Author: D'jaevle

Grain of Sand

Imagine you are a single grain of sand in the palm of my hand.

Imagine you have taken everything about yourself, your smiles and insecurities, your dreams and shames, your needs and fears, and you have compressed them into a tiny particular of existence.

It’s easy.

Start with yourself, the YOU that is reading these words. This is your core. Now wrap your hopes around it, squeezing them down until they shrink and harden around the center. Now layer on your secrets, the ones you won’t even admit even to yourself. Apply steady pressure until they, too, harden. Next is the burden of responsibilities, the weight of other’s expectations. A heavy layer, it may take a bit longer to squeeze them down.

Do this with everything about yourself. Strip yourself bare and lay yourself over the tiny sphere you have created. Drape your desires along the surface like a funeral veil, wrap the limbs of allowance around its curves like an embrace. And when you think you have nothing left, place yourself inside and draw inward, continuously, until all that exists is this tiny bit of you.

A grain of sand.

In the palm of my hand.

in Sickness and in Health

A New Start

The day after New Years I awoke, had a decent-sized breakfast, and sat in front of my computer to do some writing.

Four hours later I realized my food was not going to stay down. I went into the bathroom, put my hair into a ponytail, knelt by the porcelain goddess, and vomited up my breakfast, the previous night’s dinner, and any snacks I’d had in between. I waited until I was sure there was nothing left in my stomach and pulled myself to my feet.

I spent the next few minutes running cool water over my face, rinsed my mouth out, and went back into my study to wait out of the rest of the flu.

fever + Anthony Hopkins cinema

That night I was caught in a fevered ribbon of an idea. I was on the Bonneville Salt Flats speedway and was attempting to beat the current land-based speed record. I would awake every thirty minutes, curled against my pillow, with a renewed conviction to try again. I don’t recall my dreams. Around four AM, muscle ache outweighed my tenacity and I pulled myself out of bed. At seven, I called in sick to work.

I spent the day watching bad television and ate a bit of toast.

the loss of porn

I slept. The next morning I managed to dress and bathe myself without too much discomfort. I sat down to check my e-mail before work and found my computer in a state of distress. The hard drive was failing.

I went to work.

I came home.

The next six hours were spent trying to recover data from the dying machinery. I was unsuccessful. Six months of pictures, music, projects, writing. Gone.

But the most painful loss are those items whose existence I may never recall. Snippets of words and ideas cast back into the cauldron of my consciousness.

I went to sleep.

“Ah well, fuck it.”

You become complacent with competence. You forget how it feels to fail at something. To lose something of importance.

But without loss, you never understand what you have.

Time to start over.

Admission

Admission is a quiet prayer of sorts, a question, a plea, a moment of desire that you can feel in your erratic pulse, in the heat of your own skin, in the growing need to have more.

And sometimes it only takes a single word to get under your skin, to leave you tight inside, hungry and wanting, waiting for the next word, the next command that sends you to your knees. One word to bend you over, to expose you.

Mr. Postman

I have boxes of letters.

These boxes are filled with colorful postcards, poetry and short-story crammed packages, pictures, lipstick stained pages, scented love notes, and letters so long they required creative origami to fit within envelopes.

Between 1992 and 1997, I spent a great deal of my misbegotten youth flirting on-line with pretty much any halfway interesting female I could find. Few proved interesting enough to talk with beyond the first few months, but their letters are testaments to my unrelenting mission to explore the female mind.

And by ‘explore the female mind’, I mean ‘engage in sexual conquest’.

This was before everyone had a folder on their desktop marked ‘personal pictures’ filled with an intimate reservoir of carefully selected photos ready to be attached to your most recent Craigslist correspondence.

No, back then it had to be done the old-fashioned way. Via snail mail.

Seduction occurred in the following progression:

1. On-line chat.
2. Phone conversation.
3. Letter with picture.
4. Real life meeting.

More often than not, I never actually got to step four; I was too shy or too busy to really push beyond step three. But I did reach step three a lot.

In truth, I did love receiving letters. There is something about reading handwritten words that has a solidity and elegance. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t partly motivated by my hope for a picture when I requested they write me.

And so I have stacks of letters. Most are filled with details of day-to-day lives that read like diary entries without the truly juicy parts. Some were more intimate, expressing love in the way only aspiring teenager writers can. And a few, just a few, wrote stories, erotic musings that filled my late adolescent fantasies.

Any Excuse for Nudity

It was the day after Christmas and I had spent the night at NE and Bear’s house. After cleaning from the previous night’s festivities, Bear headed to the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner that evening.

