Random Rim Jobs
I swear. True story.Let’s Watch
Posted on September 23, 2010
Watching is fun. I’m looking forward to this year’s Folsom Street Fair.
I volunteered for the Folsom Street Fair last year. The Fair is a charitable event that raises funds for various local organizations. I had volunteered through Femina Potens, a local feminist art gallery. That meant that the time I put in gave the gallery credit so they could get a cut of the funds raised by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from the Fair.
Because I knew the time I put in was going to do some good, I went to the volunteer orientation, which was held at a just-South-of-Market hotel banquet room. I was told I was a “floater” and that as a floater I was to be available for whatever was required of me. I thought that meant I wouldn’t get bored, that I’d flit around from one thing to another.
What it turned out to be was trash duty. I was sent to a trash kiosk and my volunteer job was to tell people which of the three refuse receptacles – trash, recycling, compost – in which they were to place their refuse. After just a short amount of time, it was clear to me I should have brought my riding crop.
My riding crop – unlike at any other event – would have been welcomed. I would have been able to whack people on the back of their hands to let them know that they had deposited their refuse in the wrong receptacle. Unfortunately, I did not bring my riding crop; I didn’t think of doing so until later.
I have not officially volunteered this year. I have friends who have a booth, and I’ve said I’d help out provided they have booze for me, but otherwise I don’t feel obligated to stand under a “trash” sign for hours on end without a means to escape.
I imagine I’ll have a some fun. If I don’t, I’ll leave. It really is that simple. I can walk home easily.
If y’all are interested in meeting me, you can find me in my “Whore! Magazine” tank. I’ll be the one who’ll be somewhat shy. Also, I may have a riding crop ….
I swear. True story.
Ennui, Maliase, or My Period
Posted on September 22, 2010I haven’t had a period in over a year. This is not a complaint. Not at all. The lack of periods is not due to any pathology like pregnancy, but to an intrauterine device that’s sitting in my uterus steadily releasing hormones.
While the artificial hormones are released at a steady rate, my body still has its own ebbs and flows of natural hormones. So even though I don’t have periods, I do have period-like symptoms such as tender nipples, a bit of moodiness, and some general blah.
I’ve never been in tune with my hormones. I’ve known women who knew – just knew – when their tampons were full. I’ve known women who knew to the day when their periods would come.
I, on the other hand, am not in tune with my hormones, body, or anything else. Except when on artificial hormones, which I have been since I was 17, I’ve never had any clue when a period would come. I’m generally clueless about what’s going on with my body. Except when I’m sick, of course. When I’m sick I know it.
It wasn’t until relatively recently that I realized I had any sort of premenstrual symptoms that I noticed at all. Frankly, it wasn’t clear if they were premenstrual or menstrual, because my periods, while they came regularly, lasted for a much shorter time than the Birth Control Pills would have indicated. For those of you who don’t know, one takes hormonal pills for 21 days and then non-hormonal pills for seven days, during which one’s period is supposed to occur. I got to the point where my period lasted only about four days. This was rather nice, and helped me decide to get the IUD.
It helped me because I figured if four-day periods were fine then no-day periods would be great. I never worried that I was pregnant. Because I trusted my birth control. And condoms.
So now that I’ve not had periods for a while, it’s a bit surprising when I get the tender nipples or the malaise. But sometimes I have to admit that it’s true. I am subject to my hormones; I’m a lady, dammit. I’m a lady, goddammit!
I’ve started to exercise relatively regularly, which, since I’ve not been a regular exerciser for some time, has made me realize (realise?) that I didn’t have a fucking clue as to what was going on with my body. I’ve discovered muscles I didn’t know existed. Also, areas of my body I didn’t know mattered.
They all matter apparently. I’m discovering my “core,” which is not to say that there are not other parts that don’t matter, but my “core” is important for a number of things, including posture and confidence.
I’m getting both.
I swear. True story.
Alcohol (Part 5)
Posted on September 21, 2010[Continued from "Alcohol (Part 4)."]
On one of my weekend outings someone else had some alcohol that wasn’t wine cooler. It was liquor. Peppermint schnapps. It tasted like drinking toothpaste and felt warm when it hit my belly. I liked it instantly.
