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funkybrownchick

age:

	33

location:

	New York, NY

looking for :

	A daring, attractive, honest and delicious creature

more about me:

	What can I say? I'm funky. I'm brown. And, I'm a chick.

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Tantra. Open Relationships. Granny Porn: You Had to Be There
4/17/2008 7:11:40 AM

At every conference, it's the parties -- not the sessions -- that get the most buzz. Sex 2.0 was no different. Last Saturday, it was all about the unofficial afterparty at Clermont. It's "Roadhouse meets Granny Porn" as a man named Match describes it. Not to sound trite, but you really had to be there to get the full gist of the tale about the 62-year-old stripper at the club attached to a $35 per night hotel.

ME: I don't get it.
J. BROTHERLOVE: What's not to get? It's a $35-a-night hotel.
ME: Oh, come off it. It's $35 an hour, right?
J. BROTHERLOVE: Why are you having problems understanding this?

So, I sit down to write about my experiences at Clermont, but then I read a group email to the Sex 2.0 group from Match. He created a podcast about Clermont; I'd thought I'd share it with you because it's actually quite funny. FULL DISCLOSURE: THE PODCAST INCLUDES A STORY ABOUT TITS AND ASS!!! ;)

Podcast link:
Where Roadhouse and Granny Porn Meet

I think Sex 2.0.2 is going to be in DC next year. In the meantime, if you'd like to read a few wrap ups, I highly recommend J. Brotherlove's Sex 2.0 (Was it good for you?). You can find links to others at The Sex 2.0 Back-Channel. Ah, but really, you had to be there. Speaking of being there ... If you live in New York and you're free in a couple weeks, come "Party with the Sexerati":

The books -- Tristan's Opening Up: Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships as well as Patricia and Mark's Essence of Tantric Sexuality and Tantra for Erotic Empowerment: The Key to Enriching Your Sexual Life are available online and at bookstores near you. Also, in case you missed it, feel free to read "Does Tristan Taormino Want Me to Have Anal Sex with My Dates?" on Hooksexup. I recently caught up with Patricia and Mark on the streets of Manhattan to give you the low down on tantra; watch the video on YouTube. [Pssst! Low quality videos ending soon. Thanks to the lovely folks at Current, I’ve got a brand new Flipcam.]

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Do You Know the Way to Sex 2.0?
4/16/2008 8:45:05 AM

Four days ago. It’s 4:42am. Fuck. I overslept. I’m supposed to meet me friend Rachel at the airport. If I don’t get there by 5:30am, the plane leaves without me. And of course I haven’t packed. I rarely do before a flight. So, now I’m running around the apartment, picking up shit and throwing it into a bag. Passport. Cash. Debit card. Random articles of clothing and, of course, heels. I can live without everything else, if needed.

I arrive at the airport at 5:16 a.m. wearing a black pants and a dark top loungewear set. “What the fuck is loungewear?” you might ask. Pajamas. I wake up so late that I'm actually going to the airport in loungewear. Twittering happens.

Rachel arrives five minutes later at 5:21 a.m. with beads of water on her warm skin and her dark hair dripping wet. I know that she lost her driver’s license and couldn’t find her passport.

I change on the plane. We’re a couple of high rollers, so we fly Airtran. Sitting cramped coach class with our knees practically squished between our boobs, we catch up on celebrity gossip -- Beyonce and Jay-Z's wedding in People and Us Weekly as well as the status of Britney's mental health in Star -- before drifting off to sleep in the dreamworld.

We descend from the clouds to the pavement in Atlanta when our plane lands without incident. Aisles crowd with bodies and luggage. We squeeze through and make our way to ground transport.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Rachel asks me.

“Um, no,” I confess. “I know the place is called 1763, but I don’t remember the address.” We’re both crazy orderly professionally , so we give ourselves permission to be lax socially.

"Text someone," Rachel suggests. "Viviane, maybe? She’s really organized ..."

Ever the neurotic, I text three people instead of one. Viviane, Amber and Elizabeth. Viviane texts the address. Elizabeth, who is sitting next to her, shoots us a message to say that Viviane is sending a text. Amber sends a note that reminds us that additional directions are online. Smart but without smartphones, Rachel and I don’t have access the internet. But, it’s okay. We’re in a taxi now.

“Where are you going?” the friendly African cab driver asks in a sexy, lilted accent as he pulls away from the curb and starts the meter.

Rachel looks at me. I look at her. In unison, we sing the address of the 10,000 square foot, fully equipped dungeon, “1763 Montreal Circle.”

