Round about the 12th of August, I was taken to a wonderful event by my new friend, Dana (as opposed to my old friend, Dana, who calls new Dana “Zuul,” which new Dana finds amusing). It’s called Bawdy Storytelling, as many of you who follow my Twitter stream already know. I went and enjoyed it immensely…and thought to myself, “Talking? About sex? And getting applause and laughter? I can do that!”

And the theme for September was kinda cool and a bit challenging to me, so I had to do it. I approached the instigatrix of the thing, the bodacious Dixie de la Tour, and volunteered. Her handy helper, Kitty, worked up the ad I used based on my input to her, and I came up with the following story.

Now, there’s also been a lot of story going on around my involvement with Bawdy, and I’m going to tell it. Just not in this post. Oh, and what I did on stage only bears a family resemblance to the below, but I’m working on getting video from Dixie et al so I can embed it here, allowing you all to compare and contrast.

Overall, I think I did rather well for a first-timer who hasn’t graced any kind of stage since high school, but I could have done a few things better. (Note to self: Better time management!) Still, I felt surprisingly comfy up there and felt like I had achieved a good rapport with the audience so, oh yes, I will be doing it again.

First, the ad, which I put up on Craigslist W4W.

==

I’m only into other femme-identified queer or bi women (cis or trans women included). NOT into boy/masculine energy at all, so no butches, FTMs, andros, or genderqueers. Sorry, bois! Big pluses for dangerous curves, dangerous wit, or dangerous desires…I’m more of a RACK girl than SSC.

I’m serious about meeting and playing if it feels right, so let’s make a story we can both tell for years to come (and come and come…you get the idea. )

Femme-azon seeks fellow fabulous femmes

I’m a 5’11″, curvy 37-year-old femme switch looking for some good ol’ fashioned kinky geek-on-geek action. A night, a week, a month, more…? Up to our chemistry, really!

I’m only into other femme-identified queer or bi women (cis or trans women included). NOT into boy/masculine energy at all, so no butches, FTMs, andros, or genderqueers. Sorry, bois! Big pluses for dangerous curves, dangerous wit, or dangerous desires…I’m more of a RACK girl than SSC.

Sexually & kink-wise, I’m a very physically/sensation-oriented person. S&M is delicious fun to me! Things like power exchange and bondage don’t interest me much in and of themselves, but can make fine accompaniments to a decidedly sensual main course.

I want someone who isn’t a newbie to women, kink, or polyamory. Been there, done that, got the toaster.

I’m not much into bars and not at all into clubs, so let’s think of something where we can hear each other for a first meeting. The Academy of Sciences? Soak in a hot tub? You tell me!

I’m serious about meeting and playing if it feels right, so let’s make a story we can both tell for years to come (and come and come…you get the idea. )

Your pic gets mine. Put “amazon” somewhere in the subject line so I know you’re not a bot.

==

And now, the story…

==

Hi…I’m Sonya. Since most of you don’t know me and this is my first time doing this—so do please be gentle—let me start by saying that I’ve been meeting partners over the Internet for 20 years now. Real Internet, too…none of this dialup BBS stuff! That’s right, I got online at UC Santa Cruz all the way back in 1989. For those in the know, I was a “b-geek.”

(Aside: Anyone here remember finger files? They were the old-school version of a profile page. You just typed “finger so-and-so” and got whatever info they posted about themselves. And no, laughing at that never got old!)

So I got all the classic blunders out of the way relatively early—falling for someone halfway around the world, importing lovers, exporting myself to a lover, being taken in by someone’s well-crafted but fraudulent identity…hell, I even got over cybersex—which we TinyMUDders called “TinySex” at the time—right around 1992 or so, and we used to do it well back then.

Over the years, I’ve met people over email, on forums, on irc, on MUDs (remember MUDs, MUCKs, and MOOs?), over IM, on dating sites, on social networks, at geek parties and cons…every which nerdy way you can imagine, except for one: Craigslist.