The next time I put in an order with my sister’s boyfriend, I requested a small bottle of peppermint schnapps. After he delivered it to me at Chuck E. Cheese’s, a couple of friends and I went out to the empty lot behind Chuck E. Cheese’s and proceeded to drink the whole bottle.
On that particular night, my step-sister also happened to be at Chuck E. Cheese’s. I was none too pleased. I wanted to have my own friends and do my own things without her around. We were the same age and had been going to the same schools since I moved in with the family when we were 11. We rarely had classes together, but because we went to small schools we couldn’t help but see each other at school. We got along fine, and even hung out during class breaks and lunches, but I was itching for my own identity.
She had something that I didn’t have, sex; she had had it, I hadn’t. I wanted my own friends and my own thing. So when she wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese’s Teen Night, too, I was irritated. I didn’t know then that if she wasn’t there I probably would have died.
I drank almost all of a flask-sized bottle of peppermint schnapps; I wasn’t too good about sharing that night. I drank it fast, because that’s what 14-year-old kids drinking in empty lots behind Chuck E. Cheese’s do.
I went into Chuck E. Cheese’s. I woke up in the hospital.
What I didn’t know until my step-sister helped me piece together the evening, was what happened in the roughly 12 hours that I couldn’t remember. She said that I hit on her boyfriend. This was very uncharacteristic of me because I was so shy around boys. I did have a crush on her boyfriend, and was devastated when they began going together, so it made a kind of sense. Drunken sense. She told me that at one point I was sitting on a bench and my eyes rolled back in my head. She knew there was something very wrong. She called my dad. Before he showed up, the find folks at Chuck E. Cheese’s called an ambulance.
When I woke up in the intensive care unit I was completely disoriented. I didn’t know where the fuck I was or why. A nurse was nice enough to tell me. She told me I was in the hospital and she said, “You fucked up.” Direct quote, I promise.
I tried to talk, but she told me I would be unable to do so since I had tubes down my throat. She must have seen the panic in my eyes. She told me that I had overdosed on alcohol and that I had a machine helping me breathe. I was fucking thirsty, but I couldn’t drink water; instead, she put ice chips in my mouth.
I was very groggy, and confused. I didn’t know one could overdose on alcohol. I didn’t know that the faster it goes in the more damage it can do. I was clueless.
My dad and step-mother came by. They had concerned looks on their faces. They told me my mother and DJ were driving up from LA and would be there soon.
I learned a few things about what happens to someone when she overdoses on alcohol. The clothes I had worn the night before, a shirt and sweater I had borrowed from my sister, had been cut off of me; I would not be getting those back. My pants, which I had not borrowed from anyone, were fine.
I learned that my stomach had been pumped full of charcoal, which aids in soaking up alcohol. I learned of the charcoal when the tube was removed from my throat. I turned on my side, and a nurse pulled out the tube along with a lot of very gross black stuff. Charcoal continued to visit me for a few days following; it did not come out my mouth.
I learned that the reason I had tubes down my throat was because I had had a respiratory arrest. According to DJ, I had gotten my lungs drunk and they wanted to take a nap. I had nearly had a cardiac arrest.
I learned what a catheter is. It hurt when the catheter was removed, and I was very glad I was unconscious when it was put in.
I was sent home from the hospital later that day. The ordeal was far from over.
[Continued.]
I swear. True story.
Alcohol (Part 4)
Posted on September 20, 2010[Continued from "Alcohol (Part 3)."]
Finally I had something that my step-sister did not. She had started having sex the summer before we entered high school; I had not. Despite my body looking like I was a woman, and attracting older guys because of it, I was shy and awkward to the extreme around boys.
Of course I told my step-sister I had gotten drunk. I also told my sister, who, by that time, had moved out and then moved back in. Only by the time she moved back in, my step-sister and I had gotten used to having separate bedrooms and had even gone so far as to decorate, paint, and wallpaper (It was the 80s!) our rooms the way we wanted. My sister was relegated to the garage.
She was designated an area of the garage that served as her bedroom. It was between the washer and dryer and the camping equipment. My sister also had an older boyfriend. Older, as in over 21.
