1
Romance and romantic are different. Death, itself, can be romantic. Nature and a destructive snowstorm can be romantic. Lovers in love but giving that up can also be romantic. There is something aesthetically romantic in beauty itself. And beauty can even be pain. Therefore, pain is romantic, especially when the sufferer does so for love.R.B. OBrien
2
I was always the girl growing up who just wasn’t quite like the rest of them. I liked working hard. I liked contorting my body until I could feel the ache inside my bones, until I could feel the pain in my teeth. I liked to wear lipstick and nothing else and found myself fascinated with the shape of my lips and the different colors I could make them. I ate too little. Slept too much. Masturbated far too often and at far too young an age. I enjoyed the feeling of being naked alone behind closed doors, exploring my deepest secrets within my imagination, as I put my hand over the rapid pace of my heart to feel how nervous it made me. I blushed at the faintest mention of my name and almost perished when complimented. I loved to find the answers behind someone’s eyes. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of when someone REALLY looks at you. And I read. Every chance I got. .R.B. OBrien
3
Yesterday morning, I awoke to a brilliant rainbow. At first, I marveled at the sky’s pink hues, and I thought how soothing it was. I haven’t had that feeling in a long time, that feeling of being at peace with myself or my life. I got out of bed to stand to pull the obligatory curtain further, the color peeking through the leaves of the oaks outside my window. Where I had been seeing grey for quite some time shone now pink. The color is hard to describe accurately. It was pink; but it bordered on a light red. It told me to come look at it.R.B. OBrien
4
Don’t tell me my writing is misogynistic or anti-feminist just because I or my heroines like to be controlled in the bedroom and find great satisfaction and freedom with it. That is the most anti-feminist statement I have ever heard. Feminism is all about letting women be who THEY want to be. Not how YOU want them to be.. I am both a feminist AND a submissive in my sexual fantasies and reality. You are the one who is anti-feminist who tells me I can’t be.R.B. OBrien
5
I don’t believe in a god, not in the traditional sense anyway. I guess that’s what being raised Catholic has done to me. But I do believe in energy. I do believe in right and wrong. I do believe in kindness and truth.R.B. OBrien
6
To me the erotic is the relationship that organically manifests itself between people finding and exploring love. It is the universality of accepting the darkness that makes up human nature, the darkness I find so romantic within that dance, the inevitable opening up that lets in the light of sensuality between two human beings becoming one together without the confines of preconceived morality. In short, an exploration of all the facets of both the subconscious and conscious of light and dark. “Emotional connectedness. .R.B. OBrien
7
The intimacy of the kiss, that feeling of euphoria that comes with that kiss that is right and real, that kiss that swallows you up, starting from the curl in your toes to the fine hairs on the back of your neck, that kiss that leaves you panting for air, that makes each part of your body quiver as you melt against him, that makes you suck his bottom lip into your mouth with the overwhelming urge to bite it. Sometimes hard. That. That kind of kiss. .R.B. OBrien