Category: 1998

Lauren writes to her penpal, bootleg trader Nikki. 

Wednesday 17 May, 1998 

Dear Nikki,

I think by now we have both forgotten who is to blame, for our correspondence being but a shadow from what it once was.
How the compact packages where your letters provided the padding to the cassette tapes you sent me, and that dropped with a heavy thud into the hallway, turned into professional cardboard boxes that rattled in their hollowness.
With 2 handwritten A4s, folded just once, and neither wrinkled nor marked around the edges in any way.
If it wasn’t for your sexual remarks, your song lyric quoting, and the always present secrecy, that our correspondence has never lost;
It would be as if my accountant had mailed me.
That clean.

But no more, my darling Nikki. No more.
And neither will you have to wait for weeks for me to answer, oh no.
Because I refound myself, Nikki. And you’re coming down with me.
And found a woman, a girl, you have never met, and I know you’re going to like her!

It all started last Queens Day, which is at the 30th of April. I never go to bars or parties or anything, but I do love to walk the flea markets, that are part of the festivities in almost all municipalities.
And I found Prince’s biggie, Purple Rain.
Although I have never owned the album before, I have always felt affinity towards it because it was one of the first grownup films I ever saw.
They played it in the school auditorium, and I was only 12 years old, because that was not my regular school building.
Still being in the youngest highschool class, our building was a different one.
That’s why I so vividly remember going there, to attend this viewing for the whole school.

So I was 12 and I saw Purple Rain.
When I listened to the album it all came back to me, and it was like I had received a gift from the heavens. And one I had been searching for, for months; Just in the wrong places.
Because I knew I had to get back to where it all begun, sexually. 
I knew that the answers to recovering my sexuality to what it was last year, my body to what it was in my college years, and my faith in myself to those first years with Bear;
I had to go back in time.

I knew that to recover from losing Bear, I had to go back to the time I didn’t know him.
A time I had pinpointed at the year I turned 16.
That had been the year when my sexuality was still in its earliest of stages, and my heart had been mine. I projected my infatuation at Jon Bon Jovi, who rarely (if ever!) broke up with me from behind the poster wall I had created for him. 

But no matter how hard I tried to get myself in the virgin state of mind I must have had in that year, it didn’t work. I had too little to go by.
I knew the music I must have been listening to at the time (Bon Jovi!) but because I still listen to that, as you know since you always send me the bootlegs, they didn’t characterize a specific time for me.
That music has become timeless.
Which was one of probably a thousand reasons why my action plan to get myself back into a healthy pre-Bear state of mind, and back into an agile pre-gaining a lot of weight body, wasn’t working.

Wasn’t working until two weeks after buying the Prince cd at the flea market, I put it on and immediately felt myself drop back in time.
And the portal to the earliest stage of my sexuality opened itself.

Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called “life”

You’re the first person I am telling this to and maybe the last as well. Because I wouldn’t know who else to tell it to!
Who is an accomplice in my sexuality, now that Bear is no longer there, but also, now that there are no other men either?
Who is an accomplice, a friend, to the deepest most intimate part of me, when the part is not expressed?
When I feel as virgin as I did when I really still was that, then who is the male counterpart?
Who is the man who is the yang to my yin, as well as the yin to my yang?
Where is the male body that holds the memories of having sex with me? 

It is such a strange phase I am in, and I’ll get back to the Bear part and his role in this, but it feels strange to feel sexual, but not having someone to actually have sex with.
And with the memory of sex having faded to where you no longer know if it was all but a dream.
If you are still in a phase where you only know sex because you saw it in movies, and because you masturbate and fantasize, but your body, mind and heart really are the way we all start out;
Blank sheets.
Unmarked.
Crisp.

And your erotic thoughts are like an immaculate conception; They do not stain you. They are of the flesh, but not in the flesh. Yet.

So, Bear.
We have not officially broken up, but I have not seen him and I can feel he doesn’t want to be with me. Not at this point, not sexually. I’m positive that we’ll reunite as friends, and with our lives ahead of us I am a hundred percent certain we will one day have sex again.
How could we not, with the chemistry we have!

But the weeks or by now months without him, have also made me realize it really is time to take matters into my own hands.
That regardless of how amazing our time together has been, that this was never meant to be an exclusive arrangement.
He has found his real relationship, the real woman he wants to spend his life with. And if he would part with her, he would eventually get a new relationship and go with her.
He has a need, a desire, to play house as I usually unceremoniously call it!

And I have a desire to be a lover, and a desire to be a friend.
To me playing house has the shape of being roommates, not spouses.
And he knows this. We both do.

