Autism Awareness

This week is Autism Awareness week, so I thought I would share a little about what goes on in my head. My household is made up of three autistic children, me (diagnosed a couple of years ago and only then able to make sense of myself), my neuro-diverse husband and a string of usually male au pairs who work in teams of at least two. 

Until I was diagnosed, I thought I was a pretty flaky human being. Then I discovered the things that went on in my head, things that consumed my energy, were so little as to not even be "things" to a neuro-typical person. I know now that this concentration on detail and on the accumulation of detail as a way of interpreting life is what (I hope) makes my writing interesting. 

At the same time, life is like a game of minesweeper, full of hidden bombs and guesswork combined with fragments of information. It also feels like the descriptions given by sixties hippies on a trip, where tiny details explode into miracles of colour and sense. And a faulty computer, that reverts to DNA based protocols humans have not needed since we left the cave. 

Then there are jigsaw pieces missing. I can work out from the pieces around what must be there, but the part I craft from this knowledge is never quite going to replace that missing part. Gender and sexual bias for example. At uni I was forever hitting on gay men, or conversely sending out signals that suggested I was gay. I had owned bi-sexual as a label for a while by the time I met my husband but now I have a bigger lexicon I realise pan-sexual would be a better description. But I will never be able to work out your choice of labels from your behaviour. If I hadn't learnt a bigger frame of reference I would be in the same position as my children: if you have a ponytail you are probably a girl. Like football, probably a boy. 

This bit of writing has been triggered by needing to recruit a new team of au pairs for later this year. Inviting a stranger into your household is an intense experience and for me...well I've tried to be honest, but it is perhaps best analogised as explaining letter fonts to someone who has only experienced braille...

Ordinary moments become stretched and distorted, magnified or muted. The warmth from your skin as we work side by side hums through me triggering intruder alerts. Chemical messages rush, asking questions I cannot answer through conscious thought. Trying to establish the meaning of this moment. My body recognises both the warmth and the gentle scent of your skin and bodywash as being something important. A recollection. Excitement. An uncensored awareness of you as male and me as female. Danger. The explosions of adrenaline spike. I should move away. But then, the rational voice takes over. Points out I am fat and old and motherly. This heat is nothing more than when my children hug me. And, fuck, that stings. Little chemical knives to the heart and salt-pricked eyes.

Later, your hand brushes mine as you pass me a glass of water. I am as sensorially aware of you, of these seconds, as I am if you stroked me with a velvet glove whilst I lay blinded and tied. I am scalded by the guilt that washes through.

The unfamiliarity of you in my home makes every single scent and touch more vivid, and those with whom I am familiar fade to ghosts. I hear words they speak, but their meaning is lost as the sound of your breathing steals my focus.  

My body is programmed to respond to you in a way I do not want but cannot change. An organic infatuation that says less about you than it does about me, a remnant of programming from a teenage life, long shed. Lessons learnt twenty years ago mean the surface barely ripples. Rejection, repulsion and ridicule were the most common reactions to this lust, this need to drown in detail. Or it was read for what it wasn’t, an open invitation to a sexual encounter I neither wanted nor could enjoy. But an invitation I knew I had issued, so would honour, because no one likes a tease.

What if this is how you read me? A dirty old woman giving you the come-on. The saggy, wrinkly desperate mother wanting love and attention. Love my children and fall for me. I know how this could look.

I steal myself, don the mask and shield and become as normal as I can for protection. I make my actions appear unselfconscious although every second of this is planned and executed as a military campaign. I don’t want you to run.

Trapped on the page, this overload of inconsequential detail and focus on the tiniest hitch in your breathing becomes a love letter. The briefest second of eye contact becomes loaded with meaning because of the effort it takes. The pattern of your freckles and the way your hair grows into your beard are more familiar than the eyes of my lover, for he takes me with a different familiarity, in the darkness, with my face buried in the sheets. When you really know and love someone these details are not important enough for your day to day narrative.  

Love is the sound he makes when he comes and my contentment in knowing I know how that sounds. Lust is the slick and the softening of my cunt to let him in. However close this feels, however your proximity makes my heart race and my skin ache to touch you, it is a borrowed reaction. Borrowed from memory. This chemical crush is rollercoaster, demanding attention and drowning me in exhilaration, clarity against a confused backdrop. Love is the lens that clears the confusion and returns you to true importance.

