SeekerofWisdom

I just don't know.

2010-04-24T17:59:00.001-04:00

I am still here.

strengthening solution

2009-07-24T16:34:00.003-04:00

Oh, how my sex life is recently expressed by proxy. Tango, yoga...it's not actual sex, but the urge to be physical is not really repressible. Fortunately, I'm learning a few very essential things, things I probably couldn't have learned directly through D/s. It tends to pull me in, you see, and I get lost. That was the problem before. I got lost, and I didn't have a map.

Tango and yoga, though--they're giving me a map. And step one out of this awful trap is that I have to be strong. And I am.

So, so obvious. So, so hard.

Ashtanga yoga is helping me figure out strong.

I've re-learned where my breathing can take me: in the sage positions, into a pretzel. At every exhale, I can twist further, use my own arms to lever myself past where I was two days ago. I'm now achieving positions that have eluded me for all my years of practice. During the forward bends, my chin sinks to my shin as I count down from five--and by three's exhale, my face and my leg make contact. After that, it's just flatteningout. Easy. Not so.

I've re-learned to embrace physical risk by inverting myself, balancing my entire body weight vertically above my crossed arms. It's a process of constant tiny movements, keeping balanced up there, and getting up there in the first place is damned hard. I start by accepting an uncomfortable sensation--my head and neck taking my weight. Getting my feet off the floor is the first of several demanding moves, but I have to be in a pike and floating before my toes really aren't touching any more. If I can reach the float, it's effortless: my feet rise while the soles reach for the sun, and ultimately I am completely vertical. I can be there for a while now. My body sways ever so slightly, and I make dozens of tiny muscle and breathing adjustments to be as straight as possible. Not easy. And coming down the way I went up is even harder. But richly rewarding, to seek and find the plateau where all is good and right. I can't even feel my arms or the pressure on the crown of my head when it's good. So, so similar to what used to come so, so easily. Not so.

I'm learning that the strength of the body is more interesting to me than the strength of the mind. I've done the mind--I've lived there, reading and writing and thinking and teaching, for my adult lifetime. Its challenges hold little novelty for me at the moment; I'm comfortable there. I'm much more fascinated these days by the prospect of physical strength, and what I can make my body do.

Lesson one: relax. One particular lock is very difficult for me--it involves twisting my bad arm over my knee and around to my back, where the other arm's hand has gone behind my back to meet it. One links one's fingers and tries not to rip one's tendons out of one's shoulders. I haven't tried this lock since Monday, but today I slid into it and felt no pulling past endurance. I dread this position every time I try it, because it hurts to the edge of "bad," but today, I thought I'd give it a try. Interesting result.

I can give strength my undiluted attention because I am not distracted by sex. Yoga is the proxy, I suppose.

I have no partner when I'm practicing my yoga: I am the wheel. The lessons of strength will have to be put to the test with a partner, though, before I can finally apply them to the times when D/s bodies forth.

I wish we had a form of D/s that could let me test my limits in this way, without sex, without submission and no domination other than simple direction, with plenty of room and time for me to breathe and no distractions. If only I could find the right path to this place. Who knows where it might lead.

Perhaps, if I were strong enough, I would float.

something...cracked

2009-04-03T15:30:00.007-04:00

I don't know whether I'd call this a breakthrough, but something broke loose this morning. Something important.

I recently started yoga practice again after two years' away. This morning was the second time I've been there, in a 75 minute ashtanga class, vinyasa flow--which means, essentially, a very powerful yoga, very intense with the breathing and the stretching and the holding. Downward facing dog, or adho mukha savasana, is the position we're in the most, and it is deceptively easy.

The teacher, Jodi, is someone I've known and liked for several years, and she has that core serenity that just inspires confidence--so when we went to the ashtanga series where a reverse downward dog could happen, several of us in the class tried it. I, immediately flashing back to the disaster that was gymnastics when I was small, opted to watch for just a moment and then do another pose altogether...except that one person, doing this little flip kind of move, managed the reverse dog so easily I said, surprised, "is that it?"

Jodi said, "Sure, that's all it is. If you can do Plough and your feet touch the floor, you can do the reverse down dog."

Well, I can touch the floor with my toes when I'm in Plough. I thought I could try the reverse downward dog. I got flat on my back, rolled up into a shoulder stand, extended my arms flat on the mat and slowly reached for the floor behind my head with my feet... and then froze. I could feel the tension on my upper shoulders, and I suddenly knew with great conviction that I did not want to roll completely over backward because my neck would break. I did not want the pressure on my skull. I knew I would hurt myself. Jodi got into position to help me, and I could feel her hands on my hips, and the upper body tension felt like it was growing. I mumbled, mostly to myself and into my chest, "I don't think so..." and then, "I want to wait to try this until next week" and then, clearly, "I don't think I want to do this." I was vaguely aware that some of the others in the class were watching.

And Jodi said, "I'm going to do it for you. Trust me." And with one quick sure tug of her strong hands, I rolled over in a reverse downward dog. I ended up on my hands and knees, not a perfect dog but close, startled to find myself there, wondering. The world had turned over.

It took a few minutes, during which we moved out of that series of poses and into the individual relaxation poses, before I felt it, but then, there they were: tears. I lay on my back in savasana and I could feel them gathering, and then one spilled over and traced a line into my hair and into my ear. Then another. I could feel my chest tightening up as I struggled to breathe, reached for calm, tried not to panic at the oncoming storm. Something large was trying to get out. I felt vulnerable and fragile and as if I were teetering on a high point. I felt as if I needed to be held. I really wanted a hug. I felt a little sad, but I mostly just felt. It was the first time in probably five years that I've felt that combination of emotions with so little sad mixed in. I trusted her just enough for her to help me do something that scared me. Small wonder it brought on tears. It's bringing on tears right now as I write this.

I had a safe experience with someone I trust. I was safe because I trusted her. I trusted her with me, and it was okay.

I am okay. I feel a bit sad still, but it isn't tinged with regret--it's flavored with surprise. I think I have been spending more energy than I knew keeping up my walls, and the exhaustion of the last year, and the pace and pressures of the last month, have reached the depth of my reserves. It's hard to not trust, harder than I knew. Maybe I'm at the point where it's harder to NOT trust than it is to simply trust.

I feel a little like a bird trying to get out of its shell. After a while, the baby bird is too big for the shell but the shell, being perfect in its thinness, needs a little crack to get started, so the baby bird uses its beak somehow, in its cramped position inside that shell, to tap a tiny crack. If it keeps tapping, the first crack becomes cracks, slivers of openness appear, and with persistence the shell will finally fall open. And inside is a new thing, delicate and fragile, damp with birth and exultation.

I am not born yet. I need more, more time and more careful attention and more willingness to try turning my world over with a partner I trust. I'm going to try that reverse downward dog again next Friday. Maybe this time I won't need Jodi--but if I do, it will be okay.

what matters

2009-01-08T08:24:00.000-05:00

I have an active, healthy social and professional life. I have enjoyable hobbies and enjoyable people to share them with. I am loved and I love. I get plenty of exercise, I eat right, I laugh often, and I am, pretty much, a balanced and mindful woman. Life is very good.

In other words...

Why am I so excessively bored and frustrated? I am not enjoying even the little sex we have. I married a handsome and sexy guy who adores me, so I wasn't expecting this. We cuddle, we kiss, we sleep all snuggled up together. There's plenty of physical affection in this house! But there's only sex in the abstract. I'm pretty bored with that. I'm rarely aroused, and I'm frustrated by that. The physical reality sometimes raises its head, I take care of it, and then I go on. And there's no change coming that I can see.

It's...boring. But maybe I'm the one who's boring. Christ, what a thought.

My husband's ex wife, he tells me, was so uninterested in sex with him that months and months would go by when his only sexual activity was in the shower in the mornings. He felt rejected and unattractive. After a while, he wasn't interested in sex with her, either. Their marriage was basically over within about five years of its start.

This pattern is starting to sound very, very familiar.

Today, in particular, I feel as if I'm lacking in compassion for him. In general, I think I'm pretty laid back about things, and I have been thinking a whole lot about the rest of the world, the culture, the economic crisis, the national depression we're all in---I've been thinking about how so many men of our generation in this culture are trained, still, to think of themselves as worthy only if they pull in a lot of money. And I've been thinking of how much he, in particular, has been encouraged to think of himself as valuable only if he can demonstrate high earnings. There's internal power and confidence in money earning. And I've been thinking about what horrendous damage this equation has done to him in an economy where his income has dropped drastically, compounding his struggle to heal the scarring from his previous marriage.

But even while I understand how it's probably working in his head, and what effect it's having on him and on his own levels of confidence and sexual interest...even though I get it, I feel resentful about it. But then, this isn't what either of us was expecting.

And I'm still bored and frustrated.

I'm going to the gym.

distinctions that do make a difference

2008-12-05T05:48:00.004-05:00

There is such a difference between forcing and dominating.

getting a taste of what I thought I wanted

2008-11-19T06:28:00.004-05:00

So here's a funny thing. He did something to me that I did not want, that I actively rejected, and he did it anyway. He was calm about it, didn't force it--just did it. I didn't like it. I resented it, and I had to be dragged, kicking and screaming and digging in my toes, to where he wanted me to be. I had no choice.

In other words, he took control, ignored my protests and preferences, and went ahead and did it. And it really made me angry.

I've been forced on to a new computer....that runs on Vista.

Hah, caught you. But wait, don't go away just because this post isn't about hot D/s sex or how I squirm under the loved and hated whip. Don't go away just because there isn't blood. This is what this blog is about: seeking enlightenment.

Doesn't every submissive woman (and some men, I'm sure) fantasize about the guy she's with just sort of...taking control? it's hot stuff, really. No matter what she says, or thinks, there is something seriously arousing about the idea of his ignoring it and going ahead with whatever it is he wants. Limits? Sure...in theory. Her needs or desires? Yeah, important, but not THAT important. Not important enough to stop whatever he's planned to do. Serene in his control, he just moves forward, and she goes with it. She has no choice. It's essential D/s.

It isn't even the notion of WHAT he takes control over. For all the submissive women I know, the kink is really about that essence of control. And for years, I've missed his sure hand at the wheel. I've complained here about it more than a little bit. Take charge, already, has run through my mind a LOT.

You'd think I'd be happy that he did. Imagine my surprise when not only wasn't I happy, I was seriously angry.

As a result of a very, very ugly lightning storm some six weeks ago, I've had no functional computer with Internet access. For my job, I need this access. I am a professional woman with considerable obligations, particularly right now. I need uninterrupted access. My husband let me use his computer when I needed to, which was wonderful of him, but all my shit was on MY computer. For six weeks, this has been a pain in the ass. Over the last week or two, he's built me a brand new computer and jazzed it up considerably, so it's a custom job now. It moves faster, has a hell of a lot more storage and memory, all the toys I could want.

So doesn't that seem wonderful? Here's why it isn't so wonderful:

1--my old computer was fine; it was just the internet connection that was fried. Rather than fixing that and leaving me my computer, he decided, because he has always hated my computer (it's too slow for him, and on the very rare occasions when he needs to use it, I hear all about how slow it is), he would upgrade it. I was not given a choice here. He came in to my space and "fixed" something of mine that did not, in my opinion, need fixing. Invasive and arrogant. Not okay with me.

2--deciding to upgrade, with him, means a major overhaul. It wasn't enough to just do a new computer with XP--he told me that everyone would be on Vista sooner or later and it was "the right thing to do." I know far too many people working (or trying to) on Vista, and I did not want Vista. DID NOT WANT. I ended up with it. He forced me. Not okay with me.

3--He used my workspace as a mere test space. I cannot function as an adult woman with a career without my electronics and my internet, and to me, that means that my electronics are just as important as his. He did not see it this way. Since "everyone will be working on Vista sooner or later," he decided to put it on my computer as a test, to see whether it would work. He didn't test out Vista on his stuff first--he loaded it on mine and is now waiting to see whether I crash and burn, whether Vista will eat my irreplaceable files, whether Word will work, whether documents will disappear. He treated my systems as if any interruption to my work was insignificant. Not okay with me.

4--I expressed several times, very clearly, all my reservations and my fears. I cited example after example of people I know who find Vista a major pain. I explained that I did not want an upgrade. I protested. I said, "Please do not." For every complaint and worry and fear, all justified, he patted me on the head and sent me away: Only non-savvy people have trouble with Vista. Trust me, I've never had trouble upgrading. Windows will not support XP for much longer and it's time to move to Vista. My fears were not allayed, not at all, and I repeated them to him often. He ignored me. Not okay with me.

I know at least two submissive women who would expect and welcome this sort of treatment. The dom is in control, and whatever he decides, goes. Her protests may be heard, but they may not be heeded. Oh, joy for the rightness of His Decisions.

Well, fie on that. I didn't want him to do it to me, he did it anyway, and I was angry and resentful. Talk about opening old wounds. I felt ignored. I felt silenced (and for an English professor, being silenced is a MAJOR problem). My reaction is completely normal for a vanilla professional: he MOVED MY CHEESE. As a woman who claims submissiveness, though, I am almost amused at my fury. It's legitimate anger, after all. But it's also a done deal. I am typing this on the new computer, Vista has not yet eaten everything, and ultimately it may work out well. Continuing the anger and resentment over this bloody high handed treatment would be pointless. Let's just say that the next time a situation like this arises, I will handle it much, much differently.

