Courage of your convictions

I love my twitter feed... full of people I've met at Eroticon '17 and '18 and the wider blogging community. A really lovely bunch. If you've wondered about coming, it really is amazing and worthwhile for the atmosphere as well as the speakers and sponsers. 

At both Eroticons, I have really enjoyed the readings. At the first, I was a neophyte blogger, who had opened a blog to do my meet and greet. I was blown away by the confidence and courage of those who read their own work and digested the anthology Identity with gusto.  This year, there were people reading their work who reduced the room to hushed silence and tears, and again the anthology Truth is full of gorgeous longer pieces from bloggers I have enjoyed and people I'd never read before.  

At both there were people who said "I'm not really a writer" or in the case of one young lady, describes her feelings of impostor syndrome. "What am I doing here, reading my fiction? I blog about my life, not write."

I really felt that the first year. The second, having been through a little blogging break, I was worried that I was even more of an impostor...I had failed to keep at it. I was a fairweather blogger. 

It takes nerve to go out in public and say, "Yes. I write." and even more so  "Yes.  I write about sex." Marie talks about the difficulties of exposing this about yourself in her piece I'm not a threat

Given that the whole thing is sponsored by sex toy companies, and Saturday afternoon included a "come and try..." session, it was also scary because, unless you were very closeted, your sexuality was going to be out in the open. For some, not an issue. I'd not told anyone, not even my husband, how I self-identified before March 2017. 

What the whole experience has done for me, writing the blog and meeting people, rather than sitting at home reading  the (sometimes lackluster) stuff I found online is that it has given me courage in my convictions. Yes, I can write. Actually, it doesn't always have to be fiction to be valid. It is ok for me to identify as being on the submissive side of the scale and still be bossy me at home when I have to. It is absolutely fine that my sexuality and my gender are a bit fluid and amorphous. 

Like Jadis said in her piece My armour is made of pretty skirts the relief of wearing this on the outside cannot be under-estimated. Molly, leading us by example, goes out there and did what felt right to her Courage of my Convictions. 

This post was supposed to be a piece of fiction... So I am breaking all of the word limits to put it on the end here. But this is important for me. I have struggled to write fiction this month as the real world has crowded in. But fiction is a form of the truth. Maybe not what happened, but a fragment of thoughts and feelings blown up and magnified till it becomes something quite different. 

This is part one... I can't leave them there and I want to know what happens next. I hope you feel the same way. 

“How did you know?”

I put down my pint, because that starter for ten, well, it could go several ways. “Know what?”

Malley hunched down across the table. “Y’know. All that kinky shite you did with Dave’s cousin.”

Ah. It was going that way. I took another mouthful. Then, meeting his eyes, I took one more, just to give me time to judge his mood. It was more about what was missing. No salacious grin. No tease of humour. Dave’s cousin was what, six, seven years ago. My sister’s eighteenth.

“Nothing better to talk about?” I asked. His gaze shifted around the pub. There was just me and him and a hundred other people. My mum’s table of friends chatting after the quiz. Just a chance meeting on a rare night home.

He shifted uncomfortably and scooted his stool closer under the table. Our knees knocked, but he didn’t move away. “Just wondered,” he said. “Cuz split up with his girl last year because she wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, more fool him then. There’s more to a relationship than sex.” Even kinky sex. Another swallow. This pint was going down easy. He was matching me.

“Is that summat you do though. Y’know. With guys?” Malley blushed then. Fuck, he looked young.I downed the end of my drink and stood. “I’m going to let my mum know I’ll walk home. Be outside in ten.”

The August night was cool but bone dry, first autumn leaves swishing against the pavement as we walked. Hands in pockets, arms bumping. Casual. Like teenagers. Like we didn’t know we were going to fuck.  

“We going to yours?” Or was I going to have to get creative in the woods? I wasn’t taking him back to my mum’s, that much was certain.

“Got a flat, just off Oxford Road.”

The small talk started. Just taking us back to those summers when we knew each other. When he was the mouthy best friend of my little sister’s boyfriend. When I was the awkward hanger on, wondering what to do with my height and my kinky dreams and the boys who didn’t want to kiss me.

He paused at the petrol station, turned so suddenly he banged into me, grabbing my waist to keep me steady. Bringing us chest to chest. Face to face. His breath was sweet and minty with gum over the bitterness of our drinks. In the sodium lit dark I could see his flushed cheeks black against his orange hued skin. His eyes skimming my face and returning again and again to my lips.

“Can I kiss you?”

I kissed him, pretty sure that was what he wanted. He fought me a bit before he seemed to work out he didn’t have to. Before I brought his hands to my shoulders and hooked my thumbs into his belt loops. Let my fingers trail, loose and casual against the seam of his jeans. Hips stuttering into mine, hard and keen. I pinched his backside and pushed him away.

We walked faster then, falling into rhythm with each other. Made our way up the narrow stairs into the converted flat that was small and cluttered. I crowded him into the wall and kissed him hard, catching his wrists and pinning him and tasting the hitch in his breath, the sweetness of his gasp as I ground against him.

“What do you want?” Cursing myself for asking, I met his eyes anyway.

“Cuz said,”

“I know what Cuz said,” I interrupted, even though I didn't, letting a touch of growl into my voice, “I asked what you want.”

His hips ground up against mine again, and I dropped his wrist to manhandle his cock. If he’d been listening to Cuz, this shouldn’t have come as a shock. His hand stayed against the wall, a strangled sound bubbling from his mouth as though the pressure was on his throat.

“Please! I don’t know. I just…”

I let go and stepped back. Risky move, but I’d rather frig off after a long walk back to mum’s than make a fool of myself now. He’d kissed well enough, his hard, lean body against mine wanking fodder for the next little while if this was all I got.

“He said you fucked him. Like a man. But y’know. Not.” His words spilled out in a hot rush. “I want… I mean, I think… I dream about it. And then there you were. I didn’t think you lived here anymore.”

I don’t. I think we covered that in our memory lane session, but scrambling his brain is satisfying on a certain level. I wonder if he’s ever thought about me, or just the act.

“Please.” Just the right amount of need with the right amount of conviction in his plea.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

I push his heavy jacket down his arms till it thumps on the floor. Unbutton his shirt. Dark coarse hair that wasn’t there when we were seventeen springs to meet my fingers. Nipples flushed red and tight standing to attention as I stroke through the fur. Flushed like his mouth. I step in closer and take more. Take his breath, the softness of his lips between mine, between my teeth. Fuck into his mouth with my tongue, dancing with his. Take the lead.

Take my time.

Pop the button on his jeans and push my hand into the warm nest of his undies.  Measure him in my hand, his weight, his girth. Burrow past to his balls, pulled high already. His groan as I cup them and pull down gently is powerful magic I don’t understand but live for anyway. Who knows what makes me who I am?

His hands start to move to undress me, but this isn’t how this will go. “Naked. Bedroom. Now.” I order, not even trying to temper myself. He said it. I want to fuck him, open him, feel him stretch around my fingers. I want him beneath me, naked and panting.

The next thought, the one I never let myself have, barrels through me, catching me unawares, hitches my breath and weakens my knees.  I want to fuck him. I want to fuck him with the dick I don’t have.