Somehow, that particular sex and dating phenomenon passed me by. Maybe it’s just that I didn’t think of it as anything but a hookup medium when I’m something of an intimacy junkie. Maybe it seemed “too easy.” Maybe it was some of the horror stories I’d heard. I dunno. But then I came to this very room a month or so ago and heard that we had an assignment and I was pretty jazzed about that. On the one hand, it felt like a challenge, but on the other, I’d been ‘net-dating for decades and lately I’d had some unexpected mojo between meeting amazing women in person and over good lo’ OKCupid. Surely, Craigslist couldn’t be that hard!

I can see you’re way ahead of me here….

Now, I’m going to assume that you’ve all committed my Craigslist ad to memory by now, and you’d better have. It will be on the midterm.

The delightful Ms. Kitty Stryker did a brilliant job of condensing my slightly rambling email into a few short, sweet paragraphs summing me and what I was looking for up quite nicely. So now it was time for me to do my part of the job…to post it and start sorting through the responses.

So I did. And I waited. But I didn’t have to wait too long. This was easy! Or so I thought…

No one told me about the bots, you see. At first, for a short while, I just thought I was dealing with incompetent pseudo-literates…

I would rather chat with you than just reading your post and see what your like. If your a real person then hit me back here and if your not, then you won’t see this. If you are, Im lookn forward to chattin with your.

Uh-HUH. But when one of them tried to pitch me a skeevy-looking dating site, the penny did finally drop.

Then there was the pic-trader, who lured me in with a few pictures of some random nymph, no doubt harvested from some porn site or some other unsuspecting dupe. Whoever it was lost interest when I stopped short of nudes, some healthy suspicion having finally crept in on my side.

I was still waiting for a real human to reply…that is, aside from the two of my friends who replied to say, “Sonya? Is that you?”

Greeeeaaaat.

But then, finally, one reply. And what a reply! I thought for sure that my story was now assured and I would be able to appear before you today, triumphant. (Silly, silly me…)

My first real response to my ad came from a woman who’d actually been in one of the very few pornos I had ever sought out and bought myself—Good Vibes’ “Voluptuous Vixens.” Her picture was beautiful…a curvy, smoldering, tattooed latina temptress with piercing eyes and a playful arch of the eyebrow that said, “Well? What are you going to do about it?”

Naturally, I wrote her back.

But before I get to that, her reply had already illustrated a screw-up on my part in the presentation of the ad…I’d provided the headline, and the initial one read, “Femme-azon Seeks Same.” So, here I had this goddess, this porn-star, responding to MY ad and apologizing for not being “a big tall Amazon woman.” Clearly, that would have to be changed if I ever wanted or needed to use the ad again.

And, fortuitously enough, there was going to be one of the entirely-too-rare women’s play parties at the Citadel that weekend. So, we arranged to meet there. I was cruising on this assignment! I might even have time for extra credit, I thought. (HAH!)

Things started to go wrong when I got a call from her apologizing profusely, saying that she hadn’t been able to secure a volunteer shift at the party and couldn’t afford to pay her way. And, just my luck, I was a bit light myself so I couldn’t be all suave and sugar-mama-y and just say, “Hey, no problem…I’ll cover yah!”

So, the play party plan was canceled. But we made a raincheck for some Indian food the following Tuesday. Hmm, I thought…a restaurant date during the week seems a lot less likely to produce immediate sexual interaction than a play party. Maybe I need to hedge my bets and re-post my ad…

I came up with a better headline (“Femme-azon Seeks Fellow Fabulous Femmes”) and tried to re-post it. I thought all had gone well, but for some reason I couldn’t browse the ad. It was acting like it wasn’t there, even though I could go right into the editing page again. Something wasn’t kosher.

“No biggie,” I thought. “Must be some transient glitch. Maybe I’m better off deleting and re-posting.”

BIG…MISTAKE!

In dear old, 20/20 retrospect, I should have just waited 5 minutes or so to see if there was any lag in publishing on a site as big as Craigslist.  But noooooooooooo…I delete the post. It shows as deleted. So far, so good.

