Yay furniture!

I’ve always bought my furniture new (new but cheap, because I’m poor). Partly because I’ve never lived in an area where people discard cool furniture on the curb, and partly because I’m a bit anal retentive and don’t like leaving things to chance. I’m like “I want a shelf for my books and knicknacks. The best place to put such a thing would be over there. Which means it has to be this deep and this wide, and hopefully pretty tall so I can make the most of the space.  And preferably black or natural pine-coloured so it goes with the rest of the room. Time to look on the Ikea website and see what’ll work!” I’m not too terribly open to surprises. But who knows, maybe if I’d had access to more cool curbside shit I would’ve opened my mind.

The Dandy – ironically, since he makes a shit-ton of money – has furnished our place with mostly free stuff. The apartment building is huge and often when people move out they leave stuff on the loading dock for people to take. Also his mom downsized from a house to an apartment a while back and gave him a bunch of stuff, and wants to give us more.

Obviously none of the stuff actually matches, but it lends the place a kind of funky thrift-store charm. Also – I’ve realized – it keeps the decor from looking full-on grandmotherly. (The Dandy only scavenges good-quality stuff that tends to be on the older side). My own taste in furniture has typically been streamlined and free of fripperies, but I started kind of diggin’ the stuff we have here – the cabinets with carved decorative accents and stuff.

Well, the other day an old lady relocated from our building to an assisted living facility and she left some stuff behind that seemed – to my untrained eye – to be exactly to The Dandy’s taste. He was at work though and there was no way I could have gotten any of these pieces up to our place myself. So I texted him about this glorious bounty but assumed that by the time he came home it would all have been picked over and nothing good would be left.

BUT WHEN HE GOT HOME THE STUFF I’D ORIGINALLY SEEN WAS STILL THERE. Plus a bunch more, though most of the new additions were upholstered furniture and I’m squicky about scavenging upholstered stuff. (Too much potential for bedbugs, mysterious pee stains, cigarette stink, nooks full of mysterious crumbs, etc.)

The particular item I’d liked for The Dandy was a big mahogany dresser. He doesn’t have a proper dresser in his room at the moment and in fact had been just about to buy a bunch of storage from Ikea. Now he doesn’t have to because this dresser fits perfectly along one wall and looks fucking fabulous and it’s biiiiiiig so he can fit lots into it (and lots on top, too).

I want to be a free spirit like The Dandy, flexible and able to incorporate random furniture into a living space and make it look great. Also I’m pretty sick of flimsy Ikea shit and am ready to have some pieces of furniture made of actual hardwood, y’know? I eyeballed the dresser for myself, also, to tell you the truth. But it simply wouldn’t fit in my room unless I forfeited some of the furniture that was already there* – either the book cases I’d just recently bought or the cheapo Ikea pine dressers I’d recently spent a whole shitload of time lovingly painting to match my new colour scheme and replacing the drawer pulls with fancy crystal ones. I couldn’t bear to give any of my stuff up, and The Dandy needed a dresser more than me, so there we have it. But I was a bit jealous.

But!

There was also a lovely dark wood china hutch/display case thingy. Two parts: a sort of dresser thing on the bottom and a big cupboard with fancy glass-fronted doors to perch on top. I’d sort of had my eye on it, and thought with a smirk about how hilarious it would be to store my dildo collection in…and it was still there. And when I said I was interested in it but not sure if it would look good in my room, The Dandy said “Hey, we can always put it back where we found it” which undid my last reservation about it (I was afraid if I had The Dandy muscle it up to our place and then I didn’t want it anymore and needed him to muscle it back down again, he’d hate me).

So now I have this fucking gorgeous display case in my room.

All my other furniture in here is black and fairly simple. So I’m not sure if the display case exactly works. Although The Dandy also snagged the matching nightstand to his dresser and doesn’t think he’ll use it, so I might put that next to my bed and move my current black shelf thing by the door, thus giving the room a second piece of interesting, mismatched old dark wood furniture. That should make it look a little more balanced in here.

I probably won’t actually store my dildos in the cabinet, just because not all of them can stand up on their own and I don’t want their “business ends” touching the wooden shelves of a second-hand cabinet that I can’t sterilize. Also if The Dandy’s mom came over or something I’d have to hide everything.

