Big Ed's Place

This past week, like the week before, started off productive and then got completely sidetracked by side issues. Ya see, I had one of those ‘Face meets desk” moments where you bang your head on the nearest available flat surface for being foolish or stupid.

For I realized that I was making a serious mistake on trying to get Deep Dish published. It’s a novel and, unlike short stories, simultaneous submissions of novels to multiple publishers is common. Instead of submitting it serially, I needed to do so in parallel. At least if I want to speed up the chance of getting it published.

So much of this week was spent researching potential publishers (there aren’t many, unfortunately). I found that one of them wants paper rather than electronic submissions, which triggered another round of research on paper types. I wanted photo quality finish but matte instead of gloss. That’s not easy to find. Then I had to deal with my printer issues. I have a Dell. It sucks. It regularly loses its mind and forgets how to scan, or how to print from my wife’s computer. It’s also annoying because of its insistence of telling me it’s out of ink when it’s half full. And then also telling me it’s out of ink if I’m using a refilled cartridge.

I’ll never buy Dell again.

So I bought a new printer (HP this time), already wireless compatible, and then discovered I’ve misplaced the piece of paper that had my WEP key written on it. More running around and fighting computers instead of writing.

But in the end, I did get Deep Dish printed and into the mail. It was a lot of necessary work, and hopefully the simultaneous submissions will pay off.

Meanwhile, I also finished the crappy first draft of A Smile on my Face. It came in at 5120 words, which is a very respectable addition of 1941 words in a week. Particularly when I also added 456 words to Oral Histories, bringing it to 1732 words. 2400 words in a week? Pretty good, pretty good.

But it also makes me wonder what I could have accomplished if I’d not had the distraction with printers and resubmittals. We’ll see… maybe this week will be similarly wonderful, or maybe the editing of A Smile on my Face will slow me down like the Deep Dish submittals this week did.

In last week’s musing on lingerie, I told a story about my college roommate and lingerie. That reminded me of another story where the moral is about the value of being respectful.

It was early December one year in college. I’d gone shopping for a Christmas present for my girlfriend and, in walking through a strip mall, decided to stop in a classy lingerie store that happened to be there. Later I’d learn that it was the most high end store in town, but at the time, I was a bit naive. Nonetheless, I wandered in.

The store was impressive and the two older ladies working there were the definition of MILF, though that term didn’t come into being for a few more decades. I was clearly just a college student, in jeans and a sweatshirt, and definitely in over my head. Nonetheless, I knew my place. I was respectful to the ladies, and their wares. I wandered around and let them help me a bit, before eventually picking out an inexpensive purchase.

In the process, I spent some time talking with one of the ladies who turned out to be the owner. I expressed my admiration for the classiness of her store. As I was ringing up my purchase, she asked if I would like an invitation to a private lingerie modeling show the store was having the following week. I swallowed my surprise and said yes.

So the night of the party, I persuaded my roommate to come with me. I was a bit nervous and, well, he had a car and it would have been a long walk otherwise. We showed up punctually and nicely dressed. The owner remembered me, greeted us as I introduced my roommate and gave us each a glass of champagne.

Now, at the time we were under 21, which made it illegal for us to be drinking champagne. This was not, however, something we were going to call attention to. In fact, I consciously decided I would ‘act older,’ which meant doing my best to not appear like the neophyte I was. If we didn’t make jackasses of ourselves, I figured, no one would question what we were doing there.

To my then-surprise and now-not-surprised-at-all, the older men present weren’t under that constraint. Many of them were loud, openly lecherous, and drinking very heavily. The concept of ‘class’ was something I’m sure that some of them didn’t grasp. That was okay–it meant my roommate and I could just move away from them in the room, talk quietly, and not attract any attention.

So it soon became time for the modeling. The owner had the men form two lines that defined the sides of the ‘runway.’ The models (there were four) would change in the dressing rooms in the back, walk down between us, stop at various points to twirl and tell us what they were wearing, and then circle back after they’d completed the line.

