please

I’m warning you — pleading, really.
Tell me, “I haven’t felt a connection like this with anyone in years,”
and know that I might just scream and walk out, naked and all,
to find myself another man that I can fuck without fear,
a man that won’t give me importance when it’s not due.
Slap my face — use me,
but, please,
don’t tell me you love me
in that way that’s not real, but honest,
that punctures me,
the remains of other men left to rise and remind me
all they ever gave me of themselves was the memory of a feeling
they once had
but never with me.

space

My favorite space
is that nook
between your hipbone
and the start of your legs.

The way your leg lets out
the slightest jerk
when I kiss you there,
mouth open,
tongue wet,
just the right amount
of slobber and bite.

My hand extends,
exploring,
discovering
your sweet spots,
weak spots.

A place
where
I can knead
myself
in.

ego

I love to stroke your ego
tell you,
“I think you’re amazing.”

To please you,
keep you
happy.

You brush my hair
off my face
and say,
“Last night was perfect.”

I say,
“I know.”

“I felt bad
shaking
your
roommate’s
hand.”

“It’s OK.”
I tell you,
“We’re all perverts.”

Fingers slipped and dipped.
Above collar bones,
her scent
smeared,
smelled,
sensed.

He pauses above her throat,
gnawing at her jawline,
teething,
his chew toy soaked
in spit.

Swallowing

I have no problem swallowing sometimes — in spite of the taste it often leaves in my mouth. Certainly it’s not something my mother would ever advise me to do. Call it feminism. Call it Catholicism. But what she doesn’t tell you, what your girl-friends don’t tell you, is that they’ve all done it. It’s an uncomfortable topic, I realize, to admit having been on your knees. That tears sometimes ran down your face. No one ever told me to suck it up and take a deep gulp. That sometimes the act of not fighting, of not pushing a nonsense of an issue, made everything better in the end. No one told me. I just listened. To the women. “I don’t know what came over me. It was so unlike me.” To the men. “It was crazy.” The thing is, crazy can happen to even the sanest girl. It almost feels supernatural when it washes over you. To lose control like that. To project insecurities. To expose your inner deviant. To do things you never thought you would do. Things you promised yourself you would never do. And then, as you watch the sticky aftermath of the situation, you light a cigarette and ask yourself where you took the wrong fork in the road. But sometimes, as you rag the mess away, you can see through the crazy. That sometimes emotion needs to be eliminated. That sometimes it’s really black and white. That sometimes you need to tell your imagination to take a vacation. That you can’t enjoy the sweet without the salt. And that’s when you do what none of the other women tell you they do: you choke it down and say, “I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

Fang bang: El Vampiro goes for blood … maybe not

originally published in Creative Loafing

It was the summer after high school, when days were spent drinking Bacardi at the beach and the nights looking for trouble.

“Can I bum your lighter?” I asked him in Spanish. It worked. It always did. We started talking. He introduced himself. “Me llamo El Vampiro,” he said.

My friends made fun of me. “His name is The Vampire?” they questioned. “Seriously?” Seriously.

We met at my favorite dive bar in Old San Juan. All the pretty, popular Puerto Rican kids hung out at this one bar up the street, but I considered everyone there to be plastic and pretentious. Instead, I opted for something a little grittier, freakier. My bar of choice was Café Culebra, where they played Nine Inch Nails, and the goth kids stood outside the doorway with their trench coats, even on the muggiest of Caribbean summer nights.

El Vampiro was a few years older than me, small-framed with jet-black hair, Bowie-inspired eyes and custom-built vampire fangs from the dentist. It was Tom Cruise before he went Scientology crazy, not Robert Pattinson. He was a weirdo and I got off on it; me, the 18-year-old Puerto Rican punk with the tongue ring, blue-streaked hair, and collection of plaid pants and studded belts.

“What’s up with the one blue contact?” I asked him.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “That’s my natural eye color.” Right.

After we met, we talked on the phone here and there, but a formal relationship wasn’t something on my radar — everyone knows bad boys are for playing with, not staying with.

On the weekends, instead of joining his friends for their amateur Fight Club sessions, we got drunk and climbed the brick wall of the Spanish fort nearby to make out, the waves crashing against the fort and the 1860s cemetery that rests alongside it.