Is his assertion of control a resumption of the D/s dynamic? No. I honestly do not think so, and frankly, if that were the case, I'd be worried about my own reaction, which was in no way remotely positive.

No. This is not D/s. This is him, trying to make sure that I have a good computer (in other words, one that doesn't make him crazy) and spending a great deal of time and effort to make that happen. This is my husband, trying to give me a Porsche when I really am completely happy with my beat up old Saturn. This is him, trying to provide for me in a time when the economy and his own personal situation are eating away all his security, all his power, all his invincible positiveness, and all his ability to take care of me. This is my husband being a good guy, in the best way he can right now. My own perceptions are irrelevant in this situation.

I have learned some valuable things about me in this process. His actions tapped on the shoulder of some healing scars (to mix a metaphor) and triggered a long simmering resentment at previous high-handed treatment of me and my fears. I spent a good long while in the Before Time being ignored, not having my questions answered, being forced into submission rather than being encouraged to give it joyfully. Anything that feels like being forced right now is tightly linked to the feeling of helpless rage. And I resist, I pull back, I explain my reactions and I expect him to...something. I don't know what, but I am inevitably frustrated that he will not or cannot give me what I need.

At least this time, I made my fears clear. I didn't do that well before, and it hurt me. So this time, I expressed myself. It still didn't do me any good, but I made progress in making sure my needs were known.

It's all a little bit of progress, one bit at a time, one tiny nugget of gold each time.

Hit counter (no, not that kind of hit, alas)

2008-10-09T08:08:00.002-04:00

My hit counter reads 2000. That means my humble little blog has been looked at 2000 times! There's some sort of mystic significance, don't you think?

Thanks to every one of those readers.

reconfiguring the dance

2008-09-22T15:50:00.006-04:00

You know what's hardest about a D/s relationship? How to make it relevant to others when it is so deeply, inherently, impossibly personal. Each of our relationships is tailored to each of us, and it is US so distinctively that peering into someone else's and finding points of commonality is as rare as finding someone else's tailored clothes and attempting to wear them. Unless by some stroke of luck the bodies are identical, your tailored clothes will not fit me, nor mine fit you.

And yet we are all drawn in by the temptation that what others have--that soul deep connection--can also be ours.

What's different is, perhaps, what is the same: we each find our way into the dark and light one candle to illuminate the thoughts we find there.

So it is with us. My darling husband and I are kinky, and we know that. We also have real lives that preclude our attempts to enact the kink factor. Anyone who's been reading me knows that. And everyone I know in a D/s relationship struggles with the ups and the downs and the sudden heart-sink of when the playing stops...and doesn't start again. Is the dynamic still there? Probably. But when the play stops, the dynamic often finds another way to surface.

For us, that new way is dancing, I think. We're not professional dancers--far from it, in fact. But we dance a kind of dance that embodies D/s in ways that we were not expecting, and the further we get into it, the more we have distanced ourselves from D/s (and yet, simultaneously, the closer we come to reifying it). The Argentine tango is both profoundly intimate and publicly sexual, neither obvious nor opaque in its appeal. It takes time, and technique, and most of all--most terrifyingly of all--it requires connection. Emotional connection. Deep, fall-into-his-eyes connection. The same connection that playing used to feed on and provide for us: heart and soul.

In the tango, the connection is literally the heart: the man leads with his heart, his upper body pressing closely into the breast and heart of his partner. She, connected via infrared beam to his heart, cannot help but follow. Only if both their hearts are connected, and only if that connection is maintained, can the dance happen. He holds her, arms lifted in expressive joy...she is held by him, her hips free to move, her legs agile, graceful, adorning the dance. If he will lead--if his hold is confident without being brash, bold without being graceless, inviting without being overbearing--she will follow...if she can.

It's that connection I've been fighting. In trying to protect myself from unintentional harm, I raise walls. They cut me off from him, and when he cannot feel me, his lead is unsure. When he can feel my body and my soul rising to meet his, his hands are sure on my back and our dance is sublime. But to look into his eyes is to look into his soul, and what I see looking back undoes me every time: he adores me. When we truly see each other, we soften.

I have not been able to afford softness. To be honest, I have not allowed myself to risk the expense. The habits of the last few years were hard established and will be hard to let go, despite my conscious awareness of the rewards.

All of the issues we face in our ongoing development of our D/s (how easily we kinked ones claim uniqueness: "our D/s," we all say, knowing that what it is for one of us cannot be how it is for others) are the issues we face in the tango.

Every question and dilemma the submissive woman deals with is in the tango: every challenge the dominant man faces is here. When can I know where his lead will take us, and how can I not anticipate where our dance, our relationship, his crop might go? If I am to have perfect faith and perfect trust, how will I not lose myself in that connection? I give up control so that I can taste true freedom...and yet the freedom of the tango unnerves me because I have to give up control. In the dance, any control I have is limited to my response to his lead. Any control he has is limited by my response to his lead.

If I do not follow, he cannot lead.

If he does not lead, I cannot follow.

In most partnership dancing, indeed in life, this is true: if we do not trust our partners, the dance is not sublime. But in tango, if I do not follow or if he does not lead, the dance does not work. It does not work at all.

Faced with that choice-- to fly with him or to fall to the ground, possibly with the heel of my shoe implanted in his leg--I have no real option. And so I have tried to avoid making the choice in the first place, only to find that I have stopped our dance.

In the tango, there's a move known as the freno, the blocking of her foot with his as she moves in a series of steps around him. The freno is her cue that he wants her to do something else--perhaps the caresia, in which she, stopped by his foot, caresses his leg with her foot while she waits for him; perhaps a molinete, in which she steps over his blocking foot and continues her own dance step around him. We have always had trouble with the freno, because for us it has interrupted our flow. It should be a seamless thing, only a slight redirection, but he puts his foot down hard and I stop in response. And so we both stop. The dance has stopped. Has he stopped us by stopping me? Have I stopped us by not moving anymore? Neither. We have stopped ourselves by interrupting our dance, and the interruption becomes a cessation. momentum stops, the grace stops, the mood stops...and in less than one second we have to rebuild. It's hard. We make it hard.

We went to an afternoon tango seminar some weeks ago, and the teacher--he and his wife were seventh in the world championships a few years back--took me to the floor for a molinete. After a breathless, revelatory space of dancing with him, I found his foot placed in the freno and I froze. He wasn't fazed--he kept going. And again, after a moment of crusada followed by a corrida, he placed his foot in the freno. And again I stopped.

And then he stopped moving and looked at me, eye to eye, his face understanding. "Why did you stop?" he asked me. "When you stopped moving, you stopped our dance."

Light burst in on my eyes as if I'd been blind all my life. When you stopped moving, you stopped our dance.

It's so simple, so heartbreakingly simple, but it is so damned hard. Over and over my life has shown me that to get what I really want, I have only one option: to step over that cliff and know, to really truly deeply know, that either I will be caught...or I will suddenly know how to fly. I have stopped my moving, and so I have stopped our dance. And my husband, too, has stopped his moving...and has stopped our dance.

Until we get this sorted, our D/s will be much the same, I think. The erotism of what it is that we do can be expressed in the Argentine tango or it can be expressed in a more intimate dance...but it is the same dance no matter the floor.

That is both reassuring and scariest of all. I am on this dance floor. I must dance, before the music stops, and I must embrace that the dance will change me...just as my movement changes the dance.

stormy days, tropical nights

2008-08-24T09:35:00.010-04:00

I live in Florida. Yes, we were getting seriously drenched by rain. My love stayed home from the office Thursday and Friday (my work has been closed Wednesday, Thursday, AND Friday). Both of us bored by being trapped in the house. Given our discussions lately, I was pretty hopeful for some action.

No, nothing happened. He spent Thursday morning shredding old papers. I, being (naturally) depressed by this complete lack of attention, was therefore delighted beyond words when he wanted to go run out into the storm and have lunch somewhere. Of course we went, and I had wine with my mahi sandwich and was ready to do something when we got home.

More shredding of old papers. OK. All right. That's fine. It's okay.

Friday morning, while still in bed, we look at the weather forecast. The goddam storm had finally shifted her goddam ass and had begun to move out of here...dragging several long tails of heavy rain behind her. We were in one of those tails, and we looked to be there for some 24 hours. Drenching, steady, tropical downpour. Yay! I thought to myself. I kinda like rain anyway, and if he stayed home...

I better not try to get to the office today, he said. Look at that rain! Well, I have the vacation days. I'd better burn them.

YAY! I thought to myself, again.

What a waste of a vacation day, he grumped.

HEY, I said, offended.

What? he said.

Do you mind? I rolled my eyes. Sorry you're having to 'waste' a day at home. You're trapped in the rain with your lovely wife, with nothing to do, for the second day, and the notion of using that time to maybe DO something, like the stuff we've been TALKING about doing, doesn't even occur to you?

Uh... he said. No.

A world of face-plant there. God love him, the poor man. What's a girl to do?

Interlude, Sunday afternoon

2008-08-11T17:18:00.004-04:00

Him: So are you saying you're ready to maybe start up our D/s again?

Me: YES. Uh, I mean, yes, absolutely.

multiple

2008-08-05T15:56:00.006-04:00

A friend on another blog posted this YouTube link and reminded me, through my depressed fog of longing for days gone by, of one of my most vivid fantasies:

A threesome, even a foursome, where I remain eased onto my knees and happily occupied at both ends...doesn't every woman fantasize about this particular combination?

I have, ever since I was about 12 and found my sister's copy of *The Happy Hooker,* which I promptly stole. I kept it next to the copies of Hustler and Penthouse my brother had stashed in a forest getaway behind our house, where I can only imagine that he spent hot summer nights and a few Saturday afternoon hours indulging himself.

Threesomes, foursomes, moresomes...all are fascinating and would be memorable. But three--particularly, me in the middle with a man on each end--is a magical number. Way back then I probably fantasized about men who looked hot; my first boyfriend was a stripper and earned all those tips over and over again, and I think that was a lucky thing for me (although he was a virgin when I met him, he learned fast). But as an adult, my tastes run not to the young studs but to the real men, the ones whose strength is in their will and their character and their demeanor and not always their tummies or their arms. I am not terribly attracted to the unfit, to be sure, but my priorities have certainly shifted. Give me the man whose body demonstrates that he has more things on his mind than working out!

In fact, give me two.

I'd wear the tshirt.

I'd look at the photos. Hell, I'd take a few. They might not look like this, but I'd like to try the action, someday, somehow. My love and someone he and I would both approve of, someone who would not be threatened by my strength or by my fading submissiveness, someone who could hold my hips tightly enough to leave fingertip bruises.

And on the other end, my love, who would be in the perfect position then to ease way down my throat. it's my neck that would be strained, which we'd have to adjust for (that's another thing that's come with age: not just shifted preferences but an immediate awareness of one's need to compensate).

Would I join a threesome that was me, a woman, and my love? Yes. Absolutely. But you know what? The reality is that a two girls and one guy threesome is far more likely...because too many men are hung up. it's just that I want a MFM for ME. I'm not having this fantasy for someone else--no. For once, the sex would be all about ME and what I want, and for that? Lots of lots of (well, there is no nice way to say it) pounding. And in this specific position. Hours of it.

Ah, well. A girl can dream.

Reflections on Fern Hill

2008-07-28T19:15:00.008-04:00

Sing
Sing of the lost days and
The humid longing nights
And ripe fruit on twisted vines
Pluckworthy
And pungent

Sing of the golden days when
I was green and carefree in
The sun that is young once only when
Time let me play
Without rushing and play without
Remorse

Winsome and gladsome on hills of white marble
All it was air
And playing, lovely and watery,
Burning trails of fire green as grass
Lighting skin from beneath

And nightly under the simple stars
Knotted tensions roped and twined
Vines hanging and holding tight and wound

Wound tight and bound right
And nothing we cared that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such
Morning songs
Songs of heated breath exhaled forever into
Clouds of glory and golden dominion

But sing nightly under the simple stars
The simple breathing of simply starring

Nightly in our dreams
Were we holding each throaty breath
Waiting the sunrise shimmery and silvered from birthing

And sunrise shone lightly and slivered through
Blinds to close our eyes with pregnant grace,
Sleepy and turning with blindness to circles
Of fingers and mouths and the necklace
Of vines

Nothing we cared in the lamb white days
That time would sing us to resting and days of
Golden leafing and green
Happy we were in the lamb soft days
To sing songs of time and creation

Oh we were young and easy in the mercy of our means
And time held us green, and dying
Though I sang in my chains

Like the sea

With deepest apologies and profound gratitude to Dylan Thomas

more than that

2008-07-22T14:42:00.004-04:00

Of course, there's more to my conceptualization of "submissive" and "bottom," or "dominant" and "top" than just that. A lot more.

And again, a caveat: one's ideas about these things change depending on one's position in the pile. My definitions are not everyone's. Your mileage may vary. I'm not attempting to be gender-responsive, nonheteronormative, or offer concepts in any other way applicable to anyone else's situation at all.

A top's role is to agree with the bottom what activities and how, and possibly where, and then carry it out. Each person in the situation is autonomous, and while the bottom doesn't dictate everything that happens, if I'm the bottom I have a lot more input than I would otherwise. And the top is still driving the scene.

