Man over woman looking breathless

He’s Got Her

I rarely write while drinking. For one, I’m usually out with friends, and sitting down to pen something wouldn’t work in the moment. Then, there’s the fact that my creative process simply doesn’t flow under those circumstances. I might have some good ideas, but they won’t come to fruition in any sort of cohesive way until I’m completely clear-headed.

That’s why today’s poem is a bit of an anomaly for me. A month ago, my friend and I met and played our usual rounds of dice games over drinks at a local bar. And as the evening progressed, we shared a powerful conversation on those people who rip you right out of your comfort zone—loves who make you see things differently, move you in ways you didn’t imagine, and break straight through to your soul. Sadly, he had to leave soon after, but I was still buzzed and nowhere near ready to drive. So I sat in my car for a while, texting friends, reading blog posts, and replaying the conversation.

It was then this poem started writing itself, inspired by the heady nature of the discussion and some memories of my own. I wasn’t able to finish it that night, but I’ve finally pulled it up off my phone notes and touched up a few spots. For the most part, I left the original poem intact.

So today, I’d like to share “He’s Got Her” with you:

Man over woman looking breathless

Sakkmesterke ©123RF.com

HE’S GOT HER

by

Jade A. Waters

He’s got her
Spread out
Naked
Her limbs stretched across this bed
Wrist to headboard
Foot to base
But this has nothing to do with
That.
It’s the way he looks at her
The way he sees inside her soul,
The way his fingers dig
So deep inside her cunt,
Finding her secrets
Her truths
And all her dreams,
With the flick of his wrist and a glint in his eyes.
She thinks for a moment
It’s not right that he can do this,
Not right that he can take her
From cynical to believer in seconds
But he does,
Every time he holds her
Kisses her
Loves her.
This is what she realizes
As he circles her clit with his tongue
And drives those fingers inside;
He’s got her,
Caught her,
Ensnared her heart and soul in his net
For a lifetime to come
Because it’s supposed to be,
Was meant to be.
It is.
So when he thrusts into her,
Grunting, bearing, deep and loving,
She knows—
This love he takes from her
This love she freely shares,
It was never hers to give in the first place
Because she’s always
Belonged to him.

*

I hope you enjoyed it.

XX,
Jade

Wicked Wednesday

On Elephants and Landmines, and the People Who Help You Through

I’ve been in a really funny headspace lately. It’s one that did more damage than good, but I think one we all go through from time to time, to one degree or another (or maybe I’m only saying that so I don’t feel crazy). But in truth, life happens—it’s just that sometimes, it’s full of giant elephants blocking your way between the landmines that can blow your path to smithereens.

Move it, Bertha.

So let’s see. Where do I start?

I’ve been working on this book. It’s an exciting one for me, a standalone story that I started as what I’d intended to be a quick detour before I sat down to draft the sequel of the book my agent is currently shopping around. This baby’s got a lot of elements going for it that have my engines revved…first, there’s a bunch of exhibitionism (as I’ve said before, I am a bit of an exhibitionist). Then, there are a few relationships happening for my darling lead female—not in a poly way, but in a super complicated way I’m enjoying navigating. And then, there’s said lead character—a woman who definitely doesn’t fit the current mold of female protagonists (read: naïve virgins), and who is instead a highly educated divorcée ready to break free of her troubled old life. Score!

But here’s the thing: this poor book has been taking a beating from day one.

It took seven weeks to draft my last book, but this one has had a perilous path, interrupted in more ways than I can count. There was the one-month break. Then the two-month break. Then that other break. Then the rewriting that had to happen since I kept trying to write while I wasn’t sleeping much, or while I was sick. Or…well, you get the picture. It’s just that, for some reason, I can’t seem to get my time and focus into the game on this one.

Okay, truth be told, I laughed as I typed “for some reason”—because my life has been a hot mess for a few months now. For the last five I’ve been contending with an oil-leaking car (finally fixed…I think) and the HOA waiving threats of fines about for the spot I “took too long to clean” (too long was a week, guys, a week) and now the manner in which I’ve cleaned it (because “soap is bad for the environment”). I’ve still been running Jade’s Cat Hospice, which strangely sucks up a lot of time when you consider chasing cats down and medicating them multiple times a day, with one of them using the litter box as her hiding spot when she’s on to me (oh my god STOP that, kitty, stop!), and twice weekly email correspondence with the vet tech. Then there was the cold from hell that completely knocked me out, ironically, for the few days I took off from work to get some editing in on the damn book. I can’t seem to solve my plantar fasciitis problem, and spend a surprisingly large amount of time working on that (stretching, icing, ordering new shoes, returning crappy shoes, wondering if I’ll ever run again, stretching, icing…). My sleep is fortunately not as bad as it was during my 6-week chronic insomnia run last year, but my trick of moving to the couch if I can’t fall asleep and waking up there with a messed up back in the morning is getting kind of old. Then there’s family drama happening that’s kind of boggling my mind, and on top of that, some shit went down at my day job that was serious enough I might need to consider legal help, but I’m not sure if—with my tendency towards insane stress levels—this is the route to go yet.

But all this is neither here nor there. There are children starving in Africa, right? This is what I learned growing up: my problems are not real problems because there are children starving in Africa. It’s a mantra I repeated to myself for decades, one that left me unable to acknowledge until way later that witnessing my parents’ terribly messy divorce when I was a child actually did have an impact. It was a mantra that prevented me from realizing that raising my sister for two years while I was 11 and my parent worked graveyard did force me to play the grown-up when what I needed was to be a little girl and cry. It was the same mantra that had me putting on my game face after a series of emotional and physical traumas in my teens and twenties, because it was easier to just smile, laugh it all away, and keep it quiet than handle it for what would be about a decade. And later, it would be this very same mantra that, when I was performing aerial circus stunts as I mentioned in my interview with Molly Moore, would lead me to break myself in the middle of a performance because I didn’t believe pain could stop me—or should stop me. Ps-shaw. Hell no. I didn’t do pain. I was a superhero and had no time for pain, relaxation, feeling hurt, any of that.

There were children starving in Africa, for fuck’s sake.