My mother never approved of the guys I dated, but she was particularly horrified by El Vampiro. He wasn’t in college. He worked at the aqueduct and sewerage authority. He was divorced with a child and not yet a quarter of a century old. And, of course, there was the whole vampire thing.

“Can’t you date normal guys?” she asked.

“I’m not marrying the guy,” I explained. “We’re just hanging out.”

We did so for nearly a month when I invited my fang-wearing friend over to my aunt’s court reporting firm, where I was alone at work. No sooner did he arrive than I pushed him onto the office chair and began to straddle his waist while I kissed him.

“Bite my neck,” I told him. He stood up and pushed me off him.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “There’s no one here. I could rape you right now and no one would know.”

“Uh …”

His response confused me more than it frightened me. Suddenly he looked smaller than usual. He looked scared.

“What are you talking about?” I asked him. “Are you going to rape me?” It was a perverse question, I realized.

“No,” he said.

“Then what’s the issue? We’re just making out.”

“You girls put yourselves in these situations where you could be hurt. You don’t take care of yourselves,” he said before he walked out the door. I had no idea what happened. I thought bad boys were supposed to coerce girls into doing bad things, not lecture them like a mother would do. Where was the adventure? Where was the dirt? Where was the fun? I phoned to see if he was OK, but he never picked up.

My summer romance with El Vampiro was officially over.

The next weekend my friends and I went out, when my eyes landed on a tattooed, dark-haired man. “Excuse me,” I said to him in Spanish. “Can I bum your lighter?” When he spoke, I noticed his tongue was pierced in three different places.

“Dude,” I told my friends, “he’s got three tongue rings.” They shook their heads. “Seriously?” Seriously.

“Charlie Sheen is giving polyamory a bad name!” the glittery-eyed redhead hollers.

It’s Day One of Atlanta Poly Weekend at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Airport-Atlanta and I am not really sure what to expect. (The man next to me is knitting.)

Redhead Kelley is one of three speakers about to guide the panel on “Polyamory & Skeptism.” About her disdain for Sheen, Kelley explains she recently came out as a polyamorist to her parents and worried they would associate her lifestyle with the erratic actor’s rants about being in a relationship with two women.

With the projector finally set up, she moves on to a PowerPoint presentation about the importance of speaking the same language in a verbal and social context.

“Polyamory,” Kelley begins, “does not equal cheating.”

So what is polyamory?

“Is it like that show Big Love?” a friend of mine asked me when she found out I was coming to check out APW. (The answer: no.)

Merriam-Webster defines polyamory as the practice of having more than one open, romantic relationship at a time, but if you were to ask any of the participating panelists (a range of professors, therapists, attorneys, web developers, lieutenants, dance instructors, BDSM enthusiasts and steampunks), their definitions are more intimate.

“Polyamory is a different kind of love; it’s a family of love,” says Billy, a 34-year-old married father of three. “Polyamory, ” he adds, “is not a disease. Polyamory is about being in a healthy, open, honest, responsible, ethical, and non-monogamous relationship.”

A poly for 14 years, his current relationship is comprised of his wife as his “primary partner” and a male “secondary partner,” terms used to distinguish levels within a polyamorous relationship, in this case a “triad,” or the romantic involvement between three people.

The most common symbol is the red and white heart (♥) combined with the blue infinity sign (∞).

At the “Coming Out” panel, Billy and his two other partners sit before a group of 20 attendees discussing the personal and social value of polys making their lifestyle known.

“The IT community doesn’t mind so much,” he says. “The more educated, liberal, and open-minded the group, the more receptive they are.”

An open poly for 9 years, Billy is comfortable posting poly-related events on his Facebook and Twitter accounts, despite them being visible to his family and co-workers. His partner, Jeremy, on the other hand, whose Inbox was inundated with Bible verses from his mom after he came out as an Atheist, has yet to come out to his family.

“Are you ready for everyone you know to cut you from their lives?” a woman in the back raises her hand and asks him. “Yes,” he replies.

With the exception of a few people in their 20s and a few black couples, the average attendee is white men and women in their 30s, 40s and 50s. Most people are coupled up, while others sit alone.