I go to RE-re-post it, and get an error telling me that the post was “substantially similar” to another recently-posted ad—namely, the one I’d just deleted—and that it wouldn’t allow it again in the interest of keeping people from feeling spammed. And I’m fine with that. As a former social network admin, I’m a booster of anti-spamming technology! But I’d deleted the other ad. It was no more…it had ceased to be…or at least it had anywhere except in whatever overactive watchdog database Craigslist was using.

Now I wasn’t going to be able to re-post my ad for what I figured to be at least a good, solid 24 hours.

But hey, why was I worrying? Dinner with a porn star was approaching. Surely, I’d be charming and scintillating and we’d be firing on all jets and soon. And I was! Not that it helped, of course.

She showed up looking as if she’d just stepped out of her picture, only far more wondrous for being in 3-D and full-motion. Her curves and hauteur made her look like she should be a queen on a litter being borne by Aztec bearers. Her tattoos read like war-paint in life and in love. And we ate Indian food and talked and talked until she had to run home to the primary…without us ever really having broached the topics of sex, BDSM, and comparative tastes.

Watch carefully, ’cause here’s where I blow it.

‘Cause you see, I’m SO not “cool.” I’m not smooth. I’m not suave. Somehow the scarcity sexual economy that was my virginal pre-college years left its mark on me. When I want someone a bit too much, when my hormones get over-carbonated, I get a bit too eager, too puppy-like. I’m no stalker, mind. I try to resist this, but it’s insanely intense and that intensity has a way of ruining things with anyone who isn’t frightfully secure in herself and patient with someone suffering the carbonated hormones. Some women find it cute…just not enough of them.

So…back to the story at hand…she emails me shortly after midnight that same night expressing concern that our talk hadn’t headed in that direction and that she was worried I might be too much of a top given that she herself was very toppy. I happened to be up and online when it came so I replied immediately to reassure her that, no-no! NONONONONO! I’m a switch, and one with a rather neglected bottom side at that since people don’t meet an outgoing, assertive, brassy, large woman and think to themselves, “piggy bottom,” much to my eternal dismay.

But she had only sent the email a few minutes ago! She must still be up…maybe it would be OK to call? So I called, and got voicemail. And got nervous. And blew my cool. And tried to ping her a few more times that day over email and IM.

And, when I did get to talk to her next over IM, she said she felt that I’d been “coming on a bit strong.”  And that’s pretty much where things stand today with her. I star-crushed, I wanted my story way too much, I spazzed…and I managed to scare off a bloody porn star.

Meanwhile, back on good ol’ OKCupid, I found myself getting mad responses from bloody amazing women. Some to me messaging them, and some without any prompting from me whatsoever. Whatever mojo I had that was abandoning me on Craigslist seemed to be going strong here.

So I set up a few dates…but they were going to be entirely too close to tonight and I wasn’t really expecting sex on the first date with any of ‘em. What was I going to do?

But then, a lifeline. Another reply on Craigslist. A reply that started, “You sound way too good to be true.” *squee!*

My respondent was a library assistant who, in her spare time, plays rugby in queer leagues I hadn’t previously known existed. Geeky…physical…what a combination! And the picture…coy, slim but not skinny, chestnut-brunette, bob-haired, looking somewhere between a librarian and a demure Catholic schoolgirl, but with such a wicked little half-smile.

We made contact and made our date…for this past Friday. Oy. That’s cutting it too close! We’re going to have story rehearsal on Monday! *auuugh* Why do I feel like I’m in college again, grinding out a paper at the last minute? And why on Earth is it SEX I’m finding a way to procrastinate on?

I take her to a friend’s party in the East Bay. We nibble gourmet hors d’oeuvres, chitchat amiably with some of the most delightful people I know, play an amazing round of Rock Band…including some of the new Beatles game. ooOOOooo…

And, despite a truly delightful chat about sex and BDSM and all the yummy stuff, as I drove her back to her car I knew that I had failed in my Craigslist assignment. I would have to take an incomplete. Maybe, if I was very lucky, Dixie or Kitty would spank me.

But the next night, I had one of my “first dates” with one of the wonderful women I’d met on OKCupid. And I have to admit, this one had me in a complete lather. She’s smart, wise beyond her years, open and bold to the point of intoxication for a blunt kinda girl like me, and she writes Harry Potter slash. But we won’t hold that against her.

