Posted by Lex Konrad in Sex | Nov 18, 2005
“Sup?” I always laugh when Sara greets me this way. Clearly she’s mastering the urban vernacular.
We pop open a bottle of riesling and pop in Leslie’s mystery movie of the week. In this naked household, my girlfriend is in charge of all audiovisual materials not related to pornography. She usually manages to surprise me with some bizarre selections. This week it’s a lesbian slasher flick—a real gore fest—causing us to shudder and titter nervously.
“You’re not gonna go all crazy on us, are you?” I ask Sara as the credits roll.
“I’ll try not to.”
I imagine psychologists have to be at least somewhat sane. Part of the job description, innit?
The city is shrouded in mist as we make our way down the sidewalk to Chocolat. Yellow emergency lights pulse through the haze: the parked cars on Fifth Avenue are being towed en masse. Poor suckers.
Sara’s profession provides her with a wealth of story-time material, and as we relax in a corner of the bar she discusses the fetishes and weird sexualized compulsions she encounters. My girlfriend loves these sordid tales. “It must be embarrassing to wet your pants in front of someone,” Les says, “but there’s also something disturbingly sexual about it.” As they continue talking I cannot help but shake my head.
“So you’re a sexual anthropologist?” Sara asks me when we have a moment alone.
“Yes, I study human mating habits—particularly those of young females like you.”
When she laughs the tiny metal stud on the side of her nose glints in the light.
Sara likes to watch—she tells me so when I’m curled up in her lap as the two of us recline naked on the leather sofa. She smiles as my girlfriend straddles me, places her hand over a brown, silky buttock, and I imagine she’s taking mental notes. It’s a kind of sex therapy for all of us.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Sex | Nov 10, 2005
V.
We’re standing downtown amid a throng of party people. It’s probably in the 40s. I’m dressed in my tunic, with shorts on underneath, and sandals. Over that I’m wearing a light trench coat. Oddly, I’m not as cold as one might think. “Why didn’t you double-check the date?†I ask Les.
“I don’t know; why didn’t you double-check the date?â€
Here we are—right place, wrong time. “We’re such dumbasses. Heh, looks like it’s just the two of us tonight.â€
We walk toward Girl from Ipanema—well, I walk and Leslie shuffles in her mummy wrap. Her costume proves to be every bit as popular as I’d imagined it would be. People call after her: “Cleopatra! Cleopatra!â€
I’m relieved to have another day of rest before the party. The second consecutive night of drunken debauchery sometimes finds me hanging by a very thin thread indeed.
VI.
I see the better and acknowledge it, but I follow the worse.
-Ovid
I call them sex parties but not all of them are actual sex parties. In swinger lingo the type of event we’re attending tonight is known as an off-premises party, which means that people may talk and flirt and dance but they’ll have to go somewhere else to get naked. In theory anyway. In reality—nudge-nudge, wink-wink—things can get a little out of hand. The off-premises party is our preferred venue for just this reason: we can transgress in a way that’s simply not possible when everyone is expected to be transgressive. Or else, if we’re not interested, we can stand around and socialize without feeling out of place.
And so our journey to the underworld begins. The party is our first One Leg Up affair, soirees I’ve avoided in the past because I found Palagia’s shtick to be a little pretentious. But what the hell. Variety is good. A woman on stilts greets us at the door—I think she’s supposed to be a tree but I can’t be sure. We utter the password: “My climax.” As we walk across the Park’s airy, tree-lined foyer Cleopatra grabs my arm, tittering, “She’s still looking at us. Ohmagawd that’s so creepy!” And the woman is, indeed, bending over at the waist (oh but how does she keep her balance?) and peering at us, pantomime-like, through the doorway.
“I’m freakin’ out maaaaan.” All I can think of, though, is how she’d look naked on those stilts, and what kind of view I’d have if she stood next to me.
