divorce

Ring Toss: Links for 2007-03-28

by Viviane on 03/28/2007

in roundup, sex

London author and sex blogger Suzanne Portnoy is organizing a local Perverts’ Saloon so if you’re a sex blogger, a sex journo, an erotic writer, a sex educator or working in the adult area, get in touch with her. I need an excuse to come to London this Fall!

5 Way to Increase Your Blog Traffic (ProBlogger)

Changing your gender doesn’t nullify an agreement to receive alimony.

Paris Hilton’s new boobs.

Introducing Techsmart with Ron Jeremy (teaser clip. Oy).

NYU allows gay fraternity house.

If you’re going to take naked pics of yourself, FFS, don’t do it in front of the children.

Be still my heart – there is a Buffy Sing-A-Long!

She ain’t standing by her man: Wynonna Judd files for divorce after her husband is arrested for pedophilila.

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5 Questions about Blogging: Jefferson

by Viviane on 03/27/2007

in bloggers, sex blogs, sexbloggers

sweet 5 Questions about Blogging: Jefferson
The introductory post for this series.

Parent, pervert, Carnival contributor and my dear friend Jefferson blogs at One Life Take Two.

When did you start blogging?
My blog began in November 2004 with an email to my friend Audacia Ray. I was new to dating after the end of my marriage, and she provided a sympathetic ear as I sorted out my return to sex after fifteen years of heterosexual monogamy that was all but abstinent.

When I wrote to tell Audacia about one particularly exhilarating date, she replied that I needed to post these stories in a blog. I didn’t know about blogs, as I only read hers. She came to my place and we drank bourbon as she helped me to launch One Life, Take Two. My email to her became my first post.

What do you like about blogging?
Initially, I thought that my blog would provide an outlet for writing about my experiences while allowing me to try my hand at erotica, a new genre for me as a writer. I assumed my readership would be small and anonymous, as I intended to share my blog with few people I knew.

In a short time, I began to receive correspondence from readers. I found that many related to my experiences with divorce, dating, parenting and/or bisexuality. I also began to understand that many people were getting off on my life and my writing.

With that, my interest in blogging expanded. I was satisfied that it offered an easy opportunity to publish. I was newly excited that this writing provided me not only with readers, but also with community.

Plus, it gets me laid like crazy. Seriously, this shit is bananas.

Is blogging a major or minor way of connecting to other people for you?
One Life, Take Two has provided me with many friends, both online and offline. It has also become a factor in my sexuality, as I have sex with my readers. The blog has opened avenues for experiences that were new to me, particularly within BDSM.

Now, most people who are involved in my sex life read my blog. Many met me through it. This allows a degree of transparency that would otherwise have been inconceivable, feeding my strong fetish for honesty.

Perhaps most significantly, my blog has introduced me to people I have come to love.

Where’s your blog? Do you use a free hosted service (Blogger, WordPress, Livejournal, AOL, Google Pages, etc.) or do you have your own domain and web server?
My blog is at Blogger, which has served me well.

What do you do to promote your blog or your writing (using tags in your post, blog roll, del.icio.us, Digg, Pingoat)?
Over time, my blog has become part of an informal network of interconnected sex blogs. As many of my friends and lovers are also bloggers, I often find myself written about elsewhere. Of course, we exchange links.

My esteemed webmistress Viviane advises me in the use of tags, feeds, pings and other devices to drive traffic my way. Many readers first discover me through the Sex Blog Roundup I compile each weekend for Fleshbot.

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In the Flesh Reading series, March 21st

by Viviane on 02/28/2007

in rachelkramerbussel

intheflesh In the Flesh Reading series, March 21stWEDNESDAY, MARCH 21 at 8 PM
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET, NYC
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey, http://www.happyendinglounge.com)
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676

This month, join Cheri Crystal (Erotic Interludes 3, 4, 5), Gwendolyn Joyc Mintz (Down & Dirty 2, Velvet Heat), Joel A. Nichols (Dorm Porn 2, Travelrotica 2), Carol Novack (Mad Hatters’ Review), memoirist Suzanne Portnoy (The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker), who’s making an appearance all the way from London, and Claire Thompson (Golden Boy, Slave Castle), along with host erotica writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel (He’s on Top, She’s on Top, Caught Looking) for hot stories from across the sexual spectrum. Free candy and mini cupcakes will be served and authors’ books will be available for sale.

