My tan is fading. They pay me nonetheless. They pay me well.

As I was wondering all this, the man cups his hands around my face and pulls me up to his mouth. He is breathing fast; all the pleasure and anxiety bellowing into his head -- his eyes filled with nothing but primal desire. It's a look I'm used to, that I get off on. I suppose that's why I've been doing this for three years. He whispers to  me that I'm a goddess. He tells me he wants to stick it in me.  

“That’s extra,” I say.

“How about just the tip.”

“Still counts.”

“Come on, baby. Just the tip”

“Extra,” I say.

He’s quiet for a bit and after a few seconds I ask him what he wants now and He says what the hell, if he’s going to spend the money then he’s going to stick it to me, and add in another girl. Go big, I guess. I go and find an available bunny girl. 

My girl comes in and we kiss and touch each other for the guy. We tie him up, then he ties us up. Then he wants my partner. He wants me to watch.  I get down off the bed. She’s tied down by all four limbs and her back is arched off the mattress. Her red cherry hair hangs off of the foot of the bed. 


"Do the dance for him!" She says. She cocks her head around to look at me and forces her girlish laughter. "Show him that special move while he fucks me." Girlish laughter, small wink.


But I sit on the floor facing them. He enters and she makes noises and laughs and tells me to dance. Over her body, the man stares at me like I’m empty, and I wonder if I’m reminding him of a young neighbor across the street; if he looks for me every time he asks his wife to make love with the blinds open, and she says yeah, baby. She says, yeah I'll fuck you. If he looks at me hard enough, I can remind him of anything. 

The man is lightheaded again and his face reminds me of a toilet bowl by the way his pepper hair wraps around from ear to ear; like the rim of the seat. He could be my father, in the way I could be his daughter, and he knows it. My father also looks at me like I’m empty. "Be back soon," my father  said. He said, only once. Both men have kind eyes. Maybe I should have just let the customer have the tip. Maybe the only reason why he asked in the first place was because he trusted me enough to give him what a man deserves. What he as a husband, father, lover deserves. But trust is like money, honey. You spend it, you lend it, and you can sometimes get robbed and in this business, I can't afford to do any of that.


My other bunny girl sighs out  another laugh and moan. She's close to climax. I can see it in the tenseness of her muscles, in the slight vulnerability that her closed eyes bring. We all love sex here at the ranch. It would be a dead business if we didn't. We have to be able to let it all go here. We have to be open, assertive and comfortable in order for the customer to be. We are paid to knock down their walls. We are paid to fuck, suck, squeeze, pinch, blow, and whip those walls and inhibitions away. The orgasm is not sacred here. Nothing is. The man’s body swells and he becomes heavy headed. I sit naked and erect on my knees on the shag carpet. His mouth hangs open and his eyes squint shut. Concentrate my dear old man. Time is money. Sex is money. My body is money. Worth nothing more, and nothing less. 

He wipes the sweat from his forehead and laughs, “That’s the quickest I ever came.”

The redhead says yeah, baby and I continue to stare at him and he continues to stare at me as the redhead laughs and sighs and praises him. We stare at each other like we are reminders of each other. Like he knows me from somewhere all too familiar. Like I'm the little girl his wife gave birth to. Like I'm the little girl he gave allowances to. Like I'm the little girl he that he left behind 25 years ago. I escort him out of the "Blooming Lotus" room, smiling. 


"Come back soon," I say. 

Anxious for the Revival

I am anxious for the revival -- with fire, with blood. In fire, in blood.

5 Months Ago

5 months ago I figured I'd be in a small studio apartment infested with fleas living with a sharp-nailed alabaster cat named Myrtle after an old lady, or old beach in Florida with nothing left but mismatched plates and stained dish towels that didn't match with fleas and their feces on the rugs, on the quilt, on the green chair with that one dark stain and the blonde cat hair that I sit on anyway and eat my dinners of yellow rice, baked chicken, and a few pickles just for kicks and I watch TV on a TV that sits on a wine rack, and not a TV stand, though it should be on a TV stand for it is too big for the wine rack that doesn't hold any wine just DVDs like Men in Tights and All Dogs Go to Heaven, and The Big White, which I have yet to watch but need to since I'm only borrowing it from my Canadian coworker that sits in the cubicle next to me and says funny things to herself like "holy buckets" and "cracker barrels" when she gets upset and I laugh and then I begin to talk to myself to fill in the gaps of silence but someone complained and now we can't talk as loud anymore so I just go back to working quietly nowadays and come back to the studio apartment as I imagined it 5 months ago before I moved in but to my fortune -- the cat, the chair, the rugs, the blankets, sheets and dish towels are vacant of any fleas or flea feces so I sort of just wander around the place double checking for fleas and mold and kitty litter crumbs that Myrtle (beach) drags around the laminate wood floor and think about how I just want to write and how I've been a bit too lazy to read since I generally just hope to fall asleep in a decently short amount of time but nonetheless I pick a book up to read a page and become tired and sleep and wake up for work, and work silently in my cubicle and laugh at the Canadian and come home and yell at the shedding cat and clean up her kitty litter crumbs while a rice and/or pasta dish cooks with half-frozen chicken that I don't even like and think about watching a movie, or reading a book, or writing in this blog or in my journal or in my phone's notes, or think about a few months ago and all the dreams that get dreamed in that amount of time and how I can remember all of them, and forget them all at the same time.

The New Year

Every time another month begins to come to a close, I have another ounce of hope return for the new year is approaching and thus, I am 30 to 31 days farther away from a most dreadful year. Naturally, 2012 will rank lower on the scale of shitty years as I age, but for now, I have no shame in saying that I am grateful to be slowly running away. Running, running, running with a sigh of relief with each pounding step to the pavement. Momentum.