So I write, because the words spill from every casual encounter. Words quantify and bind and dismiss the fire that dances across my skin in favour of the banked embers masking the fire beneath. Words have the power to capture the chemistry and place it a safe distance away. To rationalise my irrational reaction to you. 

A World of our Own

This is a story that has been hanging around in my mind for a little while, but crystallised last night watching Comic Relief. Specifically watching the segment from Billy Connolly. 

Now I'm just the right age to have watched all this from the beginning. And whereas Lenny Henry and several of the others seem to defy the ageing process, it is as though it has all fallen on Billy's shoulders. I remember him stripping and chasing round Trafalgar square: I remember the energy. And I am watching it in my own parents who are mid seventies and showing the signs of wear and tear. I see friends and acquaintances struggle with providing care daily. 

And then there are the wonderful Historical Hotties from @whoresofyore 

Anyway...this story could be any of them or any of us.

The song is A World of our Own by the Seekers from 1965.

Martha brought the mugs of tea from the kitchen and placed one in front of her husband. He turned from the window and his face lit up as he looked at her, as though she was, in that moment, quite simply the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

He sipped the tea and made a sound of contentment. “I think this is perhaps the most perfect cup of tea I have ever tasted.” he said, and she tried not to roll her eyes. His disposition was mercurial, although that was nothing new, but when his eyes sparkled as though it was the first time he’d seen her that was the line that followed. Just for a few seconds, she allowed herself to play along.

She looked at him as he looked at her, the salt and pepper of his hair receding as soft brown took dominance. Lines that crinkled deeply washed back to light laughter lines. He’d always laughed when they first met and still, even though nothing ran perfectly smooth in a fifty-year marriage, he found time to make her smile, even when he couldn’t do it himself.

“So, handsome. What does a girl get for making the best cup of tea in the world?”

His voice was low and gentle as he began to croon a song from their dating days. “Close the door, light the light, we’re staying home tonight.”

“Cheeky boy, not going to take me dancing first?”

“Ah, sweetheart. We should go dancing. It’s been a long time since I took a girl dancing.”

“Do you remember those nights?”

“I remember many nights. But you make me think of one special night.”

“Tell me about it?”

“Not sure I should, sweetheart. Not suitable for tender young ears like yours.”

She left the tea at table and cuddled in beside him. Her body felt soft and familiar, as though the shape of her and the shape of him had been designed to fit perfectly together. The scent of her hair with a top note of her perfume took him back to the dance halls, clubs and concerts as though youth was only a blink of his eyes away.

“We danced.”

“The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, all lithe and curvy, softness and kohl black eyes. Touching her, the edge of her girdle firm and then the cushion of her flesh. Wanton. She pushed her hips against my thighs and tension vibrated through her like a guitar string.”

“I wanted everyone to know she was my woman. I could see other men wanted her, the way she was moving against me giving them all sorts of ideas. I pulled her close not wanting them near enough to become intoxicated by the scent of her powder and the stuff in her hair. She kissed me and then we couldn’t stop, waxy lipstick smearing between us in the darkness of the club. God, she was perfect.”

His hands were wandering with his thoughts, and Martha shivered as sure, familiar fingers curved into her waist, and flicked the edge of her knickers. She let him pull her close and just like that night, he made her small and vulnerable. Thumping pulse still filling his body with life and strength. Such a magnificent figure of a man. Always had been. The way the other girls had cast sly looks in her direction as she danced with him, and women had reacted to him throughout his working life but then he’d never seemed to notice, he’d always been so busy. There was always their retirement, they’d joked while the kids were growing, the work responsibilities growing, the bills growing. And now here they were. Their time. Together alone.

“Later that night, when I saw her home, she invited me in for a cup of tea. Think it might have been the best cup of tea ever. We kissed on the sofa of that tiny little flat and she told me her flat mate was out for the evening.”

Martha felt her voice shake, but she picked up the story. “And she led you to her little bedroom just off the living room. Sat you down and kissed some more, mainly because she didn’t really know what happened next. But then neither did you.”

“None of the things I’d ever seen prepared me for a flesh and blood woman. All that tight, underwear that nipped and pulled and succulent little packages of hot flesh.”

“Chest hair, crisp between my fingers over burning skin. Fresh hot sweat as salty as tears.” As salty as the tears that rolled silently down her cheeks as she remembered the fear and excitement of his weight over her, cradled by her hips. The silent need the had her fingers searching beneath his underwear for answers.

