The Sex Room That Can’t Come To 1995 | The Book Club final week

On Saturday November 7, I wrote the turning point blogpost in a series that has covered five months of 2020;
A Chance To Purge All That Once Was | The Book Club final week
And this is one of those final 7 posts, to purge all that once was.

One of the first things that became clear to me, when I let this idea of cleansing, dropping but most of all transmuting everything that had to do with my former lover, take shape, was that I wanted to go beyond just your regular “getting over” or “making over”.
Instead of becoming a renewed and reinvented current day me, I was going to dial it up a notch and integrate these 7 days into a project which I started in 2019;
About living in 1994-1995 and beyond.
I was reshaping my own history, of 25 years ago.

So according to this project, I m now living in November 1995.

You can find these diaries, that project, in the tabs of this website.

So this week of getting over a relationship that ended, was relocated from 2020 to the way younger me in 1995.
Where Lauren’s relationship to Bear, had ended in 1994.
And she had caught herself holding on to his memory, and to the possibility of picking it up.
Even after a rendez vous in a hotel had turned sour, where she just couldn’t be “the other woman”, she was unconsciously keeping the door open.
She knew she had to let go.

And in many aspects my 2020 life could be transferred to 1995 perfectly.
Instead of going back to 2014, the year before I met my lover, I was going back to 1989; When a 17 year old Lauren had taken matters in her own hand, and had started an affair with a boy she called Bear.

And current day wishes to get on track physically, could also be translated to 1995. Lauren95 had put on weight after her first year on a desk job.

Her desire to move past Bear, who was now living with his girlfriend, making her a mistress and how she didn’t want that?
All direct translations of my current day situation where after more than 5 years our affair ended, and I am coming to terms with realizing I will never have it in me again to be “that” other woman.

But there was one thing, one aspect, that I encountered and thought:
“OMG that is so cool!”
Only to then realize: “Dang. I can’t take this with me.”
Because Lauren 95 is not going to have this memory. Not this association.
I’ll have to leave it in 2020, and can’t bring it with me to my 1995 performance project, to Lauren95 and her lover the young man Bear.
And that was a sex room.

It was a fantasy that could not be tied to a couple in their early 20’s that had spent their encounters in student dorms and student houses.

“The sex room” was reserved for a couple where at least one of the two had a condo that was so big, there had been an entire, barely used, extra room tied to the kitchen.
It was a room that was so scarcely used, if you wanted to turn this into an adult play room, you would only have to move the vacuum cleaner, take out a drying rack and give it a little paint.
That’s how surplus it was.

My lover, whose entire penthouse had basically become one big surplus after he married, had such a room.
And on more than one occasion, I fantasized out loud that we could make that a room entirely dedicated to our sex play.
And I was really specific about what I wanted, and like always, he merrily joined along with suggestions.

That fantasy room, in his apartment, something which will never happen because we broke up and in Covid struck 2020 I just can’t make myself be a secret mistress again;
That room is a symbol of my sexuality.

Full of potential yet heavily underused.

And yesterday, I was studying my dream apartment and realized this condo, had a large, unmarked, room, next to the kitchen.
The exact same sex room I had always envisioned us having.

But the fictional Lauren, who I was becoming, and whose new life I was creating?
Lauren95 who was getting over her lover Bear, after he had broken up with her in December 94?
She would have no memory of her lover Bear and herself, fantasizing about a spare room.

I was on a junction;
Either I was going to get over my current day lover, and this room in my dream house stood for a chance to take ownership over that part of my sexuality.
Because the room was no longer his, no longer ours; It would be MINE.

Or, I could go along with the fantasy, art-project and performance, of shaping myself into Lauren95, an ambitious and soon very successful 23 year old who was leaving her student life and the young man Bear, behind.

She was envisioning a new house for herself, which according to this map, had a door in the kitchen, leading to an extra space.
Entirely neutral.

And I chose that.

The sex room, an extra room that I discovered on the map of a dream house where I want to live, was the first thing that I “cleared”, in these seven days where I get over my relationship with my lover.

It was the first thing, I could let go.
Easily.
Because Lauren95 never had it, so she never lost it either.

~Laurenn
An unexamined life is not worth living
.

the Book Club: Demons and Daemons

You just read part 1, my column.

Today’s chapter below, from Demons and Daemons, is…. heavy ass stuff. A chapter that belongs in the category: “What AM I going to do with you?”
But a little while ago I actually came up with a creative solution.
I was going to create a book and call it:
– insert a catchy story or book title that promises something juicy-
and then the subtitle:
“And all the other times I wanted to stop writing and wrote quite a good blogpost about this extremely boring topic”
And then this chapter would be in it!
lol

This is what I wrote:
.