The dominant, though, drives the scene and makes me want to do things for him. I think it was Midori who said somewhere that the dominant's job is to continually seduce consent from the submissive--and that was a glorious way to put it. (She says she got it from Joseph Bean, the leather guru.) The submissive agrees to a range of activities and then surrenders control and power knowing that it will come back to her. The bottom, though, maintains a bit more control. The bottom isn't going to do much of anything that she doesn't enjoy. The submissive more than likely will.

Some people say that the top plays the role, while the dominant lives the life. The bottom is on the bottom because she likes it there; the submissive is on the bottom because she likes to give up control. A fine, delicate edge there.

An old punchline I used to find funny--in the pre-BDSM days, when I didn't know that there was a lifestyle--was "beat me, hurt me, make me write bad checks." From where I'm sitting now, the "beat me, hurt me" part would be the bottom's line: she likes it. But "make me write bad checks"? who would like that? Only someone confident in the person making her do it. Only, in other words, a submissive (or, I suppose, a moron).

So the dominant has enough autonomy to inspire submission from the submissive. Or, at least, THIS submissive. I am rather assertive in my daily life, as many submissive women are; I have a minion who does some of my boring work and I oversee a dozen or two professionals while guiding what projects they're working on. I am nobody's doormat. Still, who doesn't enjoy getting away from the office? When I have to make sure everything gets done at home and at work, when I'm the one who ends up making all the choices and nearly all the decisions, I need to be able to take a break from that.

And that, plus a healthy dose of physicality, is why I find submission attractive. I think by nature I would be a bottom: I know what I like and what I don't. I don't mind telling people my preferences and my choices. And I generally find ways to express displeasure when I'm feeling it. All of that is the bottom part. And when I need a break, when I have a partner I can trust to just handle it, whatever it is, I like to dive under that and let it take me, knowing that I'm safe and that the world won't end because I stepped away from the controls for a bit. That's the submissive part. (Among other things.)

It's a tough job, being a dominant. Midori puts it well: The good dominant knows that the ultimate power is that of persuasion. To get them to want to do for you what you command of them...The art is in bringing out a desire previously unaroused in the submissive by the domme's persuasive powers, confidence and graceful seduction.

I suspect topping is an easier task: all of the benefits with few of the tasks. The dominant's job absolutely requires confidence and self control. It needs to radiate so that the submissive can feel safe in the sphere he creates. That's hard.

Certainly bottoming is, in my eyes, a simpler task than submitting. The risk I run as the submissive is of vulnerability without safety. That may sound incoherent, but one of the reasons that submission is so heady is that I get to feel utterly open and exposed AND safe. That's why I can go to that deep place: I know it's okay. As the bottom, that kind of trust, which is fucking hard work, is nice but unnecessary.

Ah, me. Such boring stuff from one angle, such solipsistic appeal from the other. Well, I need my definitions. I need my distinctions. I am not bound by my labels but they give me a way to understand and explain myself.

Where would we be without our definitions? In some ways, they limit us--but I, like a lot of sexual submissives, find freedom in the bonds.

The $64,000 question

2008-07-21T09:46:00.004-04:00

What, precisely, is the distinction between bottoming and submitting?

My love and I have recently had discussion about our new approach to releasing that D/s energy, and part of that approach--my decision to take the road of the bottom rather than of the submissive--has immediately come under fire.

Well, that's too strong. Not "under fire." But certainly a difference in definitions, and thereby a difference in understanding. We're talking the full range between dominant/submissive and top/bottom, whether it's a function of the role or the lifestyleness or what have you.

He considers the difference between the top and the dominant to be that of the relationship to the person on the bottom. An emotionally involved top becomes the dominant, in other words.

I had to think about that. I'm not sure I agree with it--I don't know any tops who are not emotionally involved to some extent with the person on the bottom, and I know plenty of bottoms who adore their tops. But this is the way he sees it.

I think of the difference between top and dominant somewhat differently. A dominant has something a top doesn't--but what, I'm still working to identify. Confidence, maybe, or drive, or that ineffable possessive quality of MINE. I think all dominants are tops, but not all tops are dominant. Similarly, I think nearly all submissives are bottoms but not all bottoms are submissive. Some just like to be beaten and are lucky enough to find the top who is also into it. Both bottom and submissive enjoy being on the receiving end; I suspect there's a quality of difference between the two, though, that involves the other partner: without a dominant, a submissive may not feel or in fact be submissive, because there's nothing to submit to.

But like so many other things, the question has different answers depending on one's own position in the pile. What's yours?

gold and silver

2008-07-18T09:48:00.006-04:00

More from the series we took.

For a while that night we played with the silvering effects, and one variation turned the leather cuffs to gold.

I wondered how this shot would turn out--critically speaking I'm not unhappy with it, but I think there's a finer line to draw between effect and reality. Not that there's anything wrong with golden cuffs, but...

I just don't wear cuffs and chains any more. They were symbols of submission, and they made me passive. I am not.

This one fits me more these days, I think--the waterfall effect reminds me of a pouring sexuality. Hell, I'm just now turning 45. I'm supposed to be at the peak of my sexuality, right? (It feels more than a bit odd to be posting this particular shot. It isn't precisely explicit, but it sure the hell is.)

it hurts

2008-07-16T14:21:00.005-04:00

In clinical fashion we arranged ourselves: I calmly took off my clothes, he began to carefully fold the belt just so, I asked how he wanted me on the bed, and he said (as has always been his wont) "on it." On all naked fours I waited, interested.

"Interested" is the only word that fits. We were being relatively detached, treating this as a "get reacquainted with the technical aspects" session rather than anything explicitly or implicitly more. We'd talked through the what and where and how hard. We were keeping it on the surface.

To go at it any other way, to reach for something more, would have sunk me, I think.

He sank anyway, our best intentions no match for the reality of heaviness on his heart.

He started out spanking me, firmly and with none of the gentle stroking that has, of late, driven me nuts by its hesitancy. The spanking turned as agreed to belting, and almost coincident with the pain, I could feel rising what I had dreaded: sheer helpless fury at him. Tears threatened.

I had foreseen this emotional reaction and I had privately resolved that I would take it, observe the flotsam being tossed up on the shore, and deal with it. Learn from it. Of course the feelings developed over the last two years of our play, during which I ever more strongly associated pain with rage, would be the first feelings to come up. I knew to expect it, and I knew enough this time to ride it out. I persevered.

Interesting, the maelstrom that forms when so many conflicting emotions collide. It's been years since we did anything like this. It brought up sorrow at what has been lost forever, startlement at how much the pain hurts, remembered helplessness to say no even when I was letting him hurt me beyond reason, sadness at how stupid I was over so many things I never questioned, surprise at the connection of strike with sound with sensation, nostalgia for the times when I would have been crying for more and singing under every stripe he laid on me. I was trying to stay in the moment, processing, but the emotional ancestry of each moment demanded its due.

Christ, that hurts. The scar was being ripped open and I was being forced by my own informed consent to stare deep into the birth of the wound.

All the while, I felt the tiniest bit of longing arousal. The thud of the repeated impact on my rear, the reverberations through the deepest part of the muscle masses and the ripple effects to my libido...I was subliminally aware of every step in its progression. His hand would trace up and down my thigh when he struck hard on the tender inner flesh, but there was no attempt to arouse, to tease, to stimulate. His hands were warm and soft, but firm in their intent. I wasn't sure what to do about the rising tide other than follow the plan: no sexual contact. He'd adhered to that in every respect and I wasn't about to be less. Something to be grateful for, something to explore later. Something to note. Everything in line.

Something to want next time.

At one or two points, he purposely hit the same spot over and over, working on targeting. But that repetitive strike hurts like a motherfucker when you're no longer accustomed, and I moved away, saying ever louder OUCH and Are you hitting me in the same spot on purpose? Because that really hurts a lot.

He brought me back down to my knees and did it again. And a little while after that, after a break for additional spanking up and down the zone, he did it again: belting the same spot over and over, with precisely the same degree of impact. I was getting angrier that despite my telling him how much that particular spot was hurting, despite my asking him outright to open up the strike zone, he wasn't moving. It felt really familiar, and not in a good way.

The fourth time he did it, I squalled and said ouch, that HURTS. Quit it!

The fifth time, I stopped playing. I sat down from my all fours and shook my head and reinforced it with "That's enough. No more. That really hurt."

At that point, I was livid, storm-tossed, resigned, and sore. Also pleased that I had said "stop" and then made it happen. My ass felt welted and my thighs were shaky. My wrists were aching from being on all fours and my shoulders were stiff and tight. I wanted sex but didn't dare risk the emotional fall out. I needed connection and dreaded the thought of it so much that when he tentatively offered to rub out the welts, I demurred...at first. I was too angry to want him to touch me. And then I realized I was letting the anger at him, that old hangover anger, deprive me of what I needed. Which did I need more, the old rage and hurt? Or the gentle touch over a hurting spot?

Realizing that hurt, too. I have played over and over the tape of my emotional life with him, and the volume is always turned higher for the painful parts. I need to let that go.

And he, too, needs to let it go. Almost immediately after I called a halt, we began a bit of review. He'd kept striking in the same zone to work on targeting. My eerily familiar anger was that he had ignored direct statements from me about what I could and would take. Soon, while I struggled to maintain, he was so deeply depressed that he was nearly in tears. So many years of guilt, years of knowing that he broke something very precious to him, years of fear that it could never be mended--years that matched my own prolonged rage and stupefaction and denial. He needed after care, and then he felt guilty about that. He too needed connection. He needed forgiveness for having been a selfish dominant. We have paid a high price for those mistakes.

We soothed each other for a little while and he went to sleep, after securing my promise that I would stay in the room. I curled up on the bed next to him and felt...I felt.

And it hurt.

day dreaming

2008-07-08T12:57:00.004-04:00

We're at a standstill at the moment. Each of us wants to continue our D/s interaction, but one of us has to bend a little bit. Our problem is fairly simple: neither of us is sure how to proceed past hurt and anger to let the dynamic emerge once again. We've had it recommended that we develop new rules, new matrices of behavior, new roles in fact, to see whether our D/s can be resuscitated in new and hopefully fertile ground. Both of us thought that sounded like an excellent idea.

ONE of us has proceeded to make some suggestions about what those new roles might look like. ONE of us suggested that we turn everything upside down and switch: me on top, him on the bottom. ONE of us brought up the idea that Master/pet might be interesting. ONE of us--and by now I bet you know which one of us I'm writing about--keeps looking for alternatives. The other, of course, is circling looking for a landing strip.

It's frustrating to be looking forward when your partner seems trapped by looking behind.

Regardless of where we go next, I know that "submissive" is no longer an adequate descriptor of my nature. I chose to submit to him because he was my entire emotional world, and it was glorious. Then it became a mistake, and still later it became hurtful, because I kept letting him hurt me. I didn't have enough experience to know what I was doing.

Now I do.

And so I know that regardless of which path we start to walk down, "submissive" is not going to be the first step, nor the second. That first step will be figuring out what it means to bottom instead. There is some distinction here, of course: bottoming implies a far more active role in deciding what and where and when and how than submissive, which implies, once initial parameters have been laid in place, a general willingness to follow. There's an emotional component to submission that isn't necessarily there in bottoming.

Bottoming requires that I take care of myself. That's something I found nearly impossible when I was busy being newbie submissive.

Bottoming requires that I negotiate ahead of time for what I want. As the submissive, I found that idea inherently ridiculous because I had already negotiated. Well, I thought I had.

Bottoming requires that I reach a point of agreement with him about what activities I really like. That was nearly impossible as the submissive: after all, I was following, not leading. I had been duped by the posers around me into thinking that expressing any preferences was "topping from the bottom," a posture that made me hurt myself badly before I figured it out.

And bottoming also requires me to separate "what would I do for him?" and "what do I like?" The short answer is that I would have done almost anything for him, if he'd asked. The harder answer is that if I'm going to be in a BDSM relationship with my husband, I can't do "almost anything" for him...but there are some things I'd like to experiment with, absent the D/s element.

(I bet it's easier to go from bottoming to submitting than from submitting to bottoming.)

I want my BDSM activity to be:

--bedroom only
--bottoming or topping, but not D/s
--agreed on ahead of time as a set play interlude with beginning and ending times
--impact oriented, not restraint. Restraint just doesn't give me enough of a buzz without having that submissive thing going on.
--pretty non sexual. If it becomes sexual, then my emotions may be triggered and I end up feeling horrible emotional hangover. Playing with impact only allows me to focus only on physical sensation.

I'd like to experiment with:

--orgasm control and/or denial, if we get there
--raising endorphins while remaining entirely present (subspace is not safe for me these days)
--endurance and goal-setting (maybe agreeing on a certain number of hard strikes, or reaching a general degree of pain or a set time, and then seeing how we get there?)

Christ. I just don't know how people recover themselves once they've stumbled out of habits long established. How do they do it? How on earth do they shake off the negative and say brightly "oh well! Time to try again"? How do they open up the wounds that took so long to heal?

For me, the only option now is to try to follow what I want to do. And since I know I'm kinky, and since I know that submission or 24/7 is just not feasible, that leaves me with some sort of bottoming.

And it leaves him as the top, by default.

One positive thing about being on the bottom--it allows me to decline when he makes one of his casual comments, the ones that mask requests. The other morning, after perfunctory sex that left me sort of bored and left him rarin' to go, he said, "I was thinking about a spanking."

I was on my way to the bathroom, but I turned back to him, laughed, and said "Nope! Not today, hon."

