Happiness Stan

Everyone knows Stan in our town. 30 odd years ago he played for our local football team. A real character who always had a pint in the bar before the game and still gave his all for 90 minutes on the pitch And then, after the game, well he was rarely home before midnight. When you look back you wonder what his wife made of it all, and, lovely man that he was, she let him in the end. What else was she to do?

But even as his personal life was falling apart he was a hero for us kids. I can remember well his little tricks, the dummies and shimmies, that goal at Brentford the one and only time we got to the FA Cup First Round. I am not exaggerating believe me, high ball into the box and there was Stan, took it on his right, back onto his left, a swivel and back into hs right and bang! A crisp volley into Brentford’s net to put us one up. Brentford’s defenders had been completely mesmerised by Stan’s genius. We lost 6-1 in the end but Stan’s status as a local hero was sealed. This had been the biggest day out in our club’s history and Stan’s goal had made it special.
And then he packed up playing, probably a year or two early because of the drink. Not knowing what to do with himself, he did the only other thing he knew. He drank.

He still does. Stan spends his days on a bench in a secluded corner of our local park drinking beer from cans. I never knew what he did for food so I used to take him a sandwich, a pork pie, sometimes a take away coffee. And I would sit and chat. His eyes always lit up at the mention of the Brentford game, some 40 years ago now but still the highlight of his life. And how many if us with our steady jobs and mortgages and so on, have ever, in one moment of inspiration, sent 4,000 of oir fellow human beings into rapture? Stan had and the knowledge of that clearly gave him the feeling that his life had been worth living.

One day as we chatted Stan said he had a favour to ask. It was years since he had had sex and well as he didn’t feel right approaching a woman and while he wasn’t gay would I mind? Well I would probably have done anything for Stan. He unzipped his flies and pulled out a still impressive cock. I dropped to my knees on the gravel path, took his cock in my hand, pulled back the foreskin and took him into my mouth. I had always thought of myself as a straight guy and this was a really new experience to me. But I found myself enjoying the sensation of a cock hardening and swelling in my mouth, enjoying the groans of pleasure that Stan was making. When he came into my mouth I knew what to do. I swallowed a bit , I had never known it was salty, and kept a bit in my mouth. I moved my mouth towards his. I kissed him and transferred the remaining come into his mouth. He smiled.

I stood up, brushed the gravel from my knees, and walked off without giving Stan a second glance.

I never saw him again. Whether he had left our town for good, or whether something bad had happened I will probably never know. But when I think of the happiness he brought me or even the fleeting happiness I brought him he will forever be Happiness Stan.

EROTICON 2019 – A TALE IN FOUR DINNERS

Friday 15^th March Holiday Inn Camden

On the first night it seemed easiest to eat in the bar at the hotel. So I took advantage of the St. Patrick’s Special, Irish stew with a pint of Guinness and a Jameson. I sat and ate with a lovely feeling of anticipation. Soon people began to arrive for the Meet and Greet. New faces, old faces and a couple of faces hadn’t see since Bristol days. It was particularly nice to see Kay Jaybee again and to meet the youngest attendee, the supercute Martha 3 month old daughter of Exhibit A and Livvy. I was starting to feel all broody but fortunately the Temptation Holidays goody bag included a little teddy bear.

Saturday 16th March Rosso Pomodoro Camden

On Saturday I dined alone. I needed to. I had missed out the final session of the day and gone back to my room to watch the rugby but also just to have some time on my own. I like to think of myself as a culinary woman of the world, ready to try anything but I can be crushingly conservative at times. I ordered the same as last year. Pizza Napoletana followed by rum baba. All very enjoyable though. After a few hours on my own I was refuelled emotionally for the Saturday night social. It was good finally to have a proper conversation with Posy Churchgate and with Ros Ballinger, to curse the DUP with Clare aka Kowptain Moovel, to talk about the horrors of putting mixers in malt whisky with Ian and Drew.

All this after a first day whose highlights were Elanor Janega on mediaeval sex, women are irrational and their sex drive like damp firewood apparently. Interestingly it was believed that a woman could not conceive if she didn’t orgasm, it was also believed that sex work was sinful but also socially necessary so that exiting sex workers had a route back into society, not something they can always count on today. The session on consent was also very good even if it did involve reading 4 pages of 50 Shades. I mean, they had told me the writing was bad but this…… at least now I now that orange juice is refreshing! Coffee and Kink made an impressive presenting debut giving us the low down on sex toy reviewing and Jerusalem Mortimer showed us a 21,000 year old rope bondage secene.

A stimulating day and I was looking forward to tomorrow. But I needed a short time out.