That said, due to the layout of the store, it wasn’t a straight ‘runway’. It has a small jog, about eight feet long, to get past a heavy clothes rack. So the models would walk straight for a while, then make a 90 degree left turn, go about eight feet, make a 90 degree right turn, and continue forward again.

My roommate and I happened to be standing, quietly and respectfully, at the corner of the second jog. The most obnoxious older men were standing at the corner of the first jog.

This turned out to be unexpectedly significant, because when the models stopped at the other corner, they’d get catcalls and hands they had to bat away, and other immature behavior directed at them. When they stopped in front of us, they got smiles, comments like “wow, beautiful,” and the wide gaze of happy voyeurs. It took about two passes before every one of the four models was stopping in front of us instead of the other guys. They’d smile back, do their slow turns, and even flirt with us a bit.

Additionally, the women were wearing off the rack lingerie, which meant that many of the teddies and cammies and other silk tops were both scoop necked and loose. I’m 6’3″. That means when a model would stop in front of me and lean forward a bit, she’d give me a view straight down her top.

I saw many bare breasts that night. I even got caught, with one model asking, in a sultry voice, “do you like what you see?” I blushed, she chuckled, and she shook her breasts slightly to tease me even further. None of the models seemed to mind.

Now if this were an erotica story, one or more of the models would have gone home with me or my roommate. But, of course, I clearly had a girlfriend and they were clearly looking for their paychecks and then a chance to get out of there. So nothing much beyond the pleasure of looking at women in skimpy lingerie happened that night.

With one exception. Eventually the rowdy guys figured out what was going on and jokingly complained. The next model through told them that we were being respectful, and that’s why we were getting the better views. She then invited me to feel how soft the fabric of her outfit was. Which I did, to the envy of the other guys.

The experience stuck with me for some time after that. Being a respectful voyeur could pay off. And later, there were many times it did.

At least that’s what it’s felt like this past week. Monday and Tuesday were incredible rushes of writing–as if I were carried along like Dorothy, flying through the air in my house. Then Wednesday, problems in the day job cropped up that required a ton of energy and attention and didn’t finish until Friday. It was like the wind bashing me to a mountain. Friday at lunch I finally had time to write, but I felt far too shattered to actually do so.

So what happened on Monday? Another queue jumper, and this one’s a keeper. It’s my ‘sexy dental hygienist’ story that seems to want to get written, titled “A Smile on my Face.” Judging from the search terms used to find my site, there also appears to be an audience.

So Monday the story idea showed up in force in the shower. By the time I went to bed Tuesday evening, I’d written 3,379 words in it and it’s 60-70% done. That’s phenomenal for me. Furthermore, I can think of a couple of paying publications it’d be perfect for. All I have to do is finish it.

Which might be harder than I’d like. When I picked it up again Friday, my mind went blank. I just couldn’t think of any words at all. Instead, I flipped over to the Summer Camp story I started the week before, tentatively titled “Oral Histories”, and added 197 words to it. That’s much closer to my normal pace, and I have to admit that I was fighting to get many of those words out.

Being able to switch between stories was kind of nice. I think it helped me keep writing rather than just moving on to websurfing. However, I am beginning to think I have a few too many works in progress right now. Here’s the queue:

Deep Dish: Submitted to a publisher, waiting to hear back.
TMI: In editing/review by Nick Scipio
Unmasked (8th Holiday Series Story): 4,626 words, about halfway done.
Science Fiction story: 3,033 words, about halfway done.
A Smile on my Face: 3,379 words, about 60-70% done.
Oral Histories: 1,276 words, probably 20-30% done.

That’s the active projects. Still waiting in the wings:

Giving Thanks (9th Holiday Series Story)
Devil in the Details (Devil sequel)
Boys of Summer (3rd Compassionate Courtesan novel)
Historical Novel (under different nom de plume)

I’ve got a few other ideas and potential queue jumpers too. There are a handful of story starts or fragments that I’ve written that could also rise to actual stories. We’ll just have to see.

In the meantime, I’m hoping that it doesn’t take too long to recover the wind under my wings. A few thousand words a week would be a wonderful pace to maintain.

