Crying at the death of a stranger: David Bowie

bowie 2When I was a boy I was ridiculously serious. I only listened to classical music. I couldn’t dance, even badly, and I wasn’t big on small talk.

But one day I was at a party with two girls who knew me slightly from school. We hadn’t paid much attention to each other before, but because they thought I needed to learn some social skills they took over the stereo and played the Black Tie White Noise album, and showed me how to dance to it. Then they went on to Let’s Dance, and then mainlined with Hunky Dory. Swimming backwards, like the dolphins do, in time.  

I couldn’t believe that it was all one guy. And I found it hard to believe that music that often seemed so sparse and simple could be so complex and interesting. I connected my arse to the bass lines, and learned to dance. And to be more playful. 

bowie 3I tried to score with the two girls, but perhaps because this version of me was at least partly their creation, it didn’t have any power on them. They turned me down.

Flat. Like a bedspread.

But afterwards and for the rest of my life I had more fun than I would have without Mr Bowie. 

He changed so many lives in so many ways.

That influence he had on me was relatively minor, compared to the encouragement he gave to young men and women struggling with their sexual orientation. Bowie helped a good number of people to get past their culture’s shaming, express themselves, find reasons for optimism and avoid suicide. My sexual issue was more, “how do I manage being a dom and still retain any self-respect as a broadly pro-feminist man”, and that wasn’t a question Bowie addressed much. Except indirectly, with the implicit encouragement to celebrate being whatever the hell you are.  

But making freaks and geeks, including me, feel happier about themselves is a huge legacy, and yet his music is a bigger one. My interest in Bowie’s music, from that time onwards, was major and passionate. I even like his Tin Machine period, though the later 1980s albums are too much, by which I mean too little, even for me.  

Like a lot of great artists, he seems like he wouldn’t have been much fun to know personally, at least at his creative peak, though he seems to have mellowed a bit in his last years. That’s part of all human lives.

bowie 1But I’m grateful he was here. And when I heard he’d died, about twenty minutes ago, I cried.

He had the knack, through his music, of making you feel that you knew him. It’s an odd kind of intimacy.

It’s an enormous loss, to so many of us. But his music and his fearless use of sexually ambiguous images were also an amazing gift to all of us. We were lucky to have him. 

Mouth to mouth 23: Going home

I picked up Mikey, with a minimum of fuss, from the park where he’d been hiding. He seemed to think there was a crowd after him with pitchforks and flaming torches, but all I saw was an empty park. I did believe there were thuggy guys looking for him, but they were elsewhere.  

Recent Paris performance of Ballet Mécanique.

Recent Paris performance of Ballet Mécanique.

When he jumped in the passenger seat I took The Low Anthem’s Oh My God, Charlie Darwin! off the car stereo and switched to George Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique.

That was even crueller than the diet of Schnittke and Schoenberg I’d served him on the drive up to this town. I like a lot of George Antheil, but the orchestra for Ballet Mécanique includes three aircraft propellors.  

Antheil’s an interesting guy, by the way. As well as writing music he worked with Hedy Lamarr to invent spread spectrum electronic communications.

Hedy Lamarr! Super-hot, great actor, and engineering genius.

Hedy Lamarr! Super-hot, great actor, and engineering genius.

When he wasn’t hopping frequencies with Hedy Lamarr, he wrote an advice column called “Boy Advises Girl: A Column for Modern Women”.

After a while the “Boy Advises Girl” column started to focus on Antheill’s opinion that all single girls should be spanked, and on the problems of girls who went to nudist clubs in the San Francisco area and got spanked while they were there. Which must have been embarrassing for them.

We Are Everywhere, aren’t we?Presumably Antheill wrote the letters as well as his replies to them.

(Nathaniel West’s novel Miss Lonelyhearts was largely based on Antheill.)

George Antheil, self-proclaimed "bad boy of music"

George Antheil, self-proclaimed “bad boy of music”

As you may have guessed, I’m talking about George Antheill because I don’t want to talk about Mikey. I didn’t want to talk to him either. So we were mostly silent, unlike the car stereo, till I got him home, where his new girlfriend was waiting for him. Then I went home himself.