In the Flesh is a monthly reading series hosted at the appropriately named Happy Ending Lounge, and features the city’s best erotic writers sharing stories to get you hot and bothered, hosted and curated by acclaimed erotic writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. 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, Andy Mo Beasley, Lily Burana, Jessica Cutler, Stephen Elliott, Polly Frost, Gael Greene, Andy Horwitz, Debra Hyde, Maxim Jakubowski, Emily Scarlet Kramer of CAKE, Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Edith Layton, Sofia Quintero, M.J. Rose, Lauren Sanders, Danyel Smith, Grant Stoddard, Cecilia Tan, Carol Taylor, Susan Wright, and many others. The series has gotten press attention from Escape (Hong Kong), Flavorpill, The L Magazine, New York magazine, Philadelphia City Paper, Gothamist, Nerve.com and Wonkette and has been recommended by Dr. Ruth. This is not Amanda Stern’s Happy Ending Reading Series.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations, conducts interviews for Gothamist.com and Mediabistro.com, and wrote the popular Lusty Lady column for The Village Voice. Her erotic stories have been published in over 80 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006, and she’s edited 13 erotica anthologies, most recently Caught Looking: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists and Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 2. Rachel has also written for AVN, Bust, Cosmo UK, Metro, New York Post, Punk Planet, Time Out New York and Velvetpark.

Cheri Crystal enjoys reading, writing, reviewing, eating, working out, and having sex—not necessarily in that order. Since appearing in Erotic Interludes 3: Lessons in Love, Cheri has erotica in other Bold Strokes Books, Cleis Press, and Alyson anthologies. When she’s not busy raising a family or working in health care, Cheri is putting the finishing touches on her first novel, A Closet in Syosset.

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz is a fiction writer and poet. Her work has appeared in various online and print journals as well as several anthologies. Though new to the erotic genre, Mintz has had work published in the online journal Clean Sheets as well as Down & Dirty 2 and Velvet Heat from Pretty Things Press. A very short work received an honorable mention in a contest at Katy Terrega’s Sex-writers.com.

Joel A. Nichols was born and raised in Vermont. This year stories of his will appear in Dorm Porn 2, Travelrotica 2, Second Skin, Fast Balls, Distant Horizons: Queer Science Fiction (Haworth Positronic), C is for Co-ed (Cleis), Got A Minute (Cleis), and Sex by the Book: Gay Men’s Tales of Lit and Lust (Green Candy Press), and have appeared in Alyson’s Full Body Contact, Just the Sex, Ultimate Undies, and Sexiest Soles. An excerpt from his novel in progress won second place in the Brown Foundation Short Fiction Prize 2005. In 2002, he was a Fulbright Fellow in Berlin. Joel studied German at Wesleyan University and has a Creative Writing M.A. from Temple University. He lives in Philadelphia with his boyfriend and works for an internet porn company.

Carol Novack‘s writings can & will be found in many publications, including The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets, American Letters & Commentary, Del Sol Review, Diagram, First Intensity, 5_Trope, La Petite Zine, LIT, & Notre Dame Review. She publishes the e-journal Mad Hatters’ Review.

Suzanne Portnoy has been an entertainment publicist for twelve years. Divorced and with two children, aged 13 and 15, she is formerly from New York and now lives in London. Attractive and finally a size 8 after twenty years of yo-yo dieting, she is happily single and spends her spare time writing, having sex and acting as a one-woman car pool service. Her first book, The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker: An Erotic Memoir, is published by Virgin Books.

Claire Thompson has written erotic fiction since 1995. Much of her work focuses on the romance of erotic submission, as well as the darker exploration of BDSM. Her most recent work focuses on the male/male romance and erotic submission. Claire has published numerous novels and short stories, both in print and ebook format. Says a reviewer for eCataRomance, “…Claire Thompson draws a compelling, graphic picture of a loving dominant/submissive relationship. Erotic and confronting, yet tender and intimate.” Visit her website for a listing of all Claire’s novels, upcoming releases, and more information.

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Nude York City: A Guide to the City’s Bodies of Work (Gridskipper)

by Viviane on 02/28/2007

in naked, nude, nyc

The human body is a wondrous strange thing. That and narcissism go along way in explaining to totality of Western Art. And though we have no desire to sleep with chubby middle-aged women or old men, it is true, their bodies are fun to look at. They remind us that someday we too will be dribble castles of adiposal tissue, our youth transformed into a wrinkle in time, or rather many many wrinkles. Here in New York, ample chances abound to surreptitiously observe the human form and some of those chances aren’t necessarily pervy. What follows is Gridskipper’s Expert List of where to appreciate the human form divorced (mostly) from its essential sexual function.