Well, the good news is now that I’m 35 and oh-so-wise (did you hear me chuckle just now?), I am less inclined to resort to the children starving in Africa mantra when I’m hurting. I totally feel pain, and I cry; heck, I even have meltdowns that could, I suppose, be hormonal, but holy shit. They happen. It’s rather bizarre, having been the levelheaded one in the family for so many years [decades], that now I actually cry and have to lay boundaries and stuff.

But that relaxation thing? That part where, when I see a big brick wall—or, say, a field full of elephants and landmines blocking every clear route—I know that I need to slow down and accept that this might be trickier than expected and that’s okay, because sometimes tricky things take time?

Yeah, that part I’m still working on.

So I think you might be wondering where the fuck I’m going with all this. Let’s cut back to the cold/chasing cats/work thing/family drama/limping on my foot on the way out to scrub more oil off the goddamn pavement moment: I finally had a whole day free to write and I simply couldn’t. I froze. I cried. I got myself caught in this loop over the fact that I was wasting my productive time to mull over all this bullshit that shouldn’t be stalling me. It was Meltdown City, and I kept wondering if I was PMSing, or worse, bipolar—because hell, that runs in the family—and before you know it, I’m on the internet taking a quiz to determine if maybe I am (who fucking does that?).

I suddenly felt like I did once upon a time, even without the Africa mantra, but damn—was I being hard on myself!

Then three magical things happened.

First, I put a call in to the wonderful and lovely Malin James. Many of you know I adore this woman—she’s like my long lost twin separated at birth—so she felt like the right person to call. She needed a few minutes to call me back, and that was okay. While I waited, I texted my other friend—a non-writer with whom I share other similarities (including some astrological traits, if you’re into that). As she texted me back, I randomly found this article by James Clear about not striving so fucking hard for goals and instead reaching for the process and savoring that. Because that’s attainable. That you can’t fuck up, or bemoan not reaching. Because it’s all about the journey, remember?

So about the time I’d gotten the gist of Mr. Clear’s very clear point, my phone went off with a text and a phone call all at once. My two dearies had come to the rescue. The texter hit me with some sweet words telling me I was going to do just fine with the book, and then some encouragement to go on a long walk and drink more (she’s an exercise fiend and a wine connoisseur) and remember we’re Geminis (and thus naturally a tad bipolar). Meanwhile, the fabulous Malin chimed in with her extraordinarily calming and logical approach to tackling huge missions while circumventing bitchy elephants and dangerous landmines in a way that made sense to me (the twin thing again).

Bring It, Journey.

Bring it, Journey. Konrad Bak ©123RF.com

And I’ve got to say—between these three events, I was suddenly okay with putting my story down for the day. I took a deep breath. I closed the browser telling me I was potentially bipolar. I calmly enjoyed the rest of my afternoon. I even went karaoking with another great friend (my version of the walk and drinking…instead I danced and drank) until something like 2 in the morning.

Because you know what? There are children starving in Africa. And elephants are awfully big to walk around. Also, landmines can be treacherous.

So sometimes you’ve just got to slow down and go with it.

Things are still stupidly chaotic in my life, but I’m not panicking on the book anymore. It will happen. And writing this post reminded me of a passage I scribbled from a phenomenal book I read last summer, Hillary Jordan’s When She Woke:

“I don’t have far to go.”

“That may be…or it may be that you have a greater distance than you think. But either way, you’ll get there eventually.”

You know what?

I will.

XX,
Jade

Legs of couple kissing on beach

Nostalgia

I ran into an old boyfriend last week, one that stands out from the others in his own right. The encounter itself was mellow and calm—much like our very short relationship—but it got me thinking about our time together and nostalgia, in general: that special place we hold in our hearts for the memories really worth keeping.

I’d known of C. a couple years before we dated, but I didn’t actually meet him until a strange time in my life. I’d finally ended a five-year bruise of a relationship, and though I’d ventured away from my hometown after high school with big dreams that carried me all the way through college, something about what I’d just been through made me feel like I had to go back. In a sense, I needed to be close to my roots so I could graduate again. I wanted to break out into the world all over, but this time as me, just me, with no noose, agony, or pain weighing me down.

Legs of couple kissing on beach

Miramiska ©123RF.com

So there I was one night, a couple months home and at a bar with a friend, and this handsome bartender I recognized came to take our order. “Whoa! Hey, C.! I didn’t know you worked here!” I’d said, and we’d been excited to formally meet one another. He was all smiles and charm and nice, exactly like I’d assumed he was after our occasional run-ins over the years, and not one week later we were on our first date at an absurdly fancy restaurant. He said a bevy of sweet things that made me blush so pink he claimed it was his favorite thing about me, and after hours of laughter, wine, and incredible conversation, I confessed that with all I’d been through—a story he, like many others, had heard mentioned around our hometown—I couldn’t handle anything other than light, fun and calm.

And for a while, C. was all those things. He was tall and twinkly eyed, a big carefree bear of a man who loved to make love and cuddle and laugh so loud heads turned. And when we were together, it was impossible not to laugh with him, not to spend hours rolling around in bed and having Sex and the City marathons, or singing at the top of our lungs to silly songs while we drove just to drive, fast and free, enjoying the moment and not really caring where it led.

Fun and free was what our entire relationship was for me—and though we ultimately ended because C. started wanting more and I still wasn’t ready or healed, I think deep down we both knew there was more difference than that between us. In many ways, I was still the small town girl aching to run somewhere bigger, somewhere I could stretch out my little wings, while he was more about sticking to roots, home, and comfort. It was the exact pairing I’d needed then, and yet, not something that could have worked for either of us beyond the length of time it did.

After C., I had more convoluted, tangled relationships. Some were long, some short, but many were not the kind worth remembering. This is why when I ran into C. last week, I had the strongest rush of all we shared in our brief time—not in any sort of pining way, but with that lovely flash of details that had been so good between us. I remembered bowling competitions with strikes and spares earning kisses, swing dancing in our underwear, enthusiastic discussions on the merits of men’s watches and women’s shoes, gentle kisses under a veranda before he told me I had “the most spectacular blush,” attempting to out-sing each other to Cake’s “Love You Madly” over leftovers and wine, and him surprising me with flowers on Valentine’s Day even though we were over, because, as he told me, I deserved them.

