Category: 1997

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

Sixth chapter for book 3 in my vintage diary series. 

Monday 30 May, 1997 

I don’t really know what to do with myself! Or even what my emotions are. I feel overwhelmed, relieved, in disbelief that it took so long, and also a nagging worry that “What if I m wrong? What if it doesn’t work?”

But I think it will.
Because I can’t remember ever feeling like this. It’s like I have ants on my insides!

Last weekend Bear came over and we had such a great time. It was one hundred percent like old times. We talked about how we met, and where he  had lived, and where I had lived, and the quirks of those buildings, housemates and going out and the bars we both knew.
How life really was, one big party, in many, many ways.

Maybe our lives would have changed and our dates would have toned down, regardless. I mean regardless if Bear would have chosen his now girlfriend over me (or is he rethinking it? I wonder if he is on the verge of moving out..)
With all the lightheartedness and banter, when we thought of all the crazy shit that happened in our college years, I really felt something coming back to life within me that has been dead or at least knocked out since 1994.
Something I lost in my internship, or writing my thesis, or I lost it because Bear and me didn’t live together in the same city anymore.
We were both abroad.
Sometimes I still think the separation of our internships was what broke us, but either way, water under the bridge.

What I mean is that I felt something coming back to life that was more than just him and me. More than the inevitable joy and value that came from being his lover all those years, more than that bit of me that he was always holding in the palm of his hand.

I felt the joy, banter and lightheartedness that had been mine to keep, forever, and that I had lost.

Our sex was simple and satisfying.
I hadn’t been sure if I wanted sex, but got in the mood when we were talking about the past, and we watched a VHS of Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, that I had bought a good while back.
A sentimental purchase, too. Because we had attended the show in Amsterdam. So when I saw it at the record store, at one of the moments when I had felt particularly disheartened by feeling sidelined by Bear all the time;
I bought this VHS.

The irony of me buying a VHS with “sideshow” in the title, and filled with painful hard to watch moments, to overcome being painfully sidelined by Bear, was not lost on me. Unfortunately. Maybe that’s why I never actually watched it. But we did now, and because we were together and it sparked some great memories, it no longer held that sting for me.

When he left, I felt unburdened. Carefree. And on Sunday, there was no backlash either. So it wasn’t just the date itself that had the vibe of uncomplicated times, but it had stuck. I was spared from the backlashes as well.

So I already had a great weekend, but I was up for a breakthrough and ants crawling on the inside, apparently! Today.
Via Nikki’s letter.

Nikki sent me a funny, five page letter, with enough sexual innuendo to make a nice dessert to Saturday’s sex. He didn’t include a Bon Jovi bootleg for me to review for the fan club, which I didn’t regret because I am behind as it is. Maybe he knew that. But he gifted me an original copy of Madonna’s Girlie Show, Live Down Under.
He knew I had liked her a lot in her Bed with Madonna years, and even more  so in the Erotica Sex years.
Those were the best! 

But it all seemed a long time ago, and although Bedtime Stories was more than palpable, I dropped out when she took on the role of Evita.
It reminded me too much of her Live to Tell cleanup in the 80s.
Choosing 50s clothing and feminine hairdos when you could be rolling around on stage in your garter belt, was as lame to me now as it was then.

The Girlie Show was a really small tour, I remember that. Jim Rose Circus Sideshow probably saw more people in 1993 than Madonna’s Girlie Show, but if she had toured The Netherlands, I would have been hellbent to go! 
Typical, that when the world speaks badly of her, and perhaps because of that, she only does this tiny tour, it is exactly the time I would have love to come.

So it wasn’t that I didn’t know The Girlie Show, it’s just that with her “retreating” to soft curls, bedtime stories and the whole Evita saga, I had not hunted that tour video down or something.
My interest in her had faded.

Until Nikki sent me this VHS, and I watched it, and it was like I found that joyful part of me, the girlie part of me. The part that had been mine to keep and that I somewhere along the road started tying to Bear either being there, or not being there.
And I found my sense of body too. The body I had when I was a teen, and that started getting heavier with age, with quitting smoking, with desk hours , and with coming to terms being Bear’s sideshow.