Chapter 9, Untitled Notes from Lauren #8

“A New Journey Begins”

day 13, Saturday July 25

in the movie Basic Instinct Sharon Stone plays a writer, Catherine Tramell

“After God’s Omen of having my text disappear into thin air on the day of the lord,
one is of course aware that signs are being sent and caution is called for!”
.
It is exactly one week ago that I posted an Untitled Notes from Lauren here on Facebook.
I did write one more, on Sunday, but that one was eaten by Facebook editor AND it was also eaten by the copy paster, which had only copied 4 sentences instead of the thousand or so words.
.
Because these Facebook notes – also known as the feast called “illegal blogging” where I feel less pressure because it’s not posted to a blog (sometimes I harvest them later, and blog them together) – do have a habit of becoming lengthy.
Usually the length a normal blogger would publish to the blog without hesitation, but I still prefer them here.
Illegally.
.
So what happened?
Well after God’s Omen of having my text disappear into thin air on the day of the lord, one is of course aware that signs are being sent and caution is called for!
.
And indeed, despite holding up day-by-day reasonably well, and even writing both as Lauren and under my real name (Suzanne) that things were going really good;
This was all a matter of perspective.
Good lighting so to speak.
The way a photographer chooses to portray his model in a certain way.
.
In the same way I too, always tend to focus on the positive and not dramatize things.
But there was some stuff happening behind the scenes that showed me (as many posts confess a conclusion I ve drawn about six times in the last 2,5 years)
that the time has come to stop ->online<- writing as LS Harteveld.
.
So I did.
.
And because it came together with the realization – not to say disillusion – that my 14 year long journey in search of the right relationship style and my sexual preferences, had come to an end, it was a bit of a two puncher.
.
First coming to a conclusion that LS Harteveld had to stop writing online.
(a conclusion which had been drawn before)
And that my 14 year journey had come to an end.
(something never thought before)
.
In 2006 I broke up with my partner after 14 years, and went in search of what I did want – hoping to find an explanation why I wasn’t satisfied in a healthy and fun relationship we were having.
That question is answered.
.
But because it involved things like “secrecy” “forbidden fruit” “double identities” yada yada –
Oh!
Almost forgot the most important one.
It also involves:
“Men with whom you have fantastic sex still not choosing for you”
So that was a bummer when you find out you’re still losing the best guys the same way you did as a teen-
but I m already way too elaborate.
So anyway!
Back to why the result of the 14 year long journey was that the blog, the honesty, the entire sex thing on paper – had to go,
was because if I have a chance of a normal relationship – a guy choosing me for once – and the great sex becomes a great relationship, just like it did 28 years ago;
In that case The Lady cannot have a blog.
.
And not just because HE would not accept it if he is known as my partner and I write about how I finally get it in all the ways, and all the days, and how I m now finally in sexual nirvana;
No.
I would not want that.
I don’t want to blog about going steady.
.
I would get totally freaked out if the man I seeing intimately and we’re together day after day, if I would at the same time be writing about him.
.
Writing here – online as LS Harteveld – was a journey of self-discovery.
But it will prevent relationships to grow, maybe it already has.
They might never go beyond the secret-lover status, and if they do, then I am the one who doesn’t want to blog anymore.
If I knew beforehand I would never ever get into something serious, I could keep it up.
But that’s not the case.
.
So that was the reason I knew, and know, that I will no longer be writing online as LS Harteveld.
I will continue my 1994 series, but that will be an offline endeavor, so my pen doesn’t really shape the reality
I could postpone 5 years before I publish.
Who knows, maybe I don’t even feel like writing that anymore…
there is no way to tell.
.
So the writing part died out because of that.
But I had also picked up curating/ publishing all the material, and that also got a slap in the face last week.
There were a couple of men or situations/possibilities that completely bottomed out, and I felt so empty handed.
The thought of going through that work, even if I “feel like” Suzanne the editor and not like Lauren the woman or girl who wanted to be with those men –
it was very raw and I could not see myself editing.
.
Still can’t.
.
But the difference with last week, is that I ve so made my peace with everything.
It was a beautiful journey, searching for your sexuality for 14 years straight.
And I found it, I know now what it is that I like and why a long term relationship with someone who is faithful to me, is not going to work.
I want a long term relationship with someone very supportive of me, including when i would want sexual adventures with others.
But most of all I need him to keep things exciting, for us both basically.
He needs to be open and exploratory with other women.
.
But the relationship I seek does not need seeking.
The man I seek doesn’t either.
Anything I do to “get there”; it all feels so off.
After 14 years, I m done doing anything for my love life
I m done!
It’s okay to be alone, I m not going to spend another minute of my life “trying”.
Enough is enough.
.
This morning I woke up knowing that YES, I am “over” the scare and sorrow of having to go through everything I wrote the past 14 years, that has not been published yet.
I will do it.
I will curate it, edit it, publish it.
I, Suzanne, will take care of this legacy I built.
.
And there is something else; The name thing.
Signing just as Suzanne doesn’t feel good.
“Lauren” has become a part of me.
So much, that I have actually considered adding “Lauren” to my name, on all my other accounts as well.
I won’t, but I will here!
.
So I am Suzanne/Lauren, the editor of Lauren Harteveld, a fictional writer who wrote about sex, relationships, movies, pop culture, from 2006 until the summer of 2020.
.
And maybe we can see that as our new journey.
You and me.
Together.
.
Maybe we were the ones that were supposed to find each other.
And ride off into the sunset.

———-

Chapter 10 of Demons and Daemons,
will be shared soon,
in a new episode of The Book Club

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About The Book Club

In The Book Club you can find:
– a post
– and one Chapter of my novella Demons and Daemons.

These Book Club posts will form a new book, “A Map Into Unknown”
Covering a journey of three weeks into darkness (Demons and Daemons)
and the rest of 2020, finding my way back to the light!