They drove here, I think. They marked this weekend on their calendar and made plans to come out and meet other people with the same viewpoint as them, people who won’t judge them. It’s admirable. There are people in sexless marriages who can’t even address their dry spell with their supposed lifelong partner, and yet these men and women invest their time and attend a conference to discuss their socially taboo romantic and sexual amalgamation aloud in front of strangers.

Panelists and attendees are well-spoken, polite and seem to have perfected laughing off cultural adversity, but not without raising questions about Georgia morality clauses that restrict poly coupling, case briefs that could be used in a court room, and how some companies are willing to sponsor Atlanta Pride, but not APW.

“Apparently, there’s a line,” Billy says, “and we’re it.”

Despite a foundation based on having more than one romantic relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved, polyamory is a system most often associated with recreational sex without ties, and is often confused with swinging, open relationships or polygamy.

When Melissa, Billy’s wife, tells people she has a boyfriend, she usually gets the same response: “But how does it work?” they ask. “Would you like me to draw you a diagram?” she jokes, alluding to the sexual roles in their relationship.

Listening to people speak, I notice the reactions people receive about their lifestyle depends on their sex. The response women seem to get is more of a *howcouldyou?!* gasp, while non-poly men seem to socially high-five poly men involved with more than one woman.

In reaction to those who pass judgment on her polyamorous lifestyle, one attendee admits her go-to response is: “How are you monogamous? How can you only love one person at a time?” The room laughs and cheers at this.

As the conversation flows, Billy and Melissa’s preschool-aged daughter sits next to them, crayon in hand, concentrating on her drawing. For the most part, she doesn’t look up during the lecture. Raising children is no easy task, and I wonder how having polyamorous parents affects a child growing up. A part of me wants to take the progressive route and think it has no averse reaction, but another part of me keeps wondering why she’s not wearing ear muffs during the panel.

It surprises me how many children are here. When I first arrived, my illusions of wild sexual exploits and threesomes were immediately shattered as my eyes landed not on a triad couple holding hands or sharing a three-way kiss, but young children running across the room laughing. Throughout the weekend, the children will participate in a scavenger hunt, watch Saturday morning cartoons, and make cardboard flowers, among other scheduled activities.

Upon entering, my eyes also land on a man with a pony tail, which, to quote Seinfeld in a respective, yet different context, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” but my superficial side finds itself contemplating: Where are all the pretty poly people at?

When it comes to sex, I don’t really care what anyone is into, so long as all participating parties consent. It’s true I am not a polyamorist, but it’s also true I haven’t ruled it out. After all, who knows what I’ll be into five years from now? (It’s a slippery slope, or so I’ve heard.)

But, as I look around, my imagination cannot help in shapeshifting attendees into a group of hipster-looking types. If the average attendee bore the same physical appearance of Hollywood hotties such as James Franco and Mila Kunis, then maybe I wouldn’t be leaving alone today. Instead, I have a Danny DeVito look-a-like giving me the eye.

The poly pride flag consists of three equal horizontal colored stripes with a symbol in the center of the flag. The colors of the stripes, from top to bottom are blue, red, and black.

At the “Interpersonal Communication” panel, a shaved-headed 8-year poly and BDSM enthusiast, Ms. Noel passes out a rubric on how to better communication, a crucial component to the lifestyle. Among her advice for a healthy and happy relationship is for all partners to meet once a week and discuss what has and has not worked.

As she speaks, I am distracted by a woman who walks in and sits down. She looks so familiar, I think to myself. I go through my mental filing cabinet, sifting for her identity. The man next to her is shorter than she, wearing a billowy-pirate shirt, a corset and goggles atop his head that he may have purchased from the Indiana Jones set on eBay.

Then it hits me: Dear sweet Jesus and Mary Chain, she was a professor of mine.

Seeing a an academic mentor out in the real world can be odd enough, but this is something else altogether. My memory flashes to that time she missed class because her husband (or was it her?) injured himself in a cycling event. I consider events and conferences other panelists discussed participating in—KinkFest, S&M Convention—and I realize there exists a possibility her husband didn’t injure himself at a cycling event, my imagination drawing an image of him acting as her leather-bound submissive.

Death by Jalapeño

He didn’t like garlic. It was an issue. A big one. Huge, really. “I don’t think this is going to work,” I told him. He didn’t quite appreciate the comment. “You’re making it a bigger deal than it is,” he said. “Am I?”

