I’ve often had a transgressive fantasy about a sort of hybrid sub//slave/assistant. In a previous career, I had a super-hot, super competent assistant – let’s call her “Nina.” We were friends – nothing more – but she was pretty much the perfect assistant. She anticipated my needs, and fulfilled them, better than I could have hoped. I’ve spent the rest of my professional (and personal, and sexual) life looking for someone who could replicate her preternatural ability to please me. My fantasy is Nina, but with sex.
My voice memo recording device and practices have been exponentially multiplying the volume of text I’m producing, the volume of draft posts and essays and communications that are desperately in need of editing and refinement. As a result, I’ve found myself even hungrier than usual for someone to occupy that role. There was a moment when I thought Cee might be interested in and or capable of being such an amanuensis. She wasn’t, though. Maybe I wasn’t paying her enough, maybe I wasn’t offering her enough steady work, or maybe it was just not exciting enough, both sexually and financially. Of course, in my perfect universe, this role would be entirely non-commercial. Sort of V from fifteen years ago, only instead of with her day job, instead working for me.
As I get older, as I contemplate what I want the next chapter or two of my life to look like, I find myself asking questions like, do I want to retire? What would I do if I were retired? Would I travel the world? Would I write? Would I do both? Or would I keep doing what I’ve been doing for the last fifteen years? I think the answer is, I would (I do) do a sort of combination of things, some of which consist of something that looks like what most people think of as work, but which has always felt to me a lot like play. If I’m honest, I think I probably wouldn’t do anything differently. I’m privileged enough that I don’t work for money. I mean, I get paid for what I do, but I rarely do anything because it pays me. I do things and I get paid. And I don’t choose to do things because I’ll get paid. Nor do I often choose not to do things because I won’t.
I recognize this is an enormous privilege in both directions. I’m grateful for it.
But back to the question with which I began. As I contemplate something like retirement or modifying my schedule in some ways, I think if I’m honest with myself, the only way in which I might choose to modify my current configuration, at least right now, is to shift the mix a little bit – to spend a little more time writing and editing, and a little less time in the more conventionally work-like set of my activities. And in both the work-like set of activities and the writing and playing activities, an amanuensis would be a terrific addition.
I should say, in the work realm, something about which I almost never talk in anything but the most oblique terms, I do currently have a quarter-time assistant. But she’s imperfect in many ways. Not that anyone isn’t. But she’s not great at the things she’s best at. And there’s a lot she’s not great at. Add to that, while I care deeply about her, and she’s quite beautiful, she is truly a daughter figure and not a sex object, let alone a sex partner. I would never dream of enlisting her in any of the sorts of adventures about which I write here. No, if I were to get myself a sexy amanuensis, it would have to be someone different. And it would probably have to be someone I kept quarantined from my real work world. That’s probably just as well. Good fences make good neighbors. Good boundaries make good people.
So instead, I’ll just keep on hunting for the right person, with the right mix of submissive energy, beauty, administrative skills, hunger, ardor, creativity, compliance. And enthusiasm.
If you know anyone who might be interested, please, put her in touch with me.