And physically? It was like she had walked out of a highlight reel of every sexual fantasy I’d had since I was a teenager. Long, coppery red hair, porcelain skin straight out of a Keats poem, a delightfully goth flair, tall enough that I don’t feel like Andre the Giant next to her, blue eyes with a mischievous twinkle, pouty “snakebite”-pierced lips just designed for kissing, hips you want to grab and pound with the nearest available strap-on, an ass begging to be spanked or plowed..or both!…big, beautiful, creamy-complected, rose-nipped breasts I don’t think I could have possibly stopped sucking on once I got started.

But she was young, not terribly experienced, and I didn’t want to repeat my earlier mistake.

I shouldn’t have worried. A few drinks and a very strong “magic” brownie later, and she’s having her way with ME in such a way that I feel so used, so violated…so fucking happy I couldn’t believe myself.

After a time of happy snogging and petting, of slow discarding of article after article of clothing, the pot kicked in. It turned her every touch into fireworks. When she sucked on my nipples, it was like they’d been hardwired right into my clit and all I could do was come and come and come helplessly…ecstatically.

I don’t think I could tell you how long it lasted. It was simultaneously eternal and criminally short. We kissed, we explored, we tasted and nibbled and caressed until she had to head home.

Ironically, though, we had to stop short of anything much beyond “2nd base.” (Albeit 2nd base with a very long lead toward stealing 3rd.) To go farther than night would have necessitated a mood-killing call to the skittish primary boy who’s new to sharing.

But right in that moment, as much as I might have liked to rip off her panties, I was content not to. It was a reminder of how profoundly sexual extended foreplay and delayed gratification can be. Besides, we have another date coming up next weekend and I don’t mind quivering in antici…pation.

So, I may have failed at doing things a new way on Craigslist, but it was nice to know that doing things my usual way on OKCupid was working so well!

And oh yeah, maybe Craigslist didn’t treat me so badly after all…I do have another date with a certain rugby-playing library assistant coming up soon, too. Maybe I’ll tell you about it the next time you see me on this stage.

You have to love a show that can actually one-up Buffy the Vampire Slayer for an “I’m back from the dead, miss me?” moment, which is exactly what Lost did with “Whatever Happened, Happened.”

I mean, OK, yes, that satisfying moment comes from the end of the episode, but there’s still a lot of great stuff there, like a great debate about time travel that actually worked in a Back to the Future “fading hand” reference.

Really, the only disappointing thing about “Whatever Happened, Happened” is that it was a Kate episode instead of, say, a Faraday episode, which is what one would expect from one named after a phrase so closely associated with the character. But, ah well, it was lovely all the same.

“Welcome back to the land of the living.” *snerk!*

I meant to post about it after I woke up, but I had a raging migraine. I still have it, but it’s somewhat better. A few hours kibbitzing about time travel with Dana on the phone helped. (Thanks, Dana!)

Anyway, go check it out. And remember…everybody kills Hitler on their first trip.

Free will may have given fate a poke with a pointed stick, but the gears of predestination are going to keep grinding away, just like any good Greek tragedy.

And hey, anytime I get to make a 12 Monkeys reference, I’m a happy girl.

Actually it went live in the wee hours…and just in time, too, given that tonight’s episode, “He’s Our You,” is mere hours away.

I’ve actually been really pleased with the responses people have been giving me to my Lost recaps (even despite their habitual tardiness…such a shocker from me, I know), though I’d love to hear some constructive criticisms so I can improve them.

Also, just like on this blog, you should mouse over all the links and images. I always put little easter eggs in ‘em.

Er, you do know to mouse over the links and images on my blog, right? Right…? Well, er, you should. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

Not a recap this time…I’m telling my fellow Lostaholics who really want to geek out and actually engage in cosplay from their favorite TV addiction where to go to get everything they need to be kitted out like they were in the DHARMA Initiative.

My recap of tonight’s episode, “Namaste,” will be forthcoming.