“Where is that?” he asks.

He doesn’t know where he’s going? We’re stunned. New Yorkers, we automatically assume that every person seated in the driver’s seat of a yellow car with a white box on top should know how to get from Point A to Point Whatever.

“Call Viviane?” Rachel suggests again.

I punch 10 secret numbers into my magenta-colored cell phone, and I’m relieved to hear Viviane’s sweet voice moments later. “Um,” I start. “We don’t know where we’re going, and the cabbie’s lost. How do we get to 1763?”

“Oh dear,” Viviane says. It’s not exhaustion, the tone that reverberates in my ear. She sounds amazed, stupefied. It’s as if her voice suggests, “What the hell would you people do if I didn’t answer the phone?! How do you get through life???” She’d be right to wonder. Rachel and I boarded a plane and traveled 1209 kilometers / 751 miles south without any real plans for managing ourselves once we arrived at our destination.

Before hanging up the phone, Viviane tells us that a guy named Rusty will call us back to give us directions. My cell doesn’t ring again, and I receive neither voicemail nor text message.

Now I’m pissed. I remind myself that it's not anyone's responsibility to get us there but our own; we're the ones who forgot to print out and bring the directions. I’m impatient, and I can be a hothead so it eats at me for a sec. Rachel and I are giving separate presentations in less than 20 minutes. Neither of us has any clue how to get to the venue. I don’t have a lot of extra cash to spare, and the cab fare is inching closer to three digits. If this was New York, I’d pull a Naomi Campbell and go all maniacal, foul-mouthed crazy lady on the taxi cab driver and 12% of Atlanta’s population just for the hell of it. But, I’m not in New York. This is my “time away” — even if it is work (writing) related. So, I sit back, relax and giggle at the absurdity of it all. Rachel starts giggling, too.

Sincere, the cabbie picks up his cell, calls and unknown person and speaks an unfamiliar language. “Gibberish? Gibberish gibberish 1763 gibberish gibberish Montreal Circle?”

Seems like the cabbie’s on the right track now. But, just in case, we call in reinforcements. Click. Click. Beep. “Hi dad,” Rachel says into her handheld. “Are you online?”

[Given that I didn’t hear his end of the conversation, I’ll just make his part up.]

Rachel: Can you look up Sex 2.0?
Pops: WTF, Rach?!?!
Rachel: Yeah, it’s www.sex20con.com
Pops: What in the deep fried hell?!?!
Rachel: No, no, don’t read that part. We just need to know how to get there. It should be at the top of the page.
Pops: Damn, y’all are disorganized travelers. Here are the directions.
Rachel: Thanks, daddy!

More later today or tomorrow. I wanna tell you guys all about my experience with the dancers and the $35/night hotel at Clermont. Just thought I'd give you a bit of background / prep info first. One, because you deserve it; I wanna share the background info for my previous post. And, two, because, you know, I care about Mintzworks. :)

Virtual pats on the head ensue before saying, "There, there child." ;) While others emailed me at [email protected] to thank me for what they got -- links and info about sex blogs -- I noticed Mintz only complained that the info wasn't properly spoon-fed and there aren't any specific blow-by-blow details about my sex life. :) Hmmm ... Why do I feel like I'm in grade school again and somebody's pulling my hair? ;)

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Liveblogging at Sex 2.0 Conference
4/12/2008 11:21:04 AM

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New York City 3, Me 0. Game over? Hardly.
4/4/2008 9:19:12 AM

Well, kiddies, I just lost my job. This post isn't going to a bitchfest. No whining. No cussing. No pointing the finger. This is just a heartfelt expression of my disappointment in the current state of my daytime career life.

Here's what you know: I'm a chick with a blog. Now, here's the stuff you may not know ...

I went to school for politics, generally speaking. Loved it. Got a BS in it. Took a gap year off and lived in London working as a bartender and, later, as a peon in the fashion industry. I came back to the US and got an MA in sociology with an emphasis in comparative politics. I graduated and returned to Europe. In the Netherlands, I researched and published on immigration, learned Dutch fluently and got a kickass job working as an economic policy analyst intern at the American Embassy in The Hague. I eventually came back to the US and worked in international education. For five years, I created and promoted educational programs that sent Americans to Africa, Asia, Australia, South America and Europe. In short, I had a life. A good life.