(more…)

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Gay-Gov Divorce Shocker (NY Post)

by Viviane on 02/03/2007

in divorce, gay, jimmcgreevey, marriage

By JEANE MacINTOSH and DAREH GREGORIAN

February 3, 2007 — The estranged wife of former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey says she won’t make any divorce deals with her homosexual hubby until they resolve their “profound differences about what our daughter should be exposed to.”

McGreevey filed for divorce from Dina Matos McGreevey yesterday – just two weeks after it was announced she was writing a tell-all book about her seven-year marriage.” (more…)

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51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse (NYT)

by Viviane on 01/16/2007

in sex

By SAM ROBERTS

For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.

In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.

Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.

Several factors are driving the statistical shift. At one end of the age spectrum, women are marrying later or living with unmarried partners more often and for longer periods. At the other end, women are living longer as widows and, after a divorce, are more likely than men to delay remarriage, sometimes delighting in their newfound freedom. (more…)

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Law: Marriage Void, but Gay Couple’s Separation Agreement Ruled Valid (New York Law Journal)

by Viviane on 01/08/2007

in sex

By Mark Fass

Although the Massachusetts marriage of two New York men is void under the laws of both states, the couple’s separation agreement is legally enforceable, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge has found.

Justice Phyllis Gangel-Jacob dismissed plaintiff David Gonzalez’s divorce action last week, finding his February 2005 marriage to Steven Green “null and void.”

The judge nonetheless declared the couple’s separation agreement valid, finding that Hernandez v. Robles, the New York Court of Appeals’ recent decision barring same-sex marriage, does not invalidate established principles of contract law.

“New York courts have long accepted the concept that an express agreement between unmarried persons living together . . . is as enforceable as though they were not living together,” Justice Gangel-Jacob held in Gonzalez v. Green, 300673/06, quoting the 1980 decision Morone v. Morone, 50 NY2d 481. “The theory . . . is that while cohabitation without marriage does not give rise to the property and financial rights which normally attend the marital relation, neither does cohabitation disable the parties from making an agreement within the normal rules of contract law.”

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Page Six: Dita Dumps Messed Up Manson

by Jessica Gold Haralson on 01/05/2007

in dita von teese

DitaSilverBack3 Page Six: Dita Dumps Messed Up Manson

From the New York Post:

January 5, 2007 — SHOCK-rocker Marilyn Manson is about to get one of the biggest shocks of his bizarre life – his stunning stripper-wife, Dita Von Teese, is dumping him after only a year of marriage.

Page Six has learned that the pasty-faced Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, will be served with divorce papers today at a Los Angeles recording studio where he’s working on his next album, with Von Teese citing “irreconcilable differences” in giving him the boot.

Sources say the raven-haired bombshell filed for the split right before Christmas, but Manson has been unaware of it because she couldn’t get in touch with him.

“He’s not been responsive,” a friend said. “She loved him so much, but he has too many demons. He can’t even communicate with her at this point. She tried to tell him she was divorcing him, but she can’t even get him on the phone. She moved out of the house and he hasn’t even noticed.”

Friends say Manson had been boozing heavily last year, much to Von Teese’s dismay, but she’d desperately tried to hold on. “She really tried to make this work,” the friend said.
A rep for the Michigan-born beauty, who is the spokesmodel for MAC makeup’s Viva Glam lipstick and lip gloss line, declined to comment.

But John Demsey, group president of Estée Lauder, told us: “We’re really sad to hear this. Dita has been the most extraordinary MAC spokeswoman. She’s the ultimate professional – a glamour girl like there used to be in the ’30s and ’40s.”

Von Teese’s pals say they are squarely on her side. “Well, at least now she won’t have to share her makeup,” one quipped.

It’s not known yet whether Von Teese plans to ask for custody of the couple’s two cats, Lily and Aleister, and dachshunds, Greta and Eva.

Manson and Von Teese, an accomplished burlesque performer and Playboy model, tied the knot in December 2005 after a seven-year courtship. The goth-style ceremony was held in an ancient castle in Tipperary, Ireland, with cult film director Alejandro Jodorowsky officiating.

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Portfolio Dating (Suzanne Portnoy; The Daily Mail)

by Viviane on 11/21/2006

in sex

‘Wouldn’t you like a proper boyfriend?’ asked my friend Jane recently. We had been discussing her love life, or lack of it, and as usual the conversation turned toward my love life.

It is, after all, more interesting because it’s more active – given that I am currently seeing six different men – even if it’s not really about love. ‘How long are you going to keep playing musical boyfriends?’ she wondered.