As short-lived as my time with C. was, seeing him years later—still bartending, smiling, and belly laughing, proudly showing me pictures of his beautiful wife and daughter while asking after me and rooting me on in that big-hearted way he used to—made me profoundly happy. Our relationship was a couple-month snapshot on a wide panorama of formative events, and the likelihood I’d see him again was fairly small—but when I left the bar giggling, blushing as pink as he made me do over a decade ago, I had the sweetest warmth of memory and the biggest smile on my face.

So I think that’s the true beauty of nostalgia—it doesn’t matter how small the memory is; when it’s that worth keeping, it will always be pure gold.

XX,
Jade

Part of Toby's Poem

Today I’m Going to Share a Sad Story

Twenty-one years ago today, I lost my virginity.

That experience itself is not a sad one, but it’s important; I was 14-years-old, and having already had my first sexual awakening a few months before, I’d known when I started dating Toby that he would be the one. He was three years older, an incredibly tall and thin brunet with long hair, graceful fingers, and the most prominent, lovely nose. We’d started phoning one another after he stopped me on the sidewalk outside my Taekwondo studio, where he’d told me he loved my smile and eyes.

What he didn’t know then was that I already had a crush on him. We’d both auditioned for Tevye and His Daughters a couple months before, and while I’d had to drop out of my miniscule role because I had too much homework that I took very seriously, he’d gone on to perform as Tevye in a manner that didn’t fit his 17-year-old frame. It was on that stage Toby struck me as different from all the other boys, as if hosting wisdom beyond his years, but also a presence that couldn’t be explained in any terms I understood then. It wasn’t that he was confident, or dominant, or anything we might imagine when we think of onstage presence; instead it was an aura of listlessness, of discomfort. He was a young man who struck like the gentle beat of the carotid through translucent skin—rich with life blood, and yet so faint you might miss the ghostly tick of who he was.

I discovered I was right about this feeling when Toby and I started dating. There was something about the way he gazed wistfully out the window, and the unusual things he chose to discuss and dwell on. Then there was poetry; long before we’d ever kissed, I’d read him one of my early poems when we sat together in the park. I’d stopped mid-line, suddenly embarrassed and thinking there was no way anyone would really want to hear this blubber I was writing in which I poured out my soul, my ache, and all my love—but Toby did. After, he begged me to write more, to read to him over the phone so he could savor the words and ask me all about what I was thinking when I wrote them. Occasionally—after much encouragement from me—he shared one of his own, and in time, this became our habit. Poems and letters formed our connection, the secret we’d found to express ourselves beyond the physical moments we spent cuddled in the dark, talking of dreams and the futures we imagined for ourselves. Mine were tangible and real, fantasies I could make happen if I set my mind to them. But in Toby’s written words I learned something with which I’d never been familiar: the idea that someone could truly find himself not fitting in this world, that his very existence, for him, was in question at every moment of every day.

By the time we decided to have sex, Toby had shown me more of him. There was a youthful playfulness that distorted his face when he tried to fit in, as if underneath something lingered, a quiet unease that only spilled out on paper when he spoke serious fantasies of living in different eras and places. He made it sound romantic, this obsession with running away from here and now—and this was part of the reason I asked him to be my first. It happened in the middle of the night after he snuck his long, lanky body through my window, kissed me while he slowly peeled off my clothes, and then laid me down on the carpet of my bedroom floor as the moonlight streamed in through the open window and over our skin. Toby kept his lips on mine the entire time, as we both tried, desperately, to stay silent lest we get caught.

In truth, the experience was not what I’d expected. I wondered why people made such a big deal out of this thing. All the other physical acts we’d shared had struck me as more pleasurable, more intimate—and what I wanted in that moment was something more meaningful, to light a candle by which we could whisper our poetry aloud, like we did all the other times we’d been together. I’d been trying to make sense of Toby for so long, and now, this close, this forcibly connected, I needed to understand him, to peer into his soul and see why—despite all his love, his caresses, and the way he claimed he felt happier with me—he still struck me as so lost inside his head.

Part of a poem once written for Toby

Toby’s Poem

Our lovemaking continued for only a month after that, each time better and attempting to draw us closer. It was a physical act to meet my ache for understanding, and perhaps one that represented his need for a world he couldn’t find in his family, friends, or the comings and goings of high school life. And when we broke up, it wasn’t because he was acting as the lost young man I’d come to know and treasure, but instead the laughing, joking boy he thought he was supposed to be.

*

It was almost four years later we ran into one another, and everything, while different, had stayed the same. Toby complimented my eyes; I told him I still loved his nose. He was thinner, lankier, and his eyes had grown darker somehow, like he’d taken on more of the world’s weight and it had sunk the skin around them as a mark of all he had to carry. But when he asked if I still wrote poetry and I flashed a reminiscent grin, he brightened up. He told me he missed my smile and that we should catch up over poetry and wine.

I honestly can’t remember much of the dinner we shared when we met a week later. The trials that had happened in our lives—rumors that had spread around town about me, and the rumblings I’d heard about him through friends of friends—were all irrelevant as we sat across from each other. We both pulled out the notebooks we’d written in over the years, eager to share everything we’d thought and felt about life, other lovers, and what the future would bring. After our meal, Toby bought a bottle of red while I stood outside the liquor store in the cold night air, wondering if the love we’d make would feel the same to an experienced 18-year-old as it did to the virgin he’d soothed and welcomed into his mystery all those years before.

When we arrived at my house, we uncorked the wine and sat facing each other, poetry in hand as we read, back and forth, for the next couple hours. There were many toasts, many utterances of encouragement, many awed shakes of heads at what each of us had expressed over these few years that felt like a lifetime of change. He stopped me, at one point, telling me he was so glad I’d never stopped writing. I’d dropped my notebook to my lap, beaming and blushing—no one but Toby had read so many of my words, and certainly no one but him had encouraged me to keep writing them. In the same way, I loved what he’d done with his own, and I told him so.