I will never give up my freedom, and he will never give up his dream to have a real relationship and a family.

But while he has found what he was looking for, I have not. I have not dated since I started seeing Bear.
Something that is about to change!

Because here I am, my darling Nikki.
Standing before you, having refound the sexuality of being in an auditorium on canteen chairs row after row, on a floor that was also used for dancing.
It was a pit, the floor was a few steps down, and during school hours the curtains surrounding the pit were open.
But when there was a dance, or now that we were watching a movie, the curtains were shut and a few hundred high school students ranging in ages 12 to 18, were watching Purple Rain.

And at least one of them, a twelve year old Lauren, came out a changed.

The castle started spinning
Or maybe it was my brain
I can’t tell you what it did to me
But my body will never be the same

I will write you, with the best words I can find.
I will write you, until I see little Nikki grind.

.
~Lauren98

Darling, Nikki | 1998 diary
is the third chapter of book 4, diary 1997-1998

Thursday 26 January, 1998

Okay, I paid attention now, to not let another date with Bear fall into what appears to be a Bermuda triangle in my memory, where all the sex stuff disappears.
Or maybe other memories too, who knows. I find other areas of my life far less interesting and my expectations are much lower.
But sex, I expect to remember.

In December I even blamed alcohol for not remembering it although I knew it was good, because it is always good.
It is always fun.
Even when the second half of 1997, we did have some problems. I would not get that wet or things hurt, or honestly I cannot even remember the specifics. But I do know that both Bear and me saw it as a challenge. That we almost found it hilarious, that we had to deal with these common sexual hiccups, and we made it work.
Like I said; Always good. Always fun.
But the December date did not have that either. There were no problems. For lack of a better word, I suspected the sex had been normal. 

So this year I made the resolution to pay attention, so that at least I knew if it had indeed been normal, or if I was suffering from amnesia and missing out on things that were worth writing down.
Things that befitted my ambition to become a serious diary and erotica writer, in the spirit of Anais Nin.
So I did pay close attention, and the date had the same format as in December because it was a dinner date. Something we do not have a habit around, because it is harder for him to see me. Or at least it was, when he still had a girlfriend. Something I still don’t know or understand if that is still the case. Maybe the fact that for the second time in a row he could come over at night time proves he’s available or things have flatlined for now.

But either way I felt lucky, very lucky. There is something so erotic, so mysterious, about having him come over for dinner. Especially in winter, when it’s already dark when the doorbell rings and I embrace him, cold face,  thick coat, warm gloves, and bottle of red in his backpack.
And my house is warm, I have candles burning, and I’ve already started preparing dinner. Use Your Illusion album playing, which is not romantic to others but it is to us, because we saw them in 1992 in Rotterdam.

There is something tantalizing and special about night time dating, that lunch or even coffee dates will never be able to top.
I really think that after being sidelined for years, when he had the girlfriend and he even broke up with me, which was painful and awful, that after all that we are back to where we started.
We found back what we had.
Just that instead of our noisy student rooms, I now have an apartment, and we are more deliberate in our dates.
It’s not as casual as it was, when we were still students.
We’ve grown up and after the meager years of having to accept however little came my way, even when it was a coffee date on Monday morning with not as much as a cookie or cake because I didn’t know he would come, we are now finally back at the level we had in our college years;
And more.

On paper, we got it made and we are on our way to recover from whatever dent his relationship made in our reckless and restless, young heart’s love.
Except of course, we don’t.
Because now I forget the sex.
And I did not suffer from amnesia, I had been right: Sex was good and fun, and normal! Because this time I did pay attention, and it was exactly the nothing-out-of-the-ordinary sex as I suspected.
And this time, I know why.

The time of the day and the dinner dates are no longer working for us. I am not going to claim we would have earthshattering sex on a Monday morning coffee date now, but a warm lazy Sunday afternoon?
Or closing the curtains for us after a Wednesday lunch, to the sounds of a neighborhood already coming to life outside? 
A date in a coffeeshop, or drinks in a bar? A movie and then after those things stalling if we’re going to my place or not?
Or to his, when he still had his own place…. Oh the memories. The possibilities! The already so much better atmosphere these scenarios have to me, just thinking about it.
Not in terms of love and coziness.
Not in terms of feeling good and safe.
But those casual situations do open up a feeling of excitement, adventure  and sex, simply because it is never a given that we will even have it.