In Chicago, I found myself living in a beautiful 2-bedroom apartment with a 15-foot garden leading up to the front door. I managed a humanities, arts & sciences program at a top tier university. I presented at conferences, took a group to meet Sir Ridley Scott to learn about the craft of filmmaking, delivered high school students to Greece to learn about the ancient world, and brought international journalists to Chicago to speak about freedom of the press. Chicagoan Roger Ebert was an instructor for one of the film courses in my portfolio. My coworkers, staff and managers were brilliant, interesting, driven and truly inspiring people. I had the best job in the world.

But, I worked in academia and I eventually "topped out." If I wanted to grow any further in that field, I needed a Ph.D. I looked around and noticed that others with terminal degrees lived their life first. They'd taught, run for public office, started families, traveled the world and followed their passions. I was the youngest staff member at the managerial level by many many years; I hadn't "lived" my life fully yet. "What," I asked myself, "would make you happy? If you could live out your dreams, what would you do?"

I moved to New York to pursue a more creative life in a bigger city. And, I started writing a book.

My NYC start was bumpy and difficult. In my first 24 months, I had 2 different full time jobs, 2 part time gigs, and 3 different apartments. I hadn't had this much change and instability in such a short time. Ever. So, I started temping until I could figure out what was next. I worked at a newsweekly magazine. I liked them. They liked me. They hired me. I was 30-something, double degreed and multilingual. I was an assistant. Child workers in Guatemala had more prestige and made more money than I did. But, who cared? The job provided financial stability and I left the office by 5:30pm. At the time, I had loads of free time to pursue my passions.

Eventually, Hooksexup magazine hired me to write a freelance dating blog column for their site. Additionally, my personal site, FUNKYBROWNCHICK.com, appeared at New York magazine, Vibe, EbonyJet, Baltimore Sun and elsewhere. It won awards. I posted a video on YouTube that garnered more than 36,000 hits. I decided it was time to really "go for it" with my creative self. I applied for a full-time editorial job on the dot com staff of magazine. I liked them. They liked me. They hired me and paid me well. I was finally on the masthead of a national magazine. But, I made cold calls and more cold calls. My editorial job started to feel like a marketing job. By six months in, I'd written and edited 0 straight-up articles, and it was to remain that way for the foreseeable future.

So, I quit. I didn't have anything else lined up. Maybe I should have stuck it out. Maybe I'm impatient and difficult. At the same time, I'd spent 2 ½ years trying to make the artsy stuff happen; I wasn't willing to waste another six months or a year negatively impacting my creative life – the very thing I'd moved to NYC to pursue in the first place. No worries. I still liked the company. They still liked me. But the match wasn't meant to be. So, we stopped dating each other professionally.

Luckily, a recruiter at a temp agency got me a gig with an amazing, powerhouse broadcast company. It wasn't a writing job and I'd be underemployed, but at least I'd have my evenings free again. I was grateful. So, if I was going to return to temp life, I was gonna be the hardest working temp there ever was ... by day, of course. By night, I happily had fun working on my personal online, print and video stuff.

Then, came SXSW. I gave a presentation called "Adult Conversations: Sex, Intimacy and Online Relationships." In short, I had a BLAST. Eureka! I'd finally found my people. I met filmmakers, musicians, blogger, techies, vloggers and other amazing folks who were really going for things that interested them. I was in heaven. When I returned to earth in New York, it seemed life couldn't get any better. E! Entertainment called me. They invited me to a casting call for one of their shows. Publishing house editors came sniffing around to inquire about my memoir in progress. It was all so unbelievable. I was building a creative life that I enjoyed, and I was just so happy others supported it too! None of this stuff paid the rent or bills, but I didn't mind. I had a day job that generated a base income. I also had me time to figure out what my next, long term steps would be. Then, I got the call.

"Hi, this is ___," the recruiter at my temp agency said into my voicemail at 9:48am on Thursday morning. "Can you call me as soon as you get this? I spoke with ____. They love you, but I'd like to discuss the timeframe with you." Oh, fuck! When I returned the call, the recruiter confirmed what my gut already feared. My contract was ending. In roughly fourteen days, that little hill of money that allowed me to pay my rent, buy groceries, wash my clothes and go out with my friends would stop. I knew it wasn't permanent, but I had no clue when it would stop. I was just glad it didn't end immediately!

I'd be lying if I didn't admit my first thought was that I'd been dooced. Previously, I'd kept the name of my daytime employer secret; yet, I'd recently begun revealing it in private conversations with friends, acquaintances, and random people I met at networking events. Had my employer read my blog? Is that why my services were suddenly no longer needed? I didn't know, and I didn't ask. I know that I was hired to fill a gap. With new hires, the gap closed. So, that's the most likely reason why the temp gig ended. Hence, the word "temp" in temp gig. Besides, my blog is on my resume and employers know about it. If anything, it has opened more doors than it's closed.