It was somewhere after our second glass we started to kiss.

The memory is ancient and tainted with the fuzzy haze of wine, but what I do recall is this: two naked bodies curling under the sheets, fingertips grazing each other’s sides, tracing memories and yet learning something new, something changed. There was more wine, then more poetry. We whispered it as we made love again, this time a little older, more sure, knowing it was the magic of the lines we read that fueled our fire, that maybe seemed to others strange—two people reading as they arched and bowed, breaths wavering between the words—but that for us remained the secret to our true selves, and what we sought to understand in one another. Our rapture was in poetry, and when we woke in the morning and he kissed me goodbye, I remember thinking it was the real way we were supposed to end: the writers who’d loved, not just the lovers who’d written.

I lost Toby after that night. I heard he moved away, somewhere strange, some other country he’d always wanted to visit. As close as we’d been that night, I’d read in him that comfort in his skin remained a diaphanous, tenuous thing—that despite his beautiful words and loving touch, he still wasn’t all that sure of the world or his place in it.

Wherever he was, I hoped he’d soon find the solace he’d been looking for.

*

It was over four years later I got the news.

My life was a vastly different one then. I was nearing the end of a five-year relationship that lasted five years too long, one that, without saying too much, broke me in ways women should never be broken. And it was while this boyfriend visited my apartment that my best friend called to tell me what she’d heard about Toby through some mutual friends. She’d dated him too, for a short while before I’d ever met her—but through the years, she knew who and what he was to me.

She spilled it all in a moment, her low tone signaling the gravity of what she had to say: Toby had been living in Europe with a pregnant girlfriend. No one had seen him in a while, but everyone thought he might finally be happy.

And then he killed himself.

My reaction had been stifled by the look I got from my boyfriend. I didn’t know how to act, how to feel. I’d never lost anyone before, but I found myself remembering Toby in that instant as I’d first known him—a lost young man, living in the wrong world, the wrong time, searching for something that fit and never quite finding it, writing letters and poetry that forever tried to make sense of it all.

“So he killed himself and he was your first. Big fucking deal,” was what my boyfriend said to me. “You dated that guy? He was your first? What a loser.”

And because my reaction would determine what came next between us, I didn’t say anything more.

*

They say you always remember your first, and I believe, for many, this is true. There is something to be learned in your first time—awakening, desire, love, pain, change. And yet, when I think back to my “first,” I hardly remember that moment with Toby on my bedroom floor. What I remember instead are those moments sharing ourselves in the poetic way only we understood, and, deeper than that, the lost man I tried so hard to understand but never fully could. With it all usually comes a sense of grief and loss, a feeling that rose and fell so fast then, never expressed in a way that suited the connection we shared every time we read our words.

Most of all, there comes the acceptance that sometimes, you can never truly understand what’s going on inside a person’s soul. You can encourage them, and you can empathize, but there’s always so much more beyond what they will let you see.

And the only thing you can do is treasure them anyway.

XX,
Jade

For Toby.

Picture of rain streaking down window

When It Rains

Many years ago, I had a friend with early arthritis who mentioned that whenever it rained, everything changed for him—his body slowed, his joints ached, and he remembered how old he was (his words).

While I’ve no definitive physical reaction to rainy weather, I have noticed my own unique response to it. It’s beyond the casual gaze out the streaked, foggy window, or the perfunctory lean toward the scent of nature drenched in rainfall. Instead it’s a deep-rooted thing—a snapshot in time of an incident that shaped and changed me.

And so sometimes, when it rains, I remember.

Usually, the memory comes fleeting and fast—and always, I push it aside to write about another day. But during a rainstorm a few weeks ago, I went combing through my files. I’ve been a recorder since I was a little girl, and I’ve saved most everything—I have the diary I kept from ages seven to eleven, the bounty of journals I locked in a drawer as a teen, and those I have on my nightstanPicture of journalsd as an adult. So when I found the story that’s popped into my head here and there over the last two decades, I felt inspired to finally commit the experience to words—this time as the vivid imprint that occasionally flares, something I recognize as the start of a transformation far deeper than raw, young me saw when she wrote it in calculated detail back then.

At 14, I was gangly and awkward. I had thick, bushy eyebrows hidden behind gigantic blue-framed glasses, and I wore baggy shirts and loose jeans to hide developing breasts and hips that had grown far wider than my mother’s. I’d already had braces for the first of two times, so I’d endured much of the teasing that came with them for years prior…but while my teeth were straight, I felt crooked. I felt small. I had a mind bursting with curiosity, but I, like many young teens, was just coming to understand this strange body of mine. I’d heard and read of what it could do, but I was timid, observing all the goings-on around me with a pair of huge, inquisitive eyes. Still, my body ached, somehow, for more—and at school, in my art class, I found it.

His name was Rob.

Rob was a boy three years older than me. He was tall and lean, with long, wild hair and deep, dark brown eyes. He wore a leather jacket, rings, and earrings, and rarely smiled—unless, I soon discovered, he was looking at me. I could feel him watching me from the table a few feet away, no matter who he was talking to, what he was drawing, or what the teacher had to say.

And one day—quietly, leaning close in his chair—Rob told me I was beautiful.

These words were foreign to me. I already had a boyfriend—he was a goofy boy a year older who had supposedly already had sex, but who refused to do anything with me for the six months we’d dated. He’d explained to me that “sex was trouble” and “smart, good girls didn’t want those things.” But occasionally, if I begged, he’d kiss me close-mouthed. Or, he’d push on one of my breasts and joke that my body would be more fun if the other breast would then pop up like a head in a Whack-a-Mole game. He was my very first boyfriend, and from him, I learned I was a weird nerd, an “okay but not great” trait, and that the reason he really liked me was because I wasn’t “too pretty” like the other girls he’d dated.

I suppose it’s not a big surprise Rob got my attention.

For two weeks after Rob complimented me, I remained quiet. I noticed him in class though, always watching me, making something buzz deep inside in a way I’d never felt before. The day he slipped his phone number my way, I fondled the paper for hours, wondering if I should follow the longing pulsing along my skin, and the desire filling my head. It distracted me when my boyfriend spoke of video games and burping, then reminded me I was needy when I asked him to kiss, and that if we did, we’d get caught, and the trouble we’d get into would all be my fault.