Sunday 17^th March Poppies Fish and Chips Camden

Sunday dinner was an unexpected delight. I hadn’t really made any plans but we all drifted back to the bar at the Holiday Inn and I found myself chatting to Bianca of Helen’s Toy Box who was very keen to have fish and chips before returning to Australia. Not knowing anywhere we asked and learned about Poppies, a vintage themed fish and chip restaurant just a few hundred yards from the hotel. Going out with Bianca was a humbling experience in a good way. I had never actually been the eyes for a sightless person before and never had to think about striking the balance between giving her the assistance she needed and not doing too much, or infantilising her. I saw too the way that street furniture and signs outside bars and restaurants turn the pavement into an obstacle course for people with any kind of disability. The casual rudeness of people standing around blocking the pavement who had to be asked to move so that we could get by was disappointing too. We both ordered haddock and chips with mushy peas, a bit pricy even for London {and the large haddock wasn’t that large!) but it was enjoyable. And I loved the ambience. My records kitty was just the outfit for the occasion, even if I spilt mushy peas down it!

I reflected on the day. I began with Candy Snatch’s account of the appalling online bullying she experienced, a reminder that the things we all do and love carry stigma and that those who choose to, or need to, blog and write pseudonymously, live with the constant fear of outing. And so on to Come Casual who gave an entertaining run through their YouTube channel and the awesome content they produce. After lunch, I did something I never thought I would do and voluntarily missed a session with Myles Jackman to go to hear Eleanor Janega again. I didn’t regret it. She is a speaker of incredible charisma and presence and I love her deep voice (and told her as much). She has helped rid me of a major complex. And she has a great knack of tying her discussion of mediaeval views of sexuality back to the present. For example, today’s talk about the objectification of sex began with a discussion of the Incel movement.

Finally, I went to Girl on the Net’s talk about building traffic. This made me wish I had more time to blog and while it is good to post regularly, time and metal health don’t always permit it. I am also conscious of the need not to post for the sake of posting. This is my blog and I can write what I like and some things will inevitably be better than others. It is a place where I can experiment. The main lesson for me was that I need to get more tech savvy. Much of the talk was simply over my head but not I noticed the heads of others in the room. I still have no idea what SEO is, or Jetpack (mentioned in connection with WordPress) or a host of other things. I know that I need to find out.

After fish and chips we returned to the Holiday Inn where many people were still delaying as much as they could, the moment of final departure. I didn’t need to worry. I was staying in London another day.

What I have taken from Eroticon 2019? Two things really. Firstly, body positivity (of which more to come). It was really affirming to take part in the Boobday photoshoot and I discussed with Exposing 40 the possibility of doing a shoot with her later this year. Secondly, the more mundane stuff of getting up to speed on the technical side of blogging.

Goodbyes were said, and I will catch up with a few people in Belfast, London, Manchester and places before Eroticon happens again. There will be Smutathon, there will be Kinkfest and there will be a pub lunch with Eye although not at the pub we had always talked about going to, which we agreed is a massive let down.

Monday 18^th March The Great Nepalese Euston

All my best trips to London finish here. Not strictly the Eroticon weekend any more but I was so glad I stayed over on the Sunday night and had a day in London. What I got up to will be the subject of a future post. Suffice it left me with a deep feeling of peace and well-being. I sat in the restaurant with a large Malbec as I waited for my vegetable curry and felt utterly at peace with myself, felt a calmness and serenity I hadn’t known in years. I also made an important decision over the weekend and this will also be the subject of a future post. A few Eroticon peeps know what this is because I shared it with them. As I tucked into my vegetable jeera I reflected on how wonderful it is to be part of the Eroticon family, how lovely to know that I am loved by talented sexy people who I hold in the highest regard. I love you too. And to those who were there but who I didn’t get to speak to or who don’t know me, thank you for being there, because you also made this happen. We all did and I just can’t wait to do it all again.