Not today. These are good words. Not until you respond to some of my suggestions. Not until you're willing to talk with me about positive directions forward. Not until you and I can negotiate a path. Not until you take part in this decision. Not today, honey.

Shading in Grey

2008-07-02T11:46:00.011-04:00

We found out that we like taking pictures. Or, rather, we found out that we can create from a base. I particularly like the play of edging and silver and grey in this shot. The silvering looks like the floggers are white-hot.

And yes, by the end of using this set of matched floggers, my body felt like it was radiating heat like the sun.

This one strikes me as both becoming and a little too fecund. I'm
not sure how he got the effect of negligee, since I wasn't wearing one...but the end result seems to be what he wanted. He imagines me in lingerie fairly often, I think.

Do you know how long I had to keep these damned things on while he snapped photo after photo? They hurt, they hurt so much.

But the stark grayscale here reflects the reality of that photo: I was going to wear those clamps until he was done, no matter how much I whimpered.

How to Be Alpha Submissive without Hardly Trying

2008-06-25T10:25:00.000-04:00

Just about every one I've been reading using the phrase "alpha submissive" uses it to mean the submissive at the top of a heap of other submissives. But alpha comes from within, not from without. If you are not in a poly relationship, you may still be alpha in your submissiveness.

1. Speak your mind. Sing it. Gesture, use semaphore, write...but always express yourself coherently, completely, and cogently. Do not waffle, hedge, prevaricate, filibuster, or manipulate.

2. Maintain yourself as an individual FIRST and a partner SECOND. That way, when you're between partners, or you choose not to be with anyone, you have no loss of self-identity. But then, if you can choose not to be with anyone, you may already be alpha.

3. Don't form the habit (or break it if this post comes too late) of automatically wondering "what would my dominant think?" Know how YOU feel about a thing first, THEN consider him. And don't change your mind if you think you're right. Instead, agreeing to disagree works pretty well.

4. Say what you want, say when you want it, and say how you want it done. Then, because life means that you probably won't get it all exactly the way you want, decide ahead of time what you're willing to settle for. And don't budge without very, very good reason. Your reason can definitely be "he'd really like X," though.

5. When people around you call you "smart ass submissive" or "switchy," or say to you insultingly "You sure you're really a sub?", correct them. Don't just smile and ignore it, or smile and tolerate it, or smile and ANYTHING. Correct them. Then you can smile, a self-satisfied, proud smile that says "I know exactly who I am, and you will never really understand."

6. Instead your assertiveness overbalancing your submissiveness, let your submissiveness enhance your assertiveness...for the right partner.

6a. Have pride in yourself.

7. Never negotiate down.

8. Be into yourself in a very healthy way. Put your own well being first. Respect your body. Respect others and their opinions but don't lie back for anyone who doesn't meet your high ethical, moral, intellectual, behavioral standards. We alpha submissives bring a lot to the table and we demand and expect a lot. That's our right. See above, "never negotiate down."

9. Value yourself. Value yourself highly, in fact, and not because your partner or your mother thinks you're great. Value yourself because you are a child of the universe, and you deserve it, and you have earned it, and if you are not valued, walk the fuck out and don't look back. A dominant who doesn't already value you for who you are will never value you. Don't waste your time.

9a. Don't take crap from anyone. Not your kids, not your boss, not your dog, and definitely not your dom. (Cats are a different story.)

10. Cry if you need to. And then act.

Bondage Porn: The good, the bad, and the hilarious

2008-06-17T12:04:00.006-04:00

Last night we rented a bondage flick from the local adult store.

It wasn't the first time we've attempted this--we were at Blockbuster some months ago while we were rather high, and we rented one of the Emanuelle movies...during the watching of which we were giggling hysterically. The film was so soft core I can't imagine anyone actually getting aroused by it. We laughed for hours afterward, reciting bits of the cheesiest dialogue to each other and cracking up all over again.

So last night we looked for something a little more hardcore. Well, we found it, but as usual with these things, it's a crapshoot. I knew a couple of names and producers to look for, but failing that, we had to take potluck.

Let me just say that the potluck tasted like chicken, okay?

We decided that each of us would pick a film. I figured the selection was random enough already and picked one that seemed to suggest male dom/female submissive, some bondage, some wax play, some flogging, all done up in a quasi-Satanic theme. (I thought that would be funny, since I'm a witch.) He picked out what turned out to be a duplicate of mine--same activities, and the title "666: Mark of the Beast." Snerk. My, my, where DO they come up with these highly original titles?

What fascinated us both was that the film did have some sort of vision, but the aroma of foul cheese was so far in the ascendant that the "vision" ended up coming off like someone's teeny tiny afterthought, in whatever counts for the editing room. The story was stupid enough: two women have to be flogged and prepared by the priests of Satan (Lord Ashgroth or whatever his name was supposed to be), so that they can be the receptacle of his demon seed. OK. Whatever. It's a storyline, right?

So imagine our surprise when the "action" stops---one of the priests telling the other to find him a girl or two, whores preferably--and the screen fades to black, only to be replaced with...claymation.

No, seriously, claymation.

A blonde miniature woman, presumably meant to represent the blonde in the film, was being sodomized by a claymation Satanic beast type figure about three times her size. (As my husband said, incredulous, "what the fuck is that? Run it back, let's see that again.") It lasted for about ten seconds, and then whatever passes for Act II began. The same sort of weird one-off happened again at the end of that section--except that this time there were two evil claymation beasties draped over two women. Again, ten seconds...and then the film resumed. We were puzzled and fascinated by this whole thing--the bondage action itself was boring, which is too bad, but these little side bits were interesting.

Ultimately, one priest says to the other in mock gothic tongue, "whoops, sorry, both the women died during the preparation! Oh noes! Whatever shall we do?" The other priest says, "gosh, too bad, we'll have to use my pet here as the receptacle." He turns to the girl chained beside him, who hasn't said a word thus far, and says solemnly, "Would you like that, my dear?"

Here's where we cracked up again. The whole thing was SO full of over-the-topness that the girl's dialogue made us spit out champagne (what a waste): "I think one of the other girls would be much better suited for that. I don't want to be a receptacle!" All to no avail, of course, since she's promptly hauled off and split open like a melon by the Lord Ashgroth or whoever when he finally appears, but her line was so damned incongruous I had to play it over and over again.

More of the director's vision is evident when the Lord Demon makes his entrance. It's a ridiculous costume, unbelievably cheesy--long black robe, of course, but a papier-mache head that made him look like the Fly.

He shoots these weird anomalous bolts out of his fingers (at which point my husband and I are both shrieking "It's Darth Vader!") and then pulls out a truly enormously long black dildo, which I think we were not supposed to be able to tell was actually a dildo. After practically splitting the girl in two, he seems to go soft--he pulls it out of her several times and lets it flop around ("I hate those jelly dildoes," my husband said), and then finally gives her what he fondly calls "my demon seed." And then, the camera pulls right back, and we see the planet exploding. EXPLODING. A little epilogue scrolls up the screen declaiming the evils of evil, that it will destroy the world, dum dum DUM.

We summed up by saying to each other, "WTF?" and pouring more champagne.

"The second one will be just the same thing as this one," I predicted.

"Well, then we'll be able to watch it in half the time," he replied.

in thirds

2008-06-10T09:44:00.004-04:00

It's hard to see, these days, where we might go. The world at large looms scary, and my instinctive response is to withdraw and retreat, not admitting defeat so much as admitting overstimulation of the anxiety nerves. It's all just so panic-inducing. We live in a pink-pill world, a constant red level of economic, environmental, climatic threat.

At home, life is quieter, reduced from global warming concerns to the question of the water bill and the efficient production of compost. Calmer to think about the non-meat protein options, to create the surprisingly delicious modern version of three-bean salad, than to live with the daily reality that my consumption of meat contributes to an unethical, unsustainable, inhuman treatment of animals in factory farms. Easier by far to focus on the positive than to jitter endlessly on the ends of my nerves about how negative things could really go.

And at home, better to be thinking about how to spice things up than to fix what may not be broken.

Over the last few months, a friend of mine has become a friend of ours, and she's sent signal after signal that she is interested in us. Blue (as a proud member of the Black Irish, she has deep blue eyes that are both melty and icy) knows our kink, is fascinated by it, is ignorant of much of what it implies, is naive about many things (for instance, she considers it a moral and physical failing that she needs a vibrator for orgasm) and is eager to learn. We've had more than one conversation, whether she and I alone or whether the three of us, about D/s and SM and the emotional and physical dynamics. She has pinned my husband to the conversational wall more than once, and she's handled our single tail, which was brought out for educational purposes (and not demonstrated).

We both think she's great. We find her sexy, vivacious, attractive. She's pretty much the D-type. She is high energy. In many ways, she fits in here just fine and we can see her becoming a part of our relationship in some way. Over the last few months, the enticing potential of opening up our marriage a bit has spiced us up a fair amount.

She's also married, and her husband is vanilla like the paint on my office walls. It goes without saying that he doesn't have any idea of her increasing interest in us and doesn't know--and would most certainly care--that she's "talking sex" to us.

So many ways to have thirds. So many ways to count to three, so many positions and angles arising! But one of the prerequisites has to be informed consent from the partner of a third. Blue's husband is unlikely to give consent, let alone get involved, which would be preferable. My husband would prefer a foursome because he knows I find Blue's husband, the Italian, attractive. Blue, when our conversations have ranged in this direction, thinks that two naked men with one or two naked women would have to be at least bisexual. I find that a limited viewpoint, since two straight naked men with one or two naked women would probably be more interested in the women than in each other. Still, no matter their orientation, the men involved would have to be cool with being naked around other guys. My husband? Couldn't care less about skin. Her husband? Would probably flip out.

I can see her question to us coming soon. It almost came out two weeks ago, the night she was here and we were sipping Pinot Grigio under the moonlight. She was chirping, buzzy, flirting with both of us. The conversation turned a corner and she led up to it and then backed away. I could see her inner turmoil, the yearning to reach out and touch the candy in the window...and her decision to keep her hands in her pockets.

It almost came out last weekend, when all three of us were on the beach, basking like lizards in the sunshine, and we told her about the Caribbean resort we'd found where clothing is always optional. She thought it was a sex colony, which it wasn't--but she also seems to think that if one is not required to wear clothes, one must be at a fetish party. She said to my husband, "Oh, you'd fit right in! Free love at a resort!" I corrected her impression, but the opening was there, and she almost walked through that door. But she didn't.

The question is coming. Soon she will ask something--something--that will be unmistakable. It will ask for admission into the world she finds so interesting, and no matter how she asks it, the response will have to be that if she wants to play with us, her husband will have to know and agree that it is okay.

restless

2008-06-04T21:26:00.002-04:00

Oh so restless tonight.

And watching *Boston Legal,* although I really should limit my exposure to James Spader when I'm in this particular restless mood.

And my permanent play partner is 50 miles away, not due home for HOURS.

starting from way back there

2008-05-30T08:05:00.006-04:00

Looks like we're really starting over. Here I thought we were trying to find some new way to channel the D/s energy, and he asked me the other night if I enjoy rough sex.

::face plant::

What the hell have I been doing for the last five years, then? Did he think that my extremely positive reactions to consensual high-octane sexual interactions were faked? Did he somehow come away with the impression that my continual requests for same were not sincere?

Did I not make it clear that while I appreciate it when he's occasionally gentle, the steady diet of mild for the last three years is frustrating beyond words?

Aiee.

Yes. I like rough sex. I really do. Honest.

creation

2008-05-20T17:48:00.009-04:00

It is a dance, the best and truest kind of dance we could ever step through: he gives, and I take. And then he takes while I give. And in that giving and taking, in that glorious widening gyre, a center is formed...and falls apart.

And, perhaps, with care--it reforms.

There are as many forms of relationship as there are people to be in them. What roles we play are only in part inherent; the other part must surely be chosen as we accustom ourselves to the fit. And the roles change as the people do.

Sir/submissive, master/slave, sadist/masochist, top/bottom, master/pet, daddy/little girl...only a few of the more recognized shapes and dynamics, and none of them mutually exclusive.

Of the richnesses of relationships I am cognizant, but I am not experienced at choosing from those strata. We're considering what it means to reshape and reform so that old paths need not get in the way of the new.

not that much of a masochist

2008-05-12T17:39:00.007-04:00

Before: I was a sensation junkie.

After: I was a (surprised) pain slut.

I was always into intense. And I was always into bodies. The matchup of those inclinations with kinky sex took a long time to happen, but I'm pretty sure it was inevitable.

So kinky sex came in and ruled my life for a while, and wow, did I get intense and bodies and it was all vital, electric, springing. I toyed with the idea of slavery but it wasn't for me. I toyed with the idea of masochism--because enough pain sends me to really nifty places--but I'm not inherently someone who craves pain. I just ride it to my ultimate destination. I toyed with the idea of submission, and I lived it pretty well for the most part, but I think all that experimentation is probably over. At the most, I am, probably, kinky.

So, what are the distinctions between masochistic and submissive and kinky? Look, just go elsewhere for your definitions. I've been doing this for long enough to know that everyone's definition has to be different--or it doesn't really work for them. My style of "submissive" turned out to be "nurturing." My "masochism!" turned out to be "bottoming!" My definitions aren't going to work for you. And they shouldn't.

