Downtime

Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Dec 30, 2004

NLP was down for a couple days. Apparently there was a vulnerability in the software that runs the message board on this and many other sites. Nothing was lost, fortunately: my host had the good sense to deactivate the vulnerable message boards en masse. The downside is they didn’t let me know they’d taken countermeasures and so I spent a couple hours in a state of panic. It reminded me that security is an illusion.

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Theory of Everything

Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Dec 17, 2004

I’ve kept my head down lately, preoccupied with other projects and the general business of the holiday season. It’s been a relief, actually. This year has been anything but quiet. Leslie’s birthday party was our last great hurrah for 2004 (yes, I will write about it). There’s plenty of debauchery to be had on New Year’s Eve, I’m sure, but Leslie and I will be spending that night in a jacuzzi with a bottle of bubbly.

Things with Layla have tapered off, but I think anyone who read the last few entries could have seen that coming. That emotional boundary she mentioned months ago never really disappeared, talking only led us to impasse after impasse, and so finally Les and I gave up on the “coalition.” Diplomatic channels are still open, however.

When it comes down to it, a relationship based on slippery bits rubbing together can only be interesting for so long.

Having missed Leslie’s birthday party, Natalia came over the other night to cook us dinner. She informed us she’s gone monogamous with her latest beau. We’ve known her a long time and she’s always been forthcoming with us so I couldn’t feel miffed even if I tried. Like I told her last summer, we’re friends first and foremost.

Bianca, delightful Bianca, heads to the west coast in a couple of weeks to further her acting career. I’m a little sad to see her go, but I do hope things work out for her so I can be interviewed for her tell-all celebrity biography.

Yes, I’m relieved, in a way, to tie up loose ends—to be free of quasi-romantic entanglements, to be able to spend more time on other things, to have some solitude and process what’s happened. To have Leslie all to myself, at least for a little while.

After Leslie had gone to bed the other night, Natalia and I stayed up for a couple hours and had one of those free-associative conversations people can only have in the wee hours. She’s had a bumpy December career-wise and needed some cheering up. “I have a new theory of everything,” I told her.

She laughed. “Oh lord. What’s that?”

“Funny you say that—my theory has biblical origins.”

She was now shaking her head in amused disbelief. “Okay let’s hear it.”

“It’s simple: don’t cast pearls before swine. Ignore the naysayers, the folks who can’t see more than two feet past their own noses. Take your talents, your wisdom, your affection… take all that stuff and give it to the people who are at least capable of appreciating it. This applies to everything: your fucking job, your dating life, your art, whatever.”

“And what about you? Do you think you’ve been casting your pearls before swine all along?”

“Ha! Where do I start? But everyone does sometimes. I think it’s the root of people’s unhappiness and frustrated dreams.”

Silence settled over us. “So, what was your old theory of everything?”

“I can’t remember.”

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Adult Swim

Posted by Lex Konrad in Sex | Dec 09, 2004

Midnight on the Saturday before Thanksgiving week. We’re in a secluded basement lounge on the Upper East Side. The air conditioner cycles off and Bianca zips down her top, revealing a red blouse that strains against its heavy payload. She’s even prettier than I’d remembered.

“Isn’t she delightful?” I said to Natalia a week earlier, moments after Bianca shimmied out of her sweater. I’d ogled Bianca shamelessly, emboldened by her announcement that she was bringing out the girls, my eyes settling upon her creamy furrow.

And here they are again, tucked under that blouse, magnets tugging at my pupils. “I’m going to try to keep my eyes above your chest but I can’t make any guarantees.”

She looks away and giggles. Infectious, girlish little eruptions. Bold smile. Bright teeth. A narrow nose that peaks in two small points of cartilage. Dark brown hair mated, somewhat incongruously, with piercing blue eyes. It’s a complex face—playing innocent schoolgirl one moment and femme fatale the next.

Delightful.

Vollman was right—it’s the shy ones, the retiring ones, who take hold of the imagination. Our first encounter had been as chaste as an Amish singles mixer, so I studied Bianca’s movements for scraps of meaning: a casually brushed thigh, a hastily averted gaze—gestures as subtle as mild hallucinations. And so, through no overt manipulation on her part, I found myself seduced.