I have had multiple times when I knew I was going to lose the pounds, and failed. So that’s the part of me that is in disbelief right now. It feels dangerous to have faith in something I have failed at so often.

But I know this feeling inside of me.
And seeing Madonna’s lean body was like a reminder that was my body. That body, the performer body. Not this body, the sedentary one.
It was a reminder that if I wanted my old life back, my laughter, my confidence, the way to go about that was not by changing Bear, but by changing me.

The way out was to stop being a sideshow, and owning who I was.
The fucking main act.

.
~Lauren97

Showtime | 1997 diary
is the sixth chapter of book 3, diary 1997

Fifth chapter for book 3 in my vintage diary series. 

Monday 11 April, 1997 

Tomorrow it’s one week since me and Bear had sex, and I m still recovering although it’s hard to pinpoint from what exactly. The sex, my period, or both? I got my period shortly after, in fact so shortly after that I wondered if it had not started mid-sex if we had done it again like we used to in the beginning. We could do it multiple times in a row, but since he’s living with his girlfriend we have never done that anymore.
We’ve become very efficient with our lust, or I have.
Which also might explain why I m still sore: I want it to hurt, to feel it as intensely as possible. But this time, it seems I overplayed my hand. I probably should have said “overstretched” things!
God damn it.
Let’s hope this heals.

The worrying also seems to be prolonging the mental stress. I m used to needing a couple of days for things to settle, but this one’s ugly.
Thinking about what happened in bed, is like thinking about a big barbwire ball with roses in it. Like I said, it’s been a week, yet every time I think back I  just don’t know where to start on what it is I’m feeling.
I m seriously messed up.

Right after he left I went to the bathroom, and my period started.
I always suffer from constipation around my period, and this one too came with a very painful stool. But since we had just had anal sex, I thought little of it.
I m quite familiar with having that nasty sharp pain once a month, so despite the intensity of having sex with Bear when we are only lovers (it’s just weird being the other woman, it really is) I felt it had been a good one!

I went to bed feeling happy, satisfied, and even proud of myself.
I knew few of Bear’s old girlfriends would have been able to keep up with this, let alone have enjoyable and even daring sex, without throwing fits all the time about him having to leave his girlfriend.
I knew how other women were and I was happy that once again, I had known how to play my cards in a way that brought me pleasure and made it a great experience.

I went to sleep blissfully unaware of the physical situation.
But the next couple of days, reality quickly caught up with me.

It was not the mental stress of being the other woman, not the usual hungover feeling mixed with fear of sexually transmitted diseases (I still suffer from that phobia, and I know to ignore it on days like that), and instead felt shame I had let myself go like that.
And was now suffering the consequences.

That although the constipation was a returning monthly thing, this time I could not help but think it was because we had anal sex. And although my pussy is always extremely sensitive in my period, that too seemed to be specifically violent. I even took painkillers for two days.
So I waited.
I waited for it all to clear up, so that I would not be punished for my ferocious sexual appetite.
Almost one week later and I’m waiting still. 

It worries me, not just because of some perhaps irrational fear of having to go to a doctor, but because a girl I used to know who worked as an escort had told me that she did have anal surgery after being raped by a client. And it wasn’t even a brutal rape, it had been a regular client and ordinary call. 
She wasn’t traumatized by the rape, nor by the surgery she ultimately decided to have, but I remember it spoiled anal sex for me for a while.
I never dared talking about what she had told me, with Bear. I considered it classified information.
And I didn’t have to tell him. He had always been in tune with what I wanted. As long as I was still afraid of it, he would never push it.

And ultimately I not just forgot the story, but so many other things happened between us. Bear and me abandoned anal sex for multiple years.
He broke up with me, moved in with his girlfriend, started visiting me again, 1996 was our absolute best sex year ever, and now here we are.

Maybe we got reckless. Or maybe I, not Bear, got reckless because he was the one who broke it off last week. Good thing he did, obviously. It does prove that he knows my body better than I do.

My period is almost over, but I m still paying for what happened.
And a hell of a lot more than what I bargained for.

