Scintillectually Yours

My darling DPR has a birthday today and as most of you have followed our relationship from our reconnection after 26 years, I thought I’d be brazen and post an open letter to the love of my life—celebrating the day of her birth. Join me in wishing her (and us) many years of happiness to come, won’t you?

Dearest Li,

It has been almost a full year since I found you again and nearly 9 months to the day that we decided to “factor you into the equation”—the crowded puzzle that was my life last December. Quite obviously, you were (and are) the perfect fit for me. Just as I knew you were “the one” that would finally pop my impatient lesbian cherry at the tender age of 19, so you now fill all the parts of my life that I have left neglected and/or abused for so long.

Sweetheart, you are such an incredible person. You have faced physical/mental/emotional challenges all of your life with courage and conviction. You face every day with renewed vigor and unwavering Faith that all is as it should be and all will be well. You inspire everyone who comes in contact with you. You are brave and steadfast and you are my hero.

I love that we laugh the way we do—that I can be completely and utterly myself and you accept me fully and meet me wherever I am. I love your astounding intellect—the way you call up any bit of knowledge that you have read or heard and hold your own against the weightiest of PhDs. Your business acumen is well-honed and razor sharp. But it is your spirit and the spiritual journey that you pursue that impresses me most. You have brought me back to Center and remind me every day why life is worth living even in the midst of the greatest stresses. The times when we thought we might lose hold of one another as I clung to driftwood and almost let the life raft pass me by—the greatest fear I felt when we learned you did, indeed, have cancer.

You are an amazing co-parent to my child. You have given him a wonderful gift: the gift of security. I know my child finally sees Great Love and feels safe in the knowledge that we, at least, don’t plan to go anywhere. He finally has a familial unit that is strong, together, and bound for life. He enjoys you and learns from you. When the two of you laugh together, my heart leaps with unbridled joy.

As for the physical love we share. Well, from all that I’ve written here, I’m sure that is self-evident. We continue to grow together in so many ways. Our erotic explorations never cease to amaze me. Again, with you I am never self-conscious. You worship me in ways I never thought possible and I cannot feel ashamed in the presence of your love for me—for my body. Our physical relationship transcends any that I have shared with others—while I thought that I’d seen it all, done it all…I hadn’t even skimmed the surface of my desires until you came along and exhibited your willingness to fully explore our sexuality.

And, so, my dear…I am blessed in these and countless other ways. I celebrate your birth and Thank God for bringing you back into my life. I can’t imagine spending it with anyone more compatible and I look forward to many more of these celebrations. I love you with all that I am. Always, and in all ways.

Your Sweet Scin.

I could hear the buzz of activity in the nearest of the cubicles outside my corner office. Unusual for a Monday morning. I grumbled to myself, cranky, and turned toward the floor-to-ceiling picture windows that looked out over Boyleston St. Boston was busy with shoppers rushing home with their treasures. Oh, fantastic, now that song would be stuck in my head for the remainder of the day. I was rather loathing the holidays this year, facing them alone for the first time in so long I could barely remember? Ever? I didn’t think so. I rubbed my face and sighed, turning back to my large and fairly empty oak desk, answering my insistent speakerphone.

“Your 10:00 is here,” my executive assistant, Julia, slightly breathless. I wondered idly if she’d been toying with herself under the desk again, then shook the memory of having walked in on her late one night when returning to pick up a prospectus I had left behind.

“Thank you, send her in.”

My 10:00. I hadn’t met her. She was the CEO of a global multimedia company. I knew she wanted to pitch an idea she had for some sort of mobile marketing campaign that would help launch my flagship boutique over on Newbury. I turned in my leather chair as Julia announced her arrival and stepped back to let her in to my office.

I stood up and shook her hand, we made the perfunctory introductions and both refused the coffee offered before Julia bowed out with her eyebrows raised in a blatant “ohmigod how hot is she?” look. Hmmm…maybe the day wouldn’t be a total wash after all. I appraised her very expensive Armani suit, replete with a subtly striped Italian silk tie. She shot her cuffs and shot me a look. Kindred spirit, obviously. As high femme as I am, it does take one to know one. Although she was far from femme. In fact, had I met her outside the office I would definitely have been intrigued. Oh hell, I thought, I was anyway.

I started to sit back down but a flurry of activity outside the kitchenette caught my eye. I leaned across the desk to see my staff pulling a rather large, garishly decorated cake out of a white bakery box. Oh God, no. I suddenly remembered how low cut my dress was and looked down to see my cleavage spilling out before I could catch myself. I glanced up. She was looking. Definitely looking. Definitely also interested.