I left it two days and called Qing. No answer. I tried her landline the next day, and someone picked it up and said, not friendlily, that she was out.

A few days later Mikey told me the woman he’d dumped, post-coitally, was still pissed, and she’d made it unsafe for him to show his face in that town again.

The guy who’d brought him there, and then helped him to escape righteous vengeance – that would be me – wasn’t very popular either.

So I kept calling Qing for another week, but she never answered me, and she never called me back. Eventually I gave up.

I let my friendship with Mikey lapse, too. No drama and denunciations, but I’d had enough. I suppose I should have spent more time pining over Qing, but this is real life, and in real life there were other women, who weren’t over a hundred miles away, and other projects. So, undramatically, I moved on.  

Mouth to mouth 22: Make her burn

Qing was in the doorway, carrying two mugs. “You’re leaving?”

I let her see that I was unhappy about that. “Yeah, I’d rather stay all weekend. If you’d have me.” She smiled. I was still persona grata, even if Mikey wasn’t. “But I have a bastard idiot dickhead friend. He’s got himself in trouble. I got to give him a ride home.”

Emu shit. You don't want it on your shoulders.

Emu shit. You don’t want it on your shoulders.

She nodded. “Huh. I hope his ears turn to emus and shi’ on his shoulders.” 

“What the fuck?” Most of the expressions people think are Australianisms were invented by Barry Humphries in London in the 1960s. Except that Humphries said “arseholes”, not “emus”. I liked Qing’s version better, but I was still amazed that she’d ever heard of the line.

Maybe Barry Humphries was big in Shenzhen. 

She ignored me. “But loyalty is goo’.”

“Oh, I’m staunch, me.” But I wasn’t feeling staunch. I took the tea and drank it quickly, then took Qing in my arms, rubbing my sweaty body against her clean one. I kissed her, with my hands on her ass. Her skin was cool to the touch. In a better-arranged world there’d be time to make it burn again.  

Qing was good at making me sorry I was going.

Qing enjoyed making me sorry I was leaving, and she was good at it.

I showered quickly, using her shampoo, and went back to the bedroom, still naked, to hold her again. Qing stroked my cock mischievously, and it turned out there were signs of life. I had to step back and put my clothes on.

And be polite. “Thank you. Um, for the hospitality. And the night was wonderful. So are you.”

“Yah. You take care of your frien’. And you. I’ll see you later.”

“Be sure of it. I want to see you. Um, among other things.”

Qing smiled, unreasonably cheerful. “Inter alia. In my tailia.” 

That was surprising too. But there wasn’t time to ask her about Latin puns or anything else. I left it, and after I’d taken a business card from my wallet and dropped it on her keyboard, I left her.

Outside, looking at the street, I brought out my keys. The car wasn’t far away. Always the way when you don’t want to leave.

An emu stalks a jogger, who is getting her shoulders out of range.

An emu stalks a jogger, who is getting her shoulders out of range.

Mouth to mouth 21: On the run

qing showerTowards noon Qing got up and put on a tee-shirt. She asked if I wanted coffee or tea. I ordered brown tea with lots of milk, and she pulled a face (“Milk!”) before she disappeared.

I didn’t care. I’d done every possible duty by every pleasure-sensitive surface and orifice in her body. I don’t think I’d forgotten anything. Certainly not any of the orifices.

So I put my hands behind my neck and lay on my back, listening to her shower.

I could hear, faintly, John Bonham’s drum opening to “When the Levee Breaks”. When I found my pants under the bed and extracted the cellphone I found it was that morning’s twelfth call from Mikey.

Mikey was the guy who’d come up to this town so he could spend the night fucking his girlfriend and then dumping her – in that order, naturally – and who’d manipulated me into giving him a lift so he could manage this. My feeling of friendship for Mikey was a little strained. I said, “Mikey?”

“Where you been, citizen-dude? I been calling you all morning.”

“Sorry. I’ve been sleeping.”

“Uh-huh. People at the party said you’d disappeared with that Chinese girl. So what happened there?”

He wanted to hear me tell a story about sex. Qing had walked into the kitchen, and could hear me, but I wouldn’t have given him the truth anyway. “Sleeping. I mean me. On my own. You called me?”