.
~Lauren97

It costs more now (NSFW) | 1997 diary
is the fifth chapter of book 3, diary 1997

Lauren writes to her penpal, bootleg trader Nikki. NSFW, so it’s sexual. 

Wednesday 6 April, 1997 

Dear Nikki,

I think I owe you an apology. As I probably owed Bear an apology too, but considering we had such great sex – great but with enough rawness and unfinished endings, to keep it on our mind and come back for more soon to smooth it over and push for a deeper level of satisfaction- I ll consider that score settled.
I don’t have to say to Bear: “I m sorry I wasn’t really there to enjoy in full, because I was so obsessed with my weight”.
My enthusiasm when he came over said it. My willingness to try something we had only did once before, and take that further, was all the “Motherfucking Let’s Forget About All This Shit And Move The Fuck On!” I ever needed to say.
Well, that didn’t really sound like an apology. But you know what I mean. You’re either going to have a serious talk or serious sex, and Bear and me did the latter. Which I prefer, anyway.

But you and me can’t have serious sex, or any sex, because you don’t live in the Netherlands. Yet I did share my insecurity about my weight with you, and that I wanted to lose weight and get my pre-college body back.
The virgin body I had when me and Bear started having sex.

Well: My apologies!
Not just was it an entire waste of my time to worry about it; A waste of dates with Bear that probably could have been even better (although my anxiety about my weight did translate to arousal as well!); But in the case of you and me it was a waste of chances to talk about sex with you.
Because I find everything fascinating about you: That you re an American living in London. That you own a record store. That you trade bootlegs and that I still get the cassettes from you to review for the fan club.
It’s all so exotic.

I like that you re older than I am, and are no longer caught up in that whole trying to figure out what job you re going to do.
In particular since it landed at owning a record store and not at working in an office.

But most of all I like that you have a girlfriend, although we ignore her in our letters don’t we? I do that out of courtesy, as I imagine, so do you.
I imagine you and her living above the record store, in a messy way both in your house as well as in your relationship.
I imagine it as chaos and drama, with plenty of make up sex.
Like True Romance.
Oh now I remember! I once wrote you a whole letter about that movie I think! Damn. You being Californian is setting off a whole string of erotically charged fantasies.

So my apologies you got mingled up in me feeling insecure about my body, and trying to get you on board on the idea that I should be losing the weight.
That was not yours to deal with.
And ultimately, as it turned out, my weight is not mine to deal with either. It’s always exactly as it should be. And the sex Bear and me had, was a celebration of that.

It was the first time in years that I had sex without the idea that this was a temporarily heavy body; That I should be losing weight, but that this was “okay for now”.
Now I know I m not going to change it, and I m also not going to write body complaints-letters to you. 

But all this could be the great sex talking, really.
Our prostitute role playing.
The anal sex.
The orgasms.
The way he filled me up (my pussy) as I requested, without first licking or fingering me, so that it would hurt a bit because it was so tight.

Of course I feel like I m healed of my body issues; I m still as radiant, and satisfied as yesterday.

Bear came in the evening yesterday. He usually comes during the day.
After he had left, I got ready for bed and watched myself in the bathroom mirror.  My face had the intense happy after-sex glow, but now that I had decided I wasn’t going to change my weight, I could also appreciate the fat on my face. Its roundness and fullness. I loved it.
I smiled at her while I thought:
“We’re going to have such a good time.”
And I didn’t even mean Bear. I didn’t mean that I had interpreted the sex as something that had been so smashing he would definitely come back for more, and that we were a solid “mistress and lover” from this day forward.

I meant that I felt so good in my own skin, I knew the future would always look bright.
And the sex had had a difficult part to it – maybe I needed to reassure myself that even if the worst case scenario came true and I would not see Bear again, I would still be okay. That no one could take this newfound happiness away from me.
Not even the man who had brought the smile on my face.

So now the date, and why it was such a turning point.

When I was getting ready in the shower, I knew something was up, because I was totally indecisive about what I wanted.
It went from ideas of keeping it platonic with a little kissing, and giving our affair an exciting “catch me if you can”  “hard to get” phase – which had the added benefit of not having to deal with my body – to catching myself hoping all my holes would be filled. That it would be one of those dates where we would plunge into wildly erotic fantasies, that would make me feel vulnerable and take me days to recover from.
So when he came over I still had not made up my mind.