The Dandy had a great idea, though. I am currently working on making a particular artsy-craftsy thing to hopefully sell one day. These will be medium-sized, irregular-shaped items I won’t be able to stack or nest and that might get damaged if I throw ’em in a pile to bump up against each other. They will, however, be terribly gorgeous and decorative. And The Dandy suggested I keep my stock in the display case when I’m not schlepping it places to sell it. I like this idea very much. Probably the bottom part of the case – the part with the doors and shelves – will be delegated to extra sheets and blankets. The drawer part of it has an area with little velvet-lined partitions for holding silverware and I think this might become a jewelry holder.

Soooo yeah. I have a free piece of kickass furniture that would probably have cost me hundreds if not thousands of dollars in a store. WOOT!

 

*It did occur to me to hold off on getting much furniture for a while and just see if anything interesting turned up on the loading dock, but I just really wanted to get the room livable and feel like it was “done,” y’know? I’d felt for so long like I was camping here and I’d had enough. I wanted a proper bed. I wanted a place to set up my tv and DVD player and a place to put my DVDs so I could watch stuff in bed. I wanted night tables to store my sex stuff in and put my glasses on when I went to sleep. Once I had that bare minimum of stuff, I did stop. I didn’t buy more furniture just to fill up the space and have extra storage just in case, even though the room is big and could accommodate more. I consciously did leave room for surprises. Just maybe not enough room, or I got too attached to the stuff I had, or something.

Sexytimez

The Pedant was over for a couple of days, and when he left this morning I slid into bed next to The Dandy for some sleepy Saturday morning snuggles. When he woke up more fully I was trying to talk to him about an art project I’m working on and he said he couldn’t make sense of my words yet and needed coffee. I said I’d be happy to go make some for him since I needed to go get myself some breakfast anyway.

The Dandy had been facing away from me and little-spooning but when I said that, he rolled on his back, whipped the blanket off him with a flourish to reveal an erection, and said “This is how I react when you talk about bringing me coffee.”

This was pretty funny. But also, confusing. Because The Dandy usually makes a big damn point of showing me his erection to tell me he’s interested in sex, but he’d also just said he wanted coffee, and if I stayed and did sexual stuff with him, I wouldn’t be getting coffee, but he showed me his erection, but…*cue head exploding like that android in the  Mudd’s Women episode of Star Trek*.

Also, I mean, it was first thing in the morning. It was probably just a pee-hardon and nothing even to do with me and he was just doing that thing where he teases me with his hotness. I told him I was gonna go get that coffee butttttt I went to stroke his cock a few times before I went, just because it’s so pretty and silky and lovely, and somehow I ended up giving him a blowjob. Oops. I mean not that he minded. But I hate coming off so thirsty all the time. Back when we were engaging in sex stuff a lot more often, I could admire a pre-existing erection or even give him an erection and then just wander off and do other things. Now, though, the erection supply is scarce and I always feel like I’d better take whatever I can get.

(Tangent: he gets off so fast now when I do the hand-and-mouth combo I invented. Which I’m happy about because he’s not terribly vocal during sex stuff; the only noise he makes is when he actually comes. And I’m really only in this for the reactions so I’m fine to skip over the ten-plus minutes of flogging away at him and get to the good part.)

After I got him off, we lay there snuggling and I waited to see if he would ask if I wanted an orgasm, too. I have specifically told him that I want him to ask. Recently, even.

He did not.

And because actually I wasn’t that much in the mood to get off, I was able to bring this up to him without feeling super vulnerable like I would have if I was sitting there dying to come and feeling like I needed to convince him into it.

So I told him “I would really like it if you’d make a point of asking about reciprocation. If you only ever get me off because I specifically ask you to, it doesn’t feel much like you desire me or want to do it. Do you see what I mean?”

He said he understood and asked if there was anything I’d like. That put me in a dilemma: on one hand, I feel like if I say “ask me if I want an orgasm too, dammit!” and he asks and I say no, it comes off like I was pointlessly messing with him. On the other hand, I could tell this would be one of those days where my body didn’t cooperate terribly well, which meant it would take a while, and I didn’t much feel like he was into it in the first place considering he was only asking because I told him to.  So if I said yes I would probably end up feeling self-conscious, having a hard time concentrating because I was convinced he was bored, and then having an even harder time concentrating because I was aware that it was taking a really long time, so I’d get stuck in a kind of infinite loop.