On my way up the stairs I unsheath my weapon and brandish it menacingly at no one in particular. “Izzat a dagger I see before me?” I pray I’ll be able to unsheath my other, fleshy dagger at the earliest opportunity. We slip on our masks before we reach the upstairs door, mine gold and Leslie’s black, ornate, very cat-like—we’d prefer not to be wearing them but the party is officially a masquerade ball. Jimmy and a few of the others in our group have to buy theirs from the ticket-taker. We’re admonished against removing our masks until the appointed hour of 1 AM. See what I mean by pretentious? “This isn’t fucking Eyes Wide Shut,” I grumble. Oh well. When in Rome…
Generic Slut #69 is still in abundance but at this party she’s undergone a metamorphosis. Her erect nipples, for example, might poke through a sheer mesh top. She might eschew the customary short shorts for lacy panties. Not that I have a problem with these wardrobe tweaks. One such specimen, a pretty girl with loopy eyes, approaches. She has that vacant, coke-whore aura about her, something so prevalent in this city that I’ve nearly begun to find it sexy. “Are you Caesar?” she asks.
I’ve gotten this two nights in a row. I was annoyed but now I’m mildly amused. “Naw. I’m Mark Antony. I came here to bury Caesar’s ass.” The woman runs off in search of another source of amusement—or perhaps another bump.
I’m talking to Lisa, the badass sheriff in her busty, badass leather outfit. “You look like a black, female Will Smith,” I’d told her earlier when we were having drinks at Jimmy’s apartment. A newbie couple latches on to us and we talk about the wonderful world of sex parties. Inevitably, wherever I go, people see me as some sort of urban sherpa. On the street they’ll single me out for directions. At a club they’ll ask me where the drugs are. At a sex party they’ll grill me on etiquette. I think my perceived authority derives from primal instinct: only the tall ape-men could peer over the brush and spot them sabertooths coming.
The girl on stilts is upstairs with us now, dancing. She’s still doing that creepy mime thing but snaps out of it when I ask her whether her stilts feel as natural as her own legs. She assures me they do.
Les and I wander over by the hot tub, a swinger fixture we’ve missed out on all these years. Juanita, our Barrio neighbor, is in there with Jimmy and a couple other guys. She beckons us to join them. Les pinches my thigh. “Are you kidding me?” I protest. “The girl-guy ratio is all fucked up.” The girl laughs as I eye her neat strip of pubic hair. It’s not that Juanita is unsexy, but she’s painfully heterosexual and most definitely on the hunt for a borefriend—I’d just as well not get all worked up over nothing. I’m talking to Les now but out of the corner of my eye I can see that one of the men in the hot tub is standing up and the other guy is blowing him. I nudge Les and then smirk over my shoulder at Jimmy. Cause I just know he’s a little freaked out.
I cannot recall whether he was the giver or receiver, the guy who’s standing in front of me now in his underwear, still dripping wet from the tub. He has a bit of a Marilyn Manson look. And he wants to see my cock. “You should get into the tub with me. I’ll take care of you.”
Smiling, I say, “No thanks, man. I’m only into ladies and trannies.” This isn’t entirely untrue. I had, after all, kissed Ophelia just a couple nights earlier but s/he is so pretty it almost doesn’t count.
“I’m bored,” I’m telling Les later on. “Other than that guy getting a foot job over there and the gay sex, this party is remarkably tame.”
“Yeah, what gives? I thought these parties had a reputation.”
I shuffle over to the bar and order more drinks. I return to find Les in an animated conversation with a couple—he a friendly-looking fellow in semi-formal attire and she a very pretty, very petite brunette in a bottomless ensemble that reveals her lacy red boy shorts. I soon learn he’s Swedish and she’s German and they’re married and new to this. I tell the husband I spent a week in Göteborg without ever seeing the sun. I speak to the wife in her native tongue. Leslie, always more direct with women than I, employs her tongue in a more obvious fashion, and before I can process what’s going on here the German girl’s lovely tits are out in the open. The guy grins broadly and grasps my shoulder, “Don’t be shy. Touch my wife. Please.” Even after all the time we’ve spent touring swingerland this still sounds weird to me.
