Category: The Time Travel Project

Thursday 16 November, 1998 11 PM

I feel so alone, so sad Bear left me and did not choose for me. I prefer his absence as a sign he no longer wants me in his life, to the breaking up from December 1994. I prefer having had the good times, the best times even, as recent as first half 1997, to having missed out on them. Which would have been the case if he had not returned and the breakup had been permanent. So I don’t have any regrets.

I prefer the coldness of this breakup to one where I crash and burn, something which fortunately has never happened with Bear. I was already over that when I met him. No man will ever break my heart again, and no man, ever has. I was 16 and it was a boy, not a man. I grew up quickly.  There are many other things I like including: -being indifferent to new men, maybe I will fall in love again, maybe not. It is of no interest to me, I do not pursue. -knowing how to prioritize my career. One year ago I promised myself three things. 1. Do yoga every day 2. build a business and 3. to go all in on my writing I only did (2) and still I m mostly dependent on writing assignments from old contacts. But I’m sub-teaching yoga too, and I have my own class. I m starting teaching privates now. But this diary, the one I wanted to publish the first volume of, has fallen flat. I neither write for it, nor publish. I have no idea in what phase the manuscript is or where I have the file. But I think the problem with publishing the diary is that it is too confronting because it is about the time I was still with Bear, and I don’t want to read  it. So it is time to recommit. 1. yoga every day 2. build a business 3. all in on my writing Friday 17 November 11.15 PM Feel 100% better than yesterday. The loneliness is transforming to a desire to do yoga. An acknowledgement that if I don’t want finding another man to be a priority in my life, or even resent having the task all together, then my task is to take care of my body. To give it pleasure myself. I only did yoga tonight but really see the absolute necessity  (knowing the sexual ambition that I have) to do yoga twice a day: AM + PM And become familiar with my body and be aware of it, just like with sex. Saturday 18 November 10.45 PM Good news and bad news. The good news is I wrote an entire article for the Bon Jov fanclub magazine, and I also had a day out with a friend. Making this really feel like weekend, I was no longer pre-occupied with work. The bad news is I am so tired I barely made it through taking my make-up off and brushing my teeth. I feel utterly spent and there was no way I could do my yoga. So clearly, if I want that done I need it to earlier in the day, AND cannot afford to write in the morning. The other bad news is that I still miss Bear. I am both happy for all the incredible years we had, as well as shocked that apparently he can just walk away from it. I know what we had was damn special and that it’s hard to come by. All women want to pin him down and make him the father of their babies. But regardless of if he wants that too and shares their dream, the pinning down, or settling down, inevitably comes at the cost of sexual attraction being deminished. I don’t know any woman who would come close to offering him what I have offered. And the 8 years it lasted, prove we’re the real deal. That I am, the real deal. Combined with the actual, factual truth that in any sexual relationship the real raw sexual attraction always dies out, this leads to the conclusion that I always win. Either he doesn’t have that sexual chemistry with someone else, or he does, but then it falls to pieces by the very nature of their monogamous involvement. Smothered, by playing house. So logically, in the area of sex, I should always win. Like a casino, house always wins. Maybe I’m not afraid that he gains more, wins more, experiences more, with his real girlfriend. But that he quit gambling all together. . ~Lauren98 Body first, business second, boy optional. | 1998 diary is the fourth chapter of book 4, diary 1997-1999

https://youtu.be/j8oxXkUjYHg

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 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

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