In my last musing, “Look at Me”, I waxed rhapsodic about exhibitionistic women. I thought I’d expand that with a riff of lingerie.

Lingerie is special. It’s not underwear–functional and only as decorative as it takes to make the wearer feel non-dingy. Lingerie is designed to be seen. It’s designed to say “look at me” to those eyes so privileged to see it.

Of course, without the energy and sexual attitude, it’s just clothing. Madonna’s outerwear lingerie in the 80′s wasn’t sexy at all, and pretty much failed to provoke me. The shock value was about all it was worth. It could have been on a hanger for all the sexual energy it conveyed.

My college roommate, in fact, discovered this when he was out buying lingerie for his girlfriend once. The very attractive sales girl asked, in a bedroom voice, if he wanted to see what a teddy he was admiring would look like the night he gave it to his girlfriend. He swallowed hard, with questions about fidelity running through his head. Eventually, he slowly nodded, hoping no one would find out about the ‘show.’

Except the sales girl then wadded the teddy up and threw it on the floor. “There,” she said, “that’s how it’s going to look most of the night.”

He laughed and bought it anyway. The sexiness of the moment, after all, had been in the innuendo and not the fabric.

But, as I said, when the energy is brought together with lingerie, it can be magic. By being impractical and just for the eyes, lingerie calls attention to what is not seen, or what it frames. A wisp of transparent chemise hints maddenly at magic underneath. Garters and stockings frame a treasure that might be in full view–forcing the eye to the center.

That’s why they appear so often in my stories. A woman in thigh high stockings, with or without a garter belt, has made the decision “look at me”. She wants to be seen as sexy, in most cases, and that makes all the difference.

I, for one, love the result.

Interesting week. I managed only two lunch hours of writing and nothing outside of those periods, but still knocked out a fair number of words. I managed 460 on Unmasked, bringing it to 4,626 words. I also managed 1079 words on a queue jumper that as of now has no title. It’s another Summer Camp universe story, so it probably won’t see publication for some time.

What’s interesting is that’s 1500 words in 2 hours of writing. That’s definitely a pace I would love to maintain. I’m actually surprised I managed it. It seems that, when I can focus, a few hundred words in a sitting is about right.

Realizing the ‘in a sitting’ part is also what made this past week interesting. In both lunch hours, I had a bit of time and could have kept going, but the urge to move was stronger. I needed to get up and walk around a bit before I was ready to write any more, and it made sense to just go back to the office.

Finally, I realized that I’d stopped in both Unmasked and my science fiction story right before major scenes. It was like: “This is a biggie. It’ll require my attention and it has to be good.” I think that’s part of why the queue jumper found an opening to push into my consciousness. I was shying away from the hard stuff and it’s pretty fluffy.

So I learned some stuff, on top of being reasonably productive. It was a good week.

Early in life, I discovered that I was a voyeur. It may have been access to my dad’s Playboys or something more ingrained and natural. I just discovered I liked looking at naked women.

As I got older, the mere sight of bare flesh stopped being interesting to me. I started to discover that the energy conveyed by a naked woman was as or more important than the fact that her clothes were gone. Close ups of body parts became dull. Traditional nudism, which represses sexual energy, also lost most of its charge. I even remember, in my twenties, when a strip club trip felt empty for the first time. Despite being an enterprise devoted to faux sexuality and bare female skin, I was bored. The dancers were clearly just going through the motions and the motions themselves were no longer of interest to me.

Now that turned out to be somewhat ironic, because a few years earlier, I’d been a regular at a club where I’d spent more than a healthy share of dough. There, almost all of my funds went to a single dancer—a fact rather well known among the club staff. In fact, one day I walked in and before I even sat down another dancer walked over and said, “she’s not here.” I shrugged and decided to return another day.

What made that one dancer special? She took her dancing seriously. She constantly worked on developing new moves and new tricks. She often came up with new costumes. When she gave private dances (lap dances weren’t legal in that jurisdiction then), she had a whole host of moves and looks to draw my eyes exactly where she wanted them. It was a silent “look at me.” “Look at my eyes.” “Look at my hip.” “Now look at my bare breasts.”