“If you insist.” I take a swig of gin and stash the glass somewhere. The girl smiles up at me and places her hand on my waist. I place my palms over her breasts. She’s still smiling. I bow before her and let my mouth explore, sucking and teasing, my lips pursed and pulling at her pink eraser tips. She moans. I kiss the nape of her neck and breathe deeply; the smell hits high and sweet like roses and I’m not certain whether it’s her hair or some perfume she’s wearing. I’m touching the girl from behind, obscenely, my middle finger tracing a path from her clitoris to her tail bone as she locks lips with Les. The husband watches, still grinning and egging me on. The girl shifts her weight against me now, pressing her thigh into my erection, so I lift my tunic and press her hand to me, my eyes fixated upon the small patch of red fabric between her legs. I watch as my hand slips under it, into something soft and warm and wet. My hand is a practiced hand, a relationship hand: after a thousand and one nights of bringing Leslie off as she lies next to me in the dark, it just knows what to do. Deft fingers find the girl’s clitoris, begin to dance over it, subtly varying pressure and speed, perfectly attuned to her movements. Sex is language. Her pivoting hips tell me she wants my fingers inside. Going slowly, careful not to poke or prod, I oblige. When my fingers emerge I offer them to Les, who, closing her eyes, takes them into her mouth and suckles them clean. I kiss my girlfriend, tasting the German girl’s nectar on her lips. Les reaches under my costume to paw at my shorts and I pull them down to relieve the awful swelling between my legs. She squats and wraps her mouth around me, the golden beads in her hair tickling my bare balls a little. I place one hand on Leslie’s crown, the other on the German girl’s breast. I remember we’re standing in a high traffic area. I realize we’re being watched and I don’t care. People mill around us, gathering speed, coupling and uncoupling at a breakneck pace, seeking but not finding, spinning until their colors all run together…
VII.
I’m in a cab. Juanita is seated next to me, I know, even though I cannot lift my head. Leslie is on the other side of her. May as well be a million miles away. I am drunk drunk drunk. Dunno how I got this way. Every bump sends my head bobbing, amplifies my discomfort. Just wanna stop moving. By Jove I swear I’ll never drink again. Never. Again. Just get me home.
VIII
Who keeps company with wolves, will learn to howl.
-Latin proverb
We’re out with Sara at a pub across the street from our old place in Chelsea, having decided to make a stop here after seeing a lackluster horror flick. Sara’s dressed as the tooth fairy, wearing a little pink wig and carrying a jewel-encrusted wand. Les and I decided to forgo our costumes tonight. Movie and a drink. Then sleep. I’m perfectly happy to have a conventional night out for a change.
“Just one beer to bite the dog back,” I tell Les. “I promise. Woof.” She rolls her eyes. I get no sympathy for my overindulgence.
“So what was the party lake?” Sara asks.
“It started off a little slow, but it ended up being fun, even though I wanted to leave before Lex and he was being an ass about it.”
I throw my hands up in mock surrender. “Hay, I was tarbly dronk at the tame.” Sara laughs at my ridiculous attempt to simulate her accent. Clearing my throat, I continue, “It’s about what you’d expect—you flirt a little, dance a little, maybe get a little naked and fool around. Come to think of it, that’s an average night out for us, innit?”
“If one includes the part about you being an ass, then yes.”
“Ouch. So anyway, it was kinda like Friday night, except way more expensive.” I scratch my head and turn to Les. “Wait, why do we go to those parties again?”
“Well, we did have nice costumes.”
“Right? And then there’s the sex addiction. Care to analyze that, doctor?”
Sara smiles. “I’m the last person you should be talking to about seggs addiction. I masturbate three times a day.” Les raises an eyebrow and touches Sara’s leg.
“You know, I tried to jerk off today. Thought it might ease my hangover. Can you believe I nearly bored myself to death? I have access to all this free porn and absolutely nothing did it for me. Hell, even my fond memories of that sexy bitch from last night didn’t do it for me. It was like that Twilight Zone episode where the guy’s all alone in the library, surrounded by books, and he drops his glasses.”