See Emily Play

One day I knew I would. On that day she would play with me. I would join her in the bath over the edge of which she dangled a booted leg. I would take a deep breath, dive into the scented depths and feel her pubic hair, velvet against my face. I would lick her, tongue her, before coming up for air. Then I would run my fingers over the exuberant flowers of her sleeve tattoo, kiss her and take her under with me. When we surfaced, I would take a sponge and wash her and this would be the most sensual of all, to push the sponge against her back, squeeze until the water ran in rivulets down her skin. Then I would rub her down, quickly, slowly, quickly, remembering each inch, the shades of her skin, the blemishes, the undulating highway of her spine, absorbing it all for the future. I was a cartographer of lust, even as I lay and fantasised.
I promised Emily that, come the day, she would be the first to fuck me. I am into men, sure, I love cock more than most things, and putting a length in my mouth, feeling it harden as I worked the bellend with my tongue, swallowing the warm ejaculation, was one of life’s greater pleasures. But to be penetrated by a cock? That would surely come, and I had a few volunteers to be the first. But I really want Emily, dream of a mutual fucking with a double-ended dildo. Or maybe not. I want her with the strap on, holding my wrists as she comes down, feeling my fear and feasting on it. Then I want it hard, hard.
“This time” she will say “You will know you’ve been fucked. ”
The next time her lover, the one I have cut out of the main picture will be there. They will both have strap-ons, they will spit roast me, and when I am spent I will be made to watch them making love, not roughly as they have treated me but gently, watch them kiss, watch them finger each other.
And if we can’t do that, she will plunge a wand down on my brand-new clit and bring me quickly to orgasm. Or maybe I will do it myself, imagine she is there with me. That time will come, a year and painful surgery away. It will come. For now, I say good night to Emily, put her back in the drawer, Emily and the dark-haired lover whose name I do not know and masturbate to completion as I surf the crested waves of my still too large bed.

This is a little story for Masturbation Monday. You can find links to more stories to get yoir juices flowing here

Sharing Our Shit Saturday 9th March

This week I have been reading thigs that were hot and things that were thought provoking. I will start with the latter. Here are a few reflections by Coffee and Kink on friendship and some of the difficulties that those of us who are into BDSM, or blog about sex or whatever, can have in connecting with people when our lives are necessarily compartmentalised and we can’t be really ourselves with everyone. This is now actually less of a problem for me. For one thing boundaries have been blurred by, for example, people I originally met on the kink scene turning up (in a totally good way) in my vanilla life. There is also my age. I have decided that I really don’t give a ……. what people think of me and am quite open with most people about who I am. But this, I understand, may not be an option for everyone. And it is totally liberating to be with people you can talk about the important stuff with, one reason why I am so looking to Eroticon next weekend.

Which leads onto Emmeline Peaches’ reflections on International Women’s Day and being a sex positive woman and writer and on being herself and proud of it. I spent last night out drinking with a diverse group of women, straight, bi, queer, of different ages (all younger than me though!) but all amazing people I am proud to call friends. I found it totally affirming and Emmeline’s piece really spoke to me.

This week saw the start of the 2019 Euphoff for deliberately bad erotica and I posted my entry here. I guess there will be many more equally cringe-inducing pieces to come by the end of the month and you can find links to them here as well as details of how to enter. Do have a go. It is fun and a liberating experience because if what you write is rubbish, well, that is the whole point isn’t it?

I guess I am not alone in spending ages getting ready. And, to be honest, I enjoy taking my time, sipping a gun and tonic as I ponder the key questions, what eyeshadow, what lipstick will go best with my dress, wondering whether I will finally get my eyeliner right this time? There are, of course, other ways of getting ready as this piece of flash fiction by Jayne Renault shows.

And finally, back to chastity which is kind of where I started last week’s roundup. I enjoyed this guest post on Girl on the Net’s blog.

If you have enjoyed these as much as I have then why not follow a few links and see what else you can find and maybe spend a few hours down the rabbit hole of smut?

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

This is my entry for the Euphoff competition for deliberately bad erotica. I hope you find it as dreadful as I do. For more awfulness have a look here

If your love sausage performed, if your manmeat assuaged her voracious sexual appetite, Tiffany would invite you to stay the night and cook her breakfast, a feast of bacon and eggs and black puddings that broke through the skin like monstrous bellends, and, of course, sausage. I stood at the cooker, my rising member pushing hard against the knobs, in a throb of anticipation. ,

“One sausage or two?” I asked Tiffany as the fat in the frying pan began to spit.

“Only one “she said, dropping to her knees before me, “the love sausage I enjoyed so much last night. She parted my dressing gown and took the hanging meat my manhood into her marvellous mouth. My shaft of satisfaction swelled in the voluptuous currents of her mouth.

I grew hard as she licked at the lollipop of delight, sucked at the sherbet fountain of sensuality and said

“I want you inside me again, I want your meat in the cavern of delights that is my vagina, I want that manly mayonnaise swimming up to my egg. And then who knows?”

“You want to make a baby?”

I had hardly dared hope for this but she dashed my rising dreams of fatherhood.

“Next time maybe, but not today. That fucking app. That fucking useless app.. I’ve come on and I’m early. But so what? There’s fun to be had this way too! I am so horny! I want you, want to bathe your love sausage in my sensual sauces.”