Erin was an red-headed woman whose parents had named her after Ireland. Mikey, by contrast, was an idiot.

Erin was an red-headed woman whose parents had named her after Ireland. Mikey, by contrast, was an idiot.

“Dude, you gotta get me out of here. Erin, I told Erin a couple of hours ago. And she is pissed. Super-pissed. I got scratches down my face, makes me look like, oh, I been in a car crash.” I said nothing, because I thought ‘car crash’ pretty much summed up his night’s work. “Citizen! Now she’s got two friends – big guys on roids, squeaky voice angry boys – out looking for me.”

“You’re a bampot, Mikey.” ‘Bampot’ means ‘stupid person’, mostly not in an affectionate way.

But Mikey was still my stupid person. I’d got him here, and somewhere in my damn stupid code it said that therefore I had to get him home. “So where are you?”

“I’m in the park, corner of Fourth and Derwent. In that clump of trees. You know it?” I didn’t even know the park, let alone its foliage, but I’d be able to find it easily enough. So I said nothing. Mikey said, “I can’t leave, citizen-dude. Those guys are looking for me. I’ve seen them.”

“Yeah, okay. Have you got all your stuff with you?”

“Mostly. There’s things in Erin’s room, but nothing I’d go back for. Can you drive past, along Derwent Street, very slowly?”

“And you’ll run out of the trees and jump in, right?”

“Yeah. That might just about save my life, Jaime. Can you hurry?”

“You’re a… Okay, this is a serious fucking nuisance. It’ll take me at least half an hour.”

a&E“Half an hour! Those guys’ll break my arms, minimum, if they see me.”

“Then I bet you’ll make sure they don’t. Look, you’re in the shit, and it’s an emergency. I know that, but half an hour’s still the minimum. It’ll take me that long or a bit more to get there. Just stay patient. Also out of sight, probably.”

Mikey had more to say, but I told him to text and ended the call.

Mouth to mouth 20: Cunt-licking and power

I ate with a lot of pantomimed enjoyment, and didn’t give her any. At one stage she made a stab at one of the mushrooms with her fork, and I threatened to smack her bottom. But it was an empty threat and she knew it. We were less intense now, and I’d lost the Qing-hurting privileges she’d granted, and loved, only a few hours earlier.

qing lickedFinally I pushed her onto her back, and buried my face between her legs. Qing was tense, I guessed uncertain whether this counted as sex, and whether I should be rewarded at all, since the great breakfast power struggle was unresolved. I licked around her clit, occasionally touching it directly with my tongue, and she’d jolt as if I’d connected her to the mains. And she forgot to keep her thighs tense.

I popped the last black mushroom, palmed from my bowl, into her mouth. Qing chewed it noisily, as if it were victory. I felt ridiculously proud. Every so often I get a girl thing right.

(It wasn’t victory, because I’d got access to her cunt without her getting any of my breakfast. Once she’d ceded that I could afford to be be magnanimous. These are things no sensible adult cares about, but people in the middle of sex aren’t remotely like sensible adults. A trivial clash of wills, with neither side prepared to step back a millimetre, can kill sex stone dead if it’s badly handled. Anyway, within the game Qing had described, I thought I’d won and yet she felt she’d won. So we both felt smug and happy, for different reasons.)

Well, yeah. But don't vary the diet and you risk having a bored sub on your hands. Or on her way.

Well, yeah. But don’t vary the diet and you risk having a bored sub on your hands. And on her way.

In oral sex it usually seems – and usually is – that one person serves and the other is served. That could be why it’s so very popular in bdsm, and why male doms tend to be so keen to get their submissives onto their knees with a mouthful of cock.

There are doms who say, “on your knees, bitch” at the stage most people, dom or not, would say something like, “Nice to meet you.” From what submissives have said to me, they think those doms are hilarious. Still, like sending dick pix, it must work occasionally.

But it’s different when a dom, male or female, wants to do their submissive with their mouths. Doms don’t feel they’re serving; what they feel is being in control. The submissive is the dom’s tongue-puppet, helplessly driven to orgasm or denial, or to distraction, as the dom chooses.