So I called Rob, and for two more weeks, we talked about our lives and mature things. He shared the trouble he got into with his friends, the potential risk of getting thrown out by his parents, his record with the law. I was a good girl through and through, and I couldn’t comprehend these sorts of tales. It seemed he was the very trouble my boyfriend told me I was for him—but Rob didn’t push me away or tell me I was weird, or only sort of pretty, or anything else I’d learned in last six months about myself. Most importantly, he didn’t tell me I was strange when I told him I had feelings for him, or that I wanted more than anything to kiss him.

This is why, when he asked me to meet him on a murky, drizzling Saturday, I knew it was what I needed to do.

Heart racing, limbs numb, face pink—I marched as fast as I could through the fog and sporadic tear drops of rain to meet him. With the amount of time I was allowed and the time it took to get there, we’d have a mere twenty minutes alone. But when I arrived at Rob’s side, this didn’t matter. He curved his hands around my back, affectionately, confidently, then dipped his lips near mine.

I was panting.

Rob kissed me hard and deep, pulling me up against his body as the rain sprinkled faintly on my forehead, nose, and cheeks. I had a flash of guilt when his tongue slipped into my mouth—this was new. This was close. This wasn’t anything my boyfriend would do.

“That’s gross,” he’d say.

But that clearly wasn’t what Rob thought. He kissed me there in the drizzle for a few minutes, then took my hand and led me to shelter under an enormous tree. When he pulled me into his lap, he cradled me and stared into my eyes.

I remember him asking permission every step of the way, the words a melody to the backdrop of rain pattering on the tree foliage above us. His questions came as teasing pauses paired with the most tantalizing of smiles. “Can I touch you here?” he’d said, creeping his fingertips up my thigh. “How about here?” he’d asked, catching the button of my pants. “And here?” he’d whispered, kissing me as I eagerly nodded and he slipped his fingers beneath my panties.

Picture of rain streaking down window

Grzegorz Gust ©123RF.com

What came next felt like magic. I was caught up with the pattern of his fingers in time with his mouth. There were tingles shooting through me in ways I’d never dreamed of, ways I felt like I’d been waiting for without even realizing it. When I opened my eyes, Rob was as lost in the kiss as I was—but he didn’t stop to tell me the things I usually heard after a kiss. Instead he kissed me harder, fogging up my glasses in our closeness. And as the sprinkling quickened beyond the shelter of tree we sat under, I—loving every second of this thing I’d longed to do—tried to hold my breath so he wouldn’t hear me. I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad that I took the tiniest inhalations and wheezed them out in little bursts of sound.

In a few minutes, reality interrupted—the steps of someone passing nearby, the threat of time ticking by too fast. Rob withdrew his fingers before I could come to my senses, my lips parted, my eyes wild. “We should go,” he said. “Your parents will kill you if you’re late.”

So, hot and shaky, I straightened myself up and stood. Rob held my hand and stared ahead, pensive until we came back to the sidewalk. But my mind was on fire, my body screaming with some new awareness I didn’t have before. He kissed me goodbye and sent me on my way, and I remember the way his gaze felt on my back—heavy, heated, full of the wanting and longing that rivaled my own, but so much more experienced. Once I made it around the block, I breathed normally again—and that’s when the rain began to pour down faster over me, a cascade washing away the naïve, timid girl I’d been before.

When I got home, I called my boyfriend to tell him we were done. I’d like to say things with Rob continued in a normal fashion, but our relationship over the next year and a half would end up being one of the most complicated and painful of my life, fodder for stories not meant for this rainy day memory.

Still, a few weeks later, when I got contact lenses, plucked my huge eyebrows, and started feeling more comfortable in my skin—enough not to hide under layers and layers of fabric anymore—Rob was the first to acknowledge me when I got to class. Our conversations had dulled to occasional glances, a flickered memory of our secret rendezvous in the rain—but now he cast a smile in my direction and leaned close like he had on that first day, so only I could hear him.

“You were already beautiful,” he said, whistling under his breath. “But look at you now.”

I’d smiled and set to work on my art project, just as he’d gone back to talking to his friends. I didn’t know it then, but our moment had been tattooed on my memory, a catalyst of something he was the only one to see waiting inside me to break free.

Which is why sometimes, when it rains, I remember.

XX,
Jade

Jade A. Waters sipping a Jelly Bean while on vacation in Rhodes, Greece

Time for a Kinky Cocktail Story: The Jelly Bean

I am so excited, everyone! Kristina Lloyd’s blog tour for her new book, Undone, starts today. She’ll be stopping by later in the month to answer some questions for me, but in honor of her protagonist, Lara, owning a bar, Kristina wanted to kick off the whole tour with an all-day kinky cocktail party—that is, each of our sites hosts a special drink with kink! Cheers to that!

Now, I had a few ideas running through my head on cocktail options, and as you know, alcohol tends to make people fairly uninhibited. So I thought—in the spirit of a good cocktail party story—I’d be a little extra open today. The following semi-fictional story is inspired by a vacation I took in Greece a few years back, on which I discovered a delightful new drink called “The Jelly Bean”…as well as an incredibly handsome man.

I hope you enjoy the tale…

THE JELLY BEAN

by

Jade A. Waters

“‘The Jelly Bean’? Well naturally, that’s what I’m going to have,” I said, waving my menu about with a squeal.

“Naturally.” Sia rolled her eyes, because after knowing my candy obsession—in particular, jelly beans and licorice—for over a decade, she wasn’t at all surprised.

Our waiter came out from inside the deli, then, and I dropped my menu to the table with a gulp. He was the epitome of all the Greek features I’d been drooling over this entire vacation: gorgeous, tall, and dark, with stunning rich brown eyes and nearly black hair that waved down to the bottom of his ears. And that smile—oh fuck me, that smile—had me sitting back in my chair with a gasp.

“Hi there,” I said.