Monogamy is her issue, not mine. I was married, and monogamous, for ten years but eventually I realised my husband’s heart belonged, not to me or even to another woman, but to his career. After my divorce I’ve found it easier, and so much less disappointing, to have, and keep, multiple men rather than to settle down with just one.

Link

dating, relationships, romance

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Sex Baiting Prank on Craigslist Affects Hundreds (Waxy.org)

by Viviane on 09/08/2006

in craigslist

On Monday, a Seattle web developer named Jason Fortuny started his own Craigslist experiment. The goal: “Posing as a submissive woman looking for an aggressive dom, how many responses can we get in 24 hours?”

He took the text and photo from a sexually explicit ad (warning: not safe for work) in another area, reposted it to Craigslist Seattle, and waited for the responses to roll in. Like Simon’s experiment, the response was immediate. He wrote, “178 responses, with 145 photos of men in various states of undress. Responses include full e-mail addresses (both personal and business addresses), names, and in some cases IM screen names and telephone numbers.”

In a staggering move, he then published every single response, unedited and uncensored, with all photos and personal information to Encyclopedia Dramatica (kinda like Wikipedia for web fads and Internet drama). Read the responses (warning: sexually explicit material).

Instantly, commenters on the LiveJournal thread started identifying the men. Dissenters emailed the guys to let them know they were scammed. Several of them were married, which has led to what will likely be the first of many separations. One couple in an open marriage begged that their information be removed, as their religious family and friends weren’t aware of their lifestyle. Another spotted a fellow Microsoft employee, based on their e-mail address. And it’s really just the beginning, since the major search engines haven’t indexed these pages yet. After that, who knows? Divorces, firings, lawsuits, and the assorted hell that come from having your personal sex life listed as the first search result for your name.
=======================

Adults are stupid on the internet.

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Careers and Marriage: Forbes.com style

by Viviane on 08/23/2006

in sex

Forbes.com writer Michael Noer published a piece – Don’t Marry Career Women:

How do women, careers and marrage mix? Not well, say social scientists.

Guys: A word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don’t marry a woman with a career.

Uproar ensues (Thanks, Susan). The article gets yanked, then mirrored on Livejournal.

Then reposted with a counterpoint opinion by Elizabeth Corcoran – Don’t Marry A Lazy Man:

Studies aside, modern marriage is a two way street. Men should own up to their responsibilities, too.

Girlfriends: A word of advice. Ask your man the following question: When was the last time you learned something useful, either at home or work?

If the last new skill your guy learned was how to tie his shoes in the second grade, dump him. If he can pick up new ideas faster than your puppy, you’ve got a winner.

(Thanks, AlanEsq.)

Weigh in here.

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Proof of Viagra Use Rebuts Wife’s Claim of Abandonment (NY Law Journal)

by Viviane on 05/17/2006

in sex

Mark Fass
New York Law Journal
05-15-2006

In New York, a state that requires aspiring divorcees to prove grounds — and that also provides ample economic incentive for their spouses to contest those grounds — defendants in divorce proceedings can find themselves needing to establish that they have not constructively abandoned their partners by denying them sex for over a year.

But how?

For one Westchester, N.Y., man, the proof was in the pill box: G.W. elicited as evidence of his and his wife C.W.’s lovemaking his physician’s testimony that he had taken Viagra and, purportedly, that it had worked.

Mr. W. also offered up as proof his 10-pill prescription for the erectile-dysfunction medication, which had only eight pills remaining.

“While the parties’ conflicting testimony creates a credibility issue to be resolved by this Court, there is other evidence to which the Court may turn,” Westchester Supreme Court Justice William J. Giacomo ruled in C.W. v. G.W., 01112/05.

(more…)

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Irritating Neologism: ‘Brokeback Marriages’

by Viviane on 03/08/2006

in sex

Many Couples Must Negotiate Terms of ‘Brokeback’ Marriages (NYT):

One hour into “Brokeback Mountain,” Amy Jo Remmele began to cry, and not just for the woman on-screen, standing in a doorway in Riverton, Wyo., watching her husband embrace a man.

“When I saw that look in her eyes, I thought, ‘Oh, yeah.’ Even though I never saw my husband with another man, I knew exactly how that woman would have felt,” said Mrs. Remmele, a respiratory therapist in rural Minnesota.

On June 1, 2000, Mrs. Remmele, then 31, discovered her husband’s profile on the Web site gay.com. The couple stayed up all that night weeping and talking. Soon afterward, 10 days before she gave birth to her second child, Mrs. Remmele’s husband went off to spend a couple of nights with his new boyfriend. “I tried to talk him out of it, and he left anyway,” Mrs. Remmele said. “I was devastated.” Three months later the couple divorced.