But I know what kinky is. I think. That old joke always springs to mind when I think about what "kinky" is:

Q: What's the difference between kinky and perverted?

A: When you're kinky, you use feathers. When you're perverted, you use the whole chicken!

So far, I've avoided close encounters with bird cavities, but feathers are cool...just not intense enough. Hot wax, followed by a slowly melting ice cube...now, that's intense. Whipping is intense. Tight ties and a blazing crop...they're intense.

The intense purifies. It is fucking the sacred.

Deep down we long to give up, to "come clean", as part of a general longing to be known or recognized. The prospect of surrender may be accompanied by a feeling of dread and or relief or even ecstasy. It is an experience of being "in the moment", totally in the present. Its ultimate direction is the discovery of one's identity, one's sense of self, of one's sense of wholeness, even one's sense of unity with other living beings. Joyous in spirit, it transcends the pain that evokes it. One's exquisite pain is sometimes akin to mystical ecstasy. Within the context of that surrender, a self-negating submissive experience occurs in which the person is enthralled by the dominant partner. The intensity of the masochism is a living testimonial of the urgency with which some buried part of the personality is screaming to be released. The surrender is nothing less than a controlled dissolution of self-boundaries.

I don't entirely agree with everything here, namely the conflation of masochist with submissive, but that last line...that's true. And that surrender was what I had always looked for. I wanted an experience that would burn away the dross, that would hold me in a crucible from which I would emerge, naked and newly born and transformed by ecstatic communion.

The slant here was that the surrender came from my dissolving, consciously, those self-boundaries. That put me on the bottom, on the receiving end of it. When someone else had charge of the experience, I could get much more deeply into the sensation.

By most people's definitions, that would make me a bottom, or a submissive, or a masochist. See, this is where I start to veer away. I am starting to think that how my identity shapes itself is largely in response to external forces. My long term interest in intense and in bodies is secure and inherent, but I can't really be submissive without someone domming. Without someone on top, I've got nothing to submit to. So while the desperate need for transcendance is permanent, one surefire way of getting it has been taken away, and since submission is an act rather than my identity, I can literally only be kinky these days.

It's taken me three years to actually accept this reality, that my D/s relationship may be over. I must learn very slowly--the evidence has always been there, but there's no stronger blinding force in the universe than denial. And I can't even say that it really IS over--because the possibility always exists that some day, some spark will shoot in the right direction and ignite the waiting tinder. And the waiting for that spark has been agonizing.

I waited, but you know...just not that much of a masochist. Far, far better and more fulfilling to move on. My relationship is strong and happy, and there's been plenty of sex lately (to fill gaps in various lacunae), and life is more than the happy little whimper that comes from taking whip strokes.

This pic is from Jorge Parra Photography.

body imagination

2008-05-05T17:10:00.001-04:00

As of today, it's been 22 days since we've had sex.

He said this morning, as we were talking about it again, that he used to feel completely fine about shooting from the hip, but that even during this conversation he was worried that he wasn't saying the right things. The poor guy has taken a real beating in the last few years vis a vis his confidence. Mid life, a massive financial disaster, the ruinous dregs of his former marriage, the horrifically bad decisions of his two adult children, the toxicity level of his ex wife...these have all taken a hefty toll.

Is it me? I asked. No, honey. It isn't you. It's me.

It's a puzzle for the dominant man and for the woman who adores him: can one actually lose one's nerve? What guts it takes to lay a whip to someone's rear, what moxie to grab my hair and know that I won't be angry about it--would in fact welcome it. And who can say what makes a risk taker suddenly stop taking risks that he used to take for granted, who can tell why someone's impulsive nature suddenly slows and stops acting on impulse? What turned my quietly dominant man into an unsure, hesitant guy who rethinks every impulse and most often decides against them?

I've examined and re-examined dozens of times my own behavior. I think I must, surely, in some way, be contributing to his draining confidence. I'm not wholly responsible for it--but perhaps I'm doing or saying or acting in some negative way. I know I have a passive-aggressive streak; no matter how hard I work on it, is it getting in our way? When I say yes to him, is he hearing the tiny nervous hesitation behind it and thinking it means no?

Or is it that I'm just not that attractive to him any more?

He swears vehemently that this is not the case. The desire is there in his head, just not in his body, he tells me. He says a dozen times a day that I am beautiful, sexy, wonderful. I nod my head when he says it.

And inside, a tiny worm wriggles in doubt.

When we met, I was in fantastic physical shape, the best of my life: fairly lean, muscled, just curvy enough, with great wind and tremendous physical stamina. I had abs good enough to show off. I could hold the plank position in yoga for five full minutes, and I was both flexible and strong. I was very, very happy with my body, something that apparently only 13% of American women can say. That was five years ago.

Today, I am a little more curvy, which is not a euphemism for "I've gotten fat!"--I weigh only ten pounds more than I did when we met. I'm a bit less flexible, because I stopped my yoga sessions, and my legs are not lean muscle mass anymore, since I cut far back on my gym workouts. My tummy is still good, since I never gave up Pilates, but my proportions are a bit different because of gravity's natural effect.

I'm pretty sure that my vision of my body is not his. I see a slightly thicker layer over those muscles, and I see a slightly more jiggly rear. I'm fairly confident that he doesn't notice these things at all.

But I do.

I feel a little less than sexy. How much of that is my own imagined body, how much my own projection of what my body has lost in five years? I just turned 44. Is this somehow less attractive, less desirable, than 39? Why have I lost the spark that ignited him?

It's a give and take, truly. My impression of my body varies with his reaction to it, although it is always centered in my own perceptions first. As his reactions to me change, so do some of my evaluations of my body. And when my evaluation changes for the worse, my own confidence takes a hit. That, in combination with his own decreasing self-assuredness, spirals us downward into a place where probably neither of us wants to be: each timid, each unsure, each walking more and more gingerly.

He still says he could identify my hip in a dark room of naked women. The curve right where the hip meets the waist, his hand's favorite resting place, is indelibly imprinted in his mind.

When people say "body image," they tend to mean our subjective reaction to the objective reality. When our body images skew away from truth, we develop complexes. All that makes sense. But "body image" has always meant "body imagination" to me, in no "fanciful" way. And to know that he could still unerringly tell which hips and waist are mine, and which are those of an unnamed woman...is to know that in my world, the image of my body is safe in his imagination. Even with his eyes closed, he can sense my body.

That's the important thing. And since I can only control what is mine, and since I am less than delighted with the additional layer of fluff over my muscles, I can go to the gym. My summer lies ahead of me a fallow time, and I have the leisure to work.

it happened one night

2008-04-24T19:38:00.012-04:00

A conversation we had with a friend of ours the other night--a rather liquid and far-ranging evening, it must be said--started me thinking about memorable nights. Specifically, the nights when all I remember is being the utter center of the universe, and he was the only star.

Whether a scene is short or long, if it works, the world goes away and the focus of the experience lasers down so tightly that pores become seas, when a tear can be felt tracing a snail's-pace track down my face and when one touch of the whip seems to reverberate for a long march of minutes.

One night it happened that we were coming home from a friend's dinner party. From the frantic rush to get in the door, to the roping me up to the rack, to the urgent subtlety of the warm up, the experience probably lasted only two hours. Subjectively, I was gone for days, my eyes seeing only the look on his face or the inside of my own eyelids. Because it's impossible to maintain the reality that the world is continuing absent you when you, all of you, is swimming in the light of subspace.

When it's that good, details obscure themselves. I remember the gradual warmup, threaded with urgency because he wanted to get heavy, and fast. The rack's chrome eyebolts were unmoving, and the only give, the leather cuffs, creaked as I shifted and tugged away from some of the hits. I remember the rope tight between my thighs, and I remember the spreader bars pushing my ankles apart so far that my calves were shaking. He'd blindfolded me to start with, and when he took off the shade I squinted in the light before realizing he was nude, the shafts from the lamp striking the skin where he was shiny with exertion. Before I had a chance to think--I was well on the way to gone by then--he'd moved behind me, and I heard the leather sliding through his palms one split second before he split my skin with the whip.

It was the first whip strike. Until then, he'd been switching between hands and floggers, between sting and thud, and he used the moment of transition from blindness to sight to mask the first, sharp, fiery stripe dead center on my low back.

I gasped with the surprise at the placement of the hit, and I'd barely had time to draw another breath when the full hurt came to me, when the wave of sensation scalded the one square inch of flesh he'd hit and when my whole body shook with shock and when I started to cry.

He kept going. The strikes of the single tail began licking me top to bottom, each precisely placed in some pattern only he could see, and my body began the dance I'd been racked just loosely enough to perform: I could move away, but only so far, and not fast enough to escape the lacerations of that whip. I started to feel the small trails down the skin of my back, the tiny trickling of wet inching slowly downward. I had stopped sobbing with anguish, but the tears were continuing to roll down my face and I was gone, entirely gone, anchored to reality only by that whip and by the touch of his random hand.

Of the few hours we played that night, that's nearly all I remember. Random flashes of memory still come--when, after a long period of heavy flogging, everything stopped. It took enormous effort to drag my eyelids open--they felt like they weighed more than the world--and when I could focus, I saw him, standing back, watching me. His eyes were adoring, hard, taking in the sight of me in full rope, leather cuffs and collar, spread eagled on the rack, hair strangling with the sweat of effort and mouth twitching convulsively. Our eyes met, and I worshipped him, and he whispered, almost to himself, My god.

meme-age

2008-04-10T20:05:00.001-04:00

Only two rules: You must answer yes or no. You may not explain unless someone asks.

Taken a picture naked? Yes
Made money illegally? Yes
Had a one night stand? No
Been in a fist fight? No
Slept with your best friend? No
Had sex in a public place? No
Ditched work to have sex? Yes
Slept with a member of the same sex? No
Seen someone die? Yes
Ran from the police? No
Woke up somewhere and not remember how you got there? No
Worn your partners unmentionables? No
Fallen asleep at work? Yes
Used toys in the bedroom? Yes
Ran a red light? No
Been fired? Yes
Been in a car accident? Yes
Pole danced or done a striptease? Yes
Loved someone you shouldn't? No
Sang karaoke? No
Done something you told yourself you wouldn't? Yes
Laughed so hard you peed your pants? No
Caught someone having sex? Yes
Kissed a perfect stranger? No
Shaved your partner? Yes
Given your private parts a nickname? No
Ever gone in public without underwear? Yes
Had sex on a roof top? Yes
Played chicken? No
Mooned/flashed someone? No
Do you sleep naked? Yes
Blacked out from drinking? No
Felt like killing someone? Yes
Had sex more than 5 times in one day? Yes
Been with someone because they were in a band? No
Taken 10 shots of liquor in a day? No
Shot a gun? No
Gone outside naked? Yes

unsettling

2008-04-09T08:41:00.006-04:00

It's a verb. TO unsettle someone is to do something they're not expecting, to throw them off, uproot, disturb, upend...tie into knots.

Tie into knots.

Last weekend, I got tied up. Our quiet weekend morning, lazing in bed, coffee and tea and me, cats lying in prostrate abandon in the tangle of sheets...with hemp. The scratchy stuff. For some reason he doesn't want to use the smoother, softer rope any more.

That was the first unsettling thing, that realization that he's into sensation rather than esthetics. He is an engineer, and symmetry is important. But not that day.

The second unsettling thing was that he tied me up into a long-unfelt rope dress. He wanted to take his time, he said, and so he did--measuring the lengths carefully, agonizingly slowly, while I perched cross legged on the bed and watched. Then I was asked to hop off the bed, stand in front of him, and move as requested. Turn this way for me, he would say, or Turn that way. The rope was doubled over, looped over my head, around my neck, down between my breasts. The whole time he was laying the hemp on my skin, I heard the lines from Donne:

License my roving hands, and let them go,
Behind, before, above, between, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man man'd,
My mine of precious stones: my emperie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.

He set his hand on me, his mine of precious stones, and then, despite my expression, laced the scratchy rope tightly through and around and between my thighs. The knot he positioned just so, just so, while I worried about what he had in mind: too much abrasion will be a bad thing in that area, and we are out of practice, and I have to walk and dance and bend all the rest of this long day. Unsettling, this process of wondering if he remembers what he's doing.

And then, in his usual silence, he smiled at me and looped the ends of the rope through and between, forming the diamonds that make the loops a dress. One diamond opened out over my belly pierce. One diamond with six facets formed between my breasts. A complex web of knotting culminated on my back.

He turned me this way and that, checking for rope tension and chafing. All in silence. I was silent too--half suspended in that strange tranquillity that rope brings, but half quietly dreading what would happen next. He'd told me there'd be no sex. I was more unsettled by this--rope turns him on. Why the rope if not to end with sex? Just for you, he said, and what he meant was that he wanted me to relax into it. So, not really for me--it was for him, for him to be assured that I would relax into it. A new and scratchy emotional pressure, in other words--but okay. To enter into these bonds is to be free. Trying to be free is unsettling, too; freedom oozes and surges, but it doesn't come easily. By replicating a situation he wanted me to replicate the emotional experience. No pressure to have sex, he said, meaning to be reassuring but in fact unsettling me more. When one doesn't get sexual contact that often, one feels deprived when what usually ends with sex...doesn't. And to know it was purposely not going to end in sex...

And then to learn what it would end with!

