Suzanne Portnoy

Someday he’ll come along, The man I love
And he’ll be big and strong, The man I love
And when he comes my way
I’ll do my best to make him stay
Billie Holiday

Despite finding myself single once again on Valentine’s Day, I’m feeling remarkably optimistic about finding true love. I know my guy is out there, he just hasn’t tracked me down yet.

I’m not a box ticker but I often like to imagine the mystery man who is going to sweep me off my feet even though I know he isn’t really the sweep me off my feet type. I reckon my guy may even be someone I already know but may have overlooked or maybe just isn’t available at the moment.

I know for sure that my guy is going to be more reserved than I am, possibly quite discrete but will view my indiscretions as amusing as opposed to threatening. He’s the type of man who won’t mind me going to a swinging club or seeing a few of my fuck buddies because he knows I enjoy that type of thing but frankly would prefer to read a book rather than take his cock out in front of a load of strangers.

In my head my guy is older than me, maybe ten years older, although that would make him almost sixty and that sounds very old to me. But in my head he’s older and much wiser than me and thinks of me as fun and a bit fluffy. I’m the light to his dark, not that he’s gloomy or pessimistic. No, he’s funny and kind, warm and generous and we can talk for hours.

My guy is full of surprises. He has enough money to turn up with a present from time to time or to book a trip away when I am least expecting it. In my head I imagine someone like Paul Arden, an ex-advertising man (from back in the day when advertising was still art), collector and off-the-wall creative who said things like ‘It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be’ and wrote a book trying to explain life in 125 pages. If my guy were a celebrity, he would be Ed Harris.

It’s an absolute certainly that my guy will be creative and probably an entrepreneur although in my head he no longer has to work too hard. I’ve never been good with the 9-5 types. It’s hard for me to know what to say to a salaryman. I’m convinced that self-employed people must have a different brain chemistry to those people who have a pay cheque put into their account every month on the same day.

And he’s passionate. My guy is definitely passionate. When we make love it’s all consuming and deep. My guy would almost certainly take me over the kitchen worktop without a word with his big cock (obviously), thrust his fingers inside me and make me gush, kiss me tenderly.

At the moment my guy has no nationality. I like to think he might be English but based on my track record in the UK, it’s highly probable he might be from somewhere else. I love English men because they’re kinky as hell but why do they have to drink so much?

And he would dress well. My guy would have taste. A sharply tailored suit would be his usual attire just because he liked looking smart. I once had a boyfriend who always wore the same blue/white pin stripe suit and white shirt and I liked that about him.  I imagine my guy as tall and slim and with grey closely cropped hair. Yesterday I went to Rio’s for a few hours and there was such a man sitting in the jacuzzi opposite me. We talked in the steam room and he had the most beautiful voice. I thought he could have been an actor and he said he was 55. Perhaps he was my guy. In any case, we didn’t swap numbers and didn’t speak much.

It doesn’t really matter because I know for certain my guy exists. He just has to find me.

IN THE FLESH EROTIC READING SERIES
LOVE AND LUST NIGHT
February 18, 2010 at 7:30 PM - note early start time (doors at 7)
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET, NYC
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey or F/V to 2nd Avenue, http://www.happyendinglounge.com)
Between Forsyth & Eldridge. Look for the hot pink awning that says “XIE HE Health Club.”
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676
http://www.inthefleshreadingseries.com

Published authors from New York, Portland and London offer up their post-Valentine’s Day take on Love and Lust at In The Flesh Reading Series. Join Jami Attenberg (The Melting Season), Michelle Churchill (I Thought I Grew Up), Julie Klausner (I Don’t Care About Your Band), Michael Musto (Village Voice gossip columnist, author, Fork on the Left, Knife in the Back), Suzanne Portnoy (The Not So Invisible Woman), Kevin Sampsell (A Common Pornography: A Memoir), Rakesh Satyal (Blue Boy) and Justin Taylor (Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever). Hosted by Rachel Kramer Bussel (Best Sex Writing 2010, Peep Show). Authors’ books will be available for sale. Cupcakes by Baked by Melissa will be served.

In the Flesh is a monthly reading series hosted at the appropriately named Happy Ending Lounge, and features the country’s best erotic writers sharing stories to get you hot and bothered, hosted and curated by acclaimed erotic writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. The series was named Best Reading Series by New York Press in 2009. From erotic poetry to down and dirty smut, these authors get naked on the page and will make you lust after them and their words. Since its debut in October 2005, In the Flesh has featured such authors as Laura Antoniou, Mo Beasley, Susie Bright, Lily Burana, Jessica Cutler, Mike Daisey, Stephen Elliott, Valerie Frankel, Polly Frost, Gael Greene, Andy Horwitz, Debra Hyde, Maxim Jakubowski, Emily Scarlet Kramer of CAKE, Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Edith Layton, Logan Levkoff, Suzanne Portnoy, Sofia Quintero, M.J. Rose, Lauren Sanders, Danyel Smith, Grant Stoddard, Cecilia Tan, Carol Taylor, Dana Vachon, Veronica Vera, Susan Wright, Zane and many others. The series has gotten press attention from the New York Times’s UrbanEye, Escape (Hong Kong), Flavorpill, The L Magazine, New York Magazine, New York Observer, Philadelphia City Paper, Time Out New York, Flavorwire, Gothamist, Jezebel.com, Nerve.com and Wonkette, and has been praised by Dr. Ruth.