Very shortly into my drinking career I asked my sister to ask her boyfriend to buy alcohol for me. At first more of those two liter bottles of wine cooler; it was all I knew.
I would ask my sister for booze on weekends when I went to Chuck E. Cheese’s. Because I could supply alcohol, people wanted to hang out with me. I felt cool.
I was not drinking alone, and wouldn’t have had an opportunity to do so even if I wanted to. While I had my own bedroom, privacy was not something that we, as children, were allowed to have. Over the years my sister had gotten in trouble for things she had written in her diary – because my step-mother read it. My step-sister and I got in trouble for having boys over after school and playing spin the bottle because my step-mother read a note my step-sister had written a classmate. Years later, my step-mother would steam open letters I had written to my mother but hadn’t yet had a chance to put in the mailbox – and that’s how she learned I liked girls.
So there was no chance for me to hide anything, much less a bottle of booze, in my house, even in my own bedroom. I was no Geri from The Late Great Me. I drank socially on the weekends, and between my friends and me, consumed all the alcohol I had arranged to purchase.
Around this time there were a lot of things going on in our house. My father was an alcoholic, as I mentioned. He stopped drinking when he became a Born Again Christian and began attending church, where he and my step-mother met, about ten years prior. We did not keep alcohol of any kind in the house, though occasionally my step-mother would drink wine.
My step-mother also told my step-sister and me that any time we wanted to drink that we just needed to let her know what to get and she’d happily supervise our drinking. Both my step-sister and I opted not to take her up on the offer. Who wants to get wasted with their parents looking on?
My father’s small business, which had been doing well for years, began to be less profitable so he closed it down. He went to work for a big chain service provider. It was obvious he hated not being his own boss. It was really obvious when he was fired.
My step-mother was not doing too well with the stress of being the only one bringing in money. One time she came home for lunch and was pissed that we – my step-sister, step-brother, and I – were watching tv rather than doing the chores on the list she had left for us that morning. Lunch culminated in her throwing a pot lid. I can’t remember if she aimed it at any of us, but it hit the wall, and the cat was terrified. Us kids knew to get the fuck away from her.
[By the way, if I seem to be painting my step-mother with a negative brush … well, I can't help it. To this day I still have nightmares about that woman, who, now that she's in her 60s has mellowed a bit, but when I was a kid she was a fucking banshee.]
My unemployed father was spending a lot of time sleeping on the couch, in what we all suspected were alcohol-induced naps.
I went out on weekends when I was allowed, which wasn’t that often. Even just spending the night at a friend’s was a major ordeal because we had to be home on Saturdays to do chores. My step-mother was (and is) a clean freak. Every Saturday without fail we had to change our sheets, dust and vacuum our rooms, and clean our bathroom. And then there was dusting and vacuuming the living room, dining room, and kitchen, washing windows inside and out, watering plants, pulling weeds, pruning bushes, cleaning the parents’ bathroom, cleaning and organizing drawers, polishing shoes, mending clothes …
Getting out of the house was very much welcomed.
I swear. True story.
[Continued.]
Deus Ex Machina (Part 3)
Posted on September 19, 2010[Continued from "Deus Ex Machina (Part 2)."]
I took in my new home and was ready to take my leave. On the front door above the door knob was a deadbolt lock, and above that was a lock the likes of which I had never seen. It looked like a chain lock but there was a key slot on one side of the chain. It looked odd to me. 
I slipped the clasp into the base of the lock. Oh, so that’s how it worked. Ok. Then I saw that the area where the other side of the chain lock was to slide out and release was blocked. It was blocked with a series of mismatched screws and nails bored into the wood in a haphazard manner.
I didn’t panic. Yet. I consulted my new keys and tried each one of them; none of them worked. I tried not to panic.
I was stuck inside a locked apartment. It was completely empty. This was 1999, before I had a cell phone. The closest I could get to calling for help was to open my door as far as the chain would let me and to yell. What a great way to meet my new neighbors.
It occurred to me that even if someone in the building could hear me call for help, there was little anyone else could do. If the building manager had the key to the chain lock, surely she would have given it to me, right? That meant the fire department would have to be called.
