Free Write

As she passed away,

each breath was shallower than the one before,

and the spaces between the breaths widened.

Like tides coming in to take her out to sea,

carrying her away to realms unknown to me,

leaving me on the shore.

There was a crack. Loud and angry and sad.

The sound of me breaking in two.

Blood and pain and memories poured from my wound.

And I shivered, cold and alone.

More alone than I had ever been in my life.

And as the currents swept her physical self into the ether,

I grit my teeth as tears fall.

Life may go on, but right now,

death goes on too.

Plowing rows of destruction through my heart,

and planting seeds that pain will quickly grow from

with lush abundance.

Soon the place where my heart used to be

will be full of tall, bushy weeds that will choke the soil

and block out the sun.

And I will be cast into a darkness that I hate

but cannot escape.

I worked the streets.

I changed the sheets.

I gave my pimp my money.

I worked my skills.

I paid our bills.

And you might think it’s funny.

I made him rich.

Made myself his bitch.

And enjoyed his lust and flowers

I had the light.

I shined so bright.

But he always had my power.

I played my role.

I sold my soul

in curvy, sexy drops.

I was the star

but was too far

below to reach the top.

But one day I took

a closer look

to see why I was off track.

The heavy weight

I thought was my fate

was his knee upon my back.

To be continued…

Reworked an old piece of mine

I am the quiet.

The total silence.

When the world is screaming,

I am the dreaming.

I am heat steaming

making cold nights hotter.

I am the shooter

and the five-oh spotter.

I mute the world

when it gets too loud.

I am a woman.

I am haughty and proud.

I am precision.

I am the igniter.

I possess every weapon.

Hold them tight.

Hold them tighter.

I’m lover.

I’m fighter.

I am the lighter

casting out the dark,

leading the way home

and firing up the spark

that ignites heart’s fire.

Love. Lust. Desire.

I am the calm.

Easing. Pleasing.

Never leaving.

Sssshhhhh.

Do not disturb.

I am freeing tension

from the body.

I am the quiet.

The total silence.

Back to my creative beginnings – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Confessions Of A Cell Phone – A Short Pandemic Interlude

Enhance this experience by checking out this playlist of songs related to the story:

They say if you really want to know the truth about someone, you should go through their phone. That’s definitely true about her. I should know because I am her phone. I am a Note android phone, and it’s all in me. (She says Apple is a cult.) I am huge, but that was what she wanted. One day she needed a new phone, so she went into the Sprint store and said, “My eyes are bad, give me the biggest screen you got.” They handed her a Note 5, and she’s been with Notes ever since. All her truth is here in me – the things she is proud of and the things she wouldn’t necessarily want people to know about. I am the place where she stores her desires and longings when she cannot find a place for them in the real world. She hides her loneliness in me too. What most often crosses her mind can be found in the folders of nude faceless pics, in the screenshots of conversations from DMs that she likes to read over and over, and in her Tidal playlists. She has three special playlists for the songs that console her when she is lonely – “Tossing and Turning, Volumes 1, 2, and 3.” The three are a collection of love and sex songs. I’ve heard from other phones that most people keep their love songs segregated from other songs. She’s strange in that she does not. Her dirty, raunchy “fuck me hard” songs are right alongside her romantic “I’ll love you always and forever” songs. The only exception to this are the Prince slow jams, which get their own list of course. When she shared a Tidal list with a friend once, and they commented on how there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the collection of songs assembled, she explained that she groups songs by how they make her feel first and foremost, then by their lyrics. So if a love song makes her feel the same way a sex song does, they went together on the same list. Music was important to her. It was how she managed her moods. When the pandemic hit, managing moods became a priority for everyone, including her. As the world shut down and in-person socializing dwindled, she found herself living in me more and more. I was her lifeline to friends and family, to food, to music, to all the things keeping her sane as the weeks of COVID restrictions turned into months with no end in sight.

She was afraid of COVID, that she would catch it and die and leave all her loved ones and unfulfilled dreams behind – her dreams of being successful, of being wealthy, of being in love. Her day-to-day life became full of anxiety and isolation as she began working from home and having almost everything delivered, from meals to groceries. She found herself struggling to sleep at night too, so she would spend hours with me, looking for whatever distractions she could find. And with my help, she found them. Someone was always awake, wanting to talk, craving the presence of others however they could get it, just like her. She often found herself participating in DM discussions deep into the night, and on Zoom chats where people laid their souls bare more freely than they ever had. I’m not human, but I think being so close to so much sickness and death made people want to feel alive, to take chances. And the chances they most often wanted to take began with late-night conversations with people only slightly familiar to them.

Men visited her DMs even before COVID, but as she began being more receptive to company to combat her loneliness and her anxiety, the numbers increased. She is friendly with people who reach out to her initially. She’s a great conversationalist. She is very open – this is the word most of them use to describe her. Very non-judgmental. Very calm. Unflappable. Talking to her feels safe, as if you could reveal anything and she would respond in just the right way.  She flirts, and she doesn’t necessarily discourage flirting, as long as it is light-hearted and not too serious. She is adept at the double/triple/quadruple entendre. Snappy retorts and witty chatter flow from her easily and freely. She’s vulgarly funny and philosophical all at once. She is well-versed on lots of topics. Astrology. Science. Literature. Visual arts. Movies. Fashion. Sports. International relations. But her boundaries are clear, and she polices those boundaries fiercely. A single, even slight violation of them can cause banishment from her queendom. Men came to her, seeking conversation and whatever else she might suggest or permit, but at some point or other they all tried to press past those boundaries, some more quickly than others.  In most cases, when the word “sex” would show up in one of her DMs, especially after only a few days of conversation with a man she didn’t know well, the discussion immediately dwindled. The subject matter pivots. It’s funny to me. If the man in question does not adjust his tactics once she pivots away from the sex talk, she blocks him – after all, she gave him a chance to change his course. The block will happen immediately upon receipt of unsolicited penis pictures. As soon as I get the notification that a jpeg is coming to her DMs, I wish I could tell the man to not do it. I want to tell him this is not the way. But I’m just her phone, and I can only deliver the messages that are sent. I can’t stop the block when it happens either.

This is what I expected to happen with him.

It was innocent at first. But it always is. They knew each other just well enough to be slightly familiar. This was the modus operandi of many of the pandemic DM visits. Usually not a complete stranger, but definitely not a friend, or even an acquaintance. He went into her DMs one evening to respectfully inquire about something she posted on her page. She responded, and that was how their conversations began. When the whole thing first started,  I chuckled a little. I did not chuckle for long. She took to him immediately, though I have no idea why, and he responded equally enthusiastically. He seemed no different than the others to me, but to her, he was very different. Neither of them interrogated the other much about their personal lives. They just started talking about pop culture and religion and music and art and life in the middle of the night. Their chats got longer and longer. Sometimes I’d be down to below ten percent before she’d remember to charge me, and she never forgot to charge me before he came along. Soon they were chatting for hours non-stop on a daily basis. I noticed the first time he said “fuck” to her during one of their marathon chats. He typed to her, “I want to fuck and be fucked.” I waited for her to block him. This word was always a violation. She didn’t respond to the comment, but she didn’t block him either. 

Then the pictures began to go back and forth. He asked for pictures of her, and she sent them. He called her beautiful and she told him he was full of it. But he continued to call her beautiful whenever she sent him a picture. The first dick pic he sent at 3 a.m. one Wednesday morning didn’t result in a block from her. That was unprecedented. She actually responded in kind with a rather revealing photo of herself. I was taken aback. She didn’t do that kind of thing. It was like the two of them were on some other planet where nothing mattered but what they did together.