“What’s she like?” Layla asked me a few days later.

“Well,” I hesitated, searching for words, “she laughs a lot.” I didn’t want to say anything else, fearing I’d jinx myself.

The next outing found us at a cozy bar downtown, where we met Bianca and a few of her friends. At first she was frustratingly inaccessible but after awhile we moved to a larger table; I plotted like a schoolboy to finagle a seat next to hers. We talked about movies. She stroked my corduroys. “So soft,” she said.

“You’re coming to the party?”

“The flirt party?”

“That one.”

“Definitely. I can’t wait to get dressed up.”

“Then welcome to the club. You can have as much fun as you want and no one will judge you for it.” My eyes narrowed into slits as I scanned the roomful of scruffy people chugging pissy hipster brew by the gallon. “It’ll be our little secret.”

Bianca sighed. “Leslie’s been so nice.”

“She’s a doll. So, um, you haven’t done much with women?”

“Nothing I can’t do to myself.”

Nothing she can’t—ah, yes. I stared off in to space for a moment, daydreaming, and then snapped back. Shot her a sly grin. “Excuse me, what was it we were talking about?”

I waited for her laughter and was satisfied to hear it. The night was winding down. She and Leslie leaned over my thighs and excitedly made plans. I sat back and watched their faces hover above my lap, thinking it must have been a preview of things to come.

The air conditioner hums again. Bianca zips up and a sense of loss comes over me. “You know,” she says, “I was squeezed so tightly between the two of you that I had to slide out the bottom of the bed.”

“I’m glad you woke me before you left,” Les says. “I was dead to the world.”

I put on an expression of mock indignation. “Neither of you thought to wake me up?”

“Aw baby, it’s just that you looked so cute in your sleep.”

“I guess I was having sweet dreams.” The party. A half-remembered fantasy. In the beginning I stood back and watched Leslie, Natalia and Bianca dance—my three sirens. Only after they finished did I approach Bianca from behind, wrap my arms around her waist and press my lips into the fragrant nape of her neck. She leaned against me. I ran my hands along her slender frame and, sensing no resistance, cupped her breasts. People wheeled around our group but nothing else interested me much. Bianca and Leslie kissed. I stole glances at their joined lips, their earnest, searching faces.

They kiss now and I’m the shy one. Do I smile? Do I look away? I’m envious, sometimes, of the way women are with each other; for a moment they seem to evoke all the beauty in the world. The bartender rinses a glass and watches.

Leslie was quick to undress Bianca; soon the girl stretched out on our couch, soft and willowy. I stared at what looked to be a square band-aid affixed to the left of her sparse mat of pubic hair. “What is that?”

“Birth control patch.”

“Ah, good. I think it’s a little soon for us to be starting a family.”

Les and I took turns lapping at her. Her inner labia were plump, soft and spongy near the crest, everything glistening in immaculate pink. She was shy in the light, so we retired to the bedroom, me strolling a few paces behind the women and admiring their figures. Soon I was thick and hot between Bianca’s thighs. “I like being inside you,” I said to her. Gentle with our guest. And then harder, more direct, within the silky confines of Leslie, slapping up against those luxuriant buttocks, getting her off and then myself, spreading my DNA over Bianca’s tits. We slept, the three of us, like stacked spoons.

Remembering this, I’m seduced all over again. Bianca has her hand down the back of Leslie’s jeans. Leslie, grinning, absentmindedly strokes the girl’s breast. My hand traces lazy circles on Bianca’s knee. We talk about fantasies and such. “I like fooling around in public,” Bianca says, “but not necessarily someplace where I can be watched.”

“We should go to the movies sometime,” Les offers. “Maybe a late show.”

My eyes brighten. “I’ve always wanted to try that trick where you poke a hole through the bottom of a popcorn bucket and—”

The women burst out laughing.

Soon Bianca gathers her winter things and leaves. I sit next to Les and we neck like high school kids. In one swift movement, Les flicks her dark curls from her left shoulder and sighs. “She really is sweet, isn’t she?”

“Yes she is,” I answer. “She’s delightful.”

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