I played a quick board game with NE in which she thoroughly kicked my ass. After basking in her victory (rubbing it in), she stood to head upstairs and change out of her comfy clothes.

“Going to let me watch you dress?” I asked.

“No! My room is messy. No way.”

I shook my head and smiled. “Alright.”

She turned to head upstairs.

“Wait.”

She paused.

“If I can’t watch you dress… Come here.” She stared at me. I waited until she slowly walked over. “If I can’t watch you dress, I’ll watch you undress. Hands over your head.” My fingers drew her large white shirt over her freshly washed skin. It was just chilly enough to raise tiny goosebumps along her breasts. My teeth caught her nipples, dragging them to hardness.

Her sweatpants followed her shirt, and then her panties, leaving her naked in the middle of her kitchen. She shivered. I felt the rhythm of her breathing catch, falter, the anticipation tight in the exposed lines of her body.

I gave her bare ass a nice solid smack. “Now, go.”

She glared at me and ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs. At the top of them, I heard her yell, “I hate you!”

It was turning out to be quite a nice holiday week.

Cadence

It is an act both intimate and calculated. An act of attention. Concentrated focus on that space just above the back of her knees and below the small of her back.

Is there anything more Christmas than a bared ass painted red?

***

Fingers hook on panties, drawing them over hips, thighs, letting them slip down to pool at your ankles. Hands guide you to lean up against the desk, drawing your hips back – a move that presses your ass outward, making of it a tempting target.

First, a light tease – fingers caressing the curve of each cheek, taking time to enjoy the simple lines, and just as you begin to relax, a *slap* as hand meets skin. Awakening nerve endings, reminding you of just how exposed you are. Moments pass and then another, on the other cheek, bringing the prettiest flush of red to the surface.

It is the intake of breath, the rhythm of slapping, the discordance of hands on naked skin that pulls you in. The hand becomes more than just an instrument leaving red patterns across your cheeks, it becomes a burning brand.

For a moment there is a calm, a moment of silence while your skin, sensitive to everything, is left alone. Then the gentle touch of fingers – almost surprising, as they trace lightly over your skin. One finger starts at the small of your back, tracing a line slowly along the edge between your cheeks, dipping inward. It reaches the apex of your thighs – and doesn’t stop.

There is a light slow brush of two fingers against you, teasing outer lips as they slip to the hard throbbing nub a bit further up. Agonizing in its deliberate slowness, in the obvious pleasure in holding you there…and then the calm is over, for even as those fingers part to run along either side of your clit, the other hand awakens your ass again to the pleasures of skin meeting skin with an impact sharp enough to make you cry out.

If I Tell You a Story, Part II

The path of seduction is laid out in the promise. It starts with a simple idea, a story that captures your attention long enough to bring color to your skin. You’re curious, you want to know what comes next. You read on and now you’re more than curious. You’re hungry. You ask for more.

Now you are truly caught, because the next moment is written just for you, catering to desires you only half-understand, desires unintentionally revealed in the few short words you shared. You are instilled with a need, now, a need not only for the words themselves, but the idea of them. You live with the knowledge that you have somehow given over some small part of yourself to this stranger, exchanging a sliver of self for the presence of his words. Need becomes its own aphrodisiac. You are fed morsels of potential. You are trapped by the proximity of ideas in truth. The act of salvation through experience. Bite-sized liquid heat that leaves you vulnerable.

You are fed, and yet, it is never quite enough.

You are always left wanting more.

—

I closed the study door behind you. My fingers never left your wrist as I turned to face you. My fingers curled around your hand and I lifted your wrist to my lips. I tasted the heat from your skin. I bruised your pulse with teeth and lips.

In silence, I worked. Hands drew your shirt over your head, leaving you in jeans and bra. Then your waist. Fingers unsnapped buttons and drew jeans over hips. I knelt, lifted one leg. I felt your trembling return as I guided your feet free. Calmly, but without hesitation, I moved. I left you little time to think.

You were stripped.

My breath was warm against your stomache, a calculated reminder of your current state of undress. Fingers curled around your calves, and slowly, quietly, moved up the back of your legs. I took my time. I wanted you to feel the strong warm touch of my hands on your skin, I wanted your body to understand it, to become at ease with the way I touch you.

I found the back of your thighs and paused. My face cradled close to your skin, I looked up, met your gaze.

I wasn’t done teasing yet. Not done making you witness how far I could make you go. My fingers caught on your panties and dragged one side of your panties low.