“My first time. Hers. Ours. So tight and wet.”

She didn’t need to look to know he was glassy-eyed with memories, only the stroking of his fingers a connection to the here and now. Letting herself go, she was under him again, and that one new, fresh night was overlaid with the thousands of couplings that followed. Hot and fast, tender and loving, the nights she lay back and planned her shopping list because he needed her more than she needed him. The glue binding them together.

Holding him she let the tears flow, because sometimes that was the only thing to do.

“Hey, sweetheart. Why you crying?”

He wouldn’t understand, so she didn’t tell him. Instead she sang another fragment of their song.

“We'll build a world of our own that no one else can share
All our sorrows we'll leave far behind us there
And I know you will find there'll be peace of mind
When we live in a world of our own"

“I used to know a girl that loved that song.” he murmured, humming along with the tune and carrying it forward a little. “I wonder what happened to her? Martha, I think she was called?”

“Yes, dear.” Martha’s eyes dried with the familiarity of heartbreak.

He hummed a little more of the tune before it disappeared like so many of his memories.

“Is it time for a cup of tea?”

Scissors

I scrape my nails across your scalp and your hair bunches between my fingers. Relaxed into my touch, head lolling, skull heavy in my hands, I hold you, loving the heat of your skin, the coolness of hair, the way it tickles the backs of my hands as scratch into your nape. Burying my face, scent of shampoo and skin.

Hair. Tricky subject for me. Currently blocking two writing projects. I have read and digested the psychology of identity and perception and past trauma and none of it makes any difference. Cutting hair, either in real life or here in this alter ego, is difficult.

It’s not even like mine is some sort of crowning glory. It is dyed improbably red and hangs in a slightly limp almost style down to over my shoulders. In the past, it has been both nearly to my waist and cut so short most of it was done with clippers. 

Colour doesn't bother me like cutting. I love the fun. Stepping out into a new tribe at Eroticon I could see I was not alone with this. I love the bold pinks and blues and purples worn by Emily-Rose and others who I admire and prefer to be anonymous in this community. The discussion of whether red heads have more fun with with Rose (and we do). The fantastic long white hair, the dreads, and all the other combinations I saw in Camden all statements of confidence. Every two months or so I go back to the hairdressers and beg for them to send it royal blue. I make do with extensions because they're reluctant to bleach it, but it makes me feel like some sort of wannabe. If it's ruined, cut it off! 

When it is short, I am relaxed. I like it in a style that is all in the cut, mainly because I don't have time for a hairdryer in my life, let alone straighteners. Especially a style that makes a statement. I think it speaks of confidence and of someone who can make decisions. This is who I need to be in my real life. Last year, I let it get a little longer for an evening out where I wanted to look “ladylike”. Just long enough for a beautiful up-do. Now it has reached the awkward “just long enough to call long” length. It looks nice, but you can tell how I feel about it from the description above. Six or more inches too long yet I can’t bear the thought of it being cut. But this is ridiculous. It grows quickly enough that this is only one year since the last time clippers cut my nape in close and sharp.

It’s not sensory dislike. I think it is purely the social message hair provides. I wanted to be ladylike. I want to look decisive. I want to be sexy. And I want my hair to convey all of those messages, because I am none of those things. When I write about hair, I write the hair I want. The reaction I want.

I'm a man of numbers, spreadsheets, logic, sitting in an office, staring at a computer screen. A geek. A nerd. Aiming for nothing more challenging than to not be alone. I guess I'm a romantic underneath, confused as to just how much to try to say aloud. To be more than an avatar or dismembered voice from the speaker. Channelling my inner James Bond; hoping for Brosnan not Moore. But when I needed him, when I saw a fall of straight dark hair across the office, his voice fell silent. I began to struggle to think anything more than the most basic images and feelings. Want. Need. Fuck.

  And that was was just your hair. Just a fraction of you. I need that voice now, with you, more than ever. Too many things I can't put into words. Things that are just not manly enough to let out of my mouth. Things I'm scared will drive you away. My inner poet is frustrated with the lack of words. So I will start where we started. Your beautiful hair.

I've always been a sucker for hair that trails across my chest, hair I can grab as I thrust into a sweet mouth. This was fantasy hair. Hair that made the world tilt on its axis and changed my chemistry till every hormone focussed on you. My phone rang and I had to turn away, stare back at the screen of my computer and try to convince my dry mouth to function. Reality rushed back as oxygen to suffocating lungs and despite the hum of my body I answered that call, and the next, and the next.