“Do tell about the sexy bitch,” Sara insists. Les relates the whole sordid tale but I’m fuzzy on some of the details.
“Did you—did you blow me last night in front of everyone, or was I just imagining that?”
“No, that happened.”
“Okay, and what was this about them getting mad and storming off? Because I seem to recall—”
“The Clockwork Orange guy—”
“Little Alex!”
“Yeah, little Alex. Anyway, he was eating her out in the hot tub and her husband got angry about it.”
“Oh, well I was sitting next to her, fondling her or something like that, and little Alex came by and stole her from me. Next thing I knew, she and the Swede were gone.”
“No no, that was later.”
“Then where the hell was I when all this was going down?”
“That’s when we were arguing over leaving. I went to get their number, remember?”
“Ach. Scheisse. I can’t believe I missed out on all the sexual intrigue. There’s one thing I still don’t understand, though. I was doing all kinds of stuff to her. Why was that okay?”
“He told me they liked the two of us. Basically we had his blessing.”
“Who was that little Alex guy anyway? Such a fucking vulture. He didn’t even seem to be there with anyone.”
“There were a few creepy guys there, like the one who tried to touch me while you were talking to your boyfriend.”
“Ha. I was busy deflecting his advances. Sorry I didn’t lay the smackdown dear.”
A quiet night out with a nice girl. Thank the gods. I tell Sara she need feel no pressure to attend such debaucherous soirees with us, that we actually prefer nice girls who know something about intimacy. “That’s the reason we stopped going to the on-premises events,” I tell her. “Too many creeps. Everyone had something to prove and there were so many dysfunctional pseudo-couples. It was like high school all over again.”
“So what about the off-premises parties, then? Aren’t they similar?” Sara asks.
I take the last sip of my beer and sigh. “There’s less danger of forgetting your shoes at the end of the night.”
Posted by Lex Konrad in Sex | Nov 03, 2005
I.
Whether they give or refuse, it delights women just the same to have been asked.
-Ovid
“Izzat your girlfriend?” the lithe blonde asks.
“Yup,” I answer, nodding in Leslie’s direction. I skip my usual disclaimer: I don’t feel like launching into Non-Monogamy 101 tonight. The sexy little Columbia student screws up her face in an exaggerated pout and flits away, melting into the crowd of costumed revelers, the Mardi Gras beads around her neck clicking. The preferred female costume this year appears to be Generic Slut #69.
The deejay’s mixing demonic laughter into the blaring house tracks, an effect which makes my skin crawl. I rest my arm upon a rubber zombie head perched atop a bowl full of limes and turn to Sara, the psychologist. “What’s with all these horny Columbia students tonight?”
“It’s lake Columbia garls gone wild in here,” she responds. Her Scottish accent makes all her statements sound a bit like questions. I decide that I find this charming.
This is perhaps not the best environment for a date but we make do, jostling for space at the bar and straining to be heard over the music. Somehow Sara and Les end up on the subject of exes. I’ve heard you’re not supposed to discuss exes on a date, at least not on an early date, but I find it tells me a lot about the person doing the talking.
“May eggs wus hung lake a horse,” Sara says, “so we had to be a lil creative about seggs. Too bad he wus afraid of me handcuffs.” I’m not certain, exactly, what this tells me about Sara—except that she just may be as perverted as I am.
“You oughta get a load of this,” I say, pretending to pull down my zipper.
“Oh, I’m more of an ass-garl anyway.” She grabs at my rump. I wrap an arm around her waist and pull her close, towering over her and getting a bosomy eyeful. She beams up at me and then winks at Les.
The Mardi Gras girl returns and offers beads to Les in exchange for a flash. My girlfriend promptly obliges. “What about me?” I ask, eyeing her glittery treasure.
Miss Mardi Gras shrugs. “Go ahead and flash me then.” I lift my shirt. “Ooooh,” she purrs, but she’s reluctant to hand over the goods.
“Come on, now. It’s only fair.” I step into her personal space and begin to run my fingers lightly over the beads.