I was entranced. I was enthralled. If they’d had an ATM in the club, I’d have been broke.

That “look at me” energy has turned out to be the charge I get from being a voyeur. Peeping Tom type voyeurism doesn’t work for me because, besides the consent issues, the energy isn’t there. The woman has to know she’s being watched. She has to want to be watched, or at least looked at for a while.

Sometimes that energy can be captured on film, but not always. There’s a coyness to it, an “aren’t you in for a treat,” that’s absent in most porn. It’s naughty, not nasty. The ‘view’ is a treat—not something that’s just a flaunt.

I think that the “look at me”/“I’m looking” energy exchange is similar to top/bottom energy in a good bdsm scene. It circulates and is reciprocal. My looking feeds her pleasure at being seen, which feeds my pleasure at looking even more. It’s sexual, but far beyond simple stimulation or the quest for an O. The thrill is both more intense and more subtle. Fine wine instead of a greasy burger.

There are of course many ways to enact this energetic exchange—lingerie, semi-public flashing, and even traditional burlesque can also pick up the same flair. It also doesn’t matter too much if the woman has model quality looks or not. I’d rather have an average looking woman who’s sending ‘look at me’ signals than a beauty who’s bored and taking my gaze for granted. There’s no magic in body language that conveys I’m just one of millions. Instead, a garter belt and a smile can overcome extra weight or physical ‘flaws’ galore.

For me, that’s the core of voyeurism, and the enchantment. She conveys “look at me”—and I comply.

It’s not too hard to figure out, from my writings, that I’m a fan of exhibitionistic women. I love it when women engage in public flashing (discreetly, of course–there’s a consent issue for the observers at play). I also love seeing photos of nude women outside. It seems rather refreshing and certainly more ‘natural’ than many of the porn shots that you know are in someone’s house or rented motel room.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find FTV Girls. Pretty much every model has a gallery taken outdoors or in a public place. Some are more public than others, but I’ve been pretty happy going through them and admiring the views, so to speak. Each model has galleries of still photos and two or three video galleries, which can make the public flashing scenes even more fun.

The site’s high quality. The photography is well shot and well posed. The models are pretty but with a natural look and feel. I’ve included some examples below (click on them for full sized pictures). Most of the models are indeed “new”–going with their title that this is “First Time Video Girls.” That gives a more playful and friendly vibe to the photos as well. In several cases, I could see the model’s nervousness as she first started getting into posing.

FTV Girls is more than flashing, though. Most models also strip and masturbate on camera–some with toys, some with their fingers. They have some fetish shots–mostly girls using vegetables and other implements to masturbate with. They also have some hardcore girl-girl videos and some hardcore boy-girl videos. The latter, in most cases, appear to be the model having sex with her boyfriend.

New galleries are released a few times a week. The site also give sneak peeks of upcoming models. They also have a review section of other adult sites, which is a bit strange because the sites they’re reviewing are pretty much the low quality pure porn/stroke sites that FTV Girls is trying to rise above.

The one thing I don’t like is sorting through the galleries for individual models. The descriptions of the galleries are in the cover photo, and the white print is often illegible on bright photos. Also, it would be very nice to be able to search on content tags–they list them for the galleries (“Public nudity”, “fingering,” etc.) but the terms aren’t consistent and aren’t searchable. As a result, I found myself spending a lot of time scanning down listings and opening galleries, hoping that ‘public’ meant something like a mall instead of a field where it was clear no one would be around.

Still, I recommend the site. Check it out here.

It was a rough week. I think the first week ‘back to work’ usually is, but we had major customer deadlines and I had more at home. They’re done now, but I only managed one measly lunch hour to write. That said, I added 361 words to my science fiction story in that lunch hour, bringing it to 2727. And yes, it was a lunch that was more than an hour–an hour and 15 minutes. I would have stayed longer, but the restaurant was full and people were waiting for tables. It didn’t feel right to hog one and keep writing, so I left a bit early.