I was laid out on the bed while he finished looping hemp around my thighs, my ankles, my wrists. He tied my hands together over the central belly knot. A holdover from our early days, that technique, since safety is a concern: if he drops from a heart attack, I have to be able to get out of the knots fast.

And then, he told me to get out of the ropes.

By then, I was convinced he was administering some test I didn't understand. I was swinging back and forth between puzzlement and resentment, wondering why he was testing me but willing to go with it if that's what he wanted. Flashbacks burst before my eyes of the last time he "tested" me--spanking me hard with some wooden utensil from the kitchen, he said he'd stop only if I could identify the implement. Well, I already knew what it was, and when I said "spatula," he stopped with a look of deep disappointment on his face. I had guessed too quickly and spoiled his pleasure. I didn't want to see that look again, but he'd said Go ahead, see if you can untie yourself.

Is this a test? I asked, puzzled and trepidatious.

No, I just want to see if you can.

So I did. Reluctantly, hesitantly. The knot over my belly was the first, and easiest. Loops over my wrists and around my ankles were next, so that I had the physical latitude to reach behind me. The complex of knots between my shoulder blades was the hardest. I tugged here and there, testing.My fingers became my eyes as they felt over and around the lengths of rope, feeling where the tensions would give and a long length would come free. He watched, surprised at how easily I was working myself free.

You really want me to untie myself? Are you sure this isn't a test?

No, keep going. It's interesting to see you working the problem physically. You solve problems intellectually most of the time.

I was done in about ten minutes, the work of 45 unraveled. Intellect? I couldn't figure out what he'd wanted. He didn't seem disappointed that I'd gotten out so quickly. I didn't know the rules of the game, didn't know whether I should show him how quickly I could escape or whether he was wanting me to struggle more. I didn't understand what he wanted. I just did not know.

And I still don't.

The indentations from tight rope lasted for a few hours, the reddened skin from the irritation of the hemp a bit less. The day continued...but the morning was unsettling.

and this behavior is kinky...how?

2008-04-01T20:08:00.003-04:00

Study: Octopuses Kinky Creatures of the Sea

By PAUL ELIAS - Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO(AP) Wild octopuses are far from the shy, unromantic loners their captive brethren appear to be, a new study finds. Marine biologists from the University of California, Berkeley, who journeyed off the coast of Indonesia to study octopus love lives found a kinky and violent society of jealous murders, gender subterfuge and once-in-a-lifetime sex.

The scientists watched the Abdopus aculeatus octopus, which are the size of an orange, for several weeks, in research published recently in the science journal Marine Biology. They witnessed picky, macho males carefully select a mate, then guard their newly domesticated digs so jealously that they would occasionally use their 8-to-10-inch tentacles to strangle to death a romantic rival.

The researchers also observed smaller "sneaker" male octopuses put on feminine airs, such as swimming girlishly near the bottom and keeping their male brown stripes hidden in order to win unsuspecting conquests.

And size does matter _ but not how you'd think.

"If you're going to spend time guarding a female, you want to go for the biggest female you can find because she's going to produce more eggs," said UC Berkeley biologist Roy Caldwell, who co-wrote the study. "It's basically an investment strategy."

Shortly after the female gives birth, about a month after conception, both the mother and father die, researchers said.

"It's not the sex that leads to death," said Christine Huffard, the study's lead author. "It's just that octopuses produce offspring once during a very short lifespan of a year."

Uh, yeah, really kinky. With that title, I was hoping some researcher had observed octopuses swathed in seaweed bondage, at least.

sex advice for men

2008-03-28T07:19:00.005-04:00

It continues to crack me up--nearly daily--that 21st century men need this sort of advice. Now in my early 40s, I have dated a lot of men, taught them all what I wanted, and moved on. Pretty much every woman I know has done virtually the same thing, with greater and lesser detail.

And yet---still, in some distorted confluence of increased female assertiveness and decreased male confidence, men need to be taught (not reminded, TAUGHT) that most women need clitoral stimulation to reach orgasm.

Centuries of the established power structure turned in a matter of decades into radical reversals of normality, and admittedly, a lot of Western men have felt lost in the shuffle. All the rules changed. Science started figuring out that female sexuality was not "inferior" to male, and culture started realizing that by and large, it's men who are led by their emotions, not women. Men are still, I suppose, more aggressive as a species--but aggression doesn't necessarily make for good leadership, which is usually composed of characteristics generally absorbed by women as a simple matter of cultural instruction: a clear vision, diplomacy, collaborative proaction, and so forth.

Imagine how shocking it must be for a "typical man," if there is such a thing, to be at the end of generations of droit de signeur transmogrifying into endless sitcom reruns featuring bumbling males and their far smarter, more level headed wives! No wonder guys need lessons in the obvious. If the obvious to you has just been proven resoundingly and humiliatingly wrong, the smart thing to do is shut up and learn. (Well, if you want sex, anyway, men laboring under certain assumptions need to take a correctional meeting, and I'm not talking a pro dominatrix.)

It's a rare thing to find these basic lessons--lessons that I taught every man I slept with, which wasn't a huge number but was more than, say, 15 in 25 years--expressed in humorous ways. Not "guy" ways, but genuinely humorous ways. For a prime example of the kind of thing guys apparently need these days, check out JustaGuyThing, offering in traditional list format "10 Things Your Dad Never Told You About Sex."

My favorites at the moment:

"It's not like a porno movie."

"People have sex fetishes"

"Your penis can explode."

Yeah, that last one threw me too. I'm not sure even the most enlightened Dad would have thought to mention this during the birds and bees talk. Perhaps he wouldn't have known himself. The Dad I'm thinking of right now--my father in law--probably knew, but then, he was a pretty cool guy and my understanding is that he left copies of Penthouse Letters around where his oldest son would be able to surreptitiously carry them into the bathroom for a while. That's a modern Dad.

springing: questions

2008-03-21T08:28:00.008-04:00

It's Ostara where I am, so today I'm celebrating growth. Outside, I'm going to dig my hands deeply into rose earth, enriching it with compost and castings, and inside, I'm going to grow past some of my privacy barriers by opening up this blog and its writer to questions. Over on my other blog (a locked journal on LiveJournal) I've answered a few, but I have a much different set of readers here (or so it seems!). So, ask away. I'll answer what questions you might have.

Because, you see, I'm asking them myself. Of late, and since Imbolc:

--isn't my marriage like a garden? Oh, yes. Careful time and attentive maintenance and the proper nutritive mix of love and sex and routine and surprise will render a thing of beauty, a display of sight and scent and sound whose delights keep unfolding like the flavors of wine on my tongue.

In my back garden right now are two trees: one was transplanted from one side of the garden to the other, and one was planted just last weekend. They sit close to each other. The transplanted tree (a schefflera) was shocked, of course--it had grown in its patch well and happily for three years, after bursting its bonds with joy at finally being out of the pot in which it had traveled the country with me for most of my adult life. When we tore it up and moved it, despite all the care we took, the poor thing sat thinking for some days while we watched waited worried anxiously, wondering if the roots had been irrevocably traumatized.

And then...I noticed, under the slow resigned yellowing of the topmost foliage, tiny reddish buds. New growth. It had decided to live, and drink in the water, and soak up the sunshine after all.

It had decided to burst into life where it had been newly planted. Much like me in my marriage. It had no choice in the change, and of course I did--but it, too, had the choice whether to surrender to the shock or to settle its roots into new.

The other tree--a live oak, prized in my area--was our first tree, first of many we will plant together. It is tall, and spindly, and in the years to come, barring high hurricane winds, it will expand and branch out into shade and tradition. The birds are already here, sitting and chirping in its young twigs, and the local squirrels have already run their swirling ways up and down it. It will need lots of water, and lots of love. And I already love it.

Much like my marriage.

I love it all the more because it is new, and mine, and profoundly unexpected. I am delighted by the growth, annoyed by the pests, relieved at the roots. I find myself cooing once in a while to myself, hugging my marriage in secret glee: I am not the marrying type, but this is a man to marry. The instinct to grow with him, to put down roots and let them entwine, could not be denied or ignored. We are, the two of us, mutually transplanted souls, still feeling our roots tentatively exploring new and shared earth.

We are full of questions. Full of the old voices saying "marriage is..." and "a wife should..." and "a husband never..." We are full with knowing joy that our relationship is our own. And who cares, really, what we do with it? nobody but us. Our marriage is our garden, and we shall plant as we choose and watch it grow.

So many questions we still have, for ourselves and for each other:

How shall we balance the x and the y and the z?

How do we introduce poise and counterpoise?

How shall our garden grow?

To know that there are questions is to know that we can, ultimately, answer them. Growth, I think, is in the finding of those answers.

Sure, ask yours.

because we're worth it

2008-03-14T17:34:00.003-04:00

Kaya has reminded me that Extreme Restraints is having an Easter sale. Her picks and mine are much the same, but this one caught my eye in particular: the Talking Head MP3 Rabbit.

You can download pre-recorded stuff (the cop one is fun but cheesy) or record your own lover's voice, and so forth. Five different vibe settings, even, and the option of a headphone jack for situations when you need a rabbit that doesn't make a sound.

I love the idea of the talking head. How hilarious is this? I might have to buy one of these.

Oh, Gomez

2008-03-03T09:20:00.006-05:00

Much of what I will write here will be searching and introspective. (It's the name.)

This is not one of those posts.

My husband and I spend a great deal of our "couple" time together dancing: ballroom, mostly, and not the Latin dances like rumba or salsa. We've been doing this for years. We love waltz and foxtrot, but we are deeply into tango. Over the weekend, we had a really good tango lesson, at the end of which he made me laugh by saying cara mia! to me several times. We spent the rest of the day doing other things, but occasionally he would say to me cara mia! and in return I would sigh, softly, Gomez!

The D/s elements of tango are clear--well, hell, I guess the D/s elements of any ballroom dance are clear. The lead and follow, his control over where we're moving on the floor, my obligation to follow or trip (and his obligation to lead appropriately or get kicked), the simultaneous responsibility that I have to be both autonomous and submissive...it's no surprise when I think about it that we are natural ballroom dancers. But only rarely have I seen anyone writing about it from the language of the dominant and the submissive. And oh my god, it is a dance. Tango is the dance of love. (They used to say that if you did tango properly, you had to get married afterward.)

I was reminded of this lovely vid, produced by a LiveJournaler, which tickles me several levels. We are not comic when we tango, but we are just as intense as Morticia and Gomez...and, well, let's just say that this vid is perfect for this journal. I give you The Masochism Tango!

silence and faith

2008-02-27T08:10:00.009-05:00

Kaya's asking a good question. The question of faith is an important one. Not the religious kind--the kind that keeps you believing when everything you were believing in seems to be in abeyance. Particularly for people in a specific kind of relationship, "keeping the faith" is a fucking enormous challenge. People crumble and walls fall and collars are removed and never replaced. It ain't pretty. But it's life. If you're alive, you're going to feel it.

I could share the story here of my own crisis of faith--when I felt like I couldn't believe any longer in my dominant--but I'll silence that kind of self-indulgent rambling in favor of another kind of self-indulgent rambling:

Last night I got tied up.

We dance around each other a lot these days. He's dealing with a lot, I'm dealing with a lot, our marriage is unshakable but our D/s is ineffable, fragile, bordering on ephemeral. I'm working on following the leads he gives me. Like dancing, though, if the lead is unclear, I stumble. And when we're on, the stumble is unimportant--it's how you recover that matters to the judges.

So last night, there was rope. It was impulsive, layered with emotional backtracking and compulsive reassuring, but it happened. The raw hemp not the soft black ropes. It ended with sex, gasping and sweaty and triumphant on his part, a distant thunder behind us and a crash afterward for me as I went about dinner and wine glasses and laundry. It was connection, fleeting and more valuable therefore and delicately balanced.

He asked perhaps a dozen times, "How does that feel?" I never know how to answer that. Each time, trying to speak under the enveloping spell of rope, I could only articulate, "It feels... scratchy."

What else could I say? I could not say everything I was thinking. It feels like layers, tight, scratchy, secure, like our relationship, where I usually feel free but often constrained by the situation and my internal editor to not speak every word that is on my mind, not to chill the swelling mood with practical commentary, to go with it and dance with you, I like the feeling but your hands are unsure on the ropes from long disuse but maybe with more practice (and I want more practice but I don't want to be the practice object I want to be where we were five years ago but I never want to bring up what's past again because it's a crutch, it hurts, it simply picks at the old scars, I want to move on, I want you to stop mentioning how hurt you were by your ex particularly in our bedroom when you're tying me up I know you need to talk it out to recover from her) we'll get better and better, it's like tango, my darling, don't stop and start all over again just because you put a foot wrong, I know you need reassurance but so do I, I've been waiting for you to feel strong again confident and please don't ask if it's okay that you're putting my wrists in bondage, my ankles in bondage, counting the loops of rope to ensure it's all symmetrical, how strange to be the center of your attention and know that it is still not about me, it's never really been about me no matter what you say and how amazing that we're finally playing again and how odd to hear from far away you asking questions about whether I like it when it isn't for me that you're asking but for you, and how do I answer this question: "how does that feel?"

"Scratchy..."

the scent of rope

2008-02-13T18:32:00.006-05:00

And not just rope.

Hemp.

We have a lot of rope in the house. Thick black soft nylon, a hundred yards or so. Thinner stuff, good for longterm lightweight binding. Thick sailboat-quality hemp that is almost too heavy to wrap around me, since if I fell, I might well break bones on it. Half inch raw hemp, ends tied off roughly. Thin hemp twine--which even though I use it to help me in the garden with vines is now that I think about it the absolutely perfect width for breast bondage the way we like it.