I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Do you mind if I close the door? It seems my staff has decided to plan a birthday surprise and really, I was hoping to just let the day slip by unnoticed.” She was fine with it. Of course, was she actually going to say no? She was offering her services after all. I got up and walked over to the door, gently but firmly shutting it. I could feel her eyes on my ass and turned to catch her gaze lingering on my stilettos. Okay, concentrate. Business. Right.

“Happy Birthday,” she said. Was she grinning?

“Oh, please,” I shook my head, “I’m not happy about this one. At all.” I felt myself put one hand under my chin. I know I actually batted me eyelashes. Fuck. What the hell was wrong with me?
“Look,” she said, “I know I’m here to pitch a marketing plan for you. But maybe we could shelve the talk for another time.” She pushed her chair back. I knew what she wanted and suddenly I wanted nothing more. She walked around the back of my desk, unbuttoning her jacket as she did so. I stood up, prepared to turn around when she pinned me to the desk from behind. She had one hand around the front of my throat and I was thisclose to pressing the intercom on my speakerphone when I felt the telltale bulge pressing up against my ass. Seriously? She hard-packed to a business meeting? She ran one hand down my arm to pin my palm flat against the desk, forcing me to bend over, leaned into me, and growled in my ear, “I always do my research before a meeting and I am never unprepared.”

Okay, I melted, I admit it. As a high-profile power dyke, I was always in control. I was the one who led little Miss Julia into my office that night and forced her to strip down for me, my plaything for the evening who’d do anything not to get fired. But here I was, in full view of the office next door and anyone on the street far enough away to see into my sixth-floor window, and I was about to get fucked good and proper by a total stranger.

Oh, she was good. While one hand deftly unsnapped my bra and caught my already hard nipple between her fingers, the other was pulling down her zipper and drawing out…shit, I couldn’t see. It felt big. My breathing was ragged as she pulled up my dress and proceeded to rip off my thong. “Hey,” I protested, “that was La Perla!” She pretty much told me to shut up and I did. Her hand ran from clit to ass and she chuckled at the slickness of my cunt. With the other hand she pushed me down against the desk so that I was bent over at the waist, both palms flat in front of me, my face pressed against the smooth wooden surface.

She wasted no time at all. Her cock slid into my eager pussy and yes, she fucked me good and proper. One hand on my clit, one hand on my hip and I was doing my damnedest to stifle the moans escaping me. Just as I was about to come and come hard she pulled out. Um, what the fuck? She had a handful of my hair, pulled me up and turned me around to face her. She was sitting down in my chair and I found myself straddling her lap without hesitation. As her dick slipped back into me, I noticed a small crowd of businessmen gathered at the window in the office across the street. Oh, I so wasn’t stopping now. I rode that cock so hard and fast that we were both working up a major sweat. It didn’t take long at all for me to throw my head back and pretty much sing her praises to the ceiling above. My orgasm was full force as she caught my exposed nipple between her teeth and bit down hard. Uh huh. Oh yeah.

She was grinning at me as we both put ourselves back together. The boys across the way were actually clapping. I blushed but did a modest curtsy and turned back to her as she picked up her leather attaché. Coach? Vuitton? I was so flustered I couldn’t tell. “Do you have plans to celebrate your big day?” Oh, so very mischievous.

I tried to collect my cool. “Mmmm…I think I just got my present.”

“I’ll pick you up at seven for dinner. We can do business then.” She walked to the door and opened it. “Oh…and maybe we’ll talk about that marketing plan, too.”

I sat down hard in my chair. I watched her pass the group of young women bearing my birthday cake. Julia turning her head to watch her walk away. A slight look of hunger in her eyes. They peeked into my office. “Surprise!!!”

I sighed. Smiled. Indeed it was.

I am going to be 45 years old in less than two weeks. In my family longevity is rampant. Three out of four of my grandparents lived well into their 90s, which means I am, yes…just over halfway through my life barring a fatal step-in-front-of-a-bus accident, a malignant disease, or the end of days in 2012. This post could wind up being a very tangential diatribe on the big giant fuck-up that is my life and if it sounds too horribly depressing you can chalk it up to the fact that I have a whopping case of the flu; just lost my health insurance in favor of paying the (now only two months in arrears) rent so that we won’t be living in a cardboard box on a heating grate in downtown Boston by the time the first snow flies; my parents are coming tomorrow for a week and my house looks like it was recently set down my Dorothy’s tornado; and I have a three pages of copy to write that I’ve been putting off for two days because I can’t organize my thoughts beyond this very tangential diatribe.