She removes a string of purple globes and places them around my neck, then maneuvers her hands under my shirt and squeezes my midsection. “Nice abs,” she coos. Her fingers feel like little spiders and I start to quiver. “Oh, you’re ticklish too!” I wriggle out of her grasp and pull down my shirt.
A tall girl in a black outfit, a friend of the Mardi Gras babe, joins us. The blonde still feigns distress over the loss of her beads so I make her an offer. “If you and your friend here flash me I’ll give ‘em back.” They agree readily and, much to my delight, two pairs of perky coed breasts appear before my eyes.
The tall girl tells me her name is Kate. “So how come you let my friend touch you? She told me you have a girlfriend.”
I chuckle. I suppose school is in session after all. “Well, we’re on a date with that young woman over there.”
“Oh. Oh!”
“Aren’t the two of you a little young for me?”
“But I’m a senior!”
Chuckling again. “Like I said…”
Kate shows me her Nixon mask and asks why I’m not wearing a costume. I explain that we’re just getting warmed up tonight, that tomorrow we’ll be Mark Antony and Cleopatra. “I’m studying Latin!” she declares, wearing a goofy grin. “So, are you going anywhere special?”
“A sex party.” I’m aware that I’m dropping a thought bomb, that she’ll either run for cover or pull a Major Kong and hop on for a nihilistic last ride.
The sparkle in her eyes tells me she opted for the latter. “I’ve always wanted to go to a sex party. Think I can tag along sometime?” I explain that we’re pretty selective and there’s an interview process. This doesn’t deter her in the least. “Let me give you my number then,” she insists.
Les asks me, tongue-in-cheek, whether I had fun with my new girlfriends. I tell her I’m in love. As if to remind me why we came out tonight, she backs Sara into a corner and they start snogging. Blonde and Brunette. Alabaster and Cinnamon. Lovely. Forgetting where I am, I join in and now it’s a three-way session. When I come up for air I notice we’ve attracted an audience. I am again reminded that what I see as normal, ordinary even, is a source of great entertainment for civilians. Even here, in New York, on Halloween weekend, among oversexed Columbia students. It’s 2005, damn it, and if I cannot have a hover-car or cybernetic legs I’m going to have newfangled relationships.
So when Kate backs into me I think nothing of slipping my hand down her pants and grasping those firm coed buttocks. I don’t know how long this goes on, but eventually Les and Sara decide it’s time to take the party home. I find myself in front of Kate, my hands on her hips. “We shared a special moment back there, didn’t we?”
“Yes we did, Marcus Antonius.”
“I’ll see you around, babe.”
II.
No one dances sober, unless he is insane.
-Cicero
They say Cleopatra was the most beautiful woman in the world. I don’t doubt them. Cleopatra, however, would have had nothing on Leslie, a woman whose charms few men, or women, can resist. She of the beautiful curls and the large, almond eyes. She of the aquiline nose and the soft lips. She of the graceful, cat-like movements. She of the callipygian buttocks. What might Plutarch have written?
She stands here now, the Queen of my Nile, wearing a sheer, flowing gown, a body-hugging dress that extends to her ankles, a crown of golden beads that twist through her curly locks and cascade over her shoulders. She begins to dance. Sara watches her adoringly, as do I.
I slip into my outfit, a simple warrior’s tunic and velvet cape, the midsection tied off with a leather belt into which I sheath my ersatz dagger. What the costume lacks in protection from the cold it compensates for in the ready-access-to-my-cock department. Tonight it shall be put to good use, along with the second-hand Ikea chair in our living room. Sara takes a seat and I straddle her, straining my fingers through her straight blonde hair and bringing my hands to rest against her tits, whereupon she reaches up under my tunic and brings Mr. Penis into the light. The girl always appears to have a naughty look on her face.