I hesitated and said I needed to pee and then eat something but sometime after that I would absolutely like to have orgasms (and quite possibly intercourse) with him. And I finally went and made his coffee (and a bagel with butter and jam the way he likes) and made myself some eggs and toast.

I don’t believe there’s ever been a time that I said “I want sex/an orgasm sometime today” and The Dandy actually followed up without prompting. He’ll say “okay” at the time but then just never bring it up again and I have to say “SO…ABOUT THAT SEX.” Today was no exception. A while after we ate, I’d somewhat recovered from the yucky feelings our earlier conversation brought up in me, and wanted that orgasm. I went and hung out in The Dandy’s room while he puttered around on the internet. He did not bring the topic up.

And although I did want an orgasm, it was in that distant, barely-there way that my stupid dysfunctional body has been giving me lately. Like, coming was an idea in my head but I would need some work to get my body caught up. Maybe penetration. I didn’t want to have to ask The Dandy for an orgasm again, literally an hour or so after I’d told him I want him to be more proactive, so instead I said “sex now?” (The Dandy has been known to have a pretty short refractory period, so this was not an impossible request.)

The Dandy said that he was still pretty out of it from having just woken up, and didn’t think he could rally  himself for more penis-related action just yet.

I waited for him to add “but let’s take care of your needs.” He didn’t. WTAF IS WRONG WITH HIM. Like I don’t know how to be any more clear than “OFFER TO GIVE ME ORGASMS” and what could possibly be a more obvious time to do that then after I’ve told him I wanted one sometime that day? (And to be clear, when I said I wanted sexytimes later, he seemed amenable to it. I didn’t get any sort of “ugh” vibe from him.)

And just…I get tired of feeling like I’m nagging. I didn’t want to be like “Hey, ask me on a regular basis if I wanna get off” and then “get me off later” and then “how ’bout now for the getting me off?” and also I realized I was still feeling pretty tired (I haven’t been sleeping well lately, plus there was a Pedant visit and I almost always end up exhausted after those). So I gave up on any kind of sex stuff and just asked The Dandy if he might be up for some snugglenaps. Although I noted that the coffee he’d been drinking might preclude that.

He said yeah, he wasn’t tired, and I was like “y’know what? Just come here and pet me. Fall asleep or don’t but I want you near me and touching me.”

So he lay next to me in his bed and petted my back and head and somehow the subject of him not being able to have sex right then came up again, but then (oddly) he almost immediately got an erection and I was like “wait how did you do that?!?” but the erection was not all-the-way hard and subsided quickly. All of which was fine with me, to be clear.  I’d given up on the idea of penetrative sex happening and was just enjoying the snuggles.

Oh and also I brought up a thing that’s been on my mind: “I’ve been so disappointed because you do this thing of hitting on me by just showing me that you have an erection, and my anatomy doesn’t work that way. There’s not really an obvious visual signal of ‘hellloooooooo, I’m turned on, get to work already‘. But I realized that my version of it can be wiping my wetness on you and then staring expectantly.” And I swiped my fingers through my crotch and across his shoulder to demonstrate.

“Are you hitting on me?” The Dandy asked. (Was he seriously asking that or kidding? I can’t even tell.)

“Maybe,” I said, grinning.

Pretty soon after that exchange (or because of it? I don’t even know) The Dandy said (with humour, not bitterness) “why don’t you go ahead and get out your toys instead of disappointedly waiting around for my penis to start working?” And I assured him that I wasn’t disappointedly waiting for anything. But I did get out my toys.  😀