When he stood in my hallway and I hugged his big strong body, beautifully dressed as always, and when I put my nose into the collar of his winter coat, I knew what I hoped for.
It was of course the second. To be filled up in all my holes and to drift away, together, in intoxicating fantasies that would leave me shaky for days.
I wanted to bite off more than I could chew, experience more than I knew how to deal with.
I wanted to be fucked, poked, entered, held. Melt together, which would be even sweeter because I would know how temporary it was. 
That he would go home, and I would be alone again.

And although at that moment, in our hug, I still had no idea how we were going to get to that point; We did get to that point.
This is where I credit him. This is one of those sequences he just knows how to play, how to setup. He’s like an actor in one of those improvised art house movies. And then of course, so am I.
Pretending you re actors having sex on screen, appeals to voyeurism and exhibitionism. Even though no one else is there of course. It’s a mechanism that is always present on the background, and I credit it for why I like having sex with him so much. 
It’s on the foreground, when we role play.
First we talk about what we would like to do, where we refine the scene we “one day” want to set up (we specifically talk about this in some unnamed future; or non-specifically then obviously).
And then there is that magical moment when he takes it into the now, by taking on the role and talking to me in character.

Yesterday I shared with him the want-you-in-all-my-holes desire.
(In case you re wondering: Do I feel comfortable sharing this with you? No. I don’t! But I think it’s part of savoring it happened.)
And I told him I had liked it so much last year, when we did the prostitute role playing.
It had been a role that had put me in a position of power. He was a longtime client of mine and he wanted anal sex.
It turned out as the best times we ever had it. Absolutely unbelievable, it was that good.
It were those two things – the all my holes thing, as well as the prostitute fantasy – that I brought in yesterday, and that became the building blocks of our new fantasy.

As honest as I like to be, and not just to you but also because these letters will be all that remains, so if I don’t write it down now it will be lost for myself as well, but I cannot tell all of the dimensions.
Not the entire fantasy.
It is too personal, for me.

But what I can share is that it worked. And for the first time, in I think half a year or maybe even longer, we repeated the fantasy and had anal sex.
Until, unfortunately, he slipped out. Still not entirely sure what caused it, all I remember is that I would have wanted to continue, but he chose to finish it differently.
Like an actor doing improv, he really did what was best for the story as a whole. What would have been the most likely ending, the most logical way to make it a well-rounded, satisfying, experience between a prostitute who had trusted her client and a client who did not want to extend his stay.
But I lay in his arms later and cried. Because I was no prostitute, and wasn’t paid, I was just pretending.
And I had wanted him inside of me, longer, but I had no way to ask for it, because it wasn’t in the script.

The prostitute and her client had negotiated a price, and what he would do to her. He had “warned her” about specifics, and since this was all play; Yes of course that made me horny.  
Yet, I was sensible, both in my role as well as myself, that I understood we needed a safe word. Something I would be able to say, at which he would stop.
So for the first time in over seven years, we had sex with a safe word in place. I could tell him to stop.

When I opened this letter I know I tried to describe a sense of rawness, of it not being finished. And because it was so extremely intimate, there is always the chance of it being the last time, I think. That he pulls away.
I know I wrote something about that too: How vulnerable this feels. In bed, but more so afterwards. There is this incredible pain of feeling so lonely, you just think you re gonna die, figuratively speaking.
Or never going to do this again, more literally.
That I m not cut out for this, and should stop being a mistress, or that I should at least stop having this deeply intimate sex that screws with my head, and I have no one to share this with.
And that’s all so true.

But in retrospect, I also think that in addition to a safe word, I need something that says: 
“Don’t stop.”

And maybe the reason it hurt so much, when he didn’t continue the intercourse that way, didn’t try again, is that it felt like I was being rejected. 
That ultimately, I not just wanted it more than he did. But that it was one big metaphor, for the mind fuck that has been the last seven years.
It was the pain of being the one who wants it more.

