Be Your Own Librarian

What is it that makes one fantasy (scenario/category of images/set of words) work one day, and not another? What is it about the real-life context that determines which particular thing it is that's going to send you over the edge this time?

Because it is, precisely, determined: in the sense of involuntary, unconscious, produced and constrained by factors that are outside your control. Except perhaps for those relatively rare times when I'm so insanely wound up that just about anything will make me come very quickly indeed, the process of masturbating to orgasm is a twofold journey. There's the physical journey, the feel of fingers on clit, of cock in cunt, of exploratory probing, which very soon fades from conscious awareness and kicks into autopilot. Meanwhile I'm deeply lost, absorbed, in the mental journey.

There's a library in my mind; the shelves are stacked with memories, with sounds, with ideas, with images from pornography which have been used and re-used so many times that they're almost unrecognisable from their original form. Worn smooth, stones at the edge of the sea. Rarely whole scenes, just something about the expression on a face, the look in someone's eyes, a snatch (nopunintended) of breathless speech, that grabs me for a reason I don't understand.

The mental journey to orgasm is a walk through this library, a survey of all the shelves and their strange overlapping classmarks. It's my own, it's idiosyncratic, stocked with all of the things that have worked for me over the years. But it's a diverse collection. Blood, pain, pissing, eggs, classrooms, laboratories, machines, animals, transsexuals, lesbians, furniture-fucking, exposure, humiliation...

At first, I browse tentatively, my attention ranging widely, picking up the occasional book and flicking through it to see what, if anything, grabs the attention. Playing the warmer - cooler - warmer - warmer - cooler - warmer - warmer - hot! hot! game. A rapid slideshow of images, people, juxtapositions, present themselves to the mind's eye, to see what works.

And the strange thing, to me, is the unpredictability of what does turn out to work. Something that seemed, last week, to be the absolute source and heart of my desire, is empty and flat today. It just doesn't fire. And then something else, that seemed absurd or even disgusting another time, seizes and hooks me. And I fall back against the library wall, breathless, every bit of my body heated up. It's this set of images, these words, this particular movement, that plays and replays and zooms in and repeats and intensifies until the moment where the physical and mental journeys reunite, where it all comes together, unbearable, transporting, all-powerful. A universe in a grain of sand.

Making Love

He said I understand for the first time why it's called 'making love'. Such a cheesy phrase, and yet...

He said when I feel those ripples, all those tiny tremors and squeezes, I understand what it means to be loved by your cunt.

He said, when we're fucking, and you hold my arm, or grab me, when you bite or kiss any bit of my skin that comes near your mouth, it's like being wrapped up in love.

He said it's beautiful.

He said I still want to do horrible things to you though.

I said good.