Took me an eternity and a half to get off, partly from Pedant-related exhaustion and partly from self-consciousness (“why don’t you get out your toys instead of waiting around for sex” is an invitation of sorts, but still somewhat lacking in the enthusiasm department). I kept reminding myself that it’s bullshit to feel like I’m taking too long and boring The Dandy, considering how much time I put into getting him off. I mean maybe he was bored but so fucking what? Suck it up for the sake of your partner. That’s what I do. I’ve given him handjobs where I had to switch hands four times because I was going at it so long that my forearm muscles were screaming in pain. I’ve ridden him for probably half an hour or longer before, and felt engaged and turned on for maaaaybe the first ten minutes but eventually got bored and was just in it for him. By contrast, even on my worst day I take maybe fifteen minutes to come (usually around five though), and The Dandy’s role in that – should he choose to participate – is usually fairly minor and easy. So far he hasn’t had the gall to complain about being bored (I suppose he has that much sense, at least) so I can (and should!) ignore any bored vibes he gives me and just accept his assistance. Because fuck him, that’s why.

After I finally came, I fell fast asleep for five hours and now I feel better than I have in a week or two. Yay!

*Unf*

If you’ve been hanging out here for a while, you know that I was mono for entirely too big a portion of my life – I actually didn’t realize, for a long time, that any options existed besides “loving, mono relationship” and “fucking whoever I want but never being loved” so I chose the option with the love and regretfully gave up on sexual variety.

But now I’ve figured out that non-monogamous relationships are a thing and I have two long-term partners who both love and fuck me. And it’s amazing, but it still feels sort of perverse. I still feel like I’m getting away with something or like at some point my partners are gonna go “waaaaait a minute, why are we letting her see us both?!”

Non-monogamy is definitely an orientation, for me, same as being hetero is – but I think it’s also, somehow, one of my kinks. I mean, specifically the part where everyone I’m seeing knows exactly what’s up and is fine with it.

Over the years, my kinky thrill keeps getting pushed further and further, from “OMG I came home from a date with The Pedant and Minx is totally fine with it all” to “OMG I just had sex with The Pedant and The Dandy knows it and he still wants to take me out to dinner” to “OMG The Dandy just made dinner for me and the guy I’ve been making out with all afternoon and we’re all sitting around the table having a perfectly lovely conversation” to “OMG The Pedant is over and I can literally walk back and forth between him and The Dandy, hugging and kissing them while the other watches, and nobody bats an eye” to “OMG The Pedant and The Dandy are both petting me at the same time” to “OMG THE PEDANT AND THE DANDY JUST LET ME GROPE BOTH THEIR CROTCHES SIMULTANEOUSLY.”

On The Pedant’s last visit he spent two nights here and on both nights, he was absolutely passed out from the sex we’d just had but I was restless and couldn’t sleep. I was perversely tempted to go into The Dandy’s room and try my luck sleeping there. Also, the Dandy’s total acceptance of my relationship with The Pedant always fills me with adoration (and the delightfully kinky feeling of getting away with something) and I get all horny for him, so I would happily have done more than just sleep in his room. But I’m pretty sure The Pedant would be hurt by me sleeping elsewhere (and I know he’d feel like sex with The Dandy was some kind of breach of hygiene). And it would be kinda rude for me to do that, given that The Pedant was over visiting me; he should be my focus.

Still, though. I super love the idea of having full sexual access to two men right in my home.

So yesterday I asked The Dandy how he would have felt if I’d banged him while The Pedant was over. Like, banged the Pedant, left him asleep in my bed, and come right to The Dandy’s room for seconds.

He hesitated, wrinkling his nose. “Well…I would at least want some sort of cleanup to take place first.”

“So, if I had a shower…?”

“Yeah, I mean, probably.”

Oh my. *Fans self*

 

We’re a family.

For a while now I’ve been referring to The Dandy as “daddy” when talking to the cats (“Mommy’s busy. Go ask daddy to feed you.”)

The Dandy has recently started referring to himself as their daddy, too.

And boyyyyy is that making me feel all squishy inside. 😀

One good thing

One good thing lately is that – somehow, magically, for now – AnxietyBrain has accepted the idea that I live here. I’m not constantly planning an escape or angsting about how there isn’t one. I’m not constantly living this weird double life where I’m here doing whatever but simultaneously imagining what this moment would look like in an alternate timeline where I lived on my own. I’m not perpetually half in mourning for the anticipated loss of my amazing bedroom that has space for all my stuff and that I painted the exact colour I wanted.

Shit with The Dandy isn’t perfect, but I seem to have successfully adapted to my lowered standards pretty quickly, and as a result the relationship appears to have less wrong with it than it did before.