And then there is the role playing!
The first half of 1997 we had the best sex ever, in all the seven years (as it was then) we had been doing it. It was like we had discovered sex allover together. Like we had reinvented it.
And then the second half of the year hit, and I slipped into a very dark place.
When I saw Bear I was feeling great, there was never a question about that; But his presence went from being that little something extra, to the only days I truly felt alive.

Yes…. in retrospect, our good instead of great sex is more than just a matter of planning more strategically. I am not the same person as I was at the beginning of 1997.
So many bad things happened, things that really got to me, and that can still make me cry just thinking about it. Which I rarely do because I don’t want to.

One of the things I did, was completely shut off my heart. I was so deeply hurt, I still keep everybody at arm’s length, emotionally.
And I do that to this day.
I’ve become quite the ice queen, that crappy second half of 1997. In response to all those who hurt me, I ve shut myself off entirely.

In order to get my sex life back to the level it was one year ago, I do need to opt for days, not dinners, at least for now. But I also need to start breaking down that very effective wall I built around myself. A wall that has has kept me safe, and that has become my refuge.
A wall that has become my home.

To return to the deviant sex of early 1997, will require more than retrieving the dating style we used to have.
It will require to retrieve myself.

.
~Lauren98

The nights are nice but the days are deviant | 1998 diary
is the third chapter of book 4, diary 1997-1998

Sunday 15 January, 1998

I was very surprised to see I had written in this diary just so very recently, when I was convinced I had been neglecting my own work for months.

Judging from the date of my last entry, I was still Lauren the aspiring writer, and not just Lauren the freelance copywriter, last November. It indicates I was less off-track than I suspected.
I am still nowhere near where I want to be, but still! I should give myself more credit for being far less often lost than I claim to be.
And also, that I stray away from the path because the other path really looks like the way to go. That it is more a matter of taking the wrong road, but to an unchanged dream, than a matter of forgetting what it is I want.

What I want is to live a life worth writing about, and be the Anais Nin of my time. But what I realize today, something I definitely did not know until now, is that I also want to- and should!- write about music and rock bands, movies and pop culture.
It will bring me in interesting places, and will allow me to meet interesting people.

Limiting myself to my diary, as I have done so far, would limit my working life as an author- if I even become successful- to an all-female audience. Unless a publisher decides to market the sex side of it and starts promoting it as literature.
I don’t plan on waiting for that, before I get to meet the first men.

Writing about music and art gives me a way better start than being a novelist or a diarist, and things will get more interesting a lot sooner!
I want my work to feel like the Guns N’ Roses and Bon Jovi nights at the hardrock cafe; Not like a book club.

What I have been doing wrong these last few years, is that I have been focusing too much on the diarist aspect of it, and have been combining it with my existing freelance work. I have let that work finance my Anais Nin-like writing, just like Hugo, her banker husband, financed hers.
All I had initially planned for this year, was to focus on a limited number of 4 to 5 bigger clients, and build a more solid financial foundation.

But I was wrong.
Not financially, but in terms of the life it would have be living. The life copy-writing and other freelance deskwork, had and has me living!
Because with the exception of sex with Bear, this is not a life worth writing about. This is not the life a diarist with the ambition to be the new Anais Nin, can afford to live.  

Regardless of how great a life that is. If I wasn’t that ambitious, I really could be living on his love alone.
The last time we had sex was the evening before Christmas, so Christmas Eve. In other countries that really is the real Christmas, but in the Netherlands it is a night a man can still not be with his girlfriend, apparently. Although I’m still not sure what is up with him and his girlfriend, he made a very uninvolved impression.
He was very dedicated and fun to be around, and I didn’t ask for details.

Sometimes I wonder if he minds that I don’t, but I just think it would ruin the night. And after all it really is none of my business.
So Christmas night it was, and he brought wine and I made us dinner, and there was something incredibly cheeky, fun and lighthearted about our date.
Usually we are really not that sexual. We don’t flirt that openly, we act a bit mysterious, just to make it more exciting I think. But if that would be a routine, then it wouldn’t be exciting anymore of course!
And this time, he flirted more openly.

So I was flipping our rosemary potatoes and he was leaning in the doorpost drinking his wine, making jokes and asking questions like if I was looking forward to “it”! 
We never do that! It was so hilarious, but also arousing.
If he had been behind me and feeling me up, it would have been far less erotic. But to have him standing there, at a distance, just asking me these bold questions; Oh I loved it!