And knowing there was no word to ever prevent that from happening again.

.
Take care.
XX
Lauren

_________________
Nothin’s For Free (NSFW) | 1997 diary
is the fourth chapter to book 3, diary 1997

Chapter 3 for my vintage diary series. 

Friday 25 March, 1997 

Good news first: Bear and me are still a thing. Last Monday he came by and everything was not “exactly as it has been for the past 7 years”, because “we” are always different.

Not just because 17 year old us and 24 year old us are different people, not just because he is now in a relationship and during our college years he was never very open about his status.
But because it is always different when we see each other. We don’t really have a recipe or something. We have zero routine in what we eat, or drink, or do. We don’t even always have sex.
So when I m about to say it was like it always was, I mean it was in good spirits. Not that we literally did the same thing, because there is no same thing with us.

But the bad news is that I was unable to enjoy it fully and completely like I used to, because of my body.
I ve been getting heavier since my internship and since quitting smoking and no longer have the thin yoga body I used to have in my teens.
But until now I used to feel good in my own skin when having sex. I would get annoyed by pinching pants, and by having to buy new clothes, but in bed I  ve always felt voluptuous. If anything, I felt my body was better equipped to have sex this way.
I certainly wasn’t going to break in half anymore.

But last Monday, that was no longer the case.
He was still the same, “we” were still the same, but I had reached a tipping point where I could still appreciate my body for its beauty and its health, but I no longer enjoyed being in it. It really was too big for me to enjoy the sex.

The weight had not changed. Not yet anyway. My weight in kilos has fluctuated over the past three years, and it was on the higher end, but there was no quantifiable reason why last Monday it would suddenly get in the way of me enjoying sex.
Maybe it’s because I have dropped out of exercising last winter… Either way, when he left, I got myself together and decided to do something about it!
To get back to exercising, like I should have done much earlier.

I remember a project I started last year, or maybe in 1995 already I don’t know…. But I started a project where I was going to live like in 1988, including the extensive bike riding.
But I didn’t…. If only I had stuck to that! Then I wouldn’t be in this mess now.
Or I needed to reach this point of no longer enjoying sex the way I used to, to finally get motivated.

Since then I have exercised every day, and the result is I gained one whole kilo. That’s why I said “The weight had not changed. Not yet anyway.”
Now, I have changed. In the plus.

So my pants still pinch, and I m still somewhere in purgatory between buying new clothes, and realizing I have shelves full to choose from in my own closet, once I lose the weight. I kept all my smaller sizes.

The next time Bear comes to visit me, I want to be able to enjoy it. I want to feel sexual, feminine, and hot.
Exactly like I have for 7 years minus one Monday afternoon, when my extra pounds got the better of me.

I m going to throw my full weight behind this!

.
~Lauren97
An unexamined life is not worth living

Second chapter for book 3 in my vintage diary series. 

Saturday 19 February, 1997 

If things had not gone sour so quickly, it would have been the perfect Valentines date.
Although perhaps the Guns N Roses  tape playing already gave away our Valentines Day was far from the usual sappy commercial bullshit, and that it would end messier.

Like the band breaking up last year had kind of been foretold by their in my opinion awful album “The Spaghetti Incident”.
After having stellar songwriting albums Use Your Illusion I and II, releasing an album of covers, including punk covers no less (the Illusion albums are heavy on symphonic rock), was a failure in my opinion. At least musically.
And the title “The Spaghetti Incident”, could be seen as an indication the band would end in a banal way that did not do justice to how good they were.

That the world biggest rock n roll band would die a silent death covered in tomato sauce, exactly like the bland cover photo.
That the band, in theory, still exists without Slash who they replaced with a guitarist who used to tour with Nine Inch Nails.
If I had not been writing with Californian (but living in England) bootleg trader Nikki, I would not even have known that.

So yeah.
Maybe in hindsight, Bear and me could have known that by playing the Guns N Roses in Tokyo tape, our Valentines date was actually more a Spaghetti Incident waiting to happen, than it was romance.

