"She was hot - in a fifties dress. She was hot - in her burning flesh"

Slowly Strolling In The Sweet Sunshine

My wife and I were strolling the streets of the Upper West Side this past weekend and happened upon a window in a local thrift store. This hand-me-down emporium has some pretty high end stuff and always has enticing displays. This occassion did not disappoint. There among the Stickley reproduction, Tibetan throw rug, and Mary Quant style, Sixties-vintage mini-skirt on the deco model, was a gorgeous pair of shiny purple, six-inch spike heels. Sleek pumps with some maribou on the sexy peek toes. I couldn't help myself.

"Nice shoes!", I blurt enthusiastically.

"Oh sure", she snarls. "You would say that."

Big mistake my sharing.

"I know you've suffered deep, unresolved trauma and have to create fetish objects instead of building real intimacy," she starts. "But I've had it. I'm not putting up with it anymore. My shrink has sent me articles that show just how completely damaged and fucked up you are. I know it's not your fault, but I'm just not going to put up with this anymore."

Oy, it was just a paira shoes! I nodded and said I understood.

"Look, I know you're angry and you have every right to be.", I snapped. "But do me a favor. Spare me the value judgement."

A Sunday stroll on Columbo turns into a referendum on Advo's sexuality. My wife and her shrink, our former couples therapist, partner up with the weight of scholarly opinion to searingly brand me - intimacy impotent. The cause? Shoe fetishism.

Okay, I tell you. These shoes were hot. I thought that if I sweet talked 'em just right they might agree to take me home with them - and walk all over me. Just maybe, if I was on a roll and particularly charming, they'd let me lick their vintage soles. Inhale their delicate insteps. Oh isn't she right? Aren't I just so much more comfortable with visions of lovingly soaked and sewn uppers tacked to a luscious last?

But things didn't escalate there on the Avenue as they have so often in the past. Rather than an indictment of what turns my crank, she was the wounded one. Her vitriol interpreted said, "If I won't wear those shoes, you must not be attracted to me." Heartbreaking, really.

I'm a submissive fetishist. She's not a dominant Louboutin wearer. But I'm good with that. The conflict just evaporated and we walked on together, chatting amiably. But I know there's intimacy in what I long after. Nasty, hot, and true. Those shoes fit the feet of a lovely Cinderella domme. She gets me - and loves me for my longings - because she aches to go there too.

So maybe I'll wander through these streets, where bright lights and angels meet. Look ... a new pair of shoes!

No pop pretty boy, Nutini has shared stages
with the likes of Solomon Burke and the Rolling Stones.

A One Trick Pony and His Beloved Mean Girls

I'm told this startling visitation by my long departed mother will end at the anniversary of her death which thankfully is next week. I can't wait!! In so many recent interactions, I've experienced over and over again the facination and terror I have for the wrath of a mean girl. I hunger after it and fear it at the same time. From sexualizing humiliation to eroticizing pain, I'm a text book case. The submissive eldest son of an insecure, abusive, dominant mother.

The wife wants to stay in our beautiful coop while I'm eating refried beans and living out in Queens. "She-Who-Visits" says the flowers I sent were vig - a bribe bestowed to get a phone call. A key employee, dommy girl type, tells a new job she can leave me anytime at the drop of a hat. Variations on the same theme. Oh Advo, Mom's here!! Do I crave true cruelty from my mean girls - or do I yearn for something more?

Once I wanted destructive denegration. But I'm a changed bottom. Somewhere in this emotional murk there's a strong, shining, chain-link between my need for romance and my submissive masochism. I want her to love me. I need her to realize that my need to be hurt and humiliated completes her sadism and her own need to humble another. She cherishes that connection and nurtures it. She cares for me in the process as I care for her. Together we silence our demons and are redeemed.

In so many ways, I've lived my life as a broke down, damaged, one-trick pony. While I've figured out ways to befriend my damage and find a positive identity there, I still feel all outside looking in. But there's honor and inspiration in my search for connection. Maybe I'm a scarecrow filled with nothing but dust and weeds; maybe I'm a one-legged dog making my way on down the street. Maybe I'm a one trick pony in a field so happy and free - but I'm getting to know that I'm just me.

Mickey Rourke "kinda being friends" with Bruce Springsteen
brought him to the project.

June

Memorial Day Weekend...it's the unofficial start of summer. Soon, as the showtune goes, June will be busting out all over. Longer, lazier days; the green of trees in the parks of New York City; the red paint toes of all the anonymous subway women i ogle on a downtown train. But I realize in May that June is such an emotionally loaded month for me. A virtual Coney Island funhouse of distorted mirrors and scary goblins. For June is the month my mother died and the month my brother committed suicide. June snuck up on me in May, got its hooks in me and wouldn't let go.

My mother was a strong, successful, dominating woman. It is too simple and just plain inaccurate to credit and blame her for my kinks. But she had a guiding hand. A hand not always kind and gentle. She is gone seventeen years now, but her spirit snuck up this year, grabbed me by the ear and whispered - do not forget.

My brother, dressed only in panties, suffocated himself with a plastic bag in a motel room. He was of me - a part of my soul - despite the fact that after my mom's death we had become completely estranged. We shared inherited kinks. He loved cross dressing. But he'd dress and put himself in situations he'd be "discovered" and physically hurt. He'd goad others into punishing him for his love of women's clothes. He became addicted to crack cocaine. And then he was no more. He is gone ten years now, but his spirit snuck up this year, grabbed my sleeve and shouted - do not forget.

The light I've let into my life finally illuminated the spirits that haunt me in May. As the counter-weight promise of my June passage brings another new summer to stretch out in welcome warmth, the pain of prior loss recedes and I look forward to the red paint toes of a downtown train.

Tom's voice has been described as;
"like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon,
left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months,
and then taken outside and run over with a car."

A Kink Life In Retrograde

Someone I'm corresponding with told me yesterday that Mercury is in retrograde. Her cellphone stopped working and all manner of snafus had befallen her. Work was good though she said. I told her that I thought my kink life was in retrograde. I thought that sounded cool and knowing. Kinda catchy though I had no idea what it meant. Mercury, the Winged God of Commerce and Trade, is apparently doing a backwards moonwalk until the end of the month. This little astral dance supposedly messes everything up.

While I'm not much of one to believe in the stars, psychics, fortune tellers, or fables maybe she's onto something. My efforts to engage a connection in my kink life seem all gummed up. For a variety of reasons I'm on hold in my marriage. A comfortable estrangement. No island getaway with She-Who-Visits, who has eloped with Mercury and isn't sending messages. All my flirt friends are either gone or clearly want nothing to do with me. Or they're busy. Or maybe I'm just whining.

This time last year everything seemed so limitless. Everyday an adventure. I was meeeting new people, having amazing interactions on the Max board, and dreaming of a new millenium, kink-style romance. Today I'm feeling stuck knee deep in comfortable, lukewarm, oatmeal slogging my way to who-knows-where. The shrink said yesterday it's just a phase. Mercury whispers quietly - be careful what you wish for.

But I'm ready for some action. Gimme some kind of sign. Maybe things will change when the fleet messenger god reaches his appointed station in the zodiac. Because my schoolday's insane, my work's down the drain, I need to put on my face for a mellow thighed chick to put my spine out of place.