She took me in her mouth again, made me hard, then pushed the bulging Bratwurst of my loins into her womancave. She gasped as she came and I withdrew, saw my proud pole of pleasure, a love sausage seasoned in the consummate ketchup of her endometrial effusion.

I went back to the cooker, cracked two eggs into the pan of sizzling fat.

“Black pudding too Tiff?”

Badge for EuphOff competition showing a coffee bean

A FEW THOUGHTS ON STONEWALL AND WHY THE T BELONGS IN LGBT

The recent announcement that Stonewall Chief Executive Ruth Hunt will be leaving in the summer has sparked a fair bit of comment. It has been argued that the organisation has lost its way and that it took a wrong turn by deciding to campaign for trans rights. This piece by Jonathan Best in Medium sets out the arguments cogently. I want to look at some of the claims made, in the light of my own experience.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the fightback against police oppression that began in New York’s Stonewall Inn. Prominent in the fightback that night were two trans women of colour, Marsha Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. I am going to argue that trans people are not a dispensable bolt on to the LGBT movement but have always been an integral part of it just as they were that night at the Stonewall Inn. It is both that logical and necessary that Stonewall should fight for the rights of transgender people.
Best argues that being trans is essentially different from being lesbian or gay or bi. Clearly, being trans is different from having a specific sexual orientation but I think there are three reasons for disputing the argument that it is basically a thing bolted on to the LGB.
Firstly, many trans people identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, so they are not a discrete and separate group within the community. I identify as bisexual,. For many this is, of course, a matter of logic; a straight man transitioning will identify as lesbian, a straight woman as gay.
But there is a deeper argument. The very process of transitioning, exploring gender, and embarking on the journey of self-discovery this entails, can lead to discovering sexual fluidity and new forms of sexual attraction. This is my experience. I identify as bisexual but I did not do so before beginning my transition. Sexual attraction to men is actually a function of my transition. Yes, that means I like cock. I actually like pussy more and I will return to this later. But the point is that my transness and my bisexuality are not separate from each other so that can be put in separate boxes, they are intimately linked aspects of who I am.
And haven’t trans people always been part of the queer scene? And not only trans people but genderqueer and non-binary people too, all of whom featured in the Tate Gallery exhibition Queer Britain 2 years ago. This, I fact, was one of the things that most struck me. Exploring gender fluidity and swapping gender roles has been seen as subversive as actual gay and lesbian sex. I find this fascinating and attractive. It is not by chance that I have a tattoo of Marlene Dietrich in a man’s suit on my right arm.
Best also claims that being trans is nothing to do with sexual attraction. I don’t agree. In my case it has everything to do with it. Since transitioning I have become attracted to men, attracted too to different kinds of women. Straight men in some cases are attracted to me, yes, I had to pinch myself too, but it is the case. The way I do sex with both men and women has changed, the way that I engage sexually too, and also the way in which sexual partners engage with me. I have experienced this in a powerful way as I have had sex with two women who were sexual partners before my transition and seen who their perceptions and sexual engagement with me changed.
Best argues that Stonewell’s redefinition of gays and lesbians as “people sexually attracted to the same gender” rather than the same biological sex has the effect of making gays and lebians “transphobic”. He seems to imply that trans people generally see gays and lesbians who won’t sleep with them as transphobic. He even suggests that some male bodied trans women have browbeaten lesbians into having sex with them. I take consent very seriously and would never browbeat anyone into having sex with me. And, let’s face it exercising undue pressure on people to have sex is hardly the preserve of trans people.
I want to tell a couple of stories to illustrate my point here.
On a warm summer night two years ago, I sat in the garden of a pub in Birmingham’s Gay Village drinking beer with a young lesbian friend. I asked her whether she would consider a relationship with a trans woman. I asked this out of curiosity, not because I was looking to make out with her, as I hope I made clear.
“With a post op woman may be but preop definitely not, it’s all about the body for me.”
“So you are saying that you prefer pussy to cock?”
“Every time!” She laughed. “Cock is just so not my thing.”
“I totally get that” I replied. “I am bi but, yeah, I do have a preference for pussy.”
And then there was the time I asked my closest girl friend for sex. She is a woman I have known for 20 years and with whom I was in a 10 year sexual relationship. But she turned me down.
“Eve I am straight and for me you are a woman. So it simply wouldn’t work for me.”
Neither of these friends is remotely transphobic and both have been loving and supportive friends. I have many other dear friends who, I guess, don’t want to have sex with me. This is for a variety of reasons, them being in monogamous relationships, my body, or maybe I just don’t float their boat sexually in terms of looks and personality. There is potentially a whole range of reasons why anyone would not want to have sex with a concrete other person. I wild never be so presumptuous as to accuse someone not wanting to make out with me as transphobia and neither would any other trans person I know.
Neither can I imagine any of the several trans women I know browbeating lesbians into sex they don’t really want. I can’t actually imagine them browbeating anyone into sex. For trans people sex is deeply problematic, for obvious reasons, and also because they are potentially negotiating a legal minefield where they could be accused of sexual assault if they do not make clear to potential partners what they have between their legs. For many trans people this is all too problematic and they resign themselves to living without sex and relationships because living an authentic life, as they see it, is more important.
I think the issue of gender probably needs a post in its own right. I do not believe, as Best asserts “the trans ideology” (whatever that is) holds, that gender is innate and internal. I believe that gender is fluid, believe that this very fluidity can be a response to external influences and our response as individuals to those influences. I grew up as a boy and has a happy childhood. No gender dysphoria for me and I can still bore for England about rush back goalkeepers!
Gender is complex and endlessly fascinating and the critique of gender by radical or if you prefer “gender critical feminists” is pretty thin gruel. Sexual stereotypes imposed externally and lived as oppression is part of the picture but only part. It leaves questions unanswered. What, for examples are the mechanisms of imposition? Where does patriarchy come from? Some commentators treat it as being sui generis, an ahistorical approach that I have difficulty with. How do concepts of gender change over time? When and where did the whole idea of gender originate? How is gender linked to biological facts? How does it link to concrete social formations? Is the woman queuing up at the department store beauty counter to buy a new foundation oppressed? Is she oppressed if she subjectively enjoys her femininity? There are those who would say that she is but this takes us into the territory of false consciousness which I think I think is deeply problematical for feminism.
As a socialist feminist I see gender in the light of concrete social formations, and in the modern world as something shaped by the needs of industrial capitalism. Gender, like class is not only a terrain of oppression, but also a locus of struggle, and a source of strategies for liberation. I do not find it progressive to see all men as a class oppressing all women. At some point class and race have to come into it. I think future generations will see Sheila Rowbotham as a rather more significant feminist thinker than Sheila Jefferies.