“Hello, lovely. So you’ll have The Jelly Bean, I take it?”

I flashed him my grin in response. His English was superb, but that accent had me squirming in my seat. Why yes, hot Rhodes waiter. I will have whatever sweet thing you’re offering.

Out loud I said, “Yes please!”

Behind his shoulder, Sia shook her head with another eye roll.

“I’ll have a beer.”

“No problem.” He went inside to fetch our drinks, and my jaw fell open.

“Oh hell-oh,” I said.

“Here we go…” Sia muttered.

See, I admit, vacation sex is my thing. It’s not intentional, but it happens. Foreigners rock my world, and there’s something magical about meeting a man in another country and living a brief romance with him—and don’t get me started on an accent talking dirty in my ear while I’m fucking. I guess for me it’s when in Rome, do a Roman…or something like that. There was the make-out with the Floridean on our Hawaii trip, the beach sex with the Dutchman in Aruba, the park romp with the Roman in Italy, the virginity-shattering of the Croatian in Rovinj, and the sensual island sex with the Texan in Puerto Rico. And of course, I’d already given that bar manager a blow job in the kitchen a few days ago, right before he bent me over one of the tables and then took me skinny dipping in the sea…

But the whole encounter had ended with him being a tremendous ass, so now I needed a better memory. I’d made it two weeks of our vacation through Athens, Ios, and Santorini without a hint of play, and we had only four more days for me to amend my vacation fling, dammit.

Hot Rhodes waiter came back with Sia’s beer and my blue and red glass of wonder. The Jelly Bean, you see, is a concoction of curaçao, grenadine, lemonade, and ouzo, and it tastes exactly like it sounds. I took a sip while they watched, the cool, candy-sweet taste washing down my throat as we sat in the unbelievably torrid, muggy air.

Our waiter grinned again.

“So where are you girls from?”

“San Francisco,” we chimed.

“Wow. San Francisco! We usually only get visitors from the east coast this far over. You two came a long way!”

“We did,” I said. “We wanted the full Greek tour.”

Sia gave me a look, but we made small talk with him for another twenty minutes because the place wasn’t busy midafternoon. Nikolaos—that was his name, and damn, even that fabulously Greek moniker stirred my blood—seemed tickled by his California customers. By the time I’d downed half my second Jelly Bean while devouring my Greek salad and a side of dolmas, we’d already started flirting hard. Sia, the perfect wing woman, laughed and played along, but it was on the way back from the ladies’ room that Nikolaos grabbed my hand and backed me against a wall.

“You’ve got a smile like some American actress…I can’t remember her name. But oh,” he said, looking me over, “you’re beautiful.”

Well, shit, handsome. Take me home now.

“Thank you,” I said. “You’re damn sexy yourself.”

“What are you girls doing later? I work late tonight, but you should come for dinner…”

Which is precisely what we did.

Greek dinners, for those who don’t know, happen mighty late. Sia and I had explored half the area by 10 that night and still had time to head back to our hotel for a nap and shower. It was so blazing hot—in fact, this was the year that Athens caught fire, 2007—that we lived in a layer of sweat from the second we left the shower until the moment we crawled our way back in. This meant we returned to the deli restaurant sweaty all over again, despite a good hour of freshening and dolling ourselves up. But, Nikolaos didn’t seem to mind. Not through dinner as we chowed on gyros and more drinks (Jelly Beans for me, of course), and talked to his friends who had joined the hang out. Not when Sia wandered off with some adorable Australian and a promise to meet me back at the hotel in a few hours.

And definitely not when Nikolaos talked me onto his moped and took me back to his apartment.

The place was a wreck, but I was all eyes-on-Nikolaos. He could have been a model, some Greek beauty blessing the pages of a magazine I would surely take home as a souvenir. However, I had better things in mind for this guy, and by the feel of his cock rising up between us, it was obvious he did too.

Nikolaos pulled me into his chest when the door shut behind us. He ran his fingers up my cheek, then stroked his hand through my hair. When he rolled his pelvis up against me, I let out a quiet purr only because I’d had three Jelly Beans and I wasn’t sure if I was coming off louder than I thought.

“You’re an aggressive little thing,” he said.

“I am.”

“And you almost look Greek.”

“But I’m not.”

“Are you sure you’re not a Greek-American actress? You look like an actress. And your Greek is fantastic.”

“I’m totally not. I just have a good tongue.”

That might have been the Jelly Beans talking, but Nikolaos took the bait. He leaned down and kissed me then.

And yeah. We were all tongues.

Tongues, fingers, hands, lips—we were naked and rolling around on the bed in no time. Nikolaos, it turned out, looked like a model from head to toe, and I, apparently, was his favorite shape. He spent several minutes running his hands up and down my body with heavy inhalations that made his nostrils flare, then he buried those fingers so deep in my cunt and his tongue so furiously against my clit that my Jelly Bean fueled groans had to have woken his neighbors.

“I’ve never fucked a Californian,” he growled.

“Perfect. I’ve never fucked a hot waiter from Rhodes.”

Our lips sealed back together when he frantically searched his nightstand for a condom. I barely noticed him putting it on, because moments later he plunged inside me, hard and filling, his hands gripping at my breasts and his cheeks so bright.

“Your smile…” he moaned. “It’s like fucking a celebrity…”

This somehow turned me on more. So as Nikolaos thrust in me, bit at my shoulder, nipped at my lips, and groaned in my ear—I writhed with wild calls that were twice as loud thanks to all those Jelly Beans. My body quaked with excitement as he pushed faster and deeper, and when he erupted with a grunt and I hadn’t yet come, he was right back down between my thighs lapping at me until I shuddered with cries that put everything before them to shame.

I remember thinking as we lay there—Nikolaos panting against my thigh, me trying to catch my breath, inhaling the smell of musty sex and dirty room and Greek humidity—that vacation sex was, even when terrible, awfully fun. I’m not one for notches on a bedpost, but maybe a map to mark my foreign conquests might make for a good chuckle.

Nikolaos slid up along my body, planting kisses over my face and tracing the circumference of my nipple with a fingertip.

“So you leave in four days?” he said.

