TYING UP TOMATOES WITH MISTRESS GINGER by Maria Finn
Mistress Ginger Monroe was a blond beauty with an hourglass figure. She stretched across her sofa with the languor of a cat. A woman in her mid-40’s, she has never doubted her own desirability and she has a job she loves. Men pay her $250.00 an hour to spank them, berate them, tie them up and scare them. Mistress Ginger explained her profession, “I’m like Mother Theresa with a fucking whip. This is therapy for the men.” Continue Reading »
“The Japanese gangster, Ryu, appeared to be dead. He lay naked, face-up on the heart-shaped bed of the Shakayama Love Hotel. I could see Miura, or what was left of him, a giant looming over the bed, leaning ominously over my lover’s inert form. Both men were reflected in the mirror above the bed. Ryu, spread eagle, his well-muscled body dressed only in the tattoos that the yakuza fancy, was partially hidden by Miura’s massive, white-shirted back, upon which a red stain bloomed, bright and fat, like a large cabbage rose. Miura seemed impervious to whatever had caused him his injury, and he was obviously up to no good. That is how I’d found them when I opened the bathroom door.
Love hotels are a quirky Japanese institution. Like capsule hotels, which are the size of small coffins and a great place to “sleep it off” after a wild night out, love hotels serve a particular purpose—that purpose is “quickies,” a hot snatch of love midday or mid-marriage. Some of these hotels are outrageous, with facades capped by turrets and spires reminiscent of tacky fairytale castles, ersatz Middle Eastern seraglios, or one of those corny miniature golf courses. The hotels Ryu favored were far more discreet, their tree-shadowed entrances tucked behind stone walls, the parking underground so that patrons can duck in and out without fear of observation. They are no-tell hotels where guests select rooms from a series of illuminated photos on the wall: the harem, perhaps, or maybe the S&M suite. There is no one to judge you as you slide your thousands of yen through a slot in the wall for your one- to two-hour “rest” or kyukei, or your tomari, the overnight stay.
This was the second time I’d been to a love hotel with Ryu. He liked the drama of the surroundings. He liked the privacy, and I liked anything that involved him. This particular room had a black-leather wet-bar stocked with expensive whiskies and a heart-shaped bed with red satin sheets. It also had a very large, well-appointed black- and white-tiled bathroom, and this is where I must have been when Miura snuck into the room.”
From “Be Mine,” between the DEAD LOVE covers. (more in the “Chapters” section of the site)
Dead Love is now available for Pre-Order.
We have our not-so-Victorian knickers in something of a pleasant twist over The Young Victoria, starring Emily Blunt as the imperious Queen. What’s not to love about Emily’s spunky portrayal or the oh-so-amorous attentions of her Albert, picture-perfectly portrayed by heartthrob Rupert Friend? And as if that weren’t enough, the aging 58-year-old Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, is played by dashing Paul Bettany. If it seems over the top, romantically speaking, it’s not. Queen Victoria was quite a diarist and in her own hand confessed to her instant attraction to Albert. One suspects she may have simply exhausted her eager consort. She wore mourning black for him for decades … though there are rumors about a certain John Brown and we have seen portraits of the two together in Holland.
You can read more about the longest reigning British monarch and her lifelong love in the biographies by Lytton Strachey and Christopher Hibbert. We—the royal, HF We—prefer to watch the movie and sigh over the love scenes and wish it all went on and on and on and plunged us ever-deeper into the royal romance.
Jessica Shepherd
Would you like to know the secrets to attracting your soul mate and feeling profound love every day? With this hip and fun guide, you’ll learn to use the rules of attraction, magic, astrology, and your intuition to attract the partner of your dreams and experience true, soulful love.
Join the throng at the Left Coast Writers Book Party for Jessica Shepherd, author of A Love Alchemist’s Notebook, on Saturday, May 8th, at 7pm at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Boulevard, Corte Madera, California.