Sadly many gender critical feminists make common cause with evangelical Christians, the most reactionary elements of the Roman Catholic Church (yes the same people who blame clerical child abuse on some mythical “gay agenda”) and even the far right. I will just mention Posy Parker’s recent endorsement of “Tommy Robinson.” This, I have to say, is not the basis for a constructive and progressive politics either.
I think, too, that Best’s piece sets up straw men (women) in the shape of unnamed “trans activists” or a “trans lobby” allegedly saying or doing things which few, if any, trans people can relate to their own experience. I don’t recognise any of this in my lived experience. This is simply not a basis for arguing that Stonewall is wrong to campaign for trans rights. Most trans people just want to keep their heads down and get on with their often difficult lives. And knowing that Stonewall is fighting their corner is surely a help.
So why don’t we all, those of who identify as LGBT, pull together and fight our cause side by side, for it is a common cause, just as it was in Stonewall on that New York summer’s evening in 1969 when 2 brave transwomen helped lead the fightback.

Eroticon 2019 Meet and Greet

This will be my sixth Eroticon which, I guess, almost makes me part of the furniture. As in previous years, participants have the opportunity to introduce themselves online. Here is my introduction:

Name (and Twitter if you have one)

Eve Ray and I tweet about a whole load of things at @EveRay1

Tell us 3 things you are most looking forward to at Eroticon 2019

Catching up with friends and celebrating several birthdays (including mine) that occur in the next couple of weeks.
Being inspired and surprised.
Meeting new people.

We are creating a play list of songs for the Friday Night Meet and Greet. Nominate one song that you would like us to add to the play list and tell us why you picked that song.

I’m In Love With a German Film Star by The Passions. Because I am (and have the tattoo to prove it) and because those echoing guitar chords send shivers down my spine. The Foo Fighters covered this song but the original is best.

What is your favourite item or book you’ve purchased so far this year?

Not a sex book but Middle England by Jonathan Coe, a tale of Brexit Britain set in places I know well .

You can have an unlimited supply of one thing for the rest of your life, what is it? Sushi? Scotch Tape?

Laphroaig (which I am drinking as I write this)

What is your favourite quote from a movie?

“Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Harry Lime in the Third Man

What is your word suggestion to next years Eroticon anthology?

Inspiration

Complete the sentence:

I feel the love…really. A more amazing group of people I could not wish to hang out with for a weekend,

Eve's Temptations

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