“Yep. Four more days.”

“Hmmm.” He ran his fingers down my stomach, then slipped them between the sensitive, pink lips of my pussy. “Maybe you and your friend can come back to the deli tonight for dinner again…and have another Jelly Bean.”

“Oh. For a Jelly Bean, huh?”

Nikolaos gave me a quick kiss, and when he leaned back, he nodded with a grin.

“I just might,” I said.

I always have liked sweet things.

***

Want to read more awesome stories, posts, musings, and articles from the cocktail launch party? Click right here to see the full menu! And please be sure to swing on by to join the Facebook party all day today!

As for me…I think it’s time for another drink…

Jade Discovering The Jelly Bean While Visiting Rhodes

Jade discovering The Jelly Bean while on vacation in Rhodes, Greece…this may have been her second round. (Third?)

Hiccup.

XX,
Jade

Cover of Never Say Never edited by Alison Tyler

The Never Say Never Blog Tour…Plus, a Confession

All right everyone, today is a special day—I’m excited to be the next stop on Alison Tyler’s Never Say Never Blog Tour! Since this book is all about partners exploring their kinky desires, I’ve decided to pick my favorite chapters, mash them together, and share a little experience of my own…

So to start, I must confess: I am an exhibitionist.

*Sigh.* There, that feels nice.

It took many years for me to recognize that this turned me on, but now that I’m there, I can trace the desire back to an experience I had at 19. My then-boyfriend and I had been together for a while, and we’d spent several months trying to get me off. We’d tried everything—or what I believed was everything, at age 19—but it wasn’t happening. Eventually we ended up working Renaissance Faire together (that’s a story and a half for another time), where I started exploring and playing with what I liked and didn’t. I also met all sorts of people open about their kinks and cravings—one of whom happened to be an extremely handsome and flirtatious friend of my boyfriend.

One day, my boyfriend and I escaped the noise that is Ren Faire—bells chiming, families laughing, choirs singing, trees rustling, and actors soliloquizing at the top of their lungs—for an afternoon adventure in our makeshift cabin. We had curtains to shield our bed from the trail running behind us, but that day, neither of us thought to close them. When my boyfriend went down on me, he had no idea that my heart suddenly raced less for what he was doing, but for the wonder that someone might happen to pass by… So imagine my surprise when I opened my eyes to discover his friend a few feet away on the trail.

He stopped cold, and slowly, silently, he smiled.

And then he watched.

He didn’t move, and neither did I. In fact, I clearly remember holding rigidly still beneath my boyfriend’s affections save for the curling of my toes, feeling my blood rise in my cheeks as my thoughts spun wildly over what was happening. And it was right as his friend mouthed the words You’re beautiful that I came for the first time with another person…or apparently, in my case, two.

Years later, I recognize the desire to be seen as something I crave. It’s one of a long list of “kinkier” things I enjoy, and voicing them is not as scary or taboo anymore—especially with the right partner. Instead, they form a potential adventure.

Which leads me to the point of this post: Alison Tyler’s Never Say Never: Tips, Tricks and Erotic Inspiration for Lovers. The book is a how-to guide of sorts, but more than that, it’s a wonderful blend of kinky adventures, tips, and tales designed to break couples out of vanilla inhibitions and into sexual exploration.

Never Say Never cover

The book covers a ton of kinky ground, from voyeurism and exhibitionism (gee, wonder which chapter was my favorite), to spanking, role-playing, soft swapping, and much, much more. What I loved most was how Ms. Tyler managed to seamlessly weave tips with stories. Each chapter focused on one topic as introduced by her lovely voice, using story snippets to both rile and explain with clever commentary (I particularly loved that of the chapters entitled “Slippery When Wet—Cunnilingus,” “Close Your Eyes—Blindfolds,” and “Naughty, Naughty—Spanking”). Then after a summary of highlights for the section, she masterfully chose a sexy story to follow.

And what better way to get couples exploring than to explain and demonstrate?

The glory of this book is that one can pick a chapter or topic that appeals, absorb the tips, and then share the story with a partner as a first step toward broaching a fantasy or desire. The how-to voice crossed with fiction makes this book better than your average guide—it’s almost like having a super sexy tour guide let you in on The Best Sexual Adventure You’re About To Have Ever!…and then she opens up a big door of fantasy fiction to prove it to you. It’s positively delightful.

There were numerous wonderful stories and snippets in here, but the full-length pieces that thrilled me most were “Savory” by Georgia E. Jones, “Afternoon Strip” by N.T. Morley, “Margarita Magic” by Thomas S. Roche, and Tyler’s own “Is That Man Bothering You?” Still, it needs to be said again—Ms. Tyler’s playful narration throughout the book is gold, and because of that, this book is sure to entertain, inspire, and revive…

And maybe even draw some new fantasies to the surface. 😉

To prove how delicious the merging of guide-with-snippets in this book is, here’s a brief yet steamy excerpt from one of my favorite chapters, “Slippery When Wet—Cunnilingus”:

I’ve written about oral delights in more stories than I can lick—I mean, count. Sometimes, my characters talk about what’s happened in the past, like in this clip from “Burned”:

I’ d told him about the time she splayed me on the kitchen floor and licked my pussy for hours without letting me come, a candle in her hand, drip-dripping wax all over my body whenever I got too close to climax.

I’ve penned that first breath of a tongue on a lover’s pussy, like in “Seeing Stars”:

We were nine floors up. But we were on top of the world, on top of Los Angeles. His mouth crested over my pussy, not locking on, not licking in. He was teasing me. I was shuddering. 

And then I’ve moved on to the main event, as in “Zachary’s Bed”:

I moan as he spreads me with his thumbs, parts my nether lips like the petals of a flower. I moan again as his warm mouth opens and he slides his tongue in crazy circles there, where I need him, there, and I can’t keep from shifting my hips to the rhythm he sets with his tongue, rocking with him while he laps at me. Laps and licks and kisses me with his magic tongue.   

“Zachary—” I am begging, beyond shame, straining at the ties that won’t allow me to reach him. I need to touch him, need my hands on his skin, my nails digging down his back, my fingers twisting in his still-wet hair.

