coffee republic

one of london's chain coffee shops. i'm at one on berwick street, right in the heart of soho...enjoying a yummy latte. anitparticle got me going on these things when i visited her in new york back in march. this latte may not be as good as the one at joe's in the village, but with the chilly weather here in london, it's doing the trick nicely.

it's around 4:30 p.m. i spent the afternoon perusing clothing shoppes, record stores, and sex shoppes...all in the soho area of town. for what it's worth, i much prefer london's soho to nyc's. clothing-wise, i scored some sweet pin-stripped black slacks for a mere 10£. next the cluster of record stores lining berwick street bore fruit: i found mr.scruff's solid steel set, a grooving-nightmares on wax 12" (with a killer dj spinna remix on it), gilles peterson's out-of print worldwide vol.1 compilation for only 8£ (it's a three record set!), and finally, the new roots manuva album.

i did not make any purchases in any of the sex toy/book shoppes i went into. one store in particular, though, had an amazing collection of sex photograhy and graphic sex books. it struck me how beautiful and tasteful most of the books were despite that almost all of them featured s/m themes.

lately, i've been having so many fantasies in the s/m realm that i'm really wondering if i'm normal. i feel guilty afterwards because i really love women and don't want to see them as just a means to gratification. where does the line get crossed?

plus, i know i enjoy 'normal' sex because that's pretty much all i've ever had. with my last partner, all of our sex was normal. about the kinkiest thing we ever did was i one night, after we returned from a club, i screwed her from behind over my bathroom sink, through a torn hole in the crotch of her fishnets. yeah, pretty tame.

so i don't know what's going on with me. right now, j and i are technically not in a fight, though we're also not emailing or anything. we made up after our botched nyc-meet-up, but then we got into another fight. i sent her an 'i'm sorry' email, she responded with kind words, but nothing since. that was probably three weeks ago.

i mention this because after we made up after our nyc fight, she was like, 'we should never marry. we should only fool around on special occasions.' reading this, i was like 'why would a lesbian even be thinking about marrying me?'

the hard thing with her is that she really isn't right for me, and not only because she is a lesbian. but that's the main part of it. with all of my previous partners, i've drawn girls who i really felt, deep down inside, that i didn't measure up to one of their previous loves. i don't mean in the bedroom. i mean deep within their heart.

with j having so many former girlfriend's she still in love with, along with the fact that i'm NOT a girl, there's no way i could ever really believe she loved me more than anyone else. so that's why it really struck me when she wrote about marrying me.

i'm bringing all of this up because, in the last few weeks, i've been beset with lots of s/m fantasies...and she's in a lot of them. the few times we've messed around, it was hot. she likes to take control, and she's kinky as hell. we only scratched the surface, but the chemistry was so good between us. probably because we fight a lot, i don't know...

so i've been having all these fantasies, and i feel bad about it, cause i know most women want a guy who's into just 'normal' sex. and right now, i've got lots of 'taboo' things going through me, and my afternoon in soho today has me feeling more mixed up. mixed up because, looking at ALL those books and whatnot, clearly LOTS of other people dig this shit too (or is it JUST men?) nobody talks about it and how come, of all the women around me on a daily basis (like at work, for instance), i can't picture ANY of them liking this stuff. they would think i'm very weird...and that's how i feel right now.

i don't think there's an easy answer...it's something i'll just have to keep wrestling with. if anyone else actually reads this, sorry about the massive size of this blog entry, but i needed a break from walking around and coffee republic has free internet access. so i just figured i'd get this stuff off my chest...