Left Coast Writers will be serving wine as Jessica Shepherd joyfully reveals the Nine Soul Mate Secrets, offering insight into all aspects of creating and maintaining love, such as how to focus on loving yourself, open up to love from others, and trust your intuition. You’ll engage in fun, hands-on spells, rituals, and meditations to explore your heart and grow spiritually. The Nine Soul Mate Secrets will also reveal how to:
“Large brown velvet moths settled upon each of her breasts. An orchid opened on one shoulder, a striped gecko displayed the inside of its mouth on the other. South Sea islands showed up on her belly and disappeared into the shaved split between her legs. A sea serpent slid down her thigh. Constellations unfurled on her right arm. On her left arm, winds chased clouds to the wrist. And so on. In the last picture, she was completely covered in tattoos, including her neck and her face …”
From “The Wolfman and the Mule,” between the DEAD LOVE covers. (more in from this selection at a later date in “Chapters”)
Sometimes life imitates art. That is what happened when I met Chris Rainier. He was giving a presentation of Ancient Marks. It was as if Alain had come back or stepped right out of DEAD LOVE. How do you tell someone you thought you’d invented them, that you pined over them for what felt like forever, that you’re glad they’re alive. Of course Chris isn’t Alain. But here is another weird thing: His good friend is the man who suggested the recipe for a zombie. They are a pair, those two. Brilliant artists. I’d follow them anywhere … but isn’t that just what zombies do? Oh, I can be so predictable.
If you love tattoos as I do, check out Chris Ranier’s haunting video, Ancient Marks, with music to die for by Anoushka Shankar.
post photo courtesy of Anthony Long Wu; his tattoo—the laughing buddha, a symbol of his belief and culture.
Oh, yes, it IS Fat Tuesday and that is a day of absolute deliciousness.
So in honor of Fat Tuesday and the Big Easy, we offer up a tasty bit of Amy Thigpen’s yummy look at Maw Maw and the Treme and the steamy music scene in “the City that Care Forgot.” This is just an excerpt, mind you. For the whole, delectable tale, you need to buy the book!
AMY THIGPEN
SISTAH, TAKE YOUR TIME
The Big Easy, the City that Care Forgot, the Crescent City—she is
named for the crook of the Mississippi River she inhabits and the lazy
debauchery she engenders. I call her home, and I know that what is best
about New Orleans happens mostly during the dark in the neighborhoods
that my Maw Maw warned me about.
Maw Maw was born in the Treme, just the other side of Rampart
Street from the French Quarter. This place and her first husband, Roy,
schooled her early in debauchery and its consequences. It’s where Roy was
shot and killed outside of a bar in broad daylight after a fight involving the
dice or the numbers—she won’t say exactly. When my 17-year-old Maw
Maw went to collect Roy’s things from his friend, he wouldn’t believe she
was Roy’s wife because, “You’re not the blonde I’ve seen Roy with.”
My Maw Maw’s heart was double-broken that day, and I believe that
right then and there she began her retreat from the sensual joys that are
New Orleans. Continue Reading »
Love in the dark??? Here’s a little excerpt from DEAD LOVE, due out this Fall from Stone Bridge Press. Check it out at www.deadlovebook.com. There’s a limited edition hardcover with a Manga supplement available too!
“You might imagine, as I would have if it had not happened to me, that a near-zombie girl would just stand there like a big blow-up doll. Not at all. I am a seemingly will-less creature, and let me tell you, it takes a great deal of will to resist sex. All living things are designed for it. It is their singular purpose. There was no doubt about this in my body. Horny as any bitch in heat, I was down to the basics. I was consumed with a slimy, single-celled reproductive certainty, swamped with a kind of glandular ecstasy. I couldn’t fight it. I wanted to crawl up the wall. The world turned hot and juicy.
Imagine that you are eating a peach and it begins eating you back. That’s how surprised Alain was when the laconic object of his attentions mounted a counter attack. I wanted to devour him, and I don’t mean metaphorically. This is the point at which murder takes place—murder or self-immolation. This is the lust that kills. Remember the praying mantis, the black widow spider, crimes of passion and desire. But, something inside me—some ancient parasitic wisdom—prevented me from devouring him. It did not stop me from trying to swallow his tongue. The drooling thought “deliciousness” popped into my head, and my salivary glands sprang a leak.
