Thursday 17 November, 1997

Just as I was ready to throw in the towel, wrap up my freelance work and let myself be handcuffed by corporate life, I found my strength.
I once heard a story and I have no idea if it was metaphorical, taking place in the spiritual realm, or if it was literal.
But it was a shaman story about someone who had lost the will to live, due to getting wounded in a war and because of the atrocities he had witnessed there.

The story is that the shaman and the tribe saw no other way of bringing him back, than to throw him in a lake.
It would either spark his will to live, or he would drown.
And indeed, the man who thought he wanted to die and didn’t have anything to live for, was brought back from the other side to the land of the living.

For me a career in corporate life is that lake I consider throwing myself into, not because a shaman says so, but because after struggling to create a life post-college, I think I have lost the will to live.
That I may as well throw myself in a career that will eat me alive. It’s like I have a perverted desire to be creatively and spiritually dead.
But instead, just like with the native American veteran, instead of drowning and dying, I find my will to live.

So here we are, November already.
I’ve ignored the handful of diary entries I wrote since May, because they seem pointless. None of their plans came to fruition, and this fall had a special surprise for me that really knocked me down.
1997 has been a weird year; The first half of it brought me the best sex of my life, with Bear. Still clueless where that came from!
But I know it felt like an accomplishment, I do know that.
A more than welcome, accomplishment.

And then when summer hit, our sex life got rocky. Fortunately not  rocky for him and me; We’re still in the same place!
He has a girlfriend about whom we never speak, and sometimes I think they’re separating because he’s staying at a friend’s place and I know there have been difficulties at home.
But the constant is that I am his mistress.
And we’re good.

For our arrangement it is irrelevant if he is taken or not, something we both seem to understand. I don’t ask, and he doesn’t tell.
But the sex changed in the second half of 1997, it got rocky.
I am no longer that horny, and my pussy often hurts while fucking. At the beginning of this year, the physical difficulties were more like startup problems and it lead to absolute mind blowing sex, with more anal sex than I ever thought myself capable of having!
I felt like a bonafide sex goddess.

But the sex we had second half of this year, was the result of him and me really using every trick in the book. Maybe, in hindsight, it is a good idea to check those handful of diary entries I made in the past few months.
To see what I wrote.

With all the drama going on in my life, that almost threw me into corporate life, (and no, not going to tell what happened), I could use a little help remembering how life was “before”.
Who I was, “before”.

On Tuesday 22 September 1997 I wrote;

“We make love frequently. And it’s always different, challenging, surprising, hopeful, satisfying..
He brings so much every time. Not things, like food or drinks, but he brings himself.
In a good mood, carrying adventures he doesn’t share, or a relationship we don’t talk about, or maybe both.”

On Saturday 24 September 1997 I wrote;

“Write about the fuck of the century tomorrow. I feel so disturbed, excited, afraid, all at the same time”

I have NO idea what this entry was about!
“the fuck of the century” refers to  the movie Basic Instinct, but I have no idea otherwise.
Did Bear and me have a fuck of the century and I forgot?!

On Sunday 9 October 1997 I wrote;

“both the sex with Bear and writing with (bootlegger trader) Nikki entered rough waters, although both for different reasons, but still.
With my love life being the only area I have been successful at, it got under my skin losing my grip there. To no longer being able to count on flawless  sex performances and hot letters, as the foundation of my life.”

On Tuesday 1 November 1997 I wrote;

“This was an agonizing, dramatically taxing day and it made me realize I need to cut ties with things I thought I could hold onto, for comfort and safety.
I need to understand this diary, this sex life, this random, erratic diary writing, is the best if not the only thing of value I have to offer.

That at the end of the day – but preferably at the start of every day! – this diary writing is all that matters.
When I die I will remember what I wrote here, I will regret the things I didn’t do that would have made great stories, and I will have forgotten the days spent in mediocracy.
I will have forgotten the work I did for money, and I will remember the work I did because I wanted to.
I will remember only, what I lived for.”

I had no idea I wrote this…. wow.
So apparently on November 1st, I already knew I needed to let go and rebuild my life around writing. That my sex life, dates with Bear and writing with Nikki, would ultimately be the only thing that mattered.
That writing and sex, are who I am.

Although I forgot that diary entry immediately, knowing how it all panned out, it is like I knew it would go that way.
It is like I predicted the most painful November of my life, as well as its solution.
To write.

Which brings me to a message that I keep getting, a phrase Anaïs Nin writes about in one of her books. She hears a voice, or receives an internal message:
“Write a book, Anaïs.”
Similarly, I’ve been getting the same message;
“Write a book, Lauren.”

So no more handful-of-diary-entries in five months.
No more forgotten encounters with Bear, among which even the fuck of the century could get lost.
And no more perverted fantasies of letting myself be incarcerated by corporate life.

Sex first, writing second, and may all the perversions be for Bear and me instead.
I’ll be waiting.

.
~Lauren97

Write a book, Lauren. | 1997 diary
is the first chapter of book 4, diary 1997