After a couple of months of talking, he offered to take her to lunch when things got safer and the “world opened up” as he put it, and she agreed. They would spend hours talking about this future lunch date, about what they were going to eat and how much they were going to enjoy it, and how they would finally be able to hug each other in person instead of sending the little hugging cat gifs they usually sent to each other when they ended their chats. They spoke very responsibly about wanting to protect themselves and each other, and waiting until outside opened up. But I knew they weren’t going to wait. I could tell by the way they talked about seeing each other. Pandemic or not, people hook up. Phones know this. As phones, we see people chatting in the DMs with the full intention of not seeing each other until it was “safe.” And they really do mean it at the time. They talk about meeting outside, wearing masks, staying apart while seeing each other. “We can pack a picnic lunch and eat in the park,” they say. They check the weather reports faithfully, looking for days that are warm enough to be outdoors comfortably. But we phones always know the truth, which is the more they chat, and the more pictures they exchange, and the more the words “I want to see you” appear in their chats, and the more they talk about figuring out how to meet and be safe, the faster the definition of “safe” changes. Then caution gets thrown to the wind.

A couple of short weeks after that first date was mentioned, they went out together to “hang”, deciding they didn’t need to wait months to spend a little time together, as long as they did it safely.  I wish I could tell her not to, but I can’t. They wore their masks religiously for the first few hours they spent together. But after a few too many hours together, driving around, enjoying each other’s company tremendously, boundaries rapidly disappearing, eventually parking to watch the sun set, he asked if he could kiss her. Though he wanted to kiss her lips, she directed him to her cheek, and he removed his mask and planted a long, soft kiss on her face, nuzzling her cheek slightly and resting there, inhaling her scent before pulling away and putting his mask back on. I guess they felt those few unmasked seconds were safe. But one thing I know, human interactions are never safe. Volatility is a part of the human condition. Pandemics make human interaction even more dangerous.  

Tonight was not safe at all by COVID standards. Tonight she is scrolling through “Tossing and Turning, Volume 2” while lying in bed, under the covers. He is with her. He is naked. She is too. Right before she picked me up to scroll through this particular playlist, he had been kissing her all over – her fingers, her arms, her thighs, her calves, her back, her shoulders, her ass. The curves of his lips had paid tribute to almost every curve she possessed. She had not asked him to do any of these things. He had been sitting on one side of the room a few minutes earlier, and she moved to the other side of the room, lying down on the bed, fully clothed at first. He joined her, sitting down next to her, very uncertain about how he should proceed at first. It was too much like all the fantasies he’d been having for weeks prior, and the unfamiliarity of being so very close to her in real-time slowed his decision-making about how to best let her know his intentions. But soon they were both naked, and he immediately began to kiss every bit of her fragrant flesh. She permitted this, and at first he wasn’t sure she was enjoying it. After a few minutes she slid away from him and reached for me, saying, “I want to hear some music.” And now, as she scrolled through her list, he stared, marveling at her skin’s smoothness, longing to touch her again. 

And as she ran her fingers across my face, perusing the selections that were part of “Tossing and Turning, Volume 2” list, he watched her with so much lust in his eyes, it made me uncomfortable to see it. His lips were slightly parted, and his breathing was ragged. He was staring at her breasts now as she considered what musical selection would be best for this moment. Though I saw it all, I still couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Trust just sprang up between them like weeds. I knew it was because of the pandemic. It has intensified everything for everyone. If it weren’t for the pandemic, I promise you they wouldn’t be together now. Social media acquaintances are all they would have ever been. But here they were, him staring at her, waiting to pounce, and her knowing but pretending to be oblivious. She lay down upon the bed, on her stomach, me in her hands, scrolling and scrolling. He watched her hands move across my screen jealously, wishing she would touch him. She stretched and scrolled, and his erection jumped up, trying to move towards her. I saw him tear a condom open and roll it over his intensely hard dick. As soon as she decided on “Moments In Love” and she touched me in the place that made the song begin, he quickly moved toward her, lying across her back, calling her name and pressing the head of his penis between her vagina’s lips in one fluid motion. It paused there a moment, and he inhaled sharply, not quite expecting the tightness he found there. He was unsure ever so briefly, but she moaned in obvious pleasure and arched her back upwards, sending her pussy out to meet him, and suddenly he found himself sliding into her wetness. As I began to play the opening chords of the song, she dropped me as she clutched the sheets, and I fell to the carpet. Fortunately for them, I fell speaker-side up, so they could still hear me as they began to give and take all the things they’d promised each other in all the DMs. As they spend time figuring each other out sexually, my role is to provide the soundtrack. But I do watch as well, and listen. Humans are fascinating to me. These two are especially fascinating.

As he moves more deeply into her, I hear her say his name, and he says hers in response. I remember them talking about this very moment – the moment when they would say each other’s names in this way. It was 37 days ago. I remember her saying she wanted to say his name, and he would type her name over and over sometimes. She doesn’t say his name loudly, but it is still forceful, far above a whisper, but her voice is tight and tender and full of pleading. It was a question and an answer at the same time. She repeats his name every time he presses the full weight of his body and his desire into her. He worries briefly that he may be hurting her. He isn’t. She loves it, and he quickly figures out, based on how her body responded to him, that he truly can be himself with her. She brings her hips to him over and over with complete abandon, her pussy clutching at his dick for dear life as the waters rose in her. He starts to pound harder, and he can feel her getting wetter as he does, and it pleases him more than he can say. “Moments In Love” is a long song, and they keep pace with every change in the music. When the music slows, they slow their movements to a delicious grinding. When the music pounds, they pound. When the pounding ends, they stroke with intention. She sighs, and it is as if she is melting into him. She hasn’t melted in a long time. I wonder if she picked him instead of the others for this very reason – maybe she knew his heat would be enough to cause her to melt. the hardness she’d carried around for the past five years. 

It is exactly like they described in all those DMs over all the weeks’ prior, starting 99 days ago. But even more so.  She had always clung to the familiar and known, even when it disappointed her. He was just the opposite. Unfamiliar. Unknown. He was all the things she feared in men. But not now, not today. With him she was wild and brave and free. So was he. Sometimes I would review their conversations when they were done, and would compare them to how she was with other men who employed similar tactics to get to her. Unlike those other men, she was explicit with him, and he was with her. She called his dick “beautiful” when he sent pictures of it. He told her about his desire to lick her clit and make her cum in great detail. About licking her breasts, kissing her lips. No matter how far he went, she met him there, and at times exceeded him, and vice versa. Their meeting was like two worlds colliding. Their boundaries evaporated nanoseconds after they met, and they fused into a single pulsing mass of humanity, an odd combination of love and admiration and lust and longing. 

When they would talk into the wee hours about what they wanted from each other, time and time again the words “to stay in this moment” would appear in their chat conversations. It was meant to keep the other focused on their time together. It was something a lot of phones saw in the COVID pairings that cropped up these days. People meeting online, away from prying eyes, colliding together with great force, then placing themselves in a bubble where nothing existed but them. “Staying in this moment” was a mantra against all the things meant to force reality onto them, meant to make them examine what they were doing, and why. Because the why just didn’t matter to them. Now their connectedness was just as undeniable and real as COVID. The final frontier was being explored right now as I played music for them. Their masks were completely off.

He was stroking her with deeper dedication, feeling every bit of her insides, like a parched man finding an oasis. As “Moments In Love” reached its crescendo, I heard a sound from him, and then from her, and he collapsed onto the bed. They both breathed heavily. I felt her reach for me, and as she picked me up, he reached for her, pulling her close. He kissed her. She kissed him back, then turned to look back at me. She touched my screen and summoned the “Prince Slow Jams” list. She pressed me one last time to cue up the songs and dropped me. I fell to the bed. I looked to see what songs she requested, and I trembled when I saw what she had planned for them.

“Insatiable.” “Scandalous.” “Adore.” “The Beautiful Ones.” “Slow Love.”

She had been playing Prince songs for the past 21 days as she lay awake in bed at night thinking of him when she wasn’t talking to him. They were going someplace that there would be no returning from. He placed his arms around her, and she did the same. He began to kiss her. And I knew he was going to kiss her for a while. She returned his kiss, and she touched his face as she did. She moved her fingers against his face so that her hands and her lips could remember how it felt to kiss him. It was so intimate, so tender. And as the song played on, they continued to kiss, and when their lips parted he would murmur lyrics from the song into her mouth.