Also, I have a pretty sweet deal here. I mean on one hand it drives me mad sometimes that The Dandy spends ninety percent of his waking hours watching YouTube videos in his room (I’d like him to want to hang out with me more) but the flip side of that is…he spends ninety percent of his waking hours watching YouTube videos in his room. I am paying $500/month to live here (thanks to him subsidizing me) and I basically have the run of the place. It’s my slow season at work, so I’m at home a lot, and I’ve been spending most of my time in the living room watching Netflix and working on art projects (and I can afford art supplies like never before thanks to paying such low rent). I’ve had days at a time where I’ve covered the entire couch and coffee table in art crap and The Dandy either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care because he’s not trying to use that room.

I’ve noticed, too, that we both treat his bedroom as communal but my room is kind of…mine. I pretty much have a standing invitation to sleep next to The Dandy anytime I want (I mean he says if he wants to be alone he’ll let me know, but that’s never actually happened) but if I feel like sleeping in my room he doesn’t seem hurt or confused by it. And if I sleep in my room he’s never, ever come in and plunked himself down next to me with the assumption that he can just decide to sleep there, but that’s exactly what I do to him and he’s fine with it.

Plus he loves the kitties and is very very unlikely to complain about being able to hear my Hitachi (and definitely won’t ask me what the sound is) and we have two bathrooms so my epic 45-minute shits won’t impede his life and make him hate me or make me feel like I need to rush (stuff like this, plus taking up too much space in an apartment and making people resentful, is what I worry about a lot when I try to picture living with roommates).

And, I mean…one of the things that drove me crazy when I was single (or at least more single than this) is that it was so fucking hard to find a guy (for any purpose; FWB or relationships or anything) who wouldn’t ghost on me. The Dandy, for all his faults, is at least here. He’s constant and he’s unlikely to want to leave any time soon. And during our last big relationship talk I explicitly told him that I want whoever leaves first in the mornings to give the other a goodbye kiss and for whoever goes to bed first to say goodnight. We were somewhat doing that anyway but since then these rituals have been consistent. They keep me from feeling like we’re roommates living separate lives under the same roof. Plus when The Dandy comes in and says “goodnight” that’s my cue to take advantage of bed-snuggles if I wanna.

Sexytimes

Woke up too early, moved from The Dandy’s bed to my own, got off, still couldn’t sleep. Went to the bathroom and on my way back past The Dandy’s open door he called out “hey. What’s up?” (I’d thought he was asleep still but apparently not).

I immediately detoured back into his room and his bed and sulkily told him I couldn’t sleep. He gathered me close to him and started petting my back and I still didn’t exactly sleep but I fell into a warm, comfy trance for a nice long time. I started out facing him with my head resting on his arm and my face in his chest, but eventually he wanted that arm back so I rolled over into being the little spoon.

And he kept petting me and I suddenly became aware that there miiiiiight be something lightly touching my butt. I shifted closer to him and yup, he had an erection. He hadn’t been making any big point of pushing it up on me because he knew I was hoping to get some sleep, but it was there. (And when I scootched my ass up against him, he did playfully hump me for a few strokes – he knew I was doing a little “erection recon.”)

Few things make me feel safe and cared for and also really really titillated like realizing a guy I like is aroused but hiding it for my sake. I debated staying the course and trying to sleep, but titillation (and an attack of “when-will-I-get-another-chance”) won out and I ended up giving him a blow job. He came quite quickly (like, maybe two minutes compared with his more usual ten-ish) and his breathing sounds were loud and sustained. I felt like a goddamned champion.

He didn’t ask me, afterwards, if I might like to get off, too. I’m annoyed by that. I’ve told him several times now that I want him to seem more interested in my pleasure, that he should assume that any sexytimes we have should involve an orgasm for me and not just him, and that I’d like him to offer me orgasms instead of waiting for me to pass him the dildo and tell him to get to work.