Sara uses the straps on Leslie’s dress to tie my queen’s arms behind her back. “Nooooo!” Les protests, but she’s also giggling. Somehow our date manages to maneuver Les to the living room floor and gets to work between her legs. As I watch, smiling, Les struggles against her restraints. Without breaking contact, Sara reaches back and unclasps her denim skirt, revealing an ass that’s ample for a little white girl. Taking this as an invitation, I collapse to the floor behind her and tease her with my fingers.
Les has freed herself and pranced off to the bathroom. I straddle Sara again as she kneels on the floor. She scoots backward a bit and lowers her head into my lap. I lie back and close my eyes, laughing, thinking about how she told me earlier that she just started to do sex therapy. My cock exits her mouth with a pop. “Are you enjoying it, then?” she asks, trilling the r.
“Oh yes. Please do continue, doctor.”
In the bedroom the three of us probe and lick and fondle. I have to go easy—Sara’s small and she thinks I’m big. I have my queen from behind as she bends over, perpendicular to our date’s body, and her cunt works its magic the way it always does. If I stretch a little I can just barely bring my mouth to our playmate’s parted lips and shapely breasts. My knee bumps her head and I apologize. When I orgasm I close my eyes and wonder what she thinks of all this.
III.
There are no dreams tonight, thank God. No unspeakable horrors torn from the pages of Lovecraft; no logical Gordian knots to untie; no police states and panopticons; no attacked ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Why don’t I ever dream about sex, the way other people do?
IV.
I awake with a start and look around, squinting in the light. Forgot to draw the blinds last night. Leslie is by my side. I rise to my elbows and rub my face. “Where’s our girl?”
Leslie does not stir. “Sleeping in the living room. She got hot.”
Later on the girls run out and get us breakfast. I put on a mix. Sara informs me she used to be a deejay and we talk about the world of electronic music.
Before she leaves, Sara kisses Leslie for a long time. It’s not my intent to hover there watching them; it’s just that there’s nowhere else to go. I wouldn’t mind if Les met someone she wanted to spend time with alone.
“See you Monday, then?” Sara says on her way out. I am not sure whether this is a question or just another manifestation of her accent.
“Yes,” Les answers.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Relationships | Oct 28, 2005
The bar is noisy but if I lean in I can discern her Scottish accent, a subtle inflection that creeps in now and again, turning her “oughts” into “oats.” She is getting her doctorate in psychology. I don’t flinch when she mentions Jungian analysis. She doesn’t flinch when I talk about species being.
“Do you think it’s possible that a society as a whole can be clinically dysfunctional even though the individuals within it are more or less sane?” I ask. These are the sorts of things you think about when you live in the America of the new millennium. Our conversation continues in this vein. Her mind is sexy.
Still, I don’t get too excited. I remind myself that this International Woman of Mystery isn’t a candidate for admission to the Les and Lex Institute for the Advanced Study of Non-Monogamous Relationships, or LLIASNMR for short. It’s not that she struggles with the theory involved; it’s that her impression of the entire field has been diminished by distressing experiences in a non-accredited program.
“The girl kept trying to push her boyfriend on me,” she explains, “and he was always leering at us, telling us what to do.” She scrunches her eyebrows. “Finally I went ahead and did it. He had a tiny penis. It was awful.”
So I don’t try to recruit her. I do, however, describe the sort of work we do at the Institute: a mixture of theoretical study, classroom discussion and, naturally, lots of practical assignments in the field.
Emma arrives. After introductions are made I explain that Emma’s been enrolled at the LLIASNMR for over two years now. You could say she’s our star student. She even brought me a gift—not a shiny red apple but Zadie Smith’s latest masterwork. This earns her not a gold star but a soft kiss.
The psychologist is intrigued, so much so that she disappears into the bathroom with Leslie—evidently to get a better handle on what we mean by “hands-on instruction.”
The next day she sends Les a note explaining that we’d helped her see things in a new light; that she’d already started on the required reading and might even be persuaded to tour our conveniently-located Manhattan campus.
And so tonight we’re seeing the psychologist again. If I’ve learned anything in my years as Dean of Recruitment and Campus Diversity, it’s that showing up with freshly-shaven balls is a must.