KISS. “Tonight we video…” KISS KISS. “No one will ever know.” KISS KISS KISSING. “We’ll erase the naughty bits.” KISSSSSSSS. “I’ll show my…” KISSSSSSSS. “If you show your…” I held my breath as I watched them and the song moved along. She traced his lips with her tongue, licking the corners and nibbling gently.

KISSSSSSS. “There’s no telling how far I’d go. ‘Cause when it comes to you, I know. I’m insatiable and I just can’t stop.” KISSSSSS. KISSSSSS. “Even if I wasn’t thirsty I would drink every drop.”

She said nothing, allowing him to seduce her with Prince’s lyrics and music. Eyes closed, falling, falling, falling under the spell of his lips. I watched him anchor himself to her with his lips, his tongue, his mouth. I watched and watched and watched as she submitted to his siren song, kissing him back. I realized she had kissed him more in those few minutes than she had kissed anyone in the last five years. “Insatiable” is six minutes and thirty-seven seconds long. I know this because it shows up on the song’s display on my face. They kissed for every one of those 397 seconds.

As “Scandalous” began to play, he lay her down upon the bed. He slid down her body and planted kisses along the way. When he got to her pussy, he parted her thighs and settled himself there. She opened her legs to receive him and he kissed her clit, just as he promised he would. As he did, she covered her face with her hands and cried out into her cupped palms.

He inhaled her smell as he kissed her there. I distinctly recall him telling her that he was going to put his tongue on her clit. He told her that often, especially recently. He told her he wanted to explore her this way. In the three days prior to today, the word “clit” appeared in their chat 19 times. And now, he kept every bit of his word. His tongue darted and danced at the entrance to her, kissing, licking, sucking in configurations that made her squirm excitedly, moans moving through her throat, leaving her mouth, and making their way to his ears. It was as if he was reading the messages he sent to her, ticking off each and every single thing he’d sent to her DMs, making sure he did not disappoint, or fall short, or forget anything he’d told her he was going to do. Now he was fucking her slowly with his tongue, flicking it as he went deeper into her, curling around her clit and saluting it as he did. Drawing slow circles into her skin with his tongue. And she grew wetter with every flick. And he felt her happy pussy’s weeping fall into his mouth, making him want to stay there forever. “You taste like heaven,” he said into her softness, continuing to kiss her pussy with great reverence as if he were praying. For him, the answers to all his problems were right there in her. 

He often said intensely seductive things to her, as if he knew seductive words and phrases would lead him to exactly where he was right now – learning all the things he had always wondered about her pussy. The phrase “you are beautiful” appeared 180 times in their chats. “Please you” showed up 108 times. Adjectives and adverbs littered their conversations, especially from him, as he enjoyed telling her exactly what thoughts about her crossed his mind. They would play a game called “Paying Tribute” where they would say complimentary things to each other. When it was his turn to pay tribute to her, he would type line after line about her eyes and her lips and her smile and her skin and her hair and her thighs. She once said that she “loved seeing herself the highly exaggerated way he spoke about her” during these times. Another thing that made him happy was how she smelled. It wasn’t perfume. It was just her. And he wanted her scent to cling to him.

She grabbed his face and rubbed her pussy into it, soaking his facial hair even more thoroughly and completely. He encouraged her, nodding his head as he continued to please her pussy as completely as is humanly possible. I was impressed with his stamina. She was also. To show my approval I made sure I randomly played “Dive” by Usher once the Prince interlude ended. That seemed to really inspire and motivate him, because when it played she became more intensely vocal, saying his name and making noises that expressed her pleasure even more clearly. Her hands would rapidly pat the bed when she became excited, nervous energy moving through her hands, rhythmically patting the sheets faster and then faster. The action somehow kept her from screaming, which she really wanted to do. I watched her bite her lip long and hard as he feasted on her. When the song ended he raised his head, and she immediately moved away from him, grabbing the covers and curling up in a fetal position on one side of the bed. It was as if she were afraid of him. He immediately positioned himself behind her, putting his arms around her, cuddling her and putting his still moist lips on the back of her neck. She smelled herself on him and smiled. She stretched her body out to allow his body to enfold hers. Their legs intertwined and he held her tighter. Now she felt safe, and he was glad.

It was a lot for two people who knew so little about each other.

As they lay there recuperating, working to stay in their moment and not think about anything else, I randomly played Sade’s “Kiss Of Life.” As the song played and they started to inhale and exhale in unison, both trying not to doze off, I continued watching them. It occurred to me that they were exactly like the pandemic. It was impossible to say how long it was going to last, what twists and turns it might take, or who might get hurt along the way. I am thankful I am just a phone. Because being human is quite complicated.

God. Is. Me.

I want a riverside

to lay my burdens down next to.

A rock to cling to in my storm.

A place to find strength, hope, and comfort.

But these days

I provide all those things to myself.

Though it hurts like hell and exhausts me completely.

So now I offer up prayers to myself.

I am the demi-god in my own life.

I am a mortal, elevated, forced to rise to superhuman status.

Though I never had any desire to be anything other than human.

But my life now requires me to be on some god-level shit.

Because prayers give me no solution.

Chants provide no answers.

Meditation doesn’t ease my anxiety.

My altar offerings gather dust, rot, and serve no purpose.

Shiny stones and moonlit glow are pretty but not potent.

So fuck it.

Now I am my own deity.

I offer up the praises to myself.

I turn to me when I’m low and broken.

I find ways to get myself over.

Sing spirituals about my dark eyes and coily hair.

Baptize myself in my tears and grant myself life everlasting.

Strengthen my muthafuckin’ soul until its muscle bound.

Bring three parts of me into a single glorious power filled beautiful beast.

Mark 1 1 1 across my forehead.

I’ll make the miracles of full refrigerators and wi-fi access happen every day.

Turn water bills into paid water bills.

Raise my dusty house from the dead and fill it with love.

Kill the waterbugs that show their ugly grubby faces in my basement sometimes.

Though I hate bugs and killing them terrifies me.

Magically produce my own moist satisfying orgasms from my abandoned places.

Find ways to rejoice when my life is lonely.

Write holy books testifying to my greatness.

Create mythology around my existence.

And then…when I have performed all these works,

eased all my pain

and the pain of a few others too,

made a way out of no way,

maybe, just maybe…

God will show up.

Mommy

Last week I saw my therapist for the first time since I recovered from COVID. The two weeks I spent lying in bed while my body figured out how to defeat this thing was a very sobering and humbling experience. It also gave me time to really think about the things that don’t get to take hold of me because I’m moving around so much. This meant me bringing a lot to my therapist, starting with my relationship with my mother.

Today is the anniversary of my mother’s passing – three years ago today I sat in my living room with my mother as she left this realm and transitioned to the next one. I was the only one present. I wanted it that way. I always knew I would be called upon to escort my mom to the edge of this realm and wave goodbye as she crossed over. I didn’t think I would be capable of doing it, that I would be strong enough. But I was. As I told my therapist, my family has a lot of rituals around death. This included believing in “The Gift,” as it was called in my immediate family.

Everyone had a little bit of “The Gift” it was said. Everyone had some ability to perceive beyond what exists in front of them. Everyone could foretell the future to some extent if they would just hold still and heed the signs and signals around them, waiting to be deciphered and understood. For nearly everyone, the ability to know without full awareness of the knowing, to know instinctively, without effort, was within reach. In some cases having “The Gift” meant the ability to make connections with dead ancestors and receive messages from them to bring back to those of us still in the realm of the living. In some cases it meant foreseeing the future through dreams or signs or other divinations. While all my relatives were devout Christians who took their beliefs quite seriously, including their beliefs around not interacting with supernatural forces, at the same time, most believed in “The Gift” too.