Jami Attenberg is the author of the short story collection, Instant Love, and two novels, The Kept Man, and The Melting Season, which is forthcoming from Riverhead Books in January 2010. She has contributed to a number of publications, including The New York Times, New York, Print, Salon, and Nylon, as well as the anthologies Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone and Love is a Four-Letter Word: True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships, and Broken Hearts. jamiattenberg.com

Rachel Kramer Bussel is an author, editor, blogger and reading series host. She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations and a former sex columnist for The Village Voice. She’s edited numerous anthologies, two of which (Up All Night and Glamour Girls) have been Lambda Literary Award finalists, most recently The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories, Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories, Best Sex Writing 2009, Tasting Him, Tasting Her, and Spanked. Her writing been published in publications such as Clean Sheets, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Beast, Fresh Yarn, Huffington Post, Mediabistro, Newsday, New York Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Tango, The Village Voice, and Time Out New York, and in over 100 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006. She has hosted In The Flesh since October 2005.
www.rachelkramerbussel.com

photo by Hilary McHone

Michelle Churchill is an author, blogger and real estate maven. Her first book, a memoir entitled I Thought I Grew Up, was released in May 2009. On Barnes & Noble’s web site Rising Star List and consistently in the Top 500 in Women’s Biography, I Thought I Grew Up is an Award-Winning Finalist in the National Best Books 2009 Awards. She is a single woman living, loving and working in New York City. Michelle is working on her first novel.
michellechurchill.com

Julie Klausner is a comedy writer and performer whose first book, I Don’t Care About Your Band, from Gotham Books, will be released in February of 2010. She’s appeared in many shows at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, and on VH1’s Best Week Ever, where she was also a staff writer. She has written for Saturday Night Live’s “TV Funhouse” and The Big Gay Sketch Show, and her prose has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, McSweeney’s, Salon, Videogum, and others.
julieklausner.com

Michael Musto writes the popular “La Dolce Musto” column in The Village Voice as well as the breathless blog “La Daily Musto” on villagevoice.com. He’s a regular commentator on shows like Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Theater Talk, and is celebrating the release of his fourth book, a collection with some new essays called Fork on the Left, Knife in the Back.

photo by Ivylise Simones

Suzanne Portnoy is a London based erotic memoirist and the author of The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker and The Not So Invisible Woman. Her stories have been published in Ultimate Decadence (XCite Books), Scarlet Magazine and Desire. An entertainment publicist for fifteen years, when not writing about her own sex life, she can usually be found accompanying celebrities to store openings or taking one of her two teenage boys to football practise. She once had a portfolio of lovers but recently has settled down with one.
suzanneportnoy.com

Kevin Sampsell has been the publisher of Future Tense Books since 1990. His fiction has been published widely in literary journals like LIT, McSweeney’s and Opium, and on popular sites like Nerve and Failbetter. His non-fiction essays and reviews have appeared in various newspapers and magazines. His books include Beautiful Blemish and Creamy Bullets as well as his latest work, A Common Pornography: A Memoir (HarperPerennial). He works as Small Press Champion (his actual title) for Powell’s Books. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

photo by Barb Klansnic

Rakesh Satyal is the author of the novel Blue Boy, a gender-bending comedy about a young Indian American boy’s fascination with the Hindu god Krishna. He is an editor at HarperCollins, where he works with such authors as Paulo Coelho, Clive Barker, Armistead Maupin, and Paul Rudnick. A member of the planning committee for the annual PEN World Voices Festival, he sings a popular cabaret show in the city. He lives in Brooklyn.
rakeshsatyal.com

Justin Taylor is 26 years old. He is the author of Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever (HarperPerennial). His fiction and nonfiction has been published by n+1, The Nation, The Believer, Brooklyn Rail, Slate, NPR, Time Out New York, and Best American Essays 2007, among many other journals, magazines and websites. In 2007 he edited acclaimed short fiction anthology The Apocalypse Reader, compiling new and selected stories about the end of the world; and guest-edited an issue of McSweeney’s (#24), for which he produced “Come Back, Donald Barthelme,” a symposium on the author’s life and work. He co-edits The Agriculture Reader and is a regular contributor to HTMLGiant: The Internet Literature Magazine Blog of the Future. He teaches at Rutgers and is at work on his first novel.

Most of my friends have been talking about this article from yesterday’s Sunday Times about a woman who went on 125 dates before she met ‘the one.’ If you haven’t read it, it’s very brief and not very enlightening but makes some valid points about all the stuff we gals have to do these days to stay one step ahead of the hot twenty-somethings who are trying to bag Mr. Middle-Aged, Divorced and Still Has Money Guy.

In my opinion, and as the writer points out, at 45+ it’s all a numbers game. Boring and tedious as it may be, you have to kiss a hell of a lot of frogs before you meet a prince. Not just a pond full but a lake full of frogs. Unlike the days of my youth, internet dating is perhaps the only place to meet all the frogs. I haven’t been to a dinner party since about 1995 and none of my friends know any single men as they are all single too. Middle-aged guys that hang out in bars are, frankly, alcoholics and best avoided. I suppose there might be a few down at the local gym but as I haven’t entered that cathedral of sweat for some time, I wouldn’t really know.

As well as hitting the numbers (and we’re talking 3 dates a week minimum), one must keep up in the looks department. This means lots and lots of grooming. Anyone who has been following this blog knows that it used to take me 2 days before I was ready to go out on a Friday night. That’s two days of shaving, nail polishing, hair setting and teasing, clothes choosing and all to ensure that I felt absolutely fabulous when I finally left my house. Mind you, it takes me 3 hours to get ready to go to work in the morning so perhaps I’m just particularly fastidious when it comes to my looks.

On the other hand, one can just forget the whole damn thing, find a few f*** buddies, and perhaps one of them might eventually turn into something special. Well, it’s a thought now, isn’t it?