It wasn’t just the garlic, it was his whole palette really. No steak, no beans, no yam. No tomatoes or onions or cilantro. No oysters or carrots or eggplant. He liked white rice, corndogs and croutons. At the beginning I thought to myself, “It’s okay. Relationships are all about compromise.”

He was the first man I’d ever loved. I’ll admit, I was the first one to say those three words. It was after four months of dating when I wrote it with my finger on his forearm. Marriage wasn’t something on the radar, but it wasn’t exactly an “I love you for now” either.

One Christmas, after we decorated the tree with his parents, we discussed what to eat. “Pizza?” his mother asked. “Sounds good,” I replied. “Do you like supreme pizza?” she asked. “Yeah, I love it.” She ran over and hugged me. “You don’t know how happy this makes me?! They only eat cheese pizza!” Her declaration resonated. In that moment it occurred to me that she’s what I could turn into: a woman whose best night of the year was that time she got a supreme pizza.

Go ahead, judge me. What can I say, I’m a foodie. It’s not his fault his body is so sensitive, but what I like is not my fault either. The fat girl inside me is very demanding. She wants to experience the sweetness of raw clams, the kick of good curried tofu, the tenderness of short-beef ribs simmered in a ginger and black bean sauce.

Plus, what would happen when we’d travel? I hear McDonald’s chicken nuggets taste the same in Europe and Asia as they do in America. But in the meantime we went to concerts and road trips. We kissed and held hands. We even exchanged baby names. “Gertrude,” he suggested.

Then one day we went out for Mexican food. He had the chicken quesadilla and I had the steak nachos supreme, extra jalapenos. We washed the food down with some tequila and went back to his place, where we took off our clothes and my mouth looked for the worm. Later, as I watched him from above, I noticed a look of bewilderment on his face. “Are you okay?”

He grabbed my waist and pushed me off, running to the bathroom shouting obscenities, junk in hand. Water ran from the faucet. “I have hives,” he hollered. I stood up. In the bathroom he tried to soothe his manhood with cold water. I was confused. “What happened?” It was red. And swollen. “I’m pretty sure it was the jalapenos,” he said. “You know what that means: no more jalapenos for you.” I opened my mouth when my inside voice failed me. “I don’t know about all that. We should probably talk.”

Going to the Doctor

Part I: Parked

She opened the door and walked down the hall, past rooms filled with students in large, auditorium-style classrooms. In the bathroom, she flushed the toilet and approached the sink. No soap. She rubbed her hands under the water and reached for a paper towel. No towels. Dirty ones spilled over the waste bin onto the floor. A printed note on the wall read, “We have removed the door to this facility for your convenience.” Thanks, she thought.

To her, this institution made a mockery of the education system. The staff miscalculated GPAs, forgot to register students, e-mails went unanswered, departments refused to communicate internally, and a student could draft a last-minute paper at 4 a.m. and still walk away with an A+.

Walking down the spiral staircase she raised the volume on her portable music player to drown out the sounds made by students collectively pouring out of the classrooms. It was Davis during his cool jazz era. She didn’t want to listen to anyone sing or speak, just wanted time to think about what the day had in store for her. In two hours she would meet with a clinical psychologist at a doctor’s facility to see if she would qualify for free anxiety treatment.

Outside the building, she walked down the sidewalk between sandwich shops and Asian restaurants. She considered what kind of questions the doctor would ask, and how she would answer them. Was she to tell the truth? If she wanted a solution, she knew it would be unwise to omit details which could offer some insight into her condition. Except people didn’t want to know the truth. Moreover, she didn’t want to talk about it.

At the corner of the intersection she took note of the orange hand lit in her direction before looking both ways and crossing the intersection. Davis broke off into a solo on the trumpet when she felt someone touch her shoulder after she reached the sidewalk. She removed her headphones and turned around.

“Didn’t you see the no walking sign?” a police officer asked her.

“No, officer,” she lied. “I was distracted.”

“It’s called jaywalking. I can give you a ticket.”

“Yes, officer,” she said before he walked away.

Rolling her eyes, she put her headphones back on and continued walking, past a small park that breathed among the tall buildings downtown, between firms and banks near the university. To the left of the concrete path were black men sitting and standing along the rock walls that held the park’s roots, stains on their shirts and nail beds. A large gazebo to the right housed a life-size chessboard set. Two black men rivaled deep in thought as others stood in silence and watched the game, the crowd sprinkled with students brave enough to walk outside the park’s surrounding path.