My mother possessed “The Gift” to some degree. My mother was always supremely comfortable around death, which as a child frightened me a lot. She was always looking for messages from the ancestors, in her day to day life and especially in her dreams. She always expected dead friends and relatives to come to her in her dreams once they passed away. And they always came to her at some point, without fail. She would summon them, and they would find their way to her while she slept. It was a tradition of sorts – a family member would pass away, my mother would carefully collect an obituary from their funeral to put away with her other keepsakes and mementos, and she would remark, “guess they’ll be coming to see me soon.” She prepared for them in a way, rolled out a welcome mat for them in her subconscious mind. I could see my mom preparing food and drink for the new ancestors in my mind’s eye; my mother’s hospitality was unmatched when it came to guests in our home, so there was no reason that would change just because these guests were dead. She was always pleased when she could wake up in the morning and announce that recently deceased aunt or uncle so-and-so or cousin or friend such-and-such had visited her in her dreams. Then she’d detail the events of the dream, happily recounting the time they’d spent together. Then she would retrieve her lottery dream books and decide what numbers to play that day based on who had visited her and what they shared. After consulting my sister (who held similar beliefs as strongly as my mom did), she would carefully write out her list of three and four digit numbers. She’d always play the “death number” (I never quite knew what that meant), and sometimes the ancestor’s birthdate, birth year, house number, or some combination of numbers related to them. For some reason ancestral visitors were always presumed to have winning lottery numbers to share with those of us on this plane, and my mom would prepare a long list of number to be played, in the hope that she would hit for a tidy sum of money that would offer some cushion against whatever financial troubles were befalling us at the time.

“The Gift” was like all the secret things that seemed to encircle my family as a child – no one offered me explanation, comfort or counsel regarding these things. No matter how normal my mom tried to make it seem, the ease with which she communicated with the dead troubled me a great deal. I was very afraid of death, and her lack of fear was confusing and confounding. But no one in my family expressed any shock at my mom’s afterlife social life. Cousins would often call my mom asking if she had heard from this dead loved one or that dead loved one. If some dead loved one took too long, by my mother’s estimation, to visit her, she would become indignant, saying something like, “do you know cousin so-and-so still hasn’t come to see me! It’s been a month now!” Her tone said she was feeling disrespected by the new ancestor, and whenever they did show up, they would have to explain their tardiness to her satisfaction. It frightened me so much in fact, when I became an adult, I told my mother, my sister, my dad, my uncle, and any family member that would listen that I did NOT want any of them visiting me once they passed on, even if they figured out a way to. I wanted no parts of them in that way once they left this place. I had no interest in having “The Gift”. And to their credit, none of my dead relatives have returned to me. Not my dad. Not my uncle – my mom’s brother. Not my sister. Not even my mom, which actually saddened me. But my mom has returned to visit my daughter fairly often in my daughter’s dreams – oddly enough I find myself envying the afterlife relationship my daughter is able to continue to have with my mom. But something in me knows because of my declaration, my mom cannot come to me – at least not yet anyway. So I am at peace with it as best as I can be.

Five generations of my family have died in the house I live in currently, including my grandfather, both my parents, and my uncle. And my great aunt was living in this house when she passed away in the hospital. My mother and I sat with my uncle and father when they passed, as I sat with my mother when she passed, and as I am sure my children will sit with me when the time comes. Shortly before the person passes, the ritual I call the “death march” takes place, where family come to visit the person that is expected to be the dearly departed soon. I remembered my mother’s death march clearly – several family members came to see her the weekend before she passed. She was not pleased with their visit, because she felt they did not actually spend much time with her. Her hospital bed was in the living room, and they spent most of their time in the dining room with each other. My mother expressed to me her displeasure at that, saying, “I don’t even know what they came down here for. They didn’t come to see me.” I didn’t share her sentiments with the visiting family at the time – contrary to how my mother felt, they really were doing their best in their own way. The family members left that Sunday, and my mom died two days later. I organized a beautiful, expensive funeral for my mother that I know would have pleased her.

When circumstances in my life forced me to move back into this house a couple of years ago, a few short months after my mom died, I became very much aware of how much death had taken place in the house. I had lived somewhere else for a long time, and the difference in my former home and the house my mom left to me was night and day in terms of how they felt to me. I talked to my therapist about this, about how I felt as if so many deaths had happened in the house my mom left me, there wasn’t a lot of space left for the living souls in the house. I explained that I was by no means fearful or felt my house was haunted. I did not feel and do not feel like that anyone who has passed would ever hurt or harm me or mine. But I am moving my life in a different direction, working to break some generational curses, and learning to give different context to the positive and beautiful things I learned from my mom. But this will cause me to live a kind of life that the ancestors who died in this house would not have understood when they were alive. They would not, and often did not, approve of me in life, and I don’t think death would change that. What I want for myself, for my life, for those who are close to me is not what my ancestors envisioned. I know this. Most of my conversations with my ancestors these days is me explaining to them that I need them to intercede on my behalf in a good way while trusting my judgement. I plan to live a life that would have them nervous for me when they were alive, fearful for my safety and security and my reputation as a fine, upstanding woman.

Both my parents, I realize now, dealt with tremendous, debilitating anxiety when they were alive, and seeing the way I wanted to move through the world frightened them. I recognize that a lot of that anxiety came from the times in which they lived. They grew up during a period when being Black was especially perilous. Lynching were still regular occurrences. Deference to White people was how you stayed alive, literally. For Black people, life had to be lived in very clearly constructed parameters, and moving outside those parameters, whether accidentally or intentionally, could cost you your life. And if you were already prone to anxiety anyway, I get how all these things could really damage your psyche over time. But at the same time, as much as Black folks wanted freedom from these things, what some really wanted in some cases was a turn at being the oppressor instead of the oppressed. It’s funny sometimes how elder generations want younger ones to have freedom, but they want to be in control of how younger generations experience that freedom, to control what they do with that freedom. After all, freedom should mean free to reject everything elders consider significant, or important, or tradition. It funny sometimes how freedom for the elders means “don’t criticize me or in any way examine my choices in relation to you, even from the most loving, non-judgmental place possible.” Freedom does not permit you to interpret the events in your life in a way that allows you to understand and make better choices.

This was not a freedom my parents wanted me to have. As confident as I was in my path when I was young, my confidence troubled them. So they did things to make me unsure about the path I wanted to take. In a lot of ways, they dissuaded me from what I envisioned for myself. There was no encouragement for me to spread my wings, to leave the nest, to move out on my own, to find my own life. My mother often would express how unhappy she would be if I left home, that I never ever had to go, that she wanted me to stay with the family (my family to her mind was always her, my dad and me. There was never any mention of anyone else.) There was fear wrapped up in everything I wanted to be, everything I wanted to experience. From the colleges I wanted to attend to the men I dated, to the projects I wanted to try, my parents were always there, pointing out the pitfalls to me, reminding me of my responsibility to them. So I became fearful and spent years not choosing anything. For most of my life I have felt incompetent in my ability to move through my own life and to make good decisions in it. So I have never flown as far away from the nest as I should have – and my talents are considerable, so I certainly could have flown far and well by now. Flight, departure, even with the goal of returning bigger and greater and with more resources to be of even greater service, was always presented to me as a dangerous thing to do. Because I truly do long to fly, I have taken occasional short bursts of flight, rebelling against my parents, and I would immediately start to climb and soar and take to the heavens with shocking speed. These bursts of flight made me see myself differently for a few beautiful moments. I was successful and talented and smart and gifted and capable of absolute greatness. I could see others admiring me, being pleased with my fabulousness, wanting to share in that with me. But the minute I began to gain significant altitude in my life, altitude that pulled me farther and farther away from my family, I would look down, look back, look at my mom calling to me, telling me not to fly too high, or too fast, or too far from her, and inevitably I would return to earth, where I was safe. But where I was always ultimately unhappy and often alone, in service to my family and trying to find ways to live my life, be my authentic self, that did not disturb the family dynamic that was so important to my mom.