Maybe the not-touching makes him mysterious after all. He seduces me to come over to him, which I did of course. 
He seduces me with his body and his teasing, I love that in a man. It’s so rare. I’ve met men who have intellectually seduced me, but he doesn’t do that. Sometimes he tells me something about his thoughts and I am wildly fascinated! 
There is so much going on in his head!
But he never engages into intellectual conversation with me, it’s like he knows it will take away a part of the magic, if I would really know who he is.
And perhaps he’s right.

So he spent Christmas’ Eve here,  and now comes the worrying part: I totally forgot the sex. I can’t remember what we did, and that amnesia was almost immediately.
Maybe it was because Christmas days were filled with social gatherings, and I just thought back to our night together, warming myself by the glow of the memory of being in his arms so recently.
I blamed not remembering the details on having drunk too much, both at the night we were together where we drank more than just that one bottle he brought, as well as drinking on the Christmas days themselves when I tried to remember- or I blamed it on being in company of people I did not discuss my sex life with. Or on the general busyness of the holidays.
But I do remember it was immediate.
And the memories did not return.

This sexual encounter going by undocumented, and me knowing there have been so many like that in recent years even when the sex in 1997 was absolutely spectacular, for lack of better words.
I know I lost so much gold. So much good stuff. And although the wine must have played a part in it, I don’t believe that’s it.
It’s my own carelessness around those amazing times, with my lover, the great Bear. I should write about it immediately, after he leaves, just like I did in the first year together. Although then the experiences carved into my mind so brutally, I could safely wait until the next day, when the agony around not knowing how to deal with it left me no other option but to pick up the pen.
I couldn’t have lost those memories even if I wanted to.

But me not making an effort to preserve 1997’s sex memories, with the Christmas one as the final one – I do remember it was really great, and fun, and satisfying, and that (or “even though”) we didn’t do anything even remotely deviant or out of the ordinary – has been cause of concern.
In hindsight, it was already a sign that my approach to being a diarist was not working. And that I was not so much losing my touch, not losing my skill to write or the dream to become a diarist, but I was losing my fire.
As a diarist, 1997’s lost sex memories symbolize a loss of gold, a throwing away or underuse of the most precious thing I had.
I wasn’t wasting my talent to write, but I was wasting the most valuable thing I could write about. 

And I think that was because the rest of my life, was already dying. It was drying up, and it had all the sex sucked out of it.
The reason I could not remember the details of the encounters was because I was starting to use sex as a way to keep myself alive. Just like the wine.
I used it to numb the pain of dullness, of throwing away my life, and to indulge in a feeling of being alive through sex.

Sex moved from the best, and most exquisite thing life had to offer, to being a lifeline. 

Ever since we got back together in 1995 / 1996 when we started what was now an affair, sex with Bear has kept me alive.
When I’m with him, I am the most Anais Nin version of myself. I really am Lauren Harteveld, the diarist.

The reason I made such a mess of 1997, was because I tried to give that work, the being a diarist, a place in my life.
But I did it the wrong way.

I thought that in order to “be” a diarist, to give that a chance to develop,  I would have to put up a wall, a financial wall.
Within those financial walls, I could have Anais Nin worthy adventures. With Bear, but also with other men I might meet because I don’t see myself as being exclusive. It would be crazy if I did because my sexual adventures feed straight into my writing.
And once the walls are standing, better make use of them!

But it’s not just a greed for stories that makes me think I will ultimately have other men too. Because I also just hate the idea of being dependent on one man. Not just for my physical needs, which are probably the least important part of it, but I don’t want to be dependent on one man for my romantic and emotional needs.
I need to love, and I need to be loved, and when a new opportunity for another deep relationship or affair presents itself, I will embrace that.

To love and to be loved, there is never enough of that. It is okay, to be insatiable in those areas. In particular if you want to live like Anais Nin. 

But what I failed to see is that I have everything I need to build that financial wall in a far better way. That I don’t need to do the dry freelance work of copy writing, but that I have all it takes to succeed in the wet and wild world of art and rock n’ roll!
The world of other artists, just like me.

What I failed to see in the past couple of years, where my life slipped through my fingers and I washed up on a dry, professional shore where I held on to my freelance copy-writing for dear life, was that I can write about better topics.
I don’t know everything, and would not consider myself a music or art expert, but I know a little about a lot of things. I’m a generalist when it comes to art, but mostly, I am a lover of it.
I appreciate other artists regardless of the way they express themselves.

More than understanding art, I have a deep appreciation, understanding and love, for the artist who created it.

I am a lover of artists and of the way they live and breathe.
Just like Anais was, all those years ago.

.
~Lauren98

A new year, a new Nin. | 1998 diary
is the second chapter of book 4, diary 1997-1998