Approaching another intersection, she took note of the orange hand lit in her direction. Fuckers, she said to herself. There was a nice Spring breeze, but it failed to do much to battle the rays soaked by her black jeans and T-shirt.

When she worked at the office of a construction company in Midtown, her boss once advised she not wear so much black.

“It’s off-putting,” he said. “It makes you look like those kids in Little Five Points with the shaved heads and combat boots.”

“What?” she replied.

This was the same boss who came to her every Monday and asked, one arm leaning into the cubicle wall, “So… how was the dungeon this weekend?” He was convinced she went to sex clubs on her days away from the office. She was convinced this was his manner of projecting his own fantasies into the world without having to admit them.

“Why? Afraid I saw you?” she would say.

He’d laugh and walk to his office, the one with a bottle of whisky tucked away in his desk drawer.

“That’s sexual harassment,” a friend of hers said of his routine implication. “Nah, they just think I’m one of the boys,” she’d say. The truth was she felt she could be sailor-mouthed self at that company, which was a nice and comforting advantage to working in a construction company otherwise run by good ol’ country boys. On Fridays she drank with them on the company tab and later would get high with one of her bosses, the one who ended up banging the two most religious girls in the office. “I don’t like taking the Lord’s name in vain,” one of the girls used to say.

Back on the street corner, the walking pedestrian sign finally came on the street light. She walked across the street and down the sidewalk. She swiped her ticket at the parking entrance and got in the elevator when she saw a young man swipe his card. She decided to hold the elevator door open for him. He got in. “Thank you,” he said. She thought he was handsome. Slim, with dark hair, a toothy smile and black Chucks. She wondered what would happen if she asked him to fuck right then and there. The elevator stopped and he stepped out. “Have a nice day,” he said, smiling. “You too,” she beamed.

Up on the fifth floor, she walked out of the elevator towards her car. She opened the trunk and set down her laptop bag, before looking around. With no one in sight, she reached under the car’s jack tucked under the trunk flap and pulled out a small Altoids tin can. Come to me, she thought.

In her car, she set it to idle and turned on the radio. She looked at the clock. Another hour-and-a-half until the appointment. She scanned the parking lot through the rear view mirror before opening the tin can and removing a bud of weed and a jade one-hitter she’d bought in Chinatown in New York City while on vacation. She packed the bowl and took a deep hit, puffing out her cheeks and holding the smoke in. She pictured THC molecules floating through the smoke and clinging to her lungs, their magic seeping in.

Marijuana and she had a love-hate relationship. It made her paranoid unlike it did when she was in high school, to the point where she began to avoid people when on the social drug, and instead holed away with a book or would try to write. Except then when she wrote, she would lose her thoughts, which at the time always seemed like brilliant ideas, but proved to be nothing more than abstract jibberish when read sober.

She took another hit when she heard the elevator. A woman stepped out talking on her cell phone. Lowering the pipe, she sunk down in the driver’s seat and held in the smoke until the woman got into a car. She exhaled. She put the pipe back into the tin can and waited for the woman to drive off. She opened the driver door and looked up to see if there was a cloud of smoke. Nothing. She popped open the trunk and hid the Altoids can back between the spare tire and jack. Before closing the trunk door, she looked around and grabbed her laptop bag and sat back in the driver’s seat. She unfolded the computer and waited for it to turn on.

This was her favorite parking spot. Two more to the left and she would not be able to get an Internet signal, but it was always guaranteed to work from this corner of the deck. She checked here-mail and her Facebook and CNN, as if the world would object less if they knew she logged on for normal, wholesome reasons. She clicked the Private Browsing option on her browser and typed in her favorite adult site. Her eyes looked at the rear view mirror before she smiled at the lifeless parking deck and focused her attention on the screen. She supposed she could have shopped at Target to kill time before the appointment. Or maybe bought a book or some coffee, but none of that interested her at the moment. She finished and put her finger in her mouth, tasting her juices. Delicious, she thought. Lowering the driver window, she lit a cigarette and looked at the clock. Forty-five minutes left. Time to hit the road.