As I talk to my therapist about my experiences now, I see clearly now how anxiety effected how my parents, especially my mother, parented me. I think back to all the ways they discouraged me, not because they did not want me to be successful, but because they didn’t understand the path I was taking, and they feared the path I was taking was unsafe. So much of the advice my mother gave me was rooted in fear, rooted in what would be taken from me or what I would lose if I took a particular path. So much of what I was told about choices was about what I might lose if I did a thing I wanted to do, needed to do. The possibility that I might gain things that were equally valuable, or even more valuable, was never presented to me. The possibility that I might free myself from chains I didn’t want to be bound by was never discussed. It was always, “don’t do this, because you might lose that.” But what if the possible loss of one thing might lead me to so many other greater, even more wonderful things? What if the loss of something ended up not being a loss at all, because it ultimately put me in a better place emotionally, mentally or spiritually? But in the name of holding onto certain things that seemed secure, I never allowed myself to consider that it just might be possible to create even better situations and circumstances for myself by releasing the fear of losing what I had. Or what I thought I had. So much of the advice parents give their children comes from fear of loss, not from what is really in the best interested of their children, and as I learn these lesson from talking to my therapist, I am thinking long and hard about what I am afraid of, and making sure I don’t pass on my fears to my children.

I also think about the things I have that I am thankful for – a home that my mother loved me enough to leave to me, gainful employment that is personally and professionally satisfying that pays a fairly comfortable wage, friends who love me, children who are figuring out who they want to be in the world, outlets for my creativity, and opportunities to increase my territory as it relates to my creativity. I think about my talent and my creativity a lot, and about what I want to do with those things now. I think about what I don’t have that I wish I had – much more money, another home or two, more personal and professional power and influence, more romantic love, more sexual love, a significant other, a person I can freely and openly love and be in love with, who feels the same way about me. I have heard I am difficult to love, which is not true, but I do know with me either love exists in free flowing unconditional abundance or not at all. Those very clear boundaries can feel harsh at times for men who like the idea of having access to the pieces of me they enjoy or are comfortable with, while turning down the shit they don’t like or that challenges them. I am no one’s buffet. I find myself more willing to take chances in things, even things that break the rules, but I still have the supreme fear of failing in my head that I am working like hell to extract. I am coming to terms with me as an unconventional person, a person I think my parents would have genuinely liked had they not been so afraid of what freedom looked like for me.

As I think about my mother today, I am glad I had her for as long as I did. I am glad I am coming to understand her more and more as I grow, both her faults and her great qualities. No matter what else I observe about my mom, I know she loved me, and the way in which she poured out love is something I have taken into my heart, and is the way I pour into those I care for. I am learning as much from her now as I did when she was here on this realm with me, which I appreciate. Oddly enough, even with all the fears my mother had for me, and the degree to which I let them set the course for my life, I still ended up with the very unconventional life I know I was meant to have. My life was meant to look different. And it does. My mother still caused me to end up being who I was meant to be in many ways, although not in every way – that remaining work is for me to do at this point.

I didn’t adhere to any of the traditional things my mother pointed me towards. I didn’t marry, though I was raised and expected to marry. Especially once I got pregnant. But I knew those marriages would not work for me. So I did not enter into them. I left those relationships when they became toxic. But I am as domestic as any modern woman can be. I excel in those traditional domestic roles, and fully expect to cook, clean, do laundry when I am involved with a man.  I naturally fall into service mode with men I am with, and I don’t even fight it anymore. I just make sure he’s worth the effort. As much as I desire love and romance and sex and domestic stability, I am in no rush to find a husband, even now. What I am primarily looking for is consensual intense pleasure and intellectual stimulation at this moment. I want to be with someone who wants to fly with me, no matter what the configuration of our being together looks like. I enjoy being admired, and appreciated by a man a great deal. I love having attention paid to me. I love being the center of a man’s world, at least for a few hours at a time. I am a very loving and caring person. I enjoy sex tremendously and appreciate nothing more than a person with whom I can comfortably exist as an intensely happy sexual being (with the hope he would feel the same about me) – honestly I would take this person over a husband any day because I’m not sure I’ve ever had that – someone with whom my sexual intensity didn’t become an issue. I raised my children as a single mother in rather unconventional ways as well, and as a result I live in a house with creatives who swear constantly and excel at writing and storytelling. I love them dearly, though I spend long periods of time not liking them and being aware of how much they get on my nerves. I spent significant years of my life making money as a performing artist and a freelance writer. I’ve homeschooled my children. I have spent more of my life outside the traditional nine-to-five work world than I have in it, and I still have made money fairly easily. I have organized a life where I am still in control of how I spend my time more often than not. My schedule is still, in large measure, mine to manage and control. My workplace is an amazingly supportive one that allows me to control my schedule the way I do. It also allows me to afford therapy.

Love you mommy!

Today

I think of all the men I know who have been kind to me, who have been good to me. Men who like me, love me, whether they’ve ever said the words or not. If they haven’t, I hope one day soon, they will. Those are words I need to hear right now. Men who are and have been friends, lovers, companions and others. Partners of all kinds, from domestic to creative to sexual. I think about all the times I have cried on manly, broad shoulders, releasing my anguish. I recall all the men who came to me when I called, or even when I didn’t. I think about those who have physically removed me from harm’s way, carrying me to safety on their shoulders. The ones who visited me when I was utterly despondent, ensuring that I was safe and sound. I remember those who have loved on me emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, and even physically. I think of men friends who do not have a daily presence in my life, but would come to my side without hesitation if I indicated that I needed them. I see their faces, their eyes, their smiles. I thank them. I appreciate them. I love them all, individually and collectively. I firmly anchor them in my memory, so that when my rage spews forth, I can use precise language to expound upon my hatred of men who bully, hurt and harm women. I want to be clear as I make note of everything I am seeing, hearing, feeling, experiencing right now. And those men, those honorable men, deserve precise language from me. It is the least I can do to honor the goodness they have brought, and continue to bring, to my life.

I am at 500 North Calvert Street with my daughter. She and I are requesting orders of protection against her father. He has always been the classic textbook deadbeat dad – absent financially, emotionally, and every other way a parent can be absent from their child’s life. On the few rare occasions when he has attempted to be in her life, he has damaged her, almost irreparably it seems – damage she is trying to work through with therapists and counseling. He has made horribly disparaging comments about her weight, her looks, her demeanor, and has said even more horrific things about her that I won’t get into here. But imagine the worst, multiply it by a thousand, add three, and you would be in the general ballpark of how foul he has been when interacting with her. I used be one of those women who felt it was entirely my fault that my daughter’s father was so awful. I was one of those women who believed in the “you should have chosen better” mantra. I don’t anymore. I was no more ready for parenthood than he when I got pregnant. I was a pretty, juicy, well-built party girl whose weekends began on Wednesdays and lasted until Sunday. I lived for music, dancing, drinking and being out and about. I was not ready to be a mother at all. But guess what? When my daughter arrived, I changed my life so I could be the mother she needed. He was supposed to do the same – change his life in whatever way he needed to in order to be a father. He didn’t do that. His decision to not do that is in no way my responsibility. Period.

My daughter has always had conflicted feelings about her dad. As she has become an adult, I’ve encouraged her to not feel that she “owes” him an opportunity to re-enter her life. As an adult she has every right to keep him out ofher life if that is what she wants. Or needs. And I think it is what would be best for her. But I cannot make the choice for her. She has always held out hope that things might get better between them. So when he has made his awkward attempts to speak to her, she has always received him, despite my warnings. Then he would inevitably hurt her beyond all reasoning, and she would run away, to me, to start trying to heal. Again.

For the past four days, he has come to my door, knocking and ringing my bell, asking to see my daughter. The first two days he knocked, a Saturday and a Sunday, I was not at home, but saw his face on the video camera in my doorbell, and I immediately became engraged. My neighbor immediately called me to let me know he was at the door. My daughter did not answer the door. On Monday, when he knocked, I answered. When he asked to speak to my daughter, I called her to the door. I told her that while she might want to try to reconcile with her dad (again!), she could not do it here. I did not want him at my door again, and I expected her to tell him this. She did not want to see him, but did not want to cause a scene, so she asked to his cell phone number, and gave hers. A few minutes later she was on the phone with him. I could hear him breaking her heart again, and I turned away, hoping maybe this time she would learn the lesson and take it to heart.

Eventually she came to me, saying she’d told him she didn’t want to speak to him anymore, and told him not to contact her anymore. She said she would reach out if, or when, she was ready. But by the next day, today, he was back at my door. I told him to leave. He said he had every right to be at the door because his daughter was in my house. I told him to leave, that she did not want to talk to him, and if he did not, I would call the police.