Lots of rope.

The bedroom rope we keep in a black pillowcase. (Yes, we're cheesy that way--but at least it isn't silk, although that would be better for the rope, probably.) It lives in the toybox at the end of the bed, within easy reach. When I open the lid of the toybox, the aroma rises to me feather light, and the rush is intense and immediate.

The way I understand it, the neurological triggers in our brains that let us identify and recognize scents are located right near the part of the brain that works for memory, associations, visuals. When I get a whiff of raw hemp, I'm flooded immediately with the whole experience of bondage.

The association starts from the first time he tied me. He'd spent weeks preparing me by having me condition the hemp, trimming the rough ends, rubbing in the oil recommended by the Shibari people. I even dipped the ends of the short white nylon ropes in colored DipIt so that he could decorate me if he wanted.

He wanted. The first time he tied me up, I went up so high that I giggled for nearly the entire time. The constriction, the delight he was taking in watching my reactions to each inch laid on smooth...I loved the whole thing. I found myself getting lost in the psychological impact and wound up placidly watching his face, the way his mouth is set slightly open when he's concentrating. And when this man concentrates, the rest of the world just goes away. For a period of several hours, as he wrapped me tightly and inch by inch in rope that wasn't as soft as I'd thought it would be, I was the center of the universe...and so was he.

And the smell! I remember it was chilly in the room--it was probably November or December, which in this part of country is not frigid but definitely cool. Turning up the heat made no real difference--the chill still made my skin crinkle up. I was happy to be able to wear my socks while we were playing. And the moment the rope started to touch me, I forgot about the chill. The scent was overwhelming in my nose, because he had started to build me into a rope dress, starting with a knot at the back of my neck. Scratchy diamonds bloomed downwards on my skin and they smelled of wood and yet a bit musty. I don't remember much else, honestly--his face, the scent of rope, the coarseness of the rope on my skin, how I felt to be bound but not constrained. It was, looking back, a metaphor for the way we'd continue to be together.

That first time was the first time I ever let anyone tie me into a rope dress. Tying down my ankles or binding my arms over my head is one thing. Being decorated just for the sheer joy of putting rope against my skin was a whole new idea. Suddenly 'bondage' wasn't about kink--it was about sensuality. I'd not considered that before.

Something sacred about rope. Something deep there. Something still be explored.

the falconer

2008-02-06T08:38:00.003-05:00

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned

I never needed maintenance when I was untouched vanilla. And it's true. I never "needed" a partner, either. Relationships seemed …simple: I maintained my own identity and never "blurred" into whoever I was dating (well, at least not after that first disastrous relationship when I was still thinking, Harlequin-like, that we two were supposed to become one). I was always an individual, changing my own oil, hanging my own pictures, fixing my own kitchen faucet. And doing a fine job of it.

When I met my love, however, I learned with a crash that reciprocal partnership was essential. If I had no dominant, I could not be submissive, only nurturing. If he had no submissive, he could not be dominant, only chivalrous. If there was no partnership, there could be no exchange. We had to complement each other. That febrile cycle, that fecund darkness, was lost if we did not: anarchy means lawlessness and disorder.

I constantly relearn some things. Maybe one of these days I'll finally get it and not have to take the lesson over and over again.

Until then, though...

One other thing I needed, suddenly, as a direct result of that ramped-up intensity of physical and emotional engagement and the way it was ramped-up...the way he drove me upward and around and upside down...the way I could go from utterly and happily autonomous to shockingly empty when he left...was maintenance. I couldn't maintain it all by myself.

For various reasons, he lost conviction, although we have never lost the love. But as much as I love him—and I do, my god, I adore him, this magical wonderful man of mine—I couldn’t keep up my submission when he wasn’t being dominant. When I beat my wings upward from his hands, suddenly I could no longer be sure that he could catch me on the return.

We lost our innocence then. Ceremony became jagged and we peered at each other through a thicket, shockingly unsure what we were seeing. The flood tides, once channeled and bright, grew dim and the red tints of blood were now the result of accident rather than surrender. And they hurt. They had never hurt before.

It was my first big lesson about this kind of relationship (after all the stupid shit about negotiate! and communicate! and be specific!): I needed him to keep his hand strong. The falconer needs the falcon or he is empty. Does the falcon need the falconer? Perhaps not. But working together, both are enhanced.

I hated needing him. My god, did I hate it. I spent the first few months of our unwelcome return to vanilla bathing in my own tears and trying to remember how to be one of two, rather than unified. It felt weak. And it WAS weak, because I had stopped being able to rely on his strength.

I don't know how anyone else defines maintenance. It sounds sort of lackluster and workaday to call it "maintenance." Time to defrag the computer! Change the air filter every three months.

And there it is, right there. I define maintenance as "enough attention to essential functioning parts so that things run smoothly when needed." I resist comparing myself to a car, of course—I don’t need that kind of regularly scheduled maintenance. I’m not inanimate. But I found that my feeling of submissiveness needed regular dominance, something to push against, something to give in to. We need to be filled up, so that we can pour it out on them in return.

After a time at ease, when offered structure calls us back to the familiar, we hesitate rather than joyously returning. What is this sensation, we ask, I used to know what to do! We are slightly confused about what steps to take, that ease of long practice now clumsy with disuse, the stumble when he leads us blindfolded across the floor where we used to glide, eyes closed and serene in his hands. We still want it, we long for that steady attention and for the unthinking reaction it will elicit from our hearts.

He, too, wants it. It is therapeutic to spend hours polishing, honing, striking, stroking with rhythm and engagement. Never mindless always mindful, and aware of zones and breathing and tiny sounds.

It is a dance, the best and truest kind of dance we could ever step through: he gives, and I take. And then he takes while I give. And in that giving and taking, in that glorious widening gyre, a center is formed...and falls apart.

And, perhaps, with care--it reforms.

choosing vanilla

2008-01-29T19:33:00.001-05:00

So the question posed is, if I could go vanilla again, would I?

Sigh.

I don't know. I haven't written about it much here, although anyone who followed me from LiveJournal knows a little. Generally, my story is that my husband and I started out seriously kinked and have, through a combination of life and a few other things that happen when you're making other plans, gone virtually vanilla. We still have the desire. We have the talks, the negotiations, the fantasies. We have the urge...but not strongly enough to get it acted on. So I'm now in a sort of Mobius strip of a D/s life: I started vanilla not knowing there was D/s; then I encountered D/s; now I know D/s but can't really partake in it.

In a lot of ways, vanilla was easier. I knew what to expect and had accepted reality: sex is satisfying, mostly, and not earthshaking. The relationship elements were simpler because I had ten thousand examples of it around me. Easy to see what would work and what wouldn't--the default is vanilla, after all. I coped with the woe of the competent female: not wanting to have to take care of every fucking thing myself. I never needed anyone to take care of me, but it was always nice if someone tried, even if they made a mess of it. it was...normal. Easy to be normal.

But you can never go back.

When Plato was writing The Cave, he was describing a coming to awareness with a metaphor of light. Ironically, the metaphor was flame: the prisoners in the cave could see light only in the flickering of firelight on the wall: and for me, emerging from that dark cave meant embracing the reality of the dark. I was diving below the surface of my skin and learning to savor the sensation of trust. I was growing past the need for physical thrills and into the desire for the heartdeep risk of letting someone get THAT CLOSE. A lot more thrilling, as it turned out, but when it pulled me to a higher level of awareness of my body and my mind, it started to require maintenance.

I never needed maintenance when I was untouched vanilla.

Once I came to realize the light, I needed it more. I became accustomed to the heights and the ratcheted up intensity of things. I began to think of trust as an experience, something to do, not an abstraction. And when the D/s started to fade away, the depression was unbearable--not just endorphin withdrawal but learning to live at a lower rate of oxygen intake.

After two years of pretty much vanilla, after two years of skyrocketing D/s, I've now spent as much time longing for it as I did actively partaking in it. There's a certain balance there, although it isn't terribly reassuring if I think about it too long.

But I have a perspective on it now that I could not have had before now. I do long for it--but I don't long for the D/s. I yearn for the connection we forged through it and for it and with it. I crave that instantly easy understanding we'd carved out of the slab of vanilla marble. I understand how the chemicals work with the emotions to forge that bond, and the bond itself, while faded in brightness, is still as strong as it ever was. So what is it that I miss?

And would I choose to go back?

Yes and no. I think I would choose to go back if I could also unlearn what I have learned.

But the learning is what put me here, out of the cave and into the light of our darkness. So no, I couldn't give that up, and I can't unsee the light that's burned my sight.

The only way to describe it now--our D/s, for lack of a prettier or more precise term--is that state of half light we see at dawn...or twilight.

And so I would ask: which do I prefer? The dusk in the air is the same; only the temperature is different.

The flames we see after a long night's campfire are the same as the ones we light when the sun goes down.

If it's the same flame, where is the choice? If I could put out the last embers to return to stark daylight, the effect would be the same as refusing to light the logs to drive away the encroaching night.

No choice.

There is no choice. There is only awareness of the light.

I can't be the only one!

2008-01-20T13:44:00.002-05:00

Seriously, I can't be.

I was roaming this website the other day and followed one of the links to the "how to be sure your woman has 1000 orgasms!!!!!!!" books. I realized fast that the book is all about how to go down.

I went to the next link, how to make sure your woman has really had an orgasm (and isn't just faking it because you're bad in bed and she doesn't want to hurt your feelings). Again, it was all about oral sex.

My husband is currently reading a book called She Comes First...which is all about oral sex. Actually, it starts off a lot more broadly: the physiology of the clitoris, the millions of nerve endings, and the fact that a woman's sex dynamic means that she's "warming up" and can then simmer for a long time, generating multiple orgasms, while a man's sex dynamic tends to build up and then stop after orgasm, requiring a complete restart for him. (But while the normal solution to the "he rolls over and goes to sleep while she wants to cuddle" stereotypical problem would be to give her several and then he can have one or two and THEN he can go to sleep, this book suggests that giving her oral sex is somehow the answer to the roll over/cuddle conflict. Uh.) I was kind of disappointed to see all this great and valuable information in the first half of the book followed by this sort of reductive "the tongue is mightier than the sword!" flag-waving, because...

And let's be honest here...

I DON'T LIKE GETTING ORAL SEX.

There, I said it. I don't enjoy it. It does nothing for me sexually, doesn't turn me on, doesn't make me tingle. Sure, the saliva comes in handy, but I'm not going to orgasm from it and it isn't going to "get me there," let alone do me for the night. In fact, although he enjoys it, if he does it for long enough, I will completely lose interest. I'd rather do housework, frankly. Oral sex just doesn't do a thing for me.

Some women can orgasm just from having their nipples touched, some can orgasm on command, some need hours of stimulation, some prefer their partners to be furries, some women don't get to orgasm at all...and some don't get anything out of oral sex.

I can't be the only one.

visitors

2008-01-17T18:37:00.001-05:00

Somehow, my blog has been seen 186 times. I'm surprised. Out of the millions of blogs out there, and the millions of people surfing them, who the hell is reading me, and why?

So, tell me about it. Who are y'all?

slight correction

2007-12-31T07:56:00.000-05:00

I have it on good authority that toy deleted her own blog. That's something, at any rate--her DL struck me as a hard core kinda guy, and I was worried about what it meant for her.

I'm still hacked off about the notion that any dom with the power should decide to use it to delete someone's writing...but that's because I'm a writer, and I know how important it is to the soul to be able to do so.

But as long as toy retained enough autonomy to do the right thing for herself, that's the most important thing.

I don't care how "slave" you are. You are still entitled to your own freaking words.

deleted blogs

2007-12-24T13:25:00.000-05:00

So, brooke at PuppyTales is gone. And now toy at MMFT is gone too. Another blogger bites the dust, I guess, and I have major issues. it's just aggravating as all hell that a) someone would hand over her right to self expression to someone else and then that b) he would delete it. It can only be as an exercise of power, doing it just because he can, and while I know some people get off on having things done to them "just because he can" do them, it annoys me no end.

I can't imagine what it would take to divest someone of her right to speak. I do not have that internal attitude, from either direction, and I am really sad that toy is gone.

Rats.

Wordless

2007-11-29T08:50:00.001-05:00

A sweet elderly couple live on my block. When I'm working from home, I usually see them passing my office window while they make their afternoon trek to the market for fresh veggies and half & half for their coffee. They are probably in their 80s, he stooped over a bit, she smaller, rounder, limping a little. What I love about them is that they always smile at each other, and they always hold hands. They don't say much. I imagine them, sometimes, as having been married for 50 years. What a life they must have had together, and now, they're living through the end quarter of it, still hale, still strong, still loving toward each other. It's something I hope I have with my husband when we're that age. We joke now and then (sort of a macabre joke, really) that we'll be like those couples you read about--when one of us dies, the other will almost immediately follow. Our bond is tight.