That night I fisted my dick to the imagined softness of that hair between my fingers, the slight resistance of neck muscles matching the tension in my hips, both of us trying to avoid my natural urge to thrust deeply and feel the wet tightness of a throat closing on my sensitive tip.

Anticipating a next glimpse near the coffee machine, perhaps diamond sharp cheekbones or smudgy dark eyes, I thought about the colour, the cut, every detail that could possibly elicit more clues. Smooth hair falling over sharp shoulders in a strictly tailored jacket, dark mocha brown with caramel hints. I've nothing against colour, but there is something in the confidence of leaving it natural that is more appealing to me than bright dye, or worse yet uniform mundanity. I wanted it to be paired with milk white skin and burning, intense eyes. Ice blue, if you can cope with the mixed metaphors, but then I told you I was a frustrated poet. Maybe the caramel hinted at something warmer, but the beauty of dark hair is highlighted in the contrasts and I visualised something virginally pure perhaps spotted with the occasional dark freckle.

Blunt cut and thick, with beautiful movement. Unfussy. No fringe, I thought, one length that would run through my fingers like silk through a loom, weighing heavily against my hands. I closed my eyes and imagined cradling the weight of skull and brain, the fragility and sculpted strength slack and satiated against my belly. No make up, naturally dark lashes I could hope might match the cocoa and caramel hues. A mouth rouged by friction, glistening with my spunk.

Because of my fear, I’m sure, hair cutting has become eroticised for me. I am torn between the sick feeling if I see hair hitting the floor, and the squirm in my stomach that sends me looking for video clips late at night. Cutting the hair of my fantasies. Cutting the hair of characters I create.

I could understand it if I was forcing them, but right now both of the characters are complicit. They want their haircut. It is me that doesn’t.

My first character is a female who wants to shed the confines of expectation she has created for herself with a very traditional femme packaging, ice-queen platinum hair included, which needs to change up to a pixie cut. She is exhausted by shaping herself for others and the hair is part of that. It needs to go, and the scissors that cut it will be sharp, easily shearing through the thin slivers that hang limply from her scalp.

Second character is a man. He’s been rocking androgyny, but now wants something that better reflects new confidence in his sexuality. He’s worried his partner loves his hair more than him, but really knows this is stupid. I know it’s stupid, as I am crafting their ending and the hair that is vital to the plot is unimportant by then. Blunt kitchen scissors wielded by his partner will crunch and saw and pull through his ponytail, just below his shoulders. He may well go to the hairdressers afterwards and have it cut shorter, emphasizing his cheekbones and fantastic eyebrows.

Hair is a fragment of these characters, but at the same time is crucial to their development.

I have armed myself with first-hand knowledge. Clippers wielded, articles read, scissors sharpened, videos watched. I can feel the slightly slippy but at the same time crunchy feeling of scissors cutting through hair. The vibration of clippers. The soft tufts of hair falling away and rolling down a body like tumbleweed. Dead and gone. The feel of cool air on the nape of your neck. The stranger in the mirror…but was that before or after the cut?

It’s not about me though, is it? I just need to detach enough to get on with the writing. 

Pandora visits Fuck.com

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A quiet Sunday afternoon at Eroticon

A quiet Sunday afternoon at Eroticon...

...consisted of a Rachel Kincaid  taking me (and a room full of other attendees) into a world where the darker secrets live. Of the gory and stomach turning. And of any story for which a happy ever after does not look like Disney. And what fun it was. PD James has never actually murdered anyone, Stephen King never buried anyone alive (well, as far as we know!) and yet they write about these events as their bread and butter. "Go out and write," said Rachel. 

Pondering this, I had a nice cup of chamomile tea and headed off to watch a brand being burnt into skin with a creme brulee torch and some surgical steel wire. 

In this later workshop we were talking about limits. And up popped a mention of erotic amputation. Rachel asked what it was, but I have a thing for body mods (not on me...not suburban mummy enough yet) mainly I think because they are so forbidden and different, so I had heard of it, and talked to someone who was totally happy with their hand with finger ends missing from an accident that could never quite be explained....

The gauntlet was thrown down... "You'll have to write it then."

First I have to mention Malin James and her great tips on flash writing. This is a bit long, but I tried to use the techniques she suggested. Then Victoria Blisse, engaging all your senses. I was thinking of you, but taste...not in this story. This was a great writing exercise, out of my comfort zone in more ways than one, especially as I knew I would put it out for others to read from here. My first bit of fiction on the blog. 