But we didn’t know that then. And for all we knew Valentines was the best time we had in months.
I didn’t feel violated, and I m sure Bear was relieved he no longer had to sexually tiptoe around me.
It felt healthy and unbothered, compared to our December date. Playing the Guns N Roses tape sealed the deal; We were back in 1992, when we went to see them in Rotterdam.

To us playing Guns N Roses on Valentines day, was the best we could do to try to get back to who we were, as a couple, if we were even allowed to call ourselves that, now that he was living with girlfriend.
To this day, I have no idea if all the years we had together even fucking count for any fucking thing, given the fact that when push came to shove he started a real relationship, and has been building a life without me.

In December I had felt I was auditioning for my own role as mistress, and that if I was good enough, he would switch to me.
Or I would get a higher status in his life, I m not exactly sure what I had felt but it was something!
It’s difficult to put a name on what happened, but I know that it made me feeling violated worse, although that had not been the only reason for sure. I had had nightmares of abuse before our date, it was more than just him acting out of sync.
But it certainly didn’t help I felt I was put on the spot and had to perform.

So when last Valentines Day we had our lovely low-key, highly saturated in Guns N Roses date, with uncomplicated sex in front of the tv playing the concert, we must both have felt a sigh of relief.
We were still there.
We were not broken as a “couple”, or whatever the fuck you call it when you ve been seeing each other for seven years.

I even thought Valentines Day was going to be my, I don’t know, springboard to a new life or something!
I was finally going to get my act together, lose weight, get back to my yoga mat, put an end to the freelance working which is still causing me to work nights because I can’t seem to plan my work hours;
And instead I was going to go all in on publishing and promoting my books.

Only to have it all being taken away in the same week.

I know it all sounds very me-me-me, and I suspect that’s what Bear picked up on in the next days.
That he felt that although we had a great Valentines, and things emotionally and sexually seemed to have stabilized (although they were of course nowhere near the amazing sex we had last year!!!!! but still. Stable was good. Stable is a start.) that I was no longer hanging around for more.
Whatever it had been, there had been room for in his life in December, it was no longer relevant to me. 

And when he wanted to come again later this week, I said No, because I really wanted to use the momentum I had felt on our date.
I wanted to build the life that I had resisted; A life as an independent woman who does not have a man.
A mistress even, doomed forever to be the second choice. The one who does not matter.

I had come to terms with getting so very little of him, by understanding there was a career and a Life so much bigger than that, waiting to be built by me.
If I was not meant for him, than I was going to run with the conclusion that, apparently, I was meant for bigger things.

So I said he could not come on Wednesday, because I had a ton of work to do.
And he did not accept that.
I could feel by the silence on the line, the irritation, that he thought I should have been thrilled he wanted to come by again within 48 hours.
When all I thought was:
You made your choice.
And it wasn’t me.

Although my choice to not let him come visit me, was a work related one, it was one I made without guilt because I was just responding to the situation he had created.
We have known each other for seven years, but he has chosen to keep me on the side. All I do is put boundaries on what that means. Such as not being available when we’ve already spent one workday, and finally feel inspired to work on my own life.

And the Us that had felt amazing Monday, fell to pieces that same week.
And I can’t shake the feeling he was right not choosing me, because apparently I cannot even keep Us afloat for one single week, before it gets crushed under me finally choosing for myself.

He was right choosing for her and not me, I no longer question that. 
Just as I was right to say I didn’t have time on Wednesday, I do not question that either.

I remember sitting on top him admiring his beautiful body, which always draws feelings out of me somewhere between cuddling my cats and safety. It’s the only time I really feel safe. He’s so peaceful, not so much his personality but his body. I always get all the time to touch him, caress him, admire him, love him.
And I remember trying to find words to express how happy I was he was there with me. In particular after all we had been through on our second date in December, with me dragging sexual confusion and nightmares into what we had. 

I said: 
“You’re so easy to love.” And then I paused, realizing that for someone who causes so much pain and tests the patience of the people who love him, probably on a daily basis, this was too simplistic.
So I rephrased:
“Don’t get me wrong, you’re difficult to deal with,” I laughed.
“But you’re easy to love.”

