Isn’t it an amazing feeling when you click random blog links and stumble onto a post that feels like the author was eavesdropping in your brain? I’ll tell you what I mean:

I’m a hands-on sort of guy. I love to touch and be touched. But I’ve never been very good at it. The lady I used to be with a few years ago was the sort who always managed to shrug my hand off her arm, or turn away just as I was reaching for her. Always so innocent and seemingly random or accidental, it took me years to catch on to the fact that she just didn’t like to touch. Even early in that relationship, I often wished she’d touch me more. I’m not talking about sex, here, although I could. I’m just talking about a friendly gesture as we would pass in a hallway. A hand touching a wrist, that sort of thing.

The Nymph does not have this not-touching issue. Quite the contrary. She warned me on the phone, seemed concerned even, that she’s “hands-y”. I said “Sounds yummy to me!” and meant it from the bottom of my heart.

Hands-y? She is, too. And I love it. I never want her to let go. But she keeps making comments that make it clear, she’s worried I’ll grow to think she’s clingy. The woman actually jokes (the “ha ha, only serious” kind of jokes) that I’ll get tired of her “hanging on me” all the time.

That’s so not going to happen. Have I mentioned I love it when she touches me? Or, that I’m touching her just as much, and feel like I can’t stop?

It’s like Dan wrote about his Amber (links long gone):

When we first got together, I came to understand how starved Amber was for this kind of attention. She was actually afraid that I was going to get *tired* of touching her. What I realized was that I’d been starved for years for someone *to* touch, and she’d been starved for years for someone to touch *her*.

A perfect match!

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled (i.e., non-sappy) sex blogging.

Interesting article on brothel life, courtesy of the Ratty’s Ghost archives. There’s something for everyone in there, including frustrated economists:

Most brothels have completely unacceptable pricing structures, which one is expected to follow. Prices vary according to the location and quality of the individual brothel, but most of the time, whatever the asking price is, it’s insulting when you consider the cost of living and the price of other services in the area. Escort services are even worse–some of them charge as little as $200/hour, and you’re expected to give half of that to the house, and another $10-$20 to your driver, leaving you with eighty dollars, for which you’re expected to let the client fuck you. (Right. That’ll happen.)

Needless to say, it’s not a good idea to go along with that kind of stupidity. You can get $80/hour doing an ordinary job, for Christ’s sake. There’s no point in doing something which may or may not even be legal in your area if you aren’t going to be well-compensated.

Thanks to Daze for the link.

So when The Nymph was here, we had a conversation. It was pretty simple, it went kinda like this:

“I never want you to leave.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“So don’t.”
“Well, I have to go home or my family will call the FBI.”
“Well, come back right away then.”
“OK.”

I figured I shouldn’t tempt the gods by exulting too much. But now the airplane ticket has been purchased and packing is underway. This is turning into a fairy tale. Don’t pinch me, I don’t want to wake up.

Flight date is just after Valentine’s Day. I teasingly tried to suggest that she was doing herself out of her traditional chocolate allotment that way, but I got firmly instructed that I had missed the point: the timing was cleverly designed to allow me to purchase her Valentine chocolate on February 15 at half price, and therefore it had better be a nice big double-sized ration, Buster!

I guess it’s time to start practicing my couples skills. “Yes, Dear.”

My grandmother used to believe that a young lady should never be seen to drink in public. It’s entirely possible she would feel vindicated by this photograph:

On the other hand, it’s also possible the young gentlemen present will be, er, intrigued by the young lady’s enthusiastic two-handed grasp on the beer hose.

Here in the United States we are accustomed to a certain emotional transactionalism, a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately style of equitable dealing that, at least in the sexual arena, may not always be a real comfortable fit when it’s wrapped tightly around the different values and responses men and women bring to sex. Men and women steeped in the values of classic American feminism may not approve of the following, but it’s hard to deny that Dora sounds pretty pleased with herself when she writes (at Taken in Hand, link via Spank Directory) about The Importance of Making Myself Available:

It is wonderful when we have sex and I am on fire with passion or I pick up that passion during the act, and it is an important part of our marriage and sex life, but I think the other times are just as important and, in another way, wonderful. Those are the times when it didn’t matter if I was in the mood or not, because he either needed so badly to have that pressure relieved or he just found me so adorable that he had to express it by taking me on the spot.

Those times I do not get any orgasm but I have the pleasure of having a husband who is happy and cheerful and humming. And sometimes he is even able to help decorating the table for a dinner party just because he has got it. To see him like that is a much more quiet and subtle satisfaction than an orgasm, but to me it is just as good.

Maybe I am more practical about it because I am the farm girl I am, but to me it is and always was a very natural thing that the male has different sexual needs than the female. To meet those needs and even enjoy it as much as I can in some way or another has always been a natural thing for me, because I believe that a wife has a duty to be supportive and loyal, to let her husband feel loved and appreciated, to please him and make him happy, and to comfort him and cheer him up and help him to regain his confidence and self-esteem when he needs it.

Compare and contrast: Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You.

Doxy the Phone Slut is back. She writes in her usual entertaining style about the challenge of receiving phone sex calls from couples:

Couple calls are always fascinating to me because, well, it’s not just a guy jacking off into his old Slayer t-shirt in his parents’ basement. At the very minimum the guy has to be able to bag or rent a person willing to engage in sex acts with him.
…
[S]ometimes it is people who have pretty much worn out their own ideas and are looking for new ones which can be a tricky dance of the first water. Because if they haven’t tried it before that means they didn’t think of it. And is that because they would be adverse to it, or because they just haven’t been exposed to it? I once really freaked out a woman by suggesting she rim her husband’s asshole. Another guy got angry because I asked him if he’d ever spanked his wife. Knowing what is out of bounds for people is hard. And if it’s “out of bounds” is it REALLY out of bounds, or do they just want to pretend it’s out of bounds so that you can “force” them to do things they’re trying to pretend they don’t want to do?
…
So much of this job is tightrope walking. Dominate me, but don’t fuck me in the ass. Have my sister catch me jerking off, but NOT my mom. I wanna fuck the high school cheerleader down the block, and the girl scout up the road, but the brownie is OUT of the question. There is serious Forrest Gump “phone sex is like a box of chocolates” karma in the mix. And that challenge is what keeps the job fun and exciting.

Which of course reminds me of the old joke:

Q: “How does a Cub Scout get to become a Boy Scout?”
A: “He just has to eat a Brownie.”

From a comments thread over on Making Light comes this interesting article on the historical practice of wife selling. Apparently this was slightly less obnoxious than it sounds, and functioned as a means of adjusting unhappy marriages in an era where divorce was unavailable. And the ritual was entertaining, at least to readily-amused louts like me:

In Staffordshire, for example, the custom of wife selling followed a fairly rigid pattern. A man in search of freedom took his wife to market, with a length of rope attached to her neck. He paid a toll that gave him the right to sell merchandise, then paraded her around the market extolling her virtues. Interested males would then bid for her in a general auction. Once a bid was accepted the husband would hand over the toll ticket as proof of ownership, and the trio would then retire to the inn and seal the deal with a beer or two. Despite the lowly position of the wives in these transactions, most accepted the custom as a satisfactory way of ending an unhappy marriage. In many instances the sale was agreed by mutual consent before the auction commenced. However, it was accepted practice that the formality of the market place auction would always be conducted.