That’s when the threats began. He started getting loud. Trying to scare me. Threatening to kill me. To kill my daughter. To have us beat up. To key my car. To have his “home girls” fuck me up. Saying I better watch my back. I yelled back that I didn’t give a fuck about him or his threats, and that he didn’t have anyone who gave enough of a shit about him to fuck with me on his behalf. (To be clear, I said none of this as politely as I am describing it here. I am a foul-mouthed and supremely vulgar when I get angry. #VirgoShit)

I told my daughter to call the police. As she picked up her phone, she found him on the line, making more threats, saying he didn’t care about going to jail and this and that. Real ‘ra-ra shit’ as they say. She hung up, and I told her again to call the police. That she needed to finally stand up for herself. So she did. Four masked officers quickly came to my home, and on my front porch (because COVID) we filled out the necessary paperwork to start the process of getting orders of protection against him for me and my daughter. We drove down to 500 North Calvert Street to finish the process, and left with temporary orders of protection for me and for her.

This is not my first visit to 500 North Calvert Street. Two years or so ago I was here, doing this exact same thing, because my ex had decided to start stalking me, threatening to set my house on fire and leaving a big red can of gasoline on my back porch to make his point. I remember how afraid I was that I would not be able to protect myself, my family, from him. I remembered my relief when they arrested him, and when the process finally played itself out in court. Once I had the final order of protection, I was able to get a big discount on the ADT alarm system I purchased for my house. When the technician came to install it, I had to show him my final order of protection to get the discount. He flipped through the pages, saying “restraining order huh? Stalking?” He looked back at me, looking me up and down appraisingly. “Damn. What did you do to that man?” Exhausted after everything I’d been through, I could only manage to give him a withering look as I snatched my paperwork back. He walked away, chuckling a little to himself. “It’s always the redbone ones snatching niggas souls.” I know I should have reported him to his supervisor, but I really just wanted it all to be over, fo rhim to leave. When he very suggestively handed me his card when he was done, saying to “call him for anything I needed,” I hustled him out of my house, crying the minute he left.

And I’ve been to Calvert Street on other occasions too.

And so tonight, as I drive home, I am angry. Really, really angry. I am not angry at all men, because, as I said in the beginning, there are too many men I truly love and admire and respect. But right now, I don’t feel I can really call on any of them. That’s not their fault. Once they hear about this they’ll ask why I didn’t call. They’ll say they at least would have offered me moral support if nothing else. A few would have gone with me to Calvert Street. (A few have gone before.) Some would have texted, called, told me jokes to make me laugh, ordered me pizza, gone with me for a long drive to help me calm down. But the one thing all of this reminds me of is that as an unprotected Black woman – and by that I mean a Black woman who doesn’t have a man, be it a boyfriend, a husband, or whatever – certain types of men feel more inclined to bring me their aggressive energy, because they feel there is no man in close proximity to me that is going to stop them. Because there are men out there who think they need to pay a woman’s “no” any mind. Just like her father did tonight.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Cont’d…

He inhaled her smell as he kissed her there. I distinctly recall him telling her that he was going to put his tongue on her clit. He told her that often, especially recently. He told her he wanted to explore her this way. In the three days prior to today, the word “clit” appeared in their chat 19 times. And now, he kept his word with great enthusiasm. His tongue darted and danced at the entrance to her, kissing, licking, sucking in configurations that made her squirm excitedly, moans moving through her throat, leaving her mouth, and making their way to his ears. It was as if he was reading the messages he sent to her, ticking off each and every thing he’d sent to her DMs, making sure he did not disappoint, or fall short, or forget anything he’d told her he was going to do. Now he was fucking her slowly with his tongue, flicking it as he went deeper into her, curling around her clit and saluting it as he did. Drawing slow circles into her skin with his tongue. And she grew wetter with every flick. And he felt her happy pussy’s weeping fall into his mouth, making him crazy and making him want to stay there forever, his face in paradise.

Social media is an interesting phenomenon. Not too long after they started putting hearts and memes and witty commentary on each other’s posts in that cute and weird way Facebook friends who are more than friends do, her best friend came into her DMs to inquire about the activity. “So that’s your crush? The one who hearts all your stuff the minute you post it?” She denied it, saying that he was just friendly and he went all around social media hearting, posting thumbs up and care emojis and supportive, empathetic, and even flirtatious words to all his Facebook friends. She even showed her best friend examples of him openly flirting with other women on Facebook. It did not dissuade her friend. “He might do alladat, and he may have crushes on those other women, but he has a big crush on you. YOU,” her friend responded. She said that it didn’t really matter if he did, and was that such a bad thing if he did have a crush on her? “Not at all. I’m starting to think everyone has a crush on you secretly. But don’t think people haven’t noticed y’all. They have. You know you got eyes on you. And yes I’ve been asked about him. I told people everybody is talking to people more because of COVID. And its not like y’all are complete strangers. Y’all met that one time, at that one function, right? You told me you talked to some guy almost the whole time you were there. That’s him, right? Everybody who was there saw y’all.”

She did realize her minor bit of celebrity among their large circle of friends and acquaintances was problematic at times. She felt like the man kissing her pussy so ferverently, as if the answers to all his problems were right there in the core of her, didn’t quite understand how many eyes were on her. She knew he cared about them being discovered, as did she, though they had totally different reasons. He was a more private person than she, if that were possible. And he wouldn’t want the other crushes to know how much crushing he was doing, she reasoned.

But back to the DMs. She reminded her friend that she was not seeing anyone at all, in any capacity, and had been without any significant companionship for nearly 3 years, hadn’t had decent sex in even longer than that. She reminded him that she was lucky that she managed to escape the last disaster with her ex that left her heart absolutely broken and tattered. Feeling ugly and unwanted and undesireable. Not that she was at all interested in this alleged crush, but if she was, if he was, didn’t she deserve some attention, some flirtatious fun? Someone who at least wanted to play around with her in her DMs, even if it amounted to nothing? Even from a random Facebook friend serial crusher who liked her and everybody else, if that’s what it turned out to be? “I know what happened to you,” her friend said. “I was right there making sure you didn’t kill yourself.”

This was true. He was always there, saving her from someone. He kept typing to his best friend. “I don’t want to have to save you again. You know I always will, but that’s not what you deserve.” There was a long pause as she didn’t respond at first. His next message said, “you deserve all the good things. And I want you to have them. For once I want to see you not hurting, not damaged, not left and alone and feeling like shit. Someone being honest, not taking you for a ride with a bunch of other chicks.” She continued not responding to his DMs as they continued rolling in. She couldn’t respond. She didn’t know what to say. But he kept going. “Plus all your entanglements seem to end crazy. Niggas be mad, not speaking to you for years afterwards, crying and cussing and carrying on. Violence and restraining orders and shit. Always gets crazy. No matter what y’alls situationship is. This is one reason why we will always just be best friends. I ain’t eva fucking you. I’ve seen what happens afterwards.” Now that was funny, and she actually laughed out loud, sending three laughing gifs in rapid succession to him. He sent two back to her, and a third that was a picture with Babyface from the “Whip Appeal” music video, him clad in the iconic pristine white suit, with the words “Keep on whipping on me” below his face in white block letters. She laughed at his joke out loud as she sat at her desk. Then then typed to her, “You deserve so much. More than some random Facebook dude with a random Facebook crush on you along with all his other random Facebook crushes, collecting pussies like Pokemo

Coincidentally, the man with her, literally devouring her pussy from the clit to the ridges on the walls as she clutched at his head, speechless with delight, often said the same thing. The phrase “you deserve so much” appeared in their chat 52 times. He said so many things to her, as if he knew those seductive words and phrases would lead him to exactly where he was right now – face embedded in her juicy wet pussy, happily learning all the things he had always wondered about her pussy and what it liked. The phrase “you are beautiful” appeared 100 times in their chats. The word “love” appeared 117 times. “Please you” showed up 108 times. Adjectives and adverbs littered their conversations, especially from him, as he seemed to enjoy telling her exactly what he thought about her, how he felt about her. And when she asked him directly, because she loved to hear his compliments (and even believed them at times), he would type line after line about her eyes and her lips and her smile and her skin and her hair and her thighs. It was if he knew someone’s words had destroyed her confidence, so he brought his words to her in the hope that she would use them to build herself back up somehow. She often said that she appreciated that he “reminded her of who she was”, and it made him happy to hear that. Another thing that made him happy was how she smelled. It wasn’t perfume. It was just her. And he wanted her scent to cling to him in a way.