I have had a go. I have given you a massive hint as to what I have written. It is not my usual topic, so don't go and never come back if it is not your thing...but equally stop here if you faint at the thought of blood. Feedback on anything other than choice of subject matter please... which really is not my thing... well sort of not my thing...not how I've written it anyway. 

Reliquary

Pin-pricks of sweat catch the light.

“Still ok?” I ask, my voice calmer than my heart.

His wry grin is pleasing, the corners of his eyes crinkling as though that idea was funny, and I guess it is. “Great. Better, probably.”

The violence of duct tape ripping from the roll answers for me.

“You’re not forcing me.” He seeks to reassure.

I know I’m not. Our dynamic, however temporary this meeting is, doesn’t work like that. Equal and opposite, we are drawn together.

He volunteers. Earlier, he pulled the worn leather belt from his belt loops and I fastened it around his chest and left arm, pinning his arm to his torso just above the elbow. Minor helpmeets aside, he wants to restrain himself and I trust him because he is trusting me. If he wants to swing for me or pull his arm away completely he can. But the involuntary, I control. The flinch will happen whether he wants it to or not.

He has prepared the board and knife as it is his infection risk. Brand new, the packaging still rustling as it unfurls in the paper bin. He hoped for passivity, to turn up then walk away when we were done. But that is not me and eventually we compromised. Joint enterprise.

Fingers flexed and knuckles cracked before their deliberate placement, their surrender, setting loose curls and spirals of excitement and a purr akin to arousal shivers through my pubis. Reality bites, a sweaty, heavy minute that drags like unconsciousness.

Tape across the back of his hand, I apologise without thought as I trap coarse dark hair. He huffs, excitement trapping his voice, but his amusement spreads and I nearly giggle. A quick glance at the knife soon squashes the need. I tiptoe closer to my boundaries and need a second to focus on the picture in my mind before concentrating again on his beautiful gift.

Three fingers pulled right. The rasp and slash as the tape rips punctuates our deliberately blown exhalations. Pinned together and fastened to the block: broad bands of black punctuating the tanned skin and meat. I can smell blood, but nothing is spilt. Not yet. The air I breathe is iron rich with want and sour with nausea.

Little finger, so naked and alone against the rough white board. Pressing the nail makes the nail bed whiten and the finger-tip flush. I pinch hard where finger meets hand and feel the movement of blood, not distinct enough for a heartbeat, but like a dam in a sluggish stream, the pressure slowly built until the flesh squirmed and hardened beneath my squeeze. And my body mimicked his, the rising awareness of blood and flesh and pumping energy. Of life.

I find the interphalangeal joint of the proximal phalanx, the text book words whispering from memory. Roll it between my fingers, feeling the end of the bone, the partition of the cartilage, that narrow seam waiting for steel. Press, allowing my nails to bruise the skin and force the joint until he hisses in discomfort.

“Still ready?” I have to ask. I am the one at risk here. Open. Exposed. I am doing what you want only if you still want it. I want it. I want it so the blood pulsates hazing my vision.

You growl, “Just do it,” your voice rough and resonant. I rush through the remaining preparations, tying a DIY tourniquet and stuffing cloth in your mouth.  

The grip is rough in my fingers but the blade cuts as though I draw on your skin with wet red ink. The colours are vivid: white tendon and yellow fat bright against dull purple skin. I scrape and pull to move the skin into a wrinkled stocking around the base of your finger. Harsh breath rushes from your nose and I poke and prod some more, excited by your stillness and your pain. The flesh, trapped between life and death. Between part of you and belonging of mine.

I am more aware of you than of any donor previously. You are more real. Your flesh radiates heat. Your clothes rustle, grunts pushed through damp cloth. There is no resistance though, the cutting board still against the sheets, your body still, so still, so tense. Perfect.

I change tools, catch your eye and drown in pupils blown wide. I want to be there to. To be with you in rapture.

Sweat runs like tears, soaks from your skin. The fat blade nestles and tendon frays.

Hearts pumping, the blade solid between my hands and your bones. Pressure. Parting. A deep groan as your body is penetrated by merciless steel, nearly smothering the crunch of bone. A drag of blade to sever the final tendon and I let go.

