GUSTO: BitchSlap by Elizabeth F. Stewart: The gloves are off.

"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."
-- Oscar Wilde, "The Importance of Being Earnest"

The Bitch bows down to glorious Mr. Wilde. While she has never been one for keeping a diary herself, as it is far too embarrassing to stumble upon later, she does have an archival memory of vivid erotic escapades, ranging from vanilla, touching and romantic, to lurid, XXX. BitchSlap this week is a sketchbook of sorts, an airy contrast to the recent weeks' columns of weightier stuff. One is tempted to call this a mem-waaahr. But, until she saw like 15 year-olds publishing mem-waaahrs (something like "Spiritual Reflections on my Lifelong Avocation as an Antique Pokemon Collector"), the Bitch always thought "memoirs" were for grand dames like Katherine Graham or Katherine Hepburn, who were either toppling into or practically clawing their ways out of their graves. So, she will resist the urge and call this -- THAT.

As she promises readers in her column description, the Bitch "believes that sex is about everything and everything is about sex. So expect to read anything about everything in the form of scandalous personal exploits, irresponsible smut and scathing libertine screeds." Let me add to that: "personal bio bonbons"!

Wrapped in an ankle-length silver muskrat coat, shod in brown, laced knee-high boots, I felt the frigid wind whipping up my nearly naked body across the open field under the utter blackness of the country night sky in the middle of friggin' nowhere. I had driven my two-tone '69 Ford Fairlane on high beams to a small corrugated metal shack avec rusty pickup truck at the end of a long, rutted dirt road -- the dubious but correct destination I had sought. The frostbitten grass crunching underfoot, I made my way to the shack door and knocked.

"Hey, come on in," R said, opening the inevitably creaky shack door, gracefully gesturing me in, giving me a hello kiss. R was short and muscular with long, thick, straight, silky blonde surfer hair and a big blonde walrus mustache -- a very chic look at the time. "Freezing in here. I'll just throw another log in the stove." The light was low, with only a few candles and that woodstove. So I just noticed he was wearing a Marines fatigue jacket (his own, as it turned out). When he bent down to feed the stove I realized that peeking out from under the military jacket were lace-trimmed babydoll pajamas. I wasn't completely surprised, though. My best friend had gone out with him once, found out about his lingerie penchant and decided he was too odd for her. But naturally I found him intriguing, so I chatted him up, and we made a sex date.

He was not your average cross-dressing ex-Marine, no. He was also a pot-dealing hippie ballet major at my university on the G.I. bill, an accomplished stained-glass artisan, a certified SCUBA instructor and a golf pro who looked like an Allman Brother in babydoll pajamas -- hung like a stallion out to stud. Hence, off to the hinterlands in black of night for Booty Call RFD with the guy my best friend and I still call "Fancypants."

The shack seemed less rustic -- quainter, light golden, the room toasty -- as we lounged on pillows smoking copious amounts of his commercial stash and drinking crap red wine. "So, now that it's warm enough to unwrap my present, what's under this luscious fur?" R slowly removed my heavy antique silver pelts, revealing an antique peach satin and cream lace teddy, immediately giving him a lingerie woody (my evil plan). He lowered himself onto me, "Mmmm . . . so hot with your boots on, and so, so silky, oh, yeah . . . " He began to rub himself against me and moan. I could feel his prickly, unshaven face and thick mustache on my tender skin, his fluffy chiffon babydoll top crushed against my sleek teddy, his thrusting groin pounding insistently against mine -- and his huge, stiff cock straining against his panties, silk gliding against silk.