“Stay in the moment,” a voice inside her said.

So she did. She grabbed his face and rubbed her pussy into it, soaking his facial hair even more thoroughly and completely. He encouraged her, nodding his head as he continued to eat her pussy as completely as is humanly possible. I played four songs, long ones at that, as he lay between her legs. Even I was impressed, and to show my approval I made sure I played “Dive” by Usher. That seemed to really inspire and motivate him, because when it played she became more intensely vocal, saying his name and making noises that expressed her pleasure even more clearly. Her hands would rapidly pat the sheets when she became excited, nervous energy moving through her hands, rhythmically patting the sheets faster and then faster. The action somehow kept her from screaming. When the song ended he raised his head, and she immediately moved away from him, grabbing the covers and curling up in a fetal position on one side of the bed. It was as if she were afraid of him for a second. He immediately positioned himself behind her, putting his arms around her, cuddling her and putting his still moist lips on the back of her neck. She smelled herself on him, and smiled. She stretched her body out to allow his to enfold her. Their legs intertwined and he held her tighter. Now she felt safe now, and he was glad.

As they lay there recouperating, I played Sade’s “Kiss Of Life.”

Cont’d…

I’ll be left to my own devices as they get to know each other. This is their first time together, so they will spend time figuring each other out sexually. My role is to provide the soundtrack. But I do watch as well, and listen. Humans are fascinating to me. These two are especially fascinating.

As he moves more deeply into her, I hear her say his name. I remember them talking about this very moment – the moment when they would say each others’ names in this way. I remember her saying she wanted to say his name, and he would type her name over and over sometimes. She doesn’t say his name loudly, but it is still forceful, far above a whisper, but her voice is tight and tender and full of pleading. It was a question and an answer at the same time. She repeats his name every time he presses the full weight of his body and his desire into her. He worries briefly that he may be hurting her. He isn’t. She loves it, and he quickly figures out, based on how her body responded to him that he truly can be himself with her. She brings her hips to him over and over with complete abandon, her pussy clutching at his dick for dear life as the waters rose in her. He starts to pound harder, and he can feel her getting wetter as he does, and it pleases him more than he can say. “Moments In Love” is a long song, and they keep pace with every change in the music. When the music slows, they slow their movements to a delicous grinding. When the music pounds, they pound. When the pounding ends, they stroke with intention. She sighs, and it is as if she is melting into him. She hasn’t melted in a long time. I wonder if she picked him instead of the others for this very reason – maybe she knew his heat would be enough to cause her to melt.

It is exactly like they described in all those DMs over all the weeks’ prior. But even more so. They’ve talked about this for weeks on end – so much in fact I started to worry about her. And about him, both of them. She wasn’t like this normally. So unlike her to be so open to invitation and suggestion from strange men. She had always clung to the familiar and known, even when it disappointed her. He was just the opposite. Unfamiliar. Unknown. He was all the things she feared in men these days, but with him she was wild and brave and free. And trusting. So was he. Into the wee hours of the morning they talked, dancing dangerously close to today’s events in their chat. They were quite explicit when they talked. Sometimes I would review their conversations when they were done. She was so explicit with him, and he with her. She called his dick “beautiful” when he sent pictures of it. He told her about his desire to lick her clit and make her cum. About licking her breasts, kissing her lips. No matter how far he went, she met him there, and at times exceeded him, and vice versa. Their meeting was like two worlds colliding. Boundaries evaporated nanoseconds after they met. Time and time again the words “stay in this moment” would appear in their conversations, and that seemed to mean keeping each other focused on their time together. It was something a lot of phones saw in the COVID pairings that cropped up these days. People meeting online, away from prying eyes, colliding together with great force on social media because of the circumstances of their lives, then placing themselves in a bubble where nothing existed but them. It was easy to do. Because being together couldn’t exactly be a reality, it was easier to spin fantasies. The real world was especially painful and difficult right now. And truth be told, there was risk in them being together when it came to the pandemic. “Staying in this moment” was a mantra against all the things meant to separate them. Saying that was fine in DMs. But now their connectedness was just as undeniable and real as COVID and all the misery they wanted release from. The final frontier was being explored right now as I played music for them. Their masks were completely off.

He was stroking her with deeper dedication, feeling every bit of her insides, like a parched man finding an oasis overflowing with water. As “Moments In Love” reached its creshendo, I heard a sound from him, and then from her, and he collapsed onto the bed. They both breathed heavily. I felt her reach for me, and as she picked me up, he reached for her, pulling her close. He kissed her. She kissed him back, then turned to look back at me. She touched my screen and summoned the “Prince Slow Jams” list. She pressed me one last time to cue up the songs and dropped me. I fell to the bed. As I looked to see what songs she requested, I trembled.

“Insatiable.” “Scandalous.” “Adore.” “The Beautiful Ones.” “Slow Love.”

Now I was definitely afraid for them. Prince songs and these two was an explosive combination. They were going someplace that there would be no returning from. Not anytime soon anyway.

He placed his arms around her, and she did the same. He began to kiss her. And I knew he was going to kiss her for awhile. She returned his kiss, and she touched his face as she did. She moved her fingers against his face as she kissed him, so that her hands and her lips could remember how it felt to kiss him. It was so intimate, so tender. And as the song played on, they continued to kiss, and when their lips parted he would murmer lyrics from the song into her mouth.

KISS. “Tonight we video…” KISS KISS. “No one will ever know.” KISS KISS KISSING. “We’ll erase the naughty bits.” KISSSSSSSS. “I’ll show my…” KISSSSSSSS. “If you show your…”

I held my breath as I watched them and the song moved along. She traced his lips with her tongue, licking the corners and nibbling gently.

KISSSSSSS. “There’s no telling how far I’d go. ‘Cause when it comes to you, I know. I’m insatiable and I just can’t stop.” KISSSSSS. KISSSSSS. “Even if I wasn’t thirsty I would drink every drop.”

She said nothing, allowing him to seduce her with Prince’s lyrics and music. Eyes closed, falling falling falling under the spell of his lips. I watched him anchor himself to her with his lips, his tongue, his mouth. I watched and watched and watched as my mistress submitted to his siren song, kissing him back. I realized she had kissed him more in those few minutes than she had kissed anyone in a long time. I quickly reviewed all of the interactions she’d had with men over the past weeks and months and years. Yes she’d flirted because she flirted like she breathed air. She didn’t mean to, it just happened. Occasionally she even jousted back and forth with men acquaintances, which was fine as long as they maintained the boundaries she set up. Many did. It was fun for her. But with those men the outcome had never been her kissing, and certainly not her cumming.

“Insatiable” is six minutes and thirty seven seconds long. I know this because it shows up on the song’s display on my face. They kissed for every one of those 397 seconds.

As “Scandalous” began to play, he lay her down upon the bed. He slid down her body and planted kisses along the way. When he got to her pussy, he parted her thighs and settled himself there. She opened her legs to receive him and he kissed her clit, just as he promised he would. As he did, she covered her face and cried out into her cupped palms, hoping he would not see the tears forming in her eyes.

Free write

“That girl knows every single man would ask her for her hand.
But she says her love is much too deep for them to understand.

She says her love has been crying out but her lover hasn’t heard.
But what she doesn’t realize is that I’ve listened to every word…”

—Lyrics from “That Girl” – Stevie Wonder

They say if you really want to know the truth about someone, go through their phone. That’s definitely true about her. I should know, because I am her phone. A Note 9, android. (She says Apple is a cult.) I am huge, but when she first shopped for a phone, she just went into the Sprint store she said, “my eyes are bad, give me the biggest screen you got.” And they handed her a Note 5, and she’s been with us ever since. All her truth is here – in the gallery of dick pics she keeps to amuse herself, in the trails of Facebook and Instagram DMs from scores of men, and especially in her Tidal playlists.