Now would be the time to do it, too, with the current season of Lost being so DHARMA-involved. You can also make up DHARMA foodstuffs with a little creative re-labeling. Nice, eh?

If any of you wanna do a DHARMA group for Halloween, let me know. We’ll make that happen.

In case you were wondering, the bastardized Latin above is “We who are about to prog salute you!”

Anyone who knows me knows I love Prog Rock in all its virtuosic, mind-bending, pretentious, bombastic glory. King Crimson, Yes, ELP, Jethro Tull, Rush, Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, Eloy, and so many more. They bestrode the Earth like the precursors to Spinal Tap that they were. A monument to all that was worthy of late-60s/early-70s popular music and half (with The Evil That Was Disco™) of what Punk and New Wave was rebelling against.

At its best, it idolized virtuosity and transcended the previous limitations of rock, folding in classical, jazz, world music, folk, and other elements and breaking free of the tyranny of the 4/4, 3-5 min., verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-key change-verse-chorus-repeat structure. At its most bloated and indulgent, it was 30 people on stage with massive synth pits, lasers, multiphonic sound systems, and sometimes on ice!

Ironic, really, that it took me until college to get into music that was popular around the time I was being born.

Rush was my “gateway band.” Before that, my tastes had actually been pretty abysmal with only a couple of exceptions. My first album (on casette tape) was A-Ha’s Hunting High and Low. My first concerts were The Hooters, Level 42, and post-”Don’t You (Forget About Me)” Simple Minds. I really wish I were kidding about all this. Aside from pre-”Don’t You (Forget About Me)” Simple Minds, Swiss electronic pioneers Yello, and the odd bit of Howard Jones, nothing from that time survived my introduction to Prog in college.

The album was Rush’s Signals. It was electronic enough to catch my undeveloped ear, complex enough to tease my brain, and just so much better than anything I’d really listened to before. My home was hardly what you would call musical. My Dad wasn’t into music at all, and my Mom’s idea of good stuff was Englebert Humperdink and Sade. Oy. I had to have more!

I collected Rush’s entire back catalog to date, and played the hell out of them to the point where my dorm-neighbors were ready to use my collection for skeet-shooting (I’d moved on to CDs by now). But I didn’t know where to go from there. Enter the record store guy. He worked at Streetlight Records on Pacific in Santa Cruz, looked like a biker with a paunch and a scraggly salt-and-pepper beard, and usually a Motörhead t-shirt. His knowledge of rock music was encyclopedic enough to put the characters from High Fidelity to shame. I told him I wanted more like this, please. He turned me on to all the classic prog bands listed above. But I breezed through them and wanted more.

Unfortunately, Prog was extremely out of style at that point. The big prog bands had gone pop or disbanded, and ’80s “neo-prog” like Marillion and IQ was dreadful. But one album he turned me on to was the very future of Prog, even if I didn’t know it at that point…Porcupine Tree‘s 1991 debut CD, …On the Sunday of Life. The ’90s wave of prog set the stage for a mini-renaissance of prog in the 2000s. Porcupine Tree is now a pillar of the genre, along with Swedish acts like Anekdoten (a fave) and Änglagård, and throwback stalwarts, Rocket Scientists. though I wouldn’t find out more about them until later. I put aside PTree and expanded my musical tastes more toward New Wave and Industrial and the like for a time. Prog-metal flourished in the ’90s, but most of them were more metal than prog and did little for me, aside from some Dream Theater.

But a few years back, I rediscovered PTree thanks to their then-current album, In Absentia. Their sound had both matured and hardened and it was bloody amazing. I needed more again. Then I found the prog/glam/hard-rock trio, Muse, and was turned on to the new hard-prog sensation from El Paso that had actually stormed the charts with their debut album (De-loused in the Comatorium), The Mars Volta. Something was up. Prog was charting, even if no one was calling it prog.

And finally, in rapid succession, I found about 6 more bands that I’d never heard of doing some extremely prog music, though I’ve only had time to listen to about 4 of them. The music does keep progressing, bringing in elements of electronica, alt-rock, and more modern influences into the original prog mélange.

