January – Jay and I started the year by celebrating our 2nd anniversary together. If you want to refresh on how we first met (and the aftermath of that) you’ll have to look back to January of 2006. We were in Thailand for half of this month and pretty depressed to back in the US again. So, you didn’t hear from me again until. . .

April – Where I attended Sex 2.0 and had a fire lit under me. I started a Twitter account, got involved with FetLife, and relaunched my podcast. I finally realized that I was part of a community and felt like I belonged.

May – I started reviewing products on my podcast and blog for VibeReview.

June – I spent a lot of time thinking about sex work in both text and audio forms. I also got sort of pissy and ridiculous about blogging and met Artemis Hunter for the first time.

July – I had my first freelance work published in The Naughty American and dug up some old camwhore shots. I also experienced a bit of heartbreak, but it turned out a great piece of writing if I do say so myself. I also got tied up by Artemis and finally hooked up with Carmine who had previously only been known as “cross-dressing law student“. Finally, I began publishing the Musings on Masculinity series.

August – The biggest news and one of the happiest days of my last several years was telling my dad about my “secret identity”. I’m still basking in the joy of that moment as I remember it. Also in July, Jay and I got to know Hania much better.

September – I was named #5 on the list of the Top 100 Sex Bloggers of 2008 among started a bajillion other projects. We also went to Dark Odyssey Summer Camp which was a watershed event for me despite the fact that I haven’t talked about it too much. I also presented at the Fetish Fair Flea Market and got to meet Catalina and Marky for the first time.

October – The posts slowed down and the earth stopped moving because something remarkable happened. We met Ariel and Michael and fell in love and my feet still haven’t touched the ground. At first I could only express the feelings in music. But. . .

November -  . . . soon I found more detailed words and images to express my thoughts. I captured the unique sadomasochistic relationship that Michael and I have developed as well as the experienced of being fucked by Ariel for the first time. And the sexy gave way to the mundanely profound as we found ourselves forming a type of family, broken hollondaise and all.

December – Ariel starts lending a hand with reviews and I think that the format suits this site. Jay and I also visited New York and saw tons of the friends that we met through the year. I also spent a sedate Birthday and Hanukkah at home with my new chosen family.

This weekend Jay and I travelled to the Fetish Fair Flea Market in Charlotte to present a class on Kinky Phone Sex for Couples. We had a great time and met some great friends that we had previously only known online. Catalina and Marky were kind enough to open their home to us and we spent Friday night with them. I wish I could say that we had some hot sex to tell you about (I mean, I *really* wish) but we were all beat and after eating pizza and talking about blogs and sex and random kinky stuff we all got to bed pretty early.

However, Catalina and Marky are amazingly cool people and both brilliantly fun, smart, and sexy. Know how sometimes when you are meeting someone for the first time it can be weird and you get uncomfortable because they aren’t exactly what you expect them to be? Well, this was *not* one of those situations.

On Saturday they both attended my class along with a small group and I got to have a great conversation/workshop with some lovely people about how to improve communication in their relationships and share fantasies with phone sex. After my class, it was time to go shopping since that was what the Fetish Fair was about.

Jay and I saw tons of cool stuff from some great vendors but we were most swayed by the amazing assortment of canes from The Kink Shop. We picked out three pretty thick ones and I can’t wait to try them out.

Our friends Liz and Alex had come to see us at the Fetish Fair and after we got our canes, Liz ran up to me in a gorgeous under the bust corset. She hadn’t been wearing it when I saw her just a few minutes before and I quickly complimented her on it. So, just for kicks, she said she would show me the vendor she had got it from.

Bear in mind that I had absolutely no intention of buying a corset. They are certainly gorgeous but it seemed like a lot of money to spend on a single item of clothing. However, the owner of Passional was really lovely and sweet and cinched me into a few just to try them out. This brings me to my tutorial on how to get your boyfriend to buy you a corset. Just follow this simple procedure:

Step One: Try on corset and let boyfriend see.

Congratulations! You have just successfully gotten your boyfriend to buy you a corset. I wish I was kidding but Jay’s hand was on his wallet before I even made it to the mirror. Sure, it was a lot of money to spend but he rationalized that it was a gift for both of us. So, how does it look?  How about you tell me.

More pictures are right on Flickr.

Jay and I went shopping today. The plan was to buy some new shoes but I ended up trying on bras and tops. I like what this one does for me. In fact I like it so much that I think I’ll go take some pictures with just the bra.

These posts are an experiment in time travel. I wrote them and scheduled them ahead of time. But, I should still have access to comments and Twitter messages. This is the last of these posts as we’ll be driving home on Monday and hopefully you’ll hear from me by Tuesday.

Today is the last day of camp activities and it promises to be a full one.  I’ll be attending classes on flogging among some other topics related to pain.

I’m starting to realize that I like thuddy pain more than stingy pain but I still want to learn how to use a flogger. What kind of pain works for you?

In honor of ouch, here are some of my favorite posts about erotic pain (more specifically, spanking):

Thoughts On Spanking

A Reluctant Spanking

I met Hania at the beginning of the summer. She burst into my dry and repressive summer class with so much energy and enthusiasm that it was hard not to be a bit annoyed at 8:30 in the morning. When we got assigned to do a group project together, I didn’t know what to expect.

Sometime during a procrastination break, I find myself telling her about my sexual proclivities and my phone sex work. She smiles and asks a lot of questions. Then sho bowls me over by revealing that she used to do phone sex work while she lived in London. Here I thought that Hania, a Syrian, might be free-spirited but was another oppressed middle eastern woman. My prejudices were obvious to me almost immediately.

The next week, she came over to our house for a potluck. When the rest of the guests left, she didn’t and the three of us talked late into the night.

I can break the nearly 24 hours we spent together into distinct moments, all of them characterized by arousal and many of them by a distinct longing.

***
She is on my couch and we are discussing sex (what else?) and it is 4am. I am falling asleep and I also desperately want to reach out and touch her. Her breasts are over-spilling her shirt and I think she knows this and doesn’t fix it on purpose. I can even see the top of one dark areola and I try not to stare too much.

***
After a conversation on rope bondage, she agrees to be tied up. The morning sunlight is streaming into the guest room and her hair is wet from the shower. I nervously apply the katana over her clothes. Her chest is still heaving in the shirt she was wearing the night before. Despite the intimacy I nervously apologize each time I brush against her but she looks at me angelically.

In a bold moment, I show her what the Japanese refer to as dishevelment and pull the top of her tank top down to reveal her pink bra.

***

I am in her kitchen and she thrusts a porcelain dish under my nose, “Smell!”

“Za’atar?”

“Yes, you know it? My mother sends it to me”

Three days later I find myself in my own kitchen, mixing a batch of the pungent spice blend. Sumac, paprika, cumin, and thyme. I inhale it deeply and remember her.

***

I am sitting on her couch and and she is reading my fortune from the grounds in my Turkish coffee. We are leaning our heads together and I can smell her and I want to cry because I want her so badly.

***

Last weekend we saw Hania again. She had spent a month out of town and was emailing me and calling me several times a week just to talk. I knew she wanted us but I was so nervous. For now, I’m treasuring that night and keeping it to myself. You, dear reader, can enjoy the same anticipation that I did. Hopefully by the time I write the rest of the story, she will have given me permission to publish the picture of her in my ropes.

Want to know what Jay was thinking through all of this? His version was posted this week.

Well, maybe not really. But they are pink with scandalous/ized French phrases on them:

Jay caught this while I primped in the mirror.

I’ve been sitting on these pictures for ages, can’t recall why I haven’t published them yet. I’m hoping to take more with this photographer soon.

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