Seconds, minutes, I don’t know and I don’t care. Your arm clamps me back to your heaving chest, the salt slick fabric leaching to mix with mine in an intimacy we didn’t expect. I didn’t expect. I came for bone. For flesh.

You came for me. 

Ten things I took away from Eroticon 17

Thank you Jenny for a meme to get me started with the million thank yous and superlatives that need to be said. From the Chevron tights (you know who you are) and a particular brave Canadian (who introduced himself when I am pretty sure he could see the fear in my eyes at walking through the door) who were the first to look after me at Friday night's Meet and Greet to all the other warm and friendly people who helped me through bouts of Autism induced anxiety at meal and coffee times by just talking to me so I had a focus. And listening when I waffled. 

So, from Eroticon I take away...

1. A guilt free mind,- it is easy to call yourself open minded if you never share your opinions and Eroticon was obviously going to put that to the test. Living in a safe little corner of the world surrounded with people who don’t share their opinions about controversial subjects was non- challenging. I was so unbelievably relieved to go to the pub and talk about the mechanics of threesomes as a normal thing, to regret not getting to the ropes talk, to already have a list of things I would love to try or listen to in the future. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but right now, I resolve to keep testing myself and my unconscious and socially embedded prejudices towards sex and gender by finding opportunities to be positive and inclusive in all my interactions, linked to my writing, my kinks or my wider family and community.
2.  A Christmas and Birthday list for the next couple of years at least,- I haven’t had many spare pennies for sex toy shopping in the last couple of years, but the gorgeousness on offer from several of the sponsors was just too much to ignore.  Some of the shopping will happen from home as time and pennies allow… but this often seated lady is craving a little extra pleasure, and some beautiful Ceramics and Silicone. And the practical side of me has already visited Sheets of San Francisco simply to help with the clean up.
3. A fantastically strong line up of blogs to read,- I have only occasionally dipped around on the net however this D/s life was one I read from time to time. Wow. Wistfully. Without realising it was a blog (since I lived under a social media black-spot). Life was busy without trying to make room for the complete wider reading available on the internet. But now… I want to read everything. Everyone. Speakers and delegates.
4. An understanding of the power of erotic writing and sex blogs to change the circumstances of others. Emily Rose talked wonderfully about sex and disability and Enhance UK as a place of positivity and advice. I missed Jasmine talking on people of colour, but I have read what many attendees said about her talk and felt embarrassed that coming from a very white area of Britain none of this had occurred to me, other than inter-racial being a specialist option in categories of erotica (which I always thought was a bit weird).
5. A reminder fantasy writing is imagination and therefore valid whoever writes it. Bit of a note to self, this one, but if everyone took away that message all to the good. That doesn’t mean it can’t be good, bad, or mediocre (Oh, Brad!)… but whether it was Victoria Blisse encouraging us to use our senses, Malin James on preserving the power of every word, Rachel Kincaid to explore the broad potential of non hetero-normative erotica (and taking that further into the dark and hissingly disturbing),or DrMeg-John Barker teaching us to know ourselves through our writing, it was all fantastic for the writer in me, not just the over-excited kinky bit. 
6. A strong desire to be branded,- and yes by that I mean hot metal- and tied up. That will be the over-excited kinky bit. Thing is, I’m a bit sick of my inner me being completely anonymous on my body just so I still fit in with all the other mummies on the school run. Tattoos have never appealed beyond a desire to create something on my blank canvas. And watching Gryph working a couple of willing models was achingly fascinating.
7. A blog and thanks to ILB’s informative and funny 102 hopefully some ideas on what to do with it. At the moment the problem is not sitting waiting for the muse, but shutting the bitch up so I can actually leave my computer
8. A twitter account -thank you @sexwithrose Now all I have to do is work out how to use it…properly…with links and stuff…you know, just on the off chance someone might read it…follow me…
9. A better appreciation of myself as a strong, confident, sexy, kinky person,- I have a fantastic partner, but sometimes, I feel guilty to admit, I don’t trust that he is not an aberration: when he tells me my writing is good; when he tells and shows me just how much he appreciates my kinky side. I have come back feeling empowered in my writing, in my kinks (not just decorative, blushing admissions to make me “authentic” but real desires whether tried or untried) and in myself.
10. New Connections,- too young to be friendships yet, but I hope maybe at some point some of the wonderful people I met this weekend might just consider me a friend.