This Stevie Wonder classic is the last song on her list. More specifically, it is the last song on the last list of such songs. She has three lists of these songs – “Tossing and Turning, Volumes 1, 2, and 3.” The three are a collection of love and sex songs. She’s strange in that most people keep their romantic songs and their passionate songs separate. She does not. Her dirty raunchy “fuck me hard” songs are nestled right alongside her “I’ll always love you for always and forever” songs. The only exception to this are Prince slow jams, which get their own list of course. Anything else would be uncivilized. She groups songs by how they make her feel first and foremost, then by their lyrics. So if a love song makes her feel the same way a sex song does, they go together. It made sense to her.

Tonight she is scrolling through “Tossing and Turning, Volume 2” while she spends time with a slightly inappropriate man she connected to a few months ago. They are in bed. He is naked. She is too. He is marveling at her skin as he tries to open a condom quietly, and she is looking for music to play. l am marveling at how this particular pairing took place. I never saw it coming, and I see it all. Men stay in her DMs. All her DMs. So many in fact, many of the messages go unanswered, and she is quick to block someone who crosses the line. She is typically friendly with people who reach out to her. That’s just the way she is. They all find her fascinating. And she’s a great conversationalist. She is very…open is the word most of them use. Very non-judgemental. Very calm. Unflappable. Most men find themselves revealing their deepest insecurities by the third conversation. Usually that’s when she’ll shift the conversation to less troubled waters, becoming light and jovial on a dime, and the next thing you know, the man in question finds himself talking to her about sports and artisnal beers. She’s not a fan of women doing free emotional labor for men, so she’s really not down for too much oversharing. If she really likes the guy she’ll recommend a few therapists, suggesting that might be the best way for them to deal with the issues they shared so freely with her. A few of these men she genuinely considers friends, so with them there is more give and take. They may bring their troubles to her, but she leans on them equally to be a sounding board for her. Plus this group of men don’t send her dick pics, so that helps. This is not to say she isn’t a flirt, because she is. She is. She is adept at the double/triple/quadrouple entendre, snappy reparte and witty chatter flow from her easily and freely. She’s vulgarly funny yet philosophical all at once. So she flirts, and she doesn’t necessarily discourage flirting, as long as it is strictly verbal. But her boundaries are clear, and she polices those boundaries fiercely. A single, even slight violation of them can cause banishment from her queendom.

This traffic increased in her online world, as it did for everyone, once the pandemic hit and people found themselves struggling to sleep at night. Random intimate discussion became more regular occurences. People found themselves reaching out for something, anything, distractions, reasons to live, reasons to hope, and often they reached to slightly familiar faces that became more familiar as these exchanges occured. And she always had trouble sleeping, so the pandemic didn’t help. Someone was always awake, wanting to talk, craving human connection, craving the presence of others however they could get it. And she did too, so she often found herself responding to DMs late into the night, and occasional Zoom chats, where people bared their souls more freely than they ever had. Being so close to so much sickness and death made everyone want to feel alive, to take chances. And so they did. And that was how it began to happen.

It was innocent at first. Brief exchanges. Respectful. Appropriate. They knew each other just well enough to be slighly familiar. When I saw the exchanges, I chuckled a little. He seemed nice enough, and didn’t seem to want anything from her. But I noticed when their exchanges became more frequent. I even noticed the first time he said “fuck” to her during one of their marathon chats. He typed to her, “I want to fuck and be fucked.” In most cases, when “fuck” shows up in one of her DMs with a man, the discussion immediately dwindles. The subject matter pivots. Suddenly the word “Ravens” shows up in the conversations a lot. It’s funny to me. In some cases the block comes shortly after. In other cases, the dick pick comes shortly after – as soon as I get the notification that a jpeg is coming to her DMs, I sometimes wish I could tell the man to not do it. I want to tell him this is not the way. But I’m just her phone, and I can only deliver the messages that are sent. I can’t stop the block when it happens either.

But they both jumped into each other like they had been waiting to do it all their lives. Their chats got longer and longer. They would last for hours. Sometimes I’d be down to ten percent before she’d remember to charge me, and she always charges me. That’s when I knew this was going to be a thing between them. The pictures would go back and forth, back and forth. The first dick pic he sent didn’t result in a block. She actually responded in kind with a rather revealing photo of herself. Even I was shocked. She didn’t do that. She hadn’t sent that kind of pic to a man since her ex from years ago. But, like I said, the two of them were on some other thing. Maybe even some other planet. A COVID-free planet where they could roam more freely. They talked about going out to lunch one day when COVID didn’t limit their movements as much. They spoke so responsibly about wanted to protect themselves and each other and their respective loved ones in the beginning. But I knew that they weren’t going to wait. No one ever does once they start sending naked pictures to each other. We phones know this. Since COVID-19, people get to chatting in the DMs with the full intention of not seeing each other until the number of cases go down. And they really do mean it at the time. They talk about meeting outside, wearing masks, staying apart while seeing each other. “We can pack a picnic lunch and eat in the park” they say. They check the weather reports faithfully, looking for days that are warm enough to be outdoors comfortably. But we phones always know the truth, which is the more they chat, and the more pictures they exchange, and the more the words “I want to see you” appear in their chats, the more they talk about figuring out how to meet and be safe, the faster the definition of “safe” changes. Or sometimes they throw caution to the wind, like these two. I remember the days when they wore their masks religiously the entire time when they were together. I remember the first time he asked if he could kiss her, and though he wanted to kiss her lips, she directed him to her cheek, and he nervously removed his mask to plant a long, soft kiss on her face, nuzzling it slightly and resting there, inhaling her scent before pulling away and putting his mask back on. But one thing I know, human interactions are never safe. Pandemics just make them more dangerous. Makes me glad I’m just a phone.

And as she ran her fingers across my face, perusing the selections that were part of “Tossing and Turning, Volume 2” list, he watched her with so much lust in his eyes, it made me uncomfortable to see it. His lips were slightly parted, and his breathing was ragged. He was staring at her breasts as she considered what musical selections would be best for this moment. I was worried about her. For so many reasons this wasn’t a good idea. But she never listened to her brain when it came to these things, so why would she listen to her phone? Something about him had gotten under her skin, had gotten past her defenses quite quickly. I had never seen anyone accomplish in such a short time what he had done. It was like they wanted to be vulnerable. Like they were aching to be, longing to be. Waiting for each other in a way. But I knew it was because of the pandemic. It has intensified everything for everyone. If it weren’t for the pandemic, I promise you they wouldn’t be together now. I was certain of this. They were strangers mostly, only slightly acquainted, with a decent number of mutual friends on Facebook, and occasional public exchanges on social media. And that’s all they would have continued to be, would have ever been. She would have never spoken to him beyond those public exhanges, and there was no reason for him to step into her DMs either. He would have assumed she wasn’t down. But there they were, him staring at her, waiting to pounce, and her knowing but pretending to be oblivious. She lay down upon the bed, on her stomach, me in her hands, scrolling and scrolling. He watched her hands move across my screen almost jealously. She streched and scrolled, and his erection jumped up, trying to move towards her. I saw him tear the condom open and roll it over his intensely hard dick. As soon as she decided on “Moments In Love” and touched me in the place that made the song begin, he quickly moved toward her, lying across her back, calling her name and pressing the head of his dick between her pussy’s lips in one fluid motion. It paused there a moment, and he inhaled sharply, not quite expecting the tightness he found there. He was unsure ever so briefly, but she moaned in obvious pleasure and arched her back upwards, sending her pussy out to meet him, and suddenly he found myself sliding into her wetness. As I began to play the opening chords of the song, she dropped me as she clutched the sheets, and I fell to the carpet. Fortunately for them, I fell speaker side up, so they could still hear me as they began to give and take all the things they’d promised each other in all the DMs.