Where was I? Oh right. Wallowing in misery and self-loathing. So here’s the thing. We all live in a time of economic crisis. Many people I know don’t have jobs at all. Some work for minimum wage. Many are slogging through jobs they hate simply because they have them and don’t want to give them up. I freelance for a living. I used to be an art director. I worked for huge companies for 22 years. Ultimately, I was making six figures as a designer. Then the market tanked and my services in that area were no longer required. I was an aging print dinosaur in a land of 20-somethings who could do what I did better, faster, and cheaper. My resumé was worth only the paper it was printed on. I lost my apartment, most of my belongings and my car, declared bankruptcy. and was literally standing in line at the welfare office when HTB (remember him? The now former Hubby-to-be?) told me to leave everything, pack up my son, and move into his one bedroom in a sleepy little town a good 45 minutes out of the city.

Now I copy edit and proofread math, computer science, and physics textbooks. Occasionally, I get a medical tome or something on global health that consists of 500 pages detailing the ravages of disease in third world countries. HTB left me early in the year. After a particularly nasty scene that involved police at our door at 3 a.m. I asked him to please pack a bag and leave for a few days. He never returned. I have spent the last seven or eight months in an epic battle with my prepubescent son and my now doubled bills.

I’ve been okay with all of it until this weekend. Well, of course I’ve had tough times…moments where I thought I just couldn’t do it anymore. But I still got up the next morning, found I was still breathing, and set one foot in front of the other (yes, you now have that Christmas jingle in your head and you can blame me for the rest of the day) and kept going. I think my upcoming birthday is having it way with me. Not in a good way. I mean this bitch is fucking me up the ass with a 2 x 4 loaded with rusty nails. So…in light of the birthday cunt that wants to slam me hard…here is my wishlist for the coming year.

1. I get published. THIS is my dream. I always thought that art was my one true talent, but I find that I actually am a damn good writer and I want to be a damn good, getting-paid-for-it, published writer. Preferably for something that won’t give my mother an early coronary and break that streak of longevity.

2. I find a way to coexist with my kid. I’m truly tired of the knock-down, drag-out fights. I’m tired of taking my kid to therapy. I’m tired of being IN therapy. I’m tired of always saying no, of throwing food against the wall when I’ve worked so hard to prepare a meal only to have it wasted by an upturned nose and a plea for macaroni and cheese for the fourth night in a row, of falling into bed exhausted at 8:45 p.m. when I know I have work to do or a Netflix movie that has been sitting on my shelf for four months.

3. I get my finances in order. Steady work throughout the year. Something that doesn’t suddenly drop off in October and leave me scrambling to keep the heat on throughout the winter. Would that I had inherited my dad’s gene for squandering money for tough times.

4. A healthier, sexier body. It’s something I have wished for every year since I woke up one morning in my late 20s and discovered that my metabolism had packed its bags and left for Tahiti in the middle of the night. Obviously, I never get around to accomplishing this goal, but eh, maybe being heavier than ever now will spur me into action. Or maybe it’ll be the WII Fit that I’ve asked my folks for as a Birthday present.

6. Love. Yeah, love. This is a biggie for me. I am looking at nothing but a string of failed relationships with people who were, for the most part, alcoholics or potheads or hey, that four month stint with a heroin addict (gee, that was fun. Can you feel the sarcasm dripping from the ceiling onto your shoulder?). I love HTB. I do. I can’t seem to stay away from him. Alas, he only seems to want to truly be with me when I seem unavailable to him. He’s working on his transition. One more surgery (okay, in three or four steps probably) and he’ll have that long-dreamed about penis and THEN he says he can focus on us as a couple and us as a family. Why is it that someone can’t commit to a relationship with the one woman who was there from the very beginning and has an unbridled desire to be there during the journey? The one woman who isn’t really happy about waiting around until $20,000 miraculously shits itself out of the sky, thus enabling said surgical procedures?

Everyone who knows me knows that I can’t stand to be alone. Until this year I had not been single for more than three months since I was 17. I hear everyone saying that I should wait until I’m okay with being alone and then I can finally be with someone else. Bullfuckingshit. You know what? I am okay with being alone—I’ve been doing it, right? I just don’t prefer to be alone. I want to go to bed next to someone I love and wake up with them in the morning. I want to share the good, the bad, the gorgeous, and the ugly. I want that one person who will look at me and think “fuck me…I found a goddess and I am SO lucky to be the one she chose to share her life with.” Because really? Even given all of the crappiest parts about me (see above), I’m so worth it. I can’t tell you how many men and women have said this to me: you are intelligent, talented, creative, spiritual, beautiful, sexy, great in bed, you cook, you enjoy the outdoors, you do volunteer work, you are a writer, photographer, artist, designer, singer, avid reader, mother, friend…” Right. I’m the whole package. So why am I alone?

Thus endeth the tangential diatribe.