At the same time, I don’t want him thinking I only initiate getting him off as bribery so he’ll get me off. I don’t. I mean if I initiate intercourse (which stimulates my genitals, too) it’s usually because I want to be close to him and get him off and also have orgasms of my own, but if I give him hand jobs or blow jobs I usually intend them as freebies. It’s just that his responses etc turn me on a lot of the time and I end up being totally receptive to getting off, after. And anyway it would be nice if he checked in with me just on principle. I might very well have said “No, that one was just for you. Good morning!” but at least ask, jeez.

I’ll revisit the topic with him at some point. Right now I feel like just enjoying the events of the morning as best I can. I worry that all my talk about wanting more sex/desire/mutual orgasms makes him feel pressured, like we can’t just let things happen and enjoy ourselves, like I’m sitting here with a scorecard or whatever. So I want to back off for a while and give him some breathing room.

Initiative

I get frustrated by the way The Dandy initiates sex, and how he responds to me initiating.

I’m okay with direct asking, but I prefer things to happen more organically, wherein a partner starts kissing and touching me a bit or vice-versa and it either turns into more or it doesn’t. Kind of feeling the other person out (metaphorically and literally I suppose) to see if they’re receptive.

The Dandy, though, isn’t a make-out person. He doesn’t initiate kisses often, and when he does – or if I try to make out with him – he gives individual, smoochy kisses that refuse to take on momentum. It really seems like he doesn’t understand the concept of “making out” as most people perform it; if I kiss him several times in a row, or put my lips on his and try to keep them there in some capacity instead of smooching and withdrawing, he seems bored/confused/impatient.

He’s also not a person who seems to associate affectionate touching with sex, perhaps because by his own admission his only erogenous zone is his dick. He knows I like to be caressed, and will do so absent-mindedly while we’re watching tv or falling asleep, but he doesn’t typically do it to get me in the mood for sex and has only started doing it during sex recently after I complained that he ignores me during the act.

So maybe he doesn’t understand that when I kiss and touch him a certain way, I’m trying to initiate sex. But I sense that he does get it and his lack of response is a soft no. Fair enough; it would probably feel heavy-handed to respond to some kisses and caresses with “NO THANK YOU I DO NOT WANT TEH SECKS.” I didn’t explicitly ask for sex so he’s not explicitly turning it down. I get it.

As I have mentioned, The Dandy generally initiates sex with me by showing me his erection and/or tapping me with it.

One time, we’d recently had a fight/discussion/whatever and had managed to come to some sort of truce and we were snuggling in bed naked with my head on his chest. From that vantage point, I saw him get semi-hard and then start purposely flexing his Kegel muscles so his cock twitched repeatedly. I assumed this was a sexual overture, but I was still feeling a bit raw from the events of that evening so I ignored it. I figured hey, he ignores my advances as a tacit form of rejection all the time, so he’ll get it.

But instead, he laughed and said “you’re not very observant, are you?” and pointed at his dick to make reeeeeal sure I noticed it. And I didn’t have it in me to say “I SAW IT, I JUST IGNORED IT BECAUSE I’M NOT IN THE MOOD” because after all that bloody fanfare it seemed like he’d be crushed by rejection. So I somewhat resentfully gave him a hand job.

Although from that point on, anytime I put my feet in his lap and wiggled them and he didn’t immediately get the hint and start petting them (which happens a lot) I started saying “YOU’RE NOT VERY OBSERVANT, ARE YOU?” in a bemused, slightly condescending voice.

When I have explicitly asked for sex, he’s never said no that I can recall*. I don’t mean he always fucks me. I mean literally he just doesn’t open his face-hole and utter any words along the lines of “no thank you.” Sometimes he just doesn’t answer me at all and apparently hopes I don’t notice. A few times he’s pointed out (validly) that we need to take the dog out or get groceries or something and then we never get around to having sex after; I don’t know if he was purposely deflecting or if he really was intending on fucking me later but forgot. And a few times he’s said some version of “yes,” but often I got the feeling he was humouring me. I’m not sure I ever recall him being like “Hell yeah!!!!!” or anything. So shit feels a little perfunctory/mechanical when I initiate that way.

There just doesn’t seem to be any good way of starting things up. Maybe he wants to be the only one who initiates anything, for whatever reason. Although I sure don’t recall him seeming mad when I’ve given him surprise blowjobs.

*By “sex” I mean intercourse. He’s said no once or twice to me asking him to help me get off.