I’d have no doubt, if Qing was sucking my cock, that I was in control. But as I tongued her I was still in control. My horizontal mouth teased and deep-tongued her vertical mouth while she writhed and moaned, eyes tightly closed. 

But the tension between us suddenly slackened, and she stopped. She made a questioning sound.

I said, “Yeah?”

She is the Qing of the divan

She is the Qing of the divan

Qing sat up a little. “Tha’ thing. The thing you di’, we did before. Up my ass?”

I was close enough to her cunt, still, to kiss it. I hoped it wasn’t goodbye. “Uh-huh?” 

“Coul’ we? Will you fuck my ass again? I -” She thought better of whatever she’d been going to say. “Fuck my ass again. Can we? Can you? Hunh?” 

Those were her exact words. You don’t forget the first time a girl spontaneously begs you to fuck her ass. I smacked that ass. No special reason, except that it seemed that my powers, including my right to hurt Qing, were back. I felt like celebrating.

“About time, girl. Roll over.”

Mouth to mouth 19: After-anal care for the not quite submissive woman

The last thing I remember for a while was finding myself half asleep and my cock softening, still semi-hard and still mostly inside Qing’s asshole. I grabbed the ends of the condom before I softened any further, and withdrew. This was not sexy. The condom went over the side of the bed.

I thought I should clean up. Including Qing’s asshole and perineum. A semi-liquid mess of faecal matter and lube had escaped from her asshole.

Frothy human waste: Rick Santorum.

Frothy human waste: Rick Santorum.

Dan Savage launched the habit of calling that mess “santorum”, after Rick Santorum, the creepy religious right politician. But that never felt right to me. It must annoy Santorum and that’s probably good, but associating him in any way with sexual pleasures, even ingloriously, seems to do the man too much honour.

Also, he’ll be forgotten soon, while faecal accidents and by-products will be with us forever. We humans are part of the biological world, even the beautiful and golden Qing.

Anyway, that faecal mess doesn’t happen with most anal sex, and even when it does it’s a perfectly natural by-product of a vigorous anal fuck, and not a sign of damage. But I was mostly responsible for the mess being there, so it was my responsibility to get rid of it.

Also, I’d learnt by then that girls sometimes found the sight a little challenging, and that if I cleaned up quickly with a damp cloth or a handful of tissues, without their being shamed or embarrassed about it, then life and post-fuck calm will go on. Harmoniously. 

So I thought about searching for the bathroom, which was probably on the other side of the kitchen. And then she put her hand on my waist and I fell asleep. Did I say that humans are biological creatures?

When I woke up again it was much lighter outside. Qing, fortunately, was still sleeping. I edged out of the bed silently, and took the little collection of used condoms to the bathroom. I disposed of them, washed my cock thoroughly, and collected a bunch of paper towels. 

Back to the kitchen I saw it was after nine, so I made instant noodles with strips of egg, shallots, black mushrooms and a very mild, slightly sweet soy sauce. I had to hope that Qing would like Chinese. But she, or her household, had nine different kinds of soy sauce. I figured she probably did.

I took two bowls and my tissues, two of them dampened under the tap, into her bedroom. Qing was stirring and looked up at me. “Breakfass? I’d have made you breakfass.”

“But you looked too cute to disturb.”

She smiled. “You shoul’ see my ass in a kitchen.” The smile became a laugh. “Specially you.” She chanted, “Jaime likes my aa-ass, Jaime likes my aa-ass. Wooo! You really like my ass.” 

I held out the bowl. Instead of taking it she said, “Oh! I mean, thank you. Tha’ smells haochi.” I didn’t ask. “Haochi” was clear from context. It was good, and it meant something like “yummy”.

So I put her bowl on the bed beside her head, and pushed her down onto her front. I brushed her back with one of the wet clothes, by way of  misdirection, and then opened her legs and wiped away the mess. Three dabs and a rub with a wet paper towel, then finishing with a drier sheet, was all it took. The mess had been there and it was gone. It would have been much more dramatic if she’d seen it. Qing didn’t even murmur. All was well.

