NEGROTICA: A Glance Behind, A Peek Ahead
Hold up, dear readers, mes amis. Before you analyze year 2011′s Negrotica stats below, please accept my gratitude for visiting this space from wherever you may be on this planet. The WordPress map may not represent the complete picture, for I now know that my art is respected and enjoyed by Canadian (especially from the provinces of Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia), French, Belgian, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian, Dutch, Australian, Russian, Mexican, Filipino, Indian, Japanese and, as of this month, South African readers as well as my, thus far, core readership from the U.S., U.K., Ireland and Germany. Know this: I don’t take any of you for granted. Never have. Never will.
For those of you who also followed excerpts of my short fiction over to Smashwords.com, thank you for finding those short stories worthy enough to add to your libraries and/or to purchase copies. In case some of you wondered whether the cessation of new e-books and blog posts translated to my absorption into a grand romance, well, your imaginations are far superior to mine. Despite what you will read on Negrotica and my sista blog in 2012, I’m practically a virgin again. The only romance I enjoyed last summer was vicarious: rereading a handful of Danielle Steel novels from my private collection. Believe me; it’s a compliment to Steel when I state that relying on her formula for romance is akin to a guy depending on specific selections from his porn DVD library.
Actually, an omen occurred last spring. No, I didn’t dream of Gregory Peck or find affinity with a devil dog — except for the weekly creamy Drake’s cake. (Hey, overindulgence in sweets generates hallucinations of getting laid.) With a demanding temp job that was running out of time, I was in a dead heat with my hard drive toward the finish line: burnout.
Neither a high-calorie dessert nor an expired computer was the real heartstopper, though. In the fall, before the first frost, my feline partner in crime took a pass on a tenth lifetime. I bawled just as hard upon her death as when my mother died and probably harder than when I first was spanked.
Kitty was seventeen. That’s a nonagenarian to you and me.
My pussy was a fuzzy Muse. If you’ve read “Unlike So Many Carousels,” “Knock-Knock” and, on my other blog, Part 1 of the novella A Blue Noël, you may have sensed the influence. Regarding the latest effort A Blue Noël, my first Christmastime mystery, I tried to write a happy little holiday story, really. However, my grief guided me to a murky emotional canvas on which love, passion and sex of a Bertoluccian intensity strive to inoculate some of us from the misery that can pervade even the cheeriest folks in heavy doses from Black Friday through New Year’s Day.
I recall my cat’s agility to give herself more of the kind of frisky action than I ever will experience in the one lifetime I’ve been given. She used to perch herself on my desk while I composed into the night, her silent meow always audible from deep within my writerly dreamlandscape. A real-world, oval-shaped reminder to get up and take a bathroom break.
The lengthy time that I was unemployed, I often didn’t eat, but I always fed my purrrty princess. OK, like any cat, she could be a royal pain in the arse. Still, her sudden illness was humbling; her rapid decline, dizzying. Her death brought my joy and creativity to a standstill. Mornings were spent slamming the alarm clock’s snooze button instead of stretching like the TV yoga goddess that used to entrance both of us. By mid-autumn I was more than bent out of shape that, for the first time in a long time, I was starkly alone.
Although for the time being, I remain computerless, I have been using — thanks to someone who is as heroic as Superman — an alternative device to resume publishing. I keep some things old-school, though, balling up those dissatisfactory sketches and rewrites and tossing the imperfect spheres for my new, senior cat to stalk and pounce. She has blessed me with her own spirit and, like my recently departed companion, teaches me daily lessons to be present. To live in the moment. To chase that ball of yarn — or notepaper — as if it’s a dream I need to sculpt into reality.
So today, I celebrate with all of you a new year. Hooray! (Hey, eyes up here, you upskirters.) I invite you to enjoy the eroticism, joy, romance and irreverence presented on this blog’s pages. After a mind-numbing or backbreaking day, mellow out reciting a poem or two. Or unwind reading a short story meant for one or two or … “group therapy.”
One penultimate reference to the WordPress statistics below — I’m trying to solve a priapic mystery. I can’t wrap my mind (not to mention other parts of me) around the big, dark penis that has overshadowed my romantic and erotic poetry, according to the numbers. Much of that lovely (said some of you), agonizing verse robbed me of sleep. I only can imagine that such an elongated, wide-girthed tool also would’ve done the same damage. Stereotypes be damned. Size matters … to many of you too, from Bombay to Belgium. From Queensland to Queens, New York.
Dick pic, you say? Talk about the Black elephant-size trunk in the room. Why, I’m referring to the mammoth member that helps illustrate the memoir titled “Black, Tan and Beige Fantasies.” In growing numbers you’re proving to me that featuring a photo of a Black man’s penis, in the proper context, was a stroke of genius. And, judging by January’s stats, you also have the balls to convince me that two of the all-nude Jeannie Pepper pix (also featured on “Black, Tan and Beige Fantasies”) might have a crack at the top slot on Negrotica.
Pictures are worth a thousand … orgasms (per reader, per year). While argyle swirls from a staggering series of shrieks and moans tha reverberate around the world, I’ll take the extra time to write. Coming sometime in 2012: “B.O.N.I.N.G.: Fleshy Tales of a Size Queen.”
Wishing you and your nether regions joy, serenity and good health …
Bisoux,
Chantale
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