The dazzling 1962 Cinerama epic "How the West Was Won" should have been completely overwhelming to me at 10, exciting hero-worship or at least inspiring bondage games of cowboys and Indians. I was seated down close with my brother and parents in our neighborhood theater with the huge brilliant screen bathing us in colored light, the speakers assaulting us with blasting buffalo and cattle stampedes, horses' neighing, Indians' war whoops. Actually I'm guessing what went on. My only memory of the entire night was the girl next to me. She was about 12, wearing a snug-bodiced white pique sundress with red dots and red spaghetti straps, white patent flats and white ankle socks. I didn't notice her at first, but something caught the corner of my eye. I glanced sideways at her and saw that while she seemed to be completely absorbed in the movie, she slowly raised her right hand to her budding left breast and cupped it firmly for a moment, then lowered it. She would rest for a moment and then raise her left arm slowly, cup her right breast firmly for a moment, and then lower it. She did this over and over throughout the eternity of the film's duration. I didn't know why, but she and her breast cupping had me squirming dreamily in my seat, unable to look away, unable to look directly at her, like a totally fascinating eclipse you know might burn your retinas out. The little hussy.

So, at 10 I had the hots for a 12 year-old girl. Touching herself. Sitting next to me in a movie theatre. The only things missing were our little perv-ette raincoats.

My heart beats fast in the expectant, still blackness. The lights fade up slowly from a deep blue, the music cues up to Debussy's "Clair de Lune," and fog begins to creep over the stage as we cozily nestle together, squatting on our rolling floor-stools -- onstage, but hidden from the audience by the playboard, a screen with a ledge between them and us. We are the performers, but the actors are our rod puppets, which we manipulate on the set over our heads.

I am Lucy, a Victorian young lady in a long, lacy white nightgown, sleeping fitfully in bed next to high, glass French doors at a balcony. She tosses and turns, is bedeviled by the sounds of howling wolves whose shining eyes appear outside the window. While Lucy is a dummy, an otherwise inanimate object, as the puppeteer I must animate her. For the audience to feel her anguish, (or her joy, if she is joyful), I must feel that emotion and amplify it in my own heart to telegraph it physically. Feelings must grow larger in puppeteers to be proportionately life-size for a puppet, where they remain large but minimalist. Puppets have less subtlety of expression, and their gestures have to be clearly understood from a greater distance.

While poor Lucy and I languish in anguish, R is outside the window with a series of simple bat puppets in gradually larger sizes, which progressively hover and threaten, flapping and diving at the window. Lucy and I are thrashing now. R is about two feet away, all contained, frenzied-bat energy on his stool, very menacing. Suddenly Count Dracula enters the window with a fresh burst of fog and a special light. Our bodies are facing, R's lanky flank pressing hard against my fleshy thigh. Our eyes are always upward on our actors. Lucy is stone still, helpless under his power. He whirls around the bed, working his beautiful cape, coming to rest at her bedside where he strokes the length of her, staring into her eyes, taking full possession of her body. I could feel R's touch on my skin. He gives her a long, penetrating hypnotic stare and she slowly turns her head in submission, offering her neck to him. He takes her, slowly, hungrily, deeply sucks her blood (or so we fully imagine as the performers). I can feel R's breath, lips and teeth on my neck, his weight on my body. A powerful erotic charge races through us, building up during weeks of rehearsals and a week into the run of performances.

We had never before given those urges a nod or a wink, despite how obvious they were to us both, because it was weird. It wasn't the usual backstage romance drama -- hot new boymeat actor meets hot new girlmeat actor; they do it, move on to next play, do it again with next victims. We had been old platonic friends, plus I am truly bi and he is sooo gay (having had sex with only one other woman in 35 years). However, we are both big sluts. Having that in common, we hedonistically indulged ourselves, biting necks, rutting like het minks, opening the floodgates and letting the torrents of pent-up, forbidden lust rush over us in great waves, gushing and splashing, flattening label boundaries in its way.

Elizabeth F. Stewart, AKA "The Bitch of Dupont Circle" (BoDC), was lovingly given this Nomme de Perv by her mentor in the leather community, because she is a bitch, as well as a denizen of that 'hood in Washington DC. She is an art director (see www.efstewart.com) and writer (see also www.pervgrrl.org), whose fave hobbies include cracking wise, dressing up, getting off, telling others where to get off, and arranging things in an attractive fashion.