Panic was setting in. It had been a struggle to find a landlord who would rent to me given my lack of employment or cosigner, and now that I got a place the fire department would have to be called to break down the door. The door I’d have to pay to replace. With money I didn’t have. I did not want to have to borrow even more money from my father.
After taking some calming breaths I looked around the apartment again, this time much more thoroughly. Perhaps there was something I could use to remove the screws and nails from the lock’s track.
I looked in all the kitchen drawers. I was happy to see there were no cockroach carcasses. I had lived in a big, cockroach infested building in Pasadena several years earlier and had no interest in revisiting that hell. San Francisco is cooler and not as friendly to cockroaches as southern California, but I was still paranoid. I had done an inspection when I looked at the apartment, but in my haste to get a place there was a chance I had overlooked some things. No cockroaches, and also nothing that could get me the fucking apartment either.
I looked under the kitchen sink. It was not really a cabinet like I now have in my modern kitchen, with the bottom of the cabinet elevated slightly above the floor. No, the bottom of the cabinet under the sink was the floor save for a wood plank shelf. It was dark under there and frankly, I was kind of afraid to feel around blind. I became more afraid when I detected the distinct smell of urine. Human urine. Gross.
I was beginning to regret not only locking myself in the apartment but also renting the apartment in the first place when I saw something shiny in the back of the urine-stinking cabinet under the kitchen sink. Maybe it was something I could use! I grabbed it and tried to figure out what the fuck it was. It was the size and shape of a deep spoon with a flat bottom and a short looped handle. Inside was some crusty brown stuff. Oh! It was a heroin cooking spoon.
Oh my. I guessed my new neighborhood was pretty bad, but I thought my apartment would be safe from the bad stuff. Apparently not. Apparently the bad stuff happened right there in my apartment.
The apartment in which I was still locked. The kitchen nooks and crannies exhausted, I moved on to the bathroom. The only place that wasn’t out in the open, the medicine cabinet, was empty – and needed to be cleaned. I was too worried to form the thoughts, but before I settled into the place – provided I could get out of the place – I was going to have to do some very serious cleaning.
The only other place there was any possibility of anything that might have helped get me out of the apartment was the closet. I turned on the light via the string hanging from the light bulb in the middle of the closet’s ceiling. Empty. Empty save for the clothes rod with a shelf above it. The shelf was above my head and there was, of course, nothing for me to step on, so I reached up and felt around.
A whole lot of nothing … until. Until, oh, what’s this? I pulled down three flat metal rods. They were each about a foot long and a half inch wide. There were holes on either end. They were light blue with one long side smooth and one serrated. Like a knife. Or a blade. Hmmm.
What the fuck, I might as well see what the blades could do. The blades’ serrations varied in pitch. I started with the finest one. With my left hand I held the chain of the lock taut. I gripped the blade between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand and began sawing.
The blade was cutting into the metal. And that’s when I realized that the blades were hacksaw blades. Yay!
It took a while, but the finest of the blades cut into one side of one of the links. After I had made some headway with the fine blade, I switched to a coarser blade, and the remainder of one side of one link was opened up. Then I began with the fine blade on the other side of same link. I needed to cut completely through a link so I could set myself free.
Thankfully, the blades did not go dull before my job was done. Thankfully the only things in that apartment – save for a heroin cooking spoon – were exactly what I needed to get out. God from a machine, indeed.
I lived in that apartment for about a year and a half, during which time one part of the chain dangled from the door frame and the other part clacked against the door whenever it was opened.
I swear. True story.
June 23, 1991: A Diary Entry
Posted on September 18, 20101246 AM
What does he want from me? Does he ever think about me? What is he afraid of? What kind of girl am I to him? Does he want things to become more intense or does he like them like this? Is he seeing any other girls? Does he like it that I’m not demanding or does that make him think I don’t care? How much time, effort, and emotions are he wiling to invest? Why doesn’t he trust me? Why won’t he open up? Why does he avoid answering questions? How come he hasn’t asked ab out my past? (Or have I already volunteered too much information?) Does he like it when I hold his hand? Does he like the contact? Why doesn’t he ever initiate the physical? Does he even want to? Would he like to have sex with me? Has he been tested? (I’m catching Laura’s disease.) Why isn’t he frustrated with the way things are? The way they’re not moving and we’re not going anywhere. Why doesn’t he get close? Did he get hurt? Would he ever let himself fall in love? Why doesn’t he compliment me? Does he think I’m pretty? What does he like about me? Does anything I do or say get him going? Does he think I’m sexy? What, if anything, does he want to do to me? Does he always start out by playing his guitar?