That’s really good. Longtime readers will remember when 300+ words was a big week for me. The flip side, of course, is that it’s raising my expectations. If I can do 300 words in a single lunch hour (albeit a long lunch hour), what can I really do in a week? 1000 words is quite feasible, as that’s three lunch hours and my calendar generally allows for 2-3 non-working lunch hours a week.

The thing is, I’m already seeing myself apply those expectations to myself. A 100 word week just doesn’t seem acceptable anymore. That’s probably good for my readers, even though many of the stories will go out for pay rather than be published here.

So we’ll have to see what happens. It promises to be an interesting 2011.

With the turn of the calendar, we’re in the season of retrospectives and resolutions for the future. My daily life is still oriented with very short term deadlines, which makes resolutions a bit tricky. It’s hard to say, “this is what I want to do for the year” when I can barely see past the end of the week. Similarly, it’s hard to look back at the past year with any objectivity when near term events have been rather stressful. I’m happy to say, “Good Riddance” to 2010, except it’d be more accurate to say, “Good Riddance to December 2010” because, when I have a chance to really relax, I may discover the other months weren’t that bad.

This is in part because I realize how malleable memory really is. False memories are surprisingly easy to imprint, as is the tendency for the mind to fill in details inaccurately. We remember things that have strong emotional content and I’ve realized that sometimes the memories change when the emotions do.

For example, I can remember fights with my college girlfriend, despite it being nearly 20 years since the fight in question. However, the distance of time has mellowed the import of those fights and so the details of them have changed. They’re memories I’ve revisited several times, but over time I’ve remembered less and less what she said, and more what I said. Am I remembering correctly? I like to think so, because those memories of my younger self aren’t flattering, and why alter them to make me look bad? But of course, I have no way of knowing. After all, if I asked her, there’s no way to tell if it’s her memory or my memory that’s at fault.

Similarly, and more on-topic for this site, I remember sexual encounters that I thought were the most-incredible-thing-ever at the time, and even for some time after. But years later, they’ve lost their thrill for one reason or another. It’s usually not so much me having more experience or being jaded, as having a different perspective. For example, now when I recall the face of one past partner, I see different emotions in her expression. I don’t think she was as crazy about the sex that time as I had thought.

So… what do I remember about writing in 2010? Not a lot, I admit. I remember spending most of the year on Deep Dish, getting started on Unmasked, and also TMI, but those are all relatively ‘fresh’ in that they’re still in my queue in one form or another. Fortunately, I don’t have to actually remember what I did–because I have notes in the form of musing posts over the past year.

I released Babe in the Night, though it had been written in 2009. I also wrote and released In the Style of Rodin, and Love’s Labor Found in 2010. I wrote and sold Irie No Kaubutsu. Throw in the Deep Dish script and TMI, and that’s five stories completed, for about 50,000 words total. That’s a lot more than I remembered or thought. I just kept plugging away…

So maybe the memories aren’t all that important. Not when I have my words here to provide a reality check of my brain.

It’s been a long couple of weeks. On top of the holidays and a horrendous workload, I’ve been sick. Not just once, but several times (I was healthy for a few days, then sick again, then healthy for a few days, then sick again). It’s gotten old.

I still did manage to fit some writing in. Most of it was on my science fiction story, which I added nearly 2000 words to in the past two weeks. The exact word count is 2366 right now. I also managed 370 words on Unmasked, bringing it to 4166. I’m pleased with that, given the lack of writing time. I hope I can maintain the pace into the new year. Perhaps I can even improve it?

Hard to say. I have all these grand ideas for how I want the new year to go, and what I’d like to get done, but lurking in the back of my head are the cold hard memories of grandiose schemes of the past. At the same time, I don’t want to ‘aim low’ and not achieve the most I possibly can.

Fortunately, I don’t need to make definitive plans just because the calendar rolled. I can try to get a bit healthier, deal with some issues in my non-writing life, and then give it a shot after that.