Happy anniversary to me, I guess. In April 2005 -- exactly three years ago this month -- I moved to New York with big dreams of living more creatively. My primary money line ends in two weeks. Funny thing happened on the road to a creative job. I walked away from an embassy gig and ended up in the unemployment line. Quick. Remind me. How the fuck did I get here? I thought about taking a short hiatus from blogging. I need some time to myself. Man, I hope all of this is happening for good reason. I'm just not sure what that "reason" is yet. I'm thankful that the temp recruiter will probably be able to line up another gig when the current one ends. If not, I might make this blog even more interactive by issuing a plea that you send me words of wisdom, career advice books, tips about job openings, love, prayers, a sexy Euroboy dipped in chocolate, money, whatever. Hell, if two heads are better than one, certainly the brilliant and loyal readers at Hooksexup and the FBC can help solve this dilemma if needed.

I'll keep you posted.

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Single. Dating. Life.
4/2/2008 12:10:04 AM

I left my therapist’s office in tears the other day. Rewind. We’re sitting in her office facing each other. She’s on the brown fluffy couchy seat, and I’m on the darker one. Two matching ottomans sit cozily between us. “How’s everything going?” She asks. I steel myself and say, “Ah, you know, I’m hanging in there.”

She proceeds to grill me with follow-up questions from our previous sessions. “How’s the career stuff going?” and “What’s up with the dating life?” and “What have you done on both fronts in the past week?” I give a blow-off response like, “I’m doing the best I can.” Then, I flinch a bit and my face falls. It’s only a second, but she catches it. She makes her living by noticing things that others don’t see.

“What was that emotion a few seconds ago?” she asks me.

“Uh, I dunno. I’m just, you know,” I pause, “frustrated.”

I balance a 9-5 dayjob, two blogs, freelance writing assignments, a memoir project and my social & dating lives. I handle it by minimizing the amount of drama in any particular area so that it doesn’t affect the others.

Lately, my dating life hasn’t been going well. “You go on all these dates,” my friend Rachel once told me, “and you’ve got a lot going on for you. I don’t get why you’re still single.” I don’t get it either. And, that’s exactly what I tell my shrink.

Those of you who regularly read this blog, FUNKYBROWNCHICK.com and other stuff that I’ve posted online already know I’m the first to admit I’m a work in progress. I flirt shamelessly with boys, but I’m picky when it comes to actually dating. I pick guys based on looks, and I bail when there isn’t a deeper connection. I analyze my dates, but I freak out if a guy gets too intense with me. A nutjob, I’m perfectly imperfectly human just like everyone else.

“I’m really really reeaaallly fucking frustrated,” I tell my therapist between tears. I fill her in on the latest updates about HIM as well as a recent visit from a great male friend who’s also a kind, warm and thoughtful lover. I extend my left arm to the table beside me to quickly grab more tissues. We’re 45 minutes into our session, and I’ve rubbed my nose so much that it’s starting to chafe. But, it’s not about the guys. They’ll come, they’ll go. It’s about me.

I’m tired of facing all of life’s bullshit by myself. “Sometimes I feel like I get my ass out of bed every day,” I tell the psychoanalyst, “and face the whole fucking world on my own. I don’t have rich parents to provide financial support when times get hard, and I don’t have a boyfriend to give me the ‘there, there, sweetie, let’s talk and then kiss and hug and fuck until you feel really good’ emotional support. It seems like life is too much for just one person. Frankly, sometimes I get kind of sick of it. It pisses me off.”

She counsels me for a bit more before saying, “I’m afraid we’ll have to stop there because we’re out of time.”

Shitmotherfuckindamn, that always happens. Just when I think that I’m getting deep into the stuff I really wanna talk about, time runs out. But, I guess there's only so much you can cover in a 45 - 60 minute session. I’d like to say that I’ll spend the next few days ruminating over the State of My Dating Life, but that’s not realistic. I’ve got a lot on my plate between now and my next appointment on Monday. As much as I love the delicious company of men, I’ve got tons of other stuff to juggle too. I mean, yeah, sure, I’ll reflect on the choices I make in love and fine tune adjustments where necessary. Just like I always do. But, it’s not something that consumes me. It can’t. I’ve got, you know, the rest of my other "life stuff" to manage.

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