Looking back I m not sure what this whole week was about. If we’re deeper in the mess that started in December, if we’re in a different phase, or if we’re on a road to…. to something, I guess.
And not the end. I don’t feel that is what this is about, although 1997 has gotten a rocky start when usually January and February are our strongest months.

I played the Tokyo 1992 concert from Guns N Roses in the background, as I am typing this. 
The first act as a whole, is not my favorite although it obviously has some great songs.
But a good hour in, the concert shifts into a whole new gear, and the rest is simply, absolutely, and without fail brilliant.

The song that marks this shift, is “You Could Be Mine”.

.
~Lauren97
An unexamined life is not worth living

disclaimer 2022:
This opening chapter for book 3 in my vintage diary series, has a trigger warning for having bad experiences with non-consensual sex. 

Thursday January 13, 1997 

I’m thirteen days into the new year and the sickening feeling something went wrong last December, has not left.
I’m not talking about all things I wanted to accomplish last year, among which publishing my diaries 1994-1995 and 1995-1996. I m not talking about starting my career as an independent self-published author in many other ways either.
I wish it was that!
That looking back on how I did not build a career for a whole year made me so sick, it would automatically become the sole thing on my mind this year.
But no.

As always when I feel badly, this is about Bear.

We saw each other twice in December. Which is a lot, because he’s living with his girlfriend and I assume there is more guilt associated with having an affair, or still seeing the mistress from your college days. But I seemed to be in luck, which was and still is a happy surprise.
But 13 days into the new year, I am still processing it.

It is as if I missed very important clues, or worse: That I understood them, but did not act on them. I did not respond to something I felt was going on, and although rationally I understood my choice, and still stand by it;
Emotionally, I wished I had done otherwise.
I wish I had said: “I have the feeling something is going on. What is it?”
But I didn’t and I was left with the feeling I had disappointed him. That I had failed an audition or a test. A situation where I could have proven myself a worthy partner, so that he could have chosen for me.

But again: I did it for a reason. Although this is all putting words to something I felt on an emotional level, so it’s guess work at best, I felt that if I would reach out to him, I would be reaching out for the rest of my life.
I would set myself up for decades of reaching out, whenever he was grumpy, disappointed, hurt, and could not express himself, and there I would go again opening conversation with my boyfriend or husband:
“What is it? Is something wrong?”
And as fickle and intangible the moment was, where I must have decided on instinct not to go that route, it still seems to haunt me.

We could be moving his stuff out either into an apartment of his own or perhaps we’d live together for a while in my house. If only I had acted differently.
And by not doing that I probably made his decision to choose for his girlfriend final.

Maybe final as in trying for a baby or marrying her.
Maybe final as in no longer fooling around with other women, including me.
All this is guessing, maybe there is even another woman at play. But regardless of what was at stake for his girlfriend or other women, I think what I felt mostly, was what was at stake for me.
That I was the one who was weighed, or who was on audition, for being the girlfriend he sees in the good times. A part I’ve played for 7 years. 

And it’s not that I m restless because I think I made the wrong decision, but because I feel uncertain about where we’re at now. Did I lose him? Should I be mourning? Are we still on, and can I start working on some other very disturbing things that I have been carrying into our relationship from the start, and seem to be roaring their ugly head?
Can I reflect on those, or am I thereby ruining the chance of fixing this in the way I think thinks can always be fixed, which is:
Nothing is final.
There is always room to play.

Final is when you start fighting it, acting angry, and throwing accusations. Final is when you amplify what was just a meagerest of attempts, a moment of doubt or a desire for simplicity, by the other person.
And then you take that on and wear it around like your personal cloak of sorrow.
That, is when things get final.

And sometimes that is a good thing. I mean when you’re done with someone, using their lack of interest, their vices, as well as their lazy attempts to break up, and to interpret them as them breaking up with you.
But I am not done with Bear. How could I be? How could the man who has been my lover for so long, and with whom we’ve always kept the spark, the physical attraction, and with whom every time we’re naked and have sex feels like a first time, how could I possibly ever have enough of him?