I scrunched the paper towels into a ball with the unused sheets on the outside, and dropped it on my side of the bed. A second later I said, “oh. Juice.”

qing fuckmeI hopped up, flushed away the paper towels, washed my hands, and returned to the kitchen, where I’d seen some horrible, thick green juice in the fridge. I poured her a glass, and unhealthy ginger beer for myself. 

Qing was just finishing her bowl when I returned. She said, “Tha’ was grea’. Gimme some of yours, and you might get to fuck me. Again.”

I raised my eyebrows. So much for her feeling submissive. 

Mouth to mouth 18: Fucking Qing’s ass

Qing trembled under me, on her bed on her hands and knees, with most of my weight on her back and my cock half-buried in her ass. I was riding her a little higher than I had so far that night, and that seemed to come with its own symbolism attached.

This can get noisy.

This can get noisy.

The slightly higher angle, not to mention to the tightness of her ass, was a new sensation, too. In sex a small difference is a huge difference, if you’re paying attention and prepared to enjoy details.

Qing’s tight little tube held my cock firmly and softly. If it was heavenly, and it seemed so, then I was in heaven.

I knew that many submissive women don’t like anal. And there are plenty of women who enjoy being fucked up the ass but don’t care about bdsm at all. I know that, but I also know that in practice that moment of give, when a woman opens and yields up her ass to my cock, always feels like submission. At least to me.  

That’s part of what makes anal possession of a woman feel so hot and so savage, even though the dom is (or should be) taking a lot of care not to really hurt her. She’s submitted, or at least given the dom that illusion.

I suppose someone's already selling...

I suppose someone’s already selling…

Meanwhile Qing had just been screaming. It hadn’t sounded like screams of pain, and she hadn’t repeated it or asked me to stop. But in spite of what she’d said before about not fussing, I said, “Okay?”

Qing didn’t speak immediately. She was still puffing as if she’d run a mile. Maybe a sex mile, with me riding on her back. But eventually she came back to the ordinary world of bedrooms, university course work, essay deadlines and strange men with their cocks up her ass.

She still couldn’t manage to produce words, but she nodded .I smiled at her. She made the kissy face, so we were good.  

the Hello Kitty buttplug

… the Hello Kitty buttplug

To show we were still in new territory and not being wimps about it, and because I needed to, I pushed my cock further into her, revelling in every movement. Qing grunted (“oh, that’s happening”) but she seemed happy to be buggered.

At each moment I could feel her start to resist I’d stop and withdraw a little, as slowly as I could, and then thrust forward again.

Each of these movements took my cock a little further into her, and withdrew a little less. Finally my belly pressed against the silky warmth of her ass, my cock deeply and completely inside her. I wanted to tell her I was pleased with her. I said, “Hahh… Qing. Ah fuck, girl.”

That was probably about as sensible as whatever it was that she’d said, but at least I hadn’t screamed mine. Then we both forget about words and breathing, and fucked in silence, until I stopped holding her hips and dropped my hands to support my weight on the bed.

Qing fell forward onto her breasts and shoulders, arching her ass up at me. Tightly joined, she put her hands on the backs of mine and held tight. 

I’d started to speed up because Qing’s sweetly tight ass and her own arousal had taken me past the point where I could choose whether or not to come. Qing stopped suddenly, pushing herself hard but slowly against my cock, getting it as deep as possible. I could feel the contractions inside her. Then she rocked as fast as she could, making high-pitched squealing and gibbering noises until she came.

She wanted to fall forward once she’d come but I wouldn’t let her. I held her ass tight up against me and used her until I’d come too. Then we lay together, with my arm around her and my condomed cock still hard inside her. For a long time there was no reason to move or speak.

New Year

I was up a mountain last night, where I made some resolutions, something I hardly ever do. But this year I’m going to:

That's me at bottom right. Hypothetically. Except in Canada and places that rhyme with "cunt".

That’s me at bottom right. Hypothetically. Except in Canada and places that rhyme with “cunt”.

1 Get fitter;

2 Drink more water;

3 Get more sleep;

4 Do less paid work;

5 Set up a business I enjoy, and then do more paid work;

6 Spend more time engaged in bdsm.

7 Erm, that’s it.

Thanks to all my readers in 2015, and I hope you all have a fantastic 2016!