Broke Ass
Posted on September 17, 2010The Viking and I went to see Bawdy Storytelling, a dirty version of The Moth. Every month there’s a different theme, and September’s was “Cut-Rate Coitus.” I noticed on the program that there were fewer bios than normal, which meant there were fewer storytellers than usual. Dixie, the creator and hostess is always changing things up.
There were some very good storytellers including a guy who, even if he had not told a story about going to Burning Man, I would have tagged as a Burner anyway. He was very blond and very tan. His shirt was open to show off his tanned and hairless chest. He wore sunglasses on stage. His story culminated in him holding aloft in the Reno Walmart parking lot a pair of panties that belonged to the woman he just banged in the store’s ladies’ room. Nice!
Dixie began keeping track of how much – or how little – each storyteller had to spend to make the sex happen. (The Burner spent nothing since the condom they used was hers. Oh, and he got panties.) Dixie also mentioned that they were short one storyteller that night and that if any of the audience members wanted to tell a story that fit within the theme, she’d pick some names out of a hat after the break.
During the break Dixie asked me to put my name in the hat. I had been a storyteller at a few of the previous Bawdy events, and while I’m not completely comfortable on stage, I am getting better. Up to that point no one had volunteered and Dixie was worried the show would be short. I put my name in and figured I’d be going on stage.
I had to think of a story that fit into the theme of cheap sex. This is the story I would have told had my name been pulled out of that hat.
I placed an ad on Craig’s List, which, of course, is free. I was looking for a good time with a guy who could carry on a decent conversation and who could host.
At the time my ex-husband and his girlfriend were living with me. They severely messed with my sex life – at home. They weren’t my parents so I could go out and fuck whenever I wanted.
As with any post in the Casual Encounters w4m section, my listing got a lot of responses. I finally settled on a guy who said he was in town for business. Yes! That meant he would be hosting … in a hotel. That meant hotel sex. That meant sleeping on a bed. (I had been sleeping on my couch when the Ex and his girlfriend were “sharing” my space with me.)
The guy, who I quickly dubbed Hotel Guy was in his 40s, married, and from Atlanta. He was in town to do some consulting work with a major health insurer. We fell into a routine where he’d email me to check on my availability and I’d meet up with him at whichever hotel he happened to be staying that week; he went home on the weekends.
We didn’t see each other every week, since he was in town to work, not fuck all night. Some weeks he worked too much. Some weeks he couldn’t find any rooms in the city and stayed in the East Bay. Some weeks I was busy fucking other people.
When we did get together I’d take a cab to the hotel in San Francisco where he was staying. When I didn’t have the cash to pay for the cab, I’d call him and he’d come to the cab to pay the cabbie. When I was able to pay, he always reimbursed me. So far still free for me.
We went to dinner sometimes, and to drinks often. He always paid. Free for me.
We had fun sex. He had a nice thick cock. Free for me.
In whatever hotel he stayed, I’d take at least one bottle of shampoo and conditioner, and try to get even more lotion. I love having a little bottle of lotion with me at all times. I even got some lotions for friends. All of it was free for me. Between the good fucking and the toiletries, I was coming out ahead.
But I truly came out ahead when he sent me on my way in the mornings. He’d give me cab fare back home, usually $20. I don’t think I ever took a cab. Instead, I took the bus, which was only $2, or I walked, which was free and healthy. I’d pocket the remaining cash.
On the average night Hotel Guy and I spent together, I got a ride to him, drinks, at least one good fucking, a night in a nice hotel room, hand lotion, fresh air and exercise, and $20. Fucking Hotel Guy was not only cheap for me, it was profitable.
It’s possible I would have won Dixie’s contest to determine who got their sex the cheapest.
I swear. True story.