Meanwhile, I had become a balloon. All my hormones adjusted their levels and discharged. I was enflamed and unstoppable. My breasts, which I have already explained, were plenty large, seemed to swell. My womb seemed to have opened up like an umbrella, the blood in it beating like a big vodoun drum. I imagined my lips splitting, oozing blood; breasts spilling milk; innards raining spicy mucilage. I was caught in my own monsoon. I wanted more.
More, it seemed, wanted me, too. I could feel it making a case for itself between my legs at the Ark of the Grand Central Orifice. Taking a deep breath, that collapsed our cheeks, I sprang, wrapping my legs around Alain’s waist. Like a prizefighter caught by hard right hook, he staggered and very nearly fell. To his athletic credit, he managed to retain his balance. Then we became a kind of carnival balancing act, a two-torsoed creature waddling into the bedroom where we turned and collapsed onto the bed, which, in turn, collapsed under our weight. Kaboooooom.
Now Alain was beneath me, his face under mine, his lips pink and tasty. I slipped into the saddle, slid onto that brilliantly designed, perfectly sculpted horn. What a ride we had then, my pony and I. Alain was watching me with a mixture of terror and desire. He could no more stop than a male mantis can shake its amorous mate. I was a pole dancer sliding up and down, a jillaroo bouncing along in the outback, a frigate ship tossed on the Cape of Good Horn. Straddling him, both hands on his chest, I rode him into the sea. I was in some kind of organic nirvana. Mandalas and kaleidoscopes were opening up like flowers deep inside me. Waves of purple and pale chartreuse, plumes of iris and swamp grass scrolled past my upturned eyes. Lust flashed giddy tattoos all over my flesh in a rose-red flush. I couldn’t actually hear it, but I was wailing like a cat in heat, my caterwauling sailing up and out the window, turning heads all along the canal. The big dopamine hit mushroomed up and into my brain. “Oh, oh, oooooh,” I crooned as the dike burst and the waters of the Isslemeer came in, flooding Amsterdam.
I think it was good for him, too. He lay still for a moment, his face in a grimace. “God,” he said gazing up at me in a kind of adulation. “God, that was good. What exactly are you on?” he wondered aloud and put his hand over his eyes.
I sat looking down on him, my body suffused by a delirious glow. A silky endorphin parachute was carrying me back to the bed. I was paralyzed and couldn’t move. Not unusual for me, but I had also found peace and a strange form of union. In Alain, I’d touched some lost part of myself. I was transformed forever. That’s how I became Alain’s slave.”
Monday, February 8, 2010, 5:30pm
@Book Passage in the San Francisco Ferry Plaza
Left Coast Writers® and Book Passage host a reading and pre-Valentines Day treat.
Editors Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Laurie McAndish King introduce the Hot Flashes Sexy Little Stories & Poems writers in Continue Reading »
Join Lone Morch, acclaimed Dare to be Beautiful photographer, filmmaker and founder of Lolo’s Boudoir on February 13th, at one of the most beautiful resorts in Northern California, The Claremont Hotel Club and Spa, and get the new feminine super powers every modern day woman needs…
This isn’t just another workshop or conference with break out sessions. This is an experience that participants create together – full of interactive talks, live performances and group interaction. Continue Reading »
Sometimes the slant of sunlight on the hills …
as here
the new light fingering its way
into a darkened chamber
into sleep
crisp morning licking
at the pillowcases and
the sheets to drive
us out
our bodies, calipers,
curled drowsily
toward one another
flame red
twin tulip petals tipped
in scarlet
in that refraction
our kisses multiple and
so inflected that
the sun comes rivening into
our plain souls
suffusing us.
—Linda Watanabe McFerrin
Accepting submissions: Hot Flashes 3: more sexy little stories & poems