Mrs. Remmele — now married to a farmer who raises cattle, corn and soybeans — is one of an estimated 1.7 million to 3.4 million American women who once were or are now married to men who have sex with men.

(more…)

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A Bed of Roses (Washington Post)

by Viviane on 02/12/2006

in sex

He was a combat soldier in Iraq. She was a divorced mom in California. They flirted, fell in love, committed . . . and then they met in the flesh

Melinda Jackson is on a quest for silk rose petals. She is sure the Wal-Mart in Hinesville, Ga., will carry them, because the one near her home in Santa Clarita, Calif., does — big bags that look like the real thing and are located near the scrapbooking supplies. She does a few slow turns through the aisles with her shopping cart. “They’ve got to be here somewhere,” she says.

The store is crowded with exhausted mothers in sweat suits and sneakers. Teenagers with poorly dyed hair gossip and tease each other by the cash registers, and occasionally a soldier in desert camouflage can be seen fishing through a bin of discount DVDs or awkwardly cradling a screaming baby.

“There’s camouflage everywhere!” Melinda whispers. Men in uniform are still a novelty to her. There simply aren’t that many of them where she lives, in a nondescript suburb hemmed in by mountains and freeways north of Los Angeles. But judging by the sidelong glances she’s getting here outside the gates of Fort Stewart, the largest Army installation east of the Mississippi River, she’s the oddity — a sportily dressed Californian with long strawberry-blond hair and a newly acquired Mystic Tan. Her flip-flops, tight Levis and flash of belly-button ring belie the fact that she’s a 40-year-old mother of two. She’s too sparkly, too sexy to truly belong in this small, swampy Army-centric town.

But the U.S. Army is the only reason Melinda is here, having taken two weeks off from her relatively new job as a project manager for a marketing firm and entrusted the care of her two daughters to a family friend and her former mother-in-law. It’s why, months ago, she reserved her room at the Hinesville Holiday Inn Express. (A wise move — the hotel is now sold out.) And it’s why she’s so determined to locate that $5 bag of rose petals — the ones that would look just perfect sprinkled on the king-size bed of her hotel room.

Tomorrow, Melinda’s boyfriend, Army medic Cpl. Joel Buchannan, will likely return from his third tour of duty on the front lines of Iraq. Like all the other girlfriends who have flown into town to meet their significants, Melinda is determined that everything will be perfect on this first night back on American soil. But she, perhaps, is taking a bigger gamble than most.

She and Joel, also from Southern California, have been dating for nine months. They’ve exchanged secrets and sexual histories, talked marriage, gotten her daughters and his 9-year-old son acquainted with the idea that there’s an important new grown-up around. When Joel needed his Jeep registration and civvies for Georgia, Melinda got the key to his storage space and went looking. She retrieved Joel’s Christmas presents from one of his sisters. Lately, his mother and grandmother have been calling her from California for updates on his return.

But there’s one thing the couple hasn’t done yet: met in person. Their whole relationship has taken place on the phone and online, with Melinda in California and Joel in Iraq, some 8,000 miles away.

(more…)

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Army Teaches Troops How to Pick a Spouse (Yahoo/AP)

by Viviane on 02/08/2006

in sex

They are the Pentagon’s new “rules of engagement” — the diamond ring kind. U.S. Army chaplains are trying to teach troops how to pick the right spouse, through a program called “How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk.”

The matchmaking advice comes as military family life is being stressed by two tough wars. Defense Department records show more than 56,000 in the Army — active, National Guard and Reserve — have divorced since the campaign in Afghanistan started in 2001.

Officials partly blame long and repeated deployments which started after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and stretched the service thin.

Troops also are coming home with life-altering injuries.

Many come back better people, others worse-off — but either way, very changed from who they were when they wed.

“Being in the military certainly raises the stakes when you choose a mate,” said Lt. Col. Peter Frederich, head of family issues in the Pentagon’s chaplain office.

The “no jerks” program is also called “P.I.C.K. a Partner,” for Premarital Interpersonal Choices and Knowledge.

It advises the marriage-bound to study a partner’s F.A.C.E.S. — family background, attitudes, compatibility, experiences in previous relationships and skills they’d bring to the union.

It teaches the lovestruck to pace themselves with a R.A.M. chart — the Relationship Attachment Model — which basically says don’t let your sexual involvement exceed your level of commitment or level of knowledge about the other person.
(more…)

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