“Sh, Risa.” I feel the words against my skin rather than hear them, feel the gentle motion of his mouth and tongue echoing inside me. 

“Please.” I arch as I say it. Desperate.

“Sh, darling,” he croons in the lullaby voice that has infiltrated my fantasies. “Sh, Risa,” he whispers as I slide on the slippery sheets, pressing hard against his lovely mouth.

Of course, when things really get heated, I like pushing the envelope as far as settings go, like in this gang-bang piece, “Last Call”:

Brody pulls my panties down then, and I raise my hips up to help him, but I don’t stop stroking those cocks. I feel energized, as if I could do this all night. The low, hungry sighs of the men is payment enough. I am the center, the focus of attention, and I bask in the glow.

Brody dives back between my thighs, and I bend my knees and splay for him, back arching. He’s so good. Declan knows how to eat me, knows all the tricks and turns I love best. But there’s something unreal about having that magic moustache run over my pussy lips and against my inner thighs. 

    • “Burned” appeared in The Big Book of Bondage
    • “Seeing Stars” appeared in One Night Only, edited by Violet Blue
    • “Zachary’s Bed” appeared in Naughty Stories from A to Z
    • “Last Call” appeared in Morning, Noon, and Night

**

So good! If you haven’t picked up this book yet, I highly recommend you do. You can find it on Amazon by clicking right here.

After reading it, I hope you all find a fun new adventure to try in the near future…

XX,
Jade

About Alison Tyler:

Called a “Trollop with a Laptop” by East Bay Express, Alison Tyler is naughty and she knows it. Her sultry short stories have appeared in more than 100 anthologies including Coupling edited by Sommer Marsden and Sex for America edited by Stephen Elliott. She is the author of more than 25 erotic novels, most recently Dark Secret Love and The Delicious Torment, and the editor of more than 75 explicit anthologies, including Alison’s Wonderland and 69. Visit www.alisontyler.com 24/7 as she’s a total insomniac.

 

Cover of Delta of Venus by Anais Nin

You Always Remember Your First

Okay, no holds barred: I have a lot of firsts to share today.

For example, the first time I experienced anything akin to being turned on was watching Pepé Le Pew in Looney Tunes. No, really. I loved the French skunk. I loved the way he chased that pretty cat around and smothered her in affection. I particularly loved the way he held her and talked romantically into her ear, and how she swatted him away. For me, it was the chase—and while I imitated his lines because I liked the accent, I actually imagined some French person chasing me with affection and adoration one day. (Note: I have yet to date anyone French.)

My first kiss happened when I was seven. It was a dare. I’d had a crush on Michael for a whole year. He had this hair that looked like a Ken doll’s—it was short, blond, and wavy, but it somehow stayed close to his head (seven-year-olds don’t wear hairspray, right?). He always played football at lunch, so one day I stormed out and lectured him because he dropped the football. Yes. A seven-year-old, scolding another seven-year-old for dropping a football. Then, as he stared at me dumbfounded, I planted one on him. (Okay…maybe a little too much Pepé Le Pew viewing for me.)

My first “real” sexual experience happened under the murky sky of a light rain. I met a boy three years older than me and he walked me under a tree, where he cradled me in his lap and woke parts of me I didn’t realize existed. That experience was transformative—and lovely, to say the least.

The first time I had sex was with a different boy who also happened to be three years older. We wrote each other poetry and fantasized about living in other centuries together. Our relationship didn’t last long, but we did end up having one nostalgic fling almost four years later—when we drank wine, made love, and embraced while reading poetry to one another, all night long.

These are all some of my favorite firsts, but as open about these as I am, they’re not the firsts I meant to talk about.

You see, I wanted to talk about another first—the first erotica I ever read, because I will always, always remember it.Delta of Venus cover

I read about sexual things at quite a young age—I’d devoured several V.C. Andrews and Christopher Pike novels by nine, for goodness sake—but in my early teens, I stumbled upon something on my mother’s bookcase: Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin.

Now, I confess, I already knew what sex was, but I’d never truly read it. And while the contents of those pages mesmerized and delighted me, and I worship the great Anaïs Nin to this day, it didn’t occur to me that reading those pages could be a source of sexual excitement. I read them analytically, enthralled to discover that one could weave sexual words and scenes so eloquently—and yet I didn’t completely understand that it might “turn me on.” Maybe it did and I just didn’t pick up on it. Who knows. But it did make me want to read more.

So somewhere around there, I signed up for a book club. I could order as many books as I wanted (as long as I could afford them), and I thought this was the coolest thing since peanut butter. Soon, I grew bold. Right under my parents’ noses, I ordered The Best American Erotica 1993 and concealed the book under my bed. Night after night, I read the stories within—and while Anaïs Nin had opened my eyes, these stories rocked me. They made me hot. They made me whisper things to my boyfriends about the naughty things I was reading, and how we should try this, and that, and did you know you could do that?

Best American Erotica 1993 cover

Now, this is a very old collection, but there are two stories that I’ve never, ever forgotten—even two decades later. One was “Rubenesque” by Magenta Michaels, and the other “Five Dimes” by Anita ‘Melissa’ Mashman. “Rubenesque” showed me body love, exhibitionism, and anonymous sex, while “Five Dimes” showed me lovers having fun and exploring. In fact, I may well have talked a boyfriend into playing “Five Dimes” with me. (You’ll have to read the story to understand what that means, but I assure you, it’s hot.)

So yes, technically, my first was Anaïs Nin. But the first I really remember, the first that got my pulse racing, my cheeks pink, and my body covered in goose bumps—that first happened with The Best American Erotica 1993. 

I haven’t stopped reading erotica since.

Now, as for the other firsts—they’re delightful memories, too…which brings me to you.

Do you know what I’d love to hear? YOUR firsts. First kiss, first turn-on, first sex, first sexy read—you pick. Maybe if I’m really lucky, this space will serve as your very first confession! 😉

Can’t wait to hear…

XX,
Jade

P.S. The results of Alison Tyler’s Smut Marathon Round 2 are up—check them out here! (I survived! Hurray!)