If I would see him again, would I make a leap forward, so that he knows I am serious?
Or do I explain why I didn’t last time?
Do I leave the playing board wide open, and wait for him to make the first move? Which I m going to do anyway, because since he has a girlfriend I never initiate contact unless I have to, and then I keep it business like.

But what is my strategy, if I see how we left off?

And there are two things worth mentioning.
One was how good we were doing, on the first date.
The other is all the old fears and issues, my mental bagage, that shitstormed into our second date in December.
I think they might even have been related: That because the first date went so well, he was keeping his eye out on the second, to see if we should not become more. If he had made the right choice.
And that, in turn, may have triggered old fears in me, that I had not seen in years.  

So. The first date of December. The thing I remember was an intense love for him physically. A deep desire to appreciate his body, and appreciate him, and to express it in all non-verbal ways I could think of. I don’t think I ve ever felt a deeper urge to let every move I made be one of unconditional love. I wanted to drown him in love, as far as such a thing is ethical.
And not just physically.
I wanted to express that I loved him now, being the other woman, and not having a clue of how long we’d still have or how important I was to him;
That I loved him now, as I would love him always.
I also remembered the date was light, and we laughed a lot. Even the painful or awkward things, or worries that shot to mind; They were all met with lightheartedness and a sense of humor.

The second date was intense, deep, intoxicating, dangerous. Both physical, but in particular mentally. So the sex we had was not physically dangerous, for instance we did not have anal sex, but the way we did it was rough. And for the first time ever it didn’t “work”.
Instead of the excitement I have been feeling for 7 years, for example I am always the one who puts his hands on my head when I am giving head – I initiate and ask – instead of that I felt fear.

It was as if we had missed something infinitely small, that came at the price of ruining a dynamic we thought we had mastered. I still could not tell you what it was.
And the fear was not so much that I was afraid of Bear, but a deeply rooted fear of men washed over me. All the occasions where I had feared being with  a man alone, even when I assume it should have been safe; They all washed over me.
I think I will never find out if on those occasions my response was justified in terms of other women who have had bad experiences with those men, or if my choices to stay outside, to not invite someone to my room or now my flat, or to not sleep over with someone who was a platonic friend, if those choices were “only” justified by my fear.
But that they had been subjective.

All I knew was that they were suddenly there, in my bed with us. And that they were ruining it all. Because Bear of course, was afraid he had done something wrong. That I was having a response to him. He wanted to know what he had done wrong so that he could make it right.
But there was nothing to say.

It left me alone with my fears, and him alone with his, as he is very sensitive to only doing the things I want. By including the rougher part of sex, he also had to trust me. Right from the get go, first months of 1990.
When after all my first times, I started sharing my fantasies, and he responded, it required trust from him as much as it did from me.
And now, on our final date of 1996, it was as if it was broken. But broken not by a person, but broken like someone had dropped it like a vase.

I had been having nightmares about friends violating me. The journalist guy from the hardrock cafe, who never contacted me even though we would be going on a date. And a man I used to run into when I still worked at the publisher’s with whom I never flirted. Although I had never paid much attention to it, the dream made me see I had felt threatened by him.
I had been suffering from nightmares about being violated, and in that same bed the sex me and Bear had on that intense, dark, but also fascinatingly intimate last date of the year, turned into something neither one of us could handle.
It was too much, and I think we were both overwhelmed by it.

I remember being in each other’s arms, looking in each other’s eyes. I was crying. This was before our date had turned to something I could not handle sexually. I was crying because I was absolutely overwhelmed with emotions, because I felt so close to him. He was really there. We had a whole afternoon and night together, which has been rare this year. But it seemed to pay off in him being more relaxed, and more accepting to sinking into those moments together.
Tears were streaming down my face, and all I said was:
“You’re so close.”

I didn’t say: “Will you be mine?”. Not: “Don’t you want this forever?” And definitely not: “Why can’t you stay?”

Not because I was afraid that I would have to play that role forever. Not because I feared our love would ever turn sour, and he would hold me accountable because I had lured him in. I didn’t keep myself from asking those questions because they would make me Chief Romance, if he would have said yes to me.

I didn’t ask them, because I didn’t want him to say no.

.
~Lauren97
An unexamined life is not worth living