In no particular order…

Pure Reason Revolution. Their debut, The Dark Third, takes its instrumental cues from Eloy (but updated) and its swirling male-and-female vocal harmonies from the very best of Renaissance (but updated) in a full-length concept album about sleep and dreaming. New album, Amor Vincit Omnia, just came out but is only available as an import. I have mine on its way. They’re just getting started and they’re strong out the gate! Most Prog bands take a longer time to gestate into greatness because of the complexity of the music.

Mew. And the Glass-Handed Kites is nothing short of a masterpiece. Kaleidoscopic harmonies, countertenor vocals, tempo and time-signature shifts galore. Its predecessor, Frengers, hints at the greatness that would succeed it. This is also a young band, with only three full-length albums to their name so far. They have nothing but greatness ahead of them.

Oceansize. Polyrhythms, soundscapes, then some almost-metallic grind. This band is so good they’re scary. They also have only three full-length albums under their belt. Their debut, Effloresce, knocked me off my feet. Everyone Into Position kept right up. And Frames, the latest, flat-out blew my mind. They’re indescribable…they’ll take you on a long and rewarding journey covering ground as large as their name every single time.

Riverside. This Polish band sounds to me like what might have happened if early-model VAST had cross-bred with late-model Tool. They’re prog-goth-hard rock/metal. A trifle too close to metal some of the time…but only some. I’ve heard the second of their three albums, Second Life Syndrome, but I’m so getting the other two.

I haven’t had much of a chance to give Mystery Jets or Secret Machines a listen (though wouldn’t that be a great double-bill just for the names alone?), but they’re often listed in the same breath with the other four. Chuck in upstarts like Fromuz, and stalwarts like PTree, Anekdoten, and The Mars Volta, worldwide chart-toppers like prog-eque Muse and you’ve got the makings of a worldwide prog renewal. Listen to these bands…all of them. Buy their albums. Keep complex modern music that deviates from 3-chord crunchers and rudimentary structure alive and kicking!

Dibs on the first 1-song album of the new millennium…

Gratuitous album cover art:

Stop…Sawyer-time!

That’s right, Lostoholics, we finally got a Sawyer-centric episode for the first time since early Season 3, and boy is it ever a doozy. And now you can read all about it over at DocArzt & Friends.

As for the rest of the promised posts, the Creeping Crud’s kept me seriously waylaid the last several days, as you may have read in my feverishly-written previous post. It’s only now finally just sorta-kinda starting to think about considering receding, so I’m hoping thaht over the next couple of days, I’ll start feeling a bit more like my usual self. Gah. All I can say about that is I’m sorry.

I’m back from SoCal and Baja and mostly caught up with obligations, not the least of which was getting out my DocArzt recap of “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” before the next episode of Lost aired.

Consequently, I have a whole raft of posts queued up to regale you with as the week progresses so that my blog does turn exclusively into a place for me to announce my posts on another blog entirely.

Have I mentioned that depression sucks? ‘Cause it does. Meantime, enjoy my recap, analysis, and wild speculation about The Passion of the Locke™.

Another week, another (late) Lost recap and analysis over at DocArzt & Friends. Unfortunately, with me traveling the latter half of this week and not getting back until Sunday, I’m not going to be able to get to this coming week’s Locke-tastic episode until about this time next week, too. *grump*

Ah, well…it’s all in a good cause. I’m gaining a sister-in-law as my kid brother (heh…34, lawyer, hardly a kid, I guess!) gets married.

There’ll be more posts before I leave, though!

I’m sorry and mea culpa. I’ve been neglecting my blog in a haze of depression and dithering. But, lest anyone think it was just this blog getting neglected, it took me the better part of a week to get my latest DocArzt post up, re: “This Place is Death.”

On the up-side, I did manage to work in a really sweet Watchmen parallel which enabled me to do screen-grabs of the fabulous-looking movie versions of Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias. And that’s always worthwhile.

Anyway, enjoy the Lost post and I have some non-Lost-related stuff brewing in here, too. I do have a wee test left to take to get my Apple certification, though, so give me a couple of days on that.