Leaving Eroticon

First conference. First time crawling from my secret writing space and cosy self published haven into a world of other authors. And they were glorious: welcoming, warm, open, diverse, funny and suddenly my writing was not a dirty little secret whispered to close friends and people who didn't matter but a normal living and breathing, flesh and blood life. My kinks and turn-ons normalised by acceptance. My normal life accepted too, as day jobs and families didn't always hide behind the handles and sometimes implausible pseudonyms we wore on our tags. And the respect....well possibly not if you were EL James in disguise...but for anonymity and the choices/not choices which define who we are. I have notes that tell me to give voice to experiences only in my head, to limit my self censorship and to embrace the diverse, but  it was good to know my inner kinky self with its complete lack of definitions was also a voice I could share and not be afraid of getting it wrong. Thank you Eroticon, the fabulous organisers, Molly, Michael and Girl on the Net; speakers, sponsors including  Godemiche, Ruby Glow and Ceramic Pleasures who have all become features on my birthday list and the fantastic people who all contributed to making it what I'd hoped it would be and just so much more.

New beginnings - Virtual Meet and Greet

Ok...

Forever, I think, I've had my nose in a book. It has always been my comfortable space. A few years ago I moved into writing. Life is not always straight forward but in moments of calm when the cats were herded for the day, writing became a way to let loose. 

...But I've never blogged before. 

This coming weekend though is a new beginning, so I thought I would give it a go. 

I'm off to Eroticon 2017

The grand idea of darling husband who thinks I'm good enough to be out there. So I'm trying to repay his confidence. 

Here are the links to the reason why... they're free to download so go have a look. 

Perspectives of Love

Switch

Working Away

Still, going to a convention is a bit like coming out... I've always known what I was thinking about... admitting it in public is somewhat different! 

Kicking off a blog for me is about putting this part of my life back into gear, having been hanging around in neutral for a few years while the cats were young. It's about having space that isn't about being a mum. 

Anyhow... here is my virtual meet and greet for ...ARRRRRGGGHHH...tomorrow!

NAME (and Twitter if you have one)

Alethea when I'm not being mum... will most likely answer to Allie. Twitter....don't make me laugh, this is my first blog post!

What are you hoping to get out of Eroticon 2017?

A weekend away from the troops! A chance to dust off the me that rarely sees the light of day and be a grown up for a couple of days. Also though to get an idea about what I could be doing in this corner of my life. I would love to read and write more, would love to do some beta reading, would love to get some writing collaborators for myself. And would love to make new friends who are happy to share their kinky brains, and possibly even lives, so that I can keep my writing authentic and reflective of real sex, not the fairy tale world erotica often lives in. 

This years schedule at Eroticon is pretty full on but which 4 sessions do you already have marked down as ones you want to attend?

I read the schedule and was overwhelmed. Then I went off and read the blogs and anything else I could get my hands on about the contributors, because I don't want to find I've missed something I really should have attended. Who knows when I'll get day release again!

So I plan on definitely attending ...

I've written and deleted nearly every session here because I'm scared to look like an overplanner! It all looks great. Would love to do the ropes, but without darlings husband I don't have the nerve. Likewise less likely to go to Kinkcraft...but really want to go to the disability talk (and the concurrent plotting one, darn it!) and probably blogging 102 would be a good move! Kate Lister on Saturday afternoon, because everyone has suggested her sessions are a must but Sunday clashes with tips on getting your work into print, which again is probably a good idea. but then Myles Jackman vs Malin James is a tricky one as again most virtual introducees have suggested both are "must see" speakers. 

Also, since I share a difference one or two others have mentioned...being ASC... I would love to sidle up to them and ask how they think it makes a difference to their outlook, if it does, because I do a lot of work in my other life about social perceptions and how autistic people who miss these think about gender and sexuality. Also how differences in sensitivity and the ability to enjoy touch affect your sex and fantasy life. If that's you feel free to wander up to me...

Tell us one thing about yourself that not many people know?

I'm an occasional speaker at the church I attend. Likewise, most of them would be clueless about this part of me...although not all!

If you made the papers, what would the headline be?

Local education meeting improved as community rep brings wrong document for consideration... 

If you could have one skill for free (I.e. without practice/time/effort) what would it be?

to have my house run by the domestic goddess version of myself all the time whilst the rest of me gets some sleep!

Complete the sentence: I love it when…

I can be on my own with no immediate demands on my time and I can find both my inner calm and my inner kink ;-)

... or when a plan comes together, because all other things aside I was born in the 70s.