We're certainly in each other's pockets a lot. He works a tremendous number of hours still--seems like he's always done this and despite all assurances that soon he'll stop the day job and really develop his freelancing, he doesn't like having too much free time. I'd be happy with SOME free time! But back to my point. Despite his working so freakin' many hours, we have a very strong emotional connection. We've recently started calling it the radar. Radar is a good thing. When he's having trouble with his ex, who still plagues him, I can feel something wrong even though he's working 50 miles away. When I'm unhappy about something at my office, he'll come home with roses for reasons he can't really identify; he will say that he just felt like I needed flowers. We can read each other well, and so we should, after all this time. (Radar is vital. How do couples manage without it?)

How this applies to our D/s is interesting. We used to plunge into heavy scenes with utter abandon, but there's more at stake now, so we are more cautious with our plunging. We know how much we can hurt each other, and so we take care not to do so. It's fascinating how the radar, which should encourage us and strengthen us in our courage, actually encourages us to back away. It often shuts down when we're playing or thinking about playing, leaving us both sort of blind. I'm starting to think that the radar shuts down to force us to verbally communicate during playtime, something we never did before. We never felt the need--we just KNEW. Now, when the radar has required us to speak, we have found, I think, the real challenge: walking the line of involvement and intensity without crossing into subliminal or subconscious communication.

Is it less spontaneous? Yes. Is it less intense? Yes. Is it therefore less desirable? No way. That emotional connection, where we didn't have to speak, is something we've been mourning for a while, but I am coming to think about this loss differently. In any first-stage love relationship, the glitter and glory of it all is such a rush that the longer-lasting, more stable relationship that comes after you settle into each other might, at first, seem boring, less spontaneous, less intense. That initial headlong lust is just the early bonding stage, though. The later, established stages are far more rewarding. They come with permanence, and with connection on deeper levels, and responsibilities to every stratum of our lives together. The radar is highly sensitive in every area but our D/s, but in our D/s, the radar cannot replace simple verbal communication.

It's a lesson I think we've taken a long time learning. Any little issues we had at the start--there weren't many, believe me--were about simple verbal communication. I'm an English professor, for god's sake--you wouldn't think that words would be a problem for me, but for once in my life, words started to fail me. At the time, I was glad. It was a relief to just FEEL and not have to articulate all the damned time. Now, that relief is a responsibility. He said to me a couple of weeks ago that when he kisses me, or brings out the cuffs or the belt, the look on my face is often questioning, waiting--as if I'm waiting for the right words or touch before unleashing it all. He's right. Sometimes the right words are MINE, though, and I can't really say them.

Last weekend, we'd started making love in the morning and then, after working each other into a sweat, we'd paused. I'd gone to make us cups of English Breakfast, and a minute later he followed me out into the kitchen, belt in hand. He hadn't bent me over the sink for a while, and I was clumsy getting into position, but we didn't stop. He belted me several times, getting my bottom redder than it's been for a while, and then he stopped. I was just starting to get warm and into it (because you know those first few strokes are the ones to get past, the ones you have to suffer through before the fun really starts), but then we went back to the bedroom and the impact play was over. I should have spoken then! They were my words to speak: "don't stop." But I am unaccustomed. I think I may have been shy.

Shy! Me!

That couple I see nearly every day, the aged and loving man and woman who stroll past my office window holding hands, smiling secret smiles to each other--were they shy? They must surely have been, at some point. Perhaps they had a turning point, an emotional spot of time where one said to the other, "No radar is sufficient. We live not just in an empathic world but also in a world of words. Here are my words." And the other one listened, and heard, and said in return, "Here are my words."

Turning the tables

2007-11-21T07:17:00.001-05:00

For giggles, I put his tuxedo tie around his neck, but that was the only suggestion of "submission." The rest was, as I had planned, merely an intense pain scene. I wanted to see if I could get tears out of him. I made sure he'd be okay with that. I made sure he could say stop. I made sure he was a little nervous.

Mostly, I smiled at him, humming to Wollenweider.

I kept him standing--it's harder that way. And I did only a little warmup, because it's harder that way. The strikes feel more intense, the rebound harder to surf, the sting more bitter, the thud heavier. And, unfortunately, since I didn't give myself a good warmup either, the tails of the heavy flogger were easier to wrap. One set of strikes missed their target, curling around to the tender skin directly over his hip, leaving short red rectangular tracks. When I saw the marks, I apologized, scolding him gently for not telling me I was wrapping him. Surprise one: he didn't know that wrapping hurts like that, nearly impossible to convert into pleasure. The sting from a hard wrap feels like a burn, and you writhe under the stripe of flame.

He marked up almost immediately. The heavy floggers are a matched pair of motorcycle handle grips; from far enough away, they sting like hell. Close up, the impact feels like a deep tissue massage, and the rhythm and duration of the strikes will spur anyone's endorphins. Tiny dots on tender skin blossomed into bigger dots, small bruises widening out like his eyes at the feel of hard impact. Back and forth, up and down his back, avoiding the lower back, finding the sweet spot where ass meets thighs. Surprise two: he didn't know how the sweet spot felt until we hunted it down, tested it out, and then tried out the cane.

The cane is a bitch. A two on the impact scale doesn't leave much of a mark, but a six will leave railroad tracks. Two, two, six. One, two, seven. Sweet spot, back of the thighs, a light drumming on the calves, seven across the cheeks, pause.

Breathe. Breathe. Honey, you have to breathe through it.

Tracks sprang up instantly. He twitched, jerked, gave me nods in response to questioning, flinched away from where he thought the cane would land only to jump when he felt where it actually landed.

In between relays of strikes, I decorated him with clothespins. They stayed put, biting a little, for a while, as I gave his back a rest and focused his attention on the tender parts of his front. One clothespin, two, and then three. His eyes were closed, and he was biting his lip as he felt the sensation. He winced as I tugged on them gently, flipped them with my fingertips, squeezed them tighter and ever tighter. As soon as he yelped, his eyes still closed, I paused for just a moment and then deftly took them off, left right, left right, left right...and then the last two came off at once, fast, hard. His face was white and his lips were pinched.

"Some people," I said conversationally, "like the pinched skin to be massaged as the blood comes back." I demonstrated, and his face contorted. His eyes were still closed as he whispered "ouch" to himself. "Do you like that?" I asked him, and he shook his head.

"Can you speak?" I said, stroking his cheek, wondering if I had pushed too far. His eyes dragged themselves open, slightly glazed, wandering for a minute before focusing on my face.

"I still have all my faculties," he said softly. "I feel..."

"Warm," I prompted, "itchy, floaty..."

"All of those," he managed to say.

I kissed his face, loved on him, gave him a drink of water, stroked his skin. He felt warm, slightly sticky where the tails had dragged hard. I could feel welts starting to rise. They would be hot and red and I knew they would make him feel he'd been blooded.

More clamps. Clovers. I showed him the clovers before I put them on, and I watched his face as I let them bite down. The clovers are hard to take, and he couldn't take them, yelping for me to remove them fast. I rubbed the skin where they had been, and he winced again. Breathless, he said "Need to work up to those." I nodded in sympathy. Our eyes met in understanding.

I went to the crop, pulling it down his back, outlining the strike zone, talking to him so he knew what was coming. Here's the flap, here's the core, hit with the flap, there. There, and now, a strike with the core, too far down the handle, ouch. Feel the difference? Feel it. Flap, strike, rebound sting, warm flush that follows. Hit with the core and it feels like hard metal. Not enjoyable, hard to process, impossible to convert. Feel it?

"Ouch," he said, and sharp "ah"s as I worked over the backs of his thighs, the inner flesh, the sweet spot. Then, a test of endurance: crop strikes over the sacrum, starting gently. We traded comments back and forth:

Strike OUCH Yes, that hurts there...but not so much here, right?

"Interesting," he said, meditatively.

And even less here on the sweet spot, right?

"Right," he whispered to me.

But here, on the thin skin, right here STRIKE, it hurts badly.

"Yes," he said, and said regretfully, "I've hit you there," and he was starting to slur.

At that point, we'd been playing about an hour, maybe 90 minutes. I knew from the degree of slur and the heat of his skin that I didn't have much longer before we'd have to stop, and I wanted to do some endurance work. I said, softly, "Get ready," and I saw the muscles of his shoulders tense in preparation.

The floggers are my favorite, I think. I am just the right height to be able to put my whole body into swinging them, freewheeling them through the air until they land with maximum impact. I hit him hard, five times, where there was plenty of meat to absorb the strike.

He was gasping. I moved closer to his ear, whispered to him to let me know when he was ready for more. It took a minute. Then it took another. Finally, he said "okay," and there were five more, hard. Pause, kiss him, stroke the maddened skin, check the welting.

"Whenever you're ready," I whispered again, "there's no rush," and again it took a minute. He was losing the ability to speak, but his eyes, although slightly glazed, were still fairly alert when he said, faintly, "okay."

Five more. They were full body hits, and I could feel the impact radiating back to me and trailing warmth back up my arm. I wasn't quite at "as hard as I can hit," but we weren't too far away. I had heard him choke back one sob, and my heart ached sympathetically.

We continued in sets of five, each time waiting longer before the next set. He stopped speaking, but he could still nod. I got ever closer to "as hard as I can hit," and finally, after one particular fourth stroke, he cried out "stop!" Before the fifth could land, I had dropped the floggers, come in close to him, touched his mouth, kissed him, gentled him.

I unbuckled his wrists, helped him stand straight, rubbed his aching shoulders. He stood, swaying, for a minute, and then reached blindly for my arm. Staggering only a bit, we made our way down the hall, and I helped him onto our bed. The minute his backside felt the cool sheets, he hissed and reached back to feel.

"My god," he said numbly, his fingers running over the welts. "Have I ever done this to you?"

"Only once or twice," I told him, smiling at the look on his face.

He was marked, for sure. Cane tracks, crop welts, flogger stripes. His rear was a portrait of pointillism. Angry streaks of red and blue were rising. His fingers were telling him that the welts were awful, bloody, raised. He looked at me, astonished, and said, "Am I raw?"

"Not bleeding," I assured him.

"How does it look?" he asked, and I said, with a great deal of envy, "It looks wonderful." I went to get the camera.

When he saw the marks, he was silent, and then awed. "Wow," he said, and "holy Christmas."

I kissed him. "You took a lot," I said admiringly.

And then he fell heavily asleep.

Aloha, Gregory Peck

2007-11-13T19:08:00.002-05:00

For the last several years, I've visited a suburb of the Huge City south of me to see my oral surgeon. (The short story about why I see an oral surgeon is that while performing EXTREMELY VIGOROUS oral sex one night, I completely ruined the left side of my jaw--the little slippy pad that protects the TM joint basically slipped itself right out of position, and for some months I was in great pain as the joint ground slowly down to nothing. I wasn't a candidate for surgery, unfortunately, and so I had to get a splint to sleep in. I loathed it. I still loathe it, but I must admit that it works to forestall the pain, the ache, and the extremely unpleasant muscle tension that slowly became permanent. The damned splint is the only thing that lets me deep throat at all any more.)

Anyway, my oral surgeon is a very handsome guy--a distinguished, 60-something Gregory Peck, I swear. Absolutely lovely. And he calls me Princess with fond frequency. We get along very well, so it's never a problem when I have to go in for my six month splint check, even though it means an hour drive for a ten minute appointment. Hell, I'd drive for longer than that to sit in a chair while a tall, handsome man pets my shoulder and calls me Princess in that cultured New England voice. Who wouldn't?

Except that there is really no not-embarrassing way to talk to Gregory Peck about why my jaw might or might not be aching from having given my husband extreme pleasure on the nights before my appointments. I couldn't ever really explain to him why my TMJ disintegrated in the first place. There is no way to say to a man with this charisma, "How did I dislocate the TMJ? Oh, well, see, I was flat on my back with my jaws open wide, while my throat got pounded by a throbbing male member for a good long time. And when I woke up the next morning, I couldn't close my mouth all the way. Do you think that might have caused a problem?"

And there's definitely no way to recover from the accidental missteps I have made in his office. More than once, I've gone in with a really achey jaw from too-vigorous sucking action the night before and made the mistake of mentioning to him that my jaw was hurting. Invariably, he stops everything, fixes me with that deep grey eye and says, "Why, what were you doing last night?"

Um. The last time this happened, I had a quick vision of my saying "I was deep throating," but fortunately, the vision faded. I know I blushed, though, and I'm pretty sure that he did not miss that I was mumbling when I said "I was just laughing too hard at something on tv last night...um..."

So today's appointment was kind of a shock. Not only did it take an hour for the actual appointment, because of various adjustments he decided he wanted to make to the splint, which means that my jaw is really aching right now...he had both hands in my mouth, and they are large hands, and my mouth no longer opens all that way with any ease....but my next follow up isn't in six months. It's in a YEAR. A year without seeing Gregory Peck! My husband is kind of happy about it, since he's teased me for a long time about having a crush on this guy (what? no! no way!) But at least now I won't have to worry about the fact that I am not, actually, telling my medical professional the hard (heh) truth about my jaw.

So, aloha, Gregory Peck. I'll see you in a year.

Wah.

Breast moments

2007-11-07T17:57:00.001-05:00

You have very dense tissue, he said over the shoulder of the ultrasound technician. He was a small man, slim, Asian, with a surprisingly orotund pronunciation. He palpates "right lateral," his black eyes looking off into the distance as he listens with deft fingers to the song of the density.

They used to match perfectly. One sags a bit now, a function of gravity, genetics, usefulness. The other has never sagged.

Odd. I started out at 12 with mismatched breasts, a fact my mother often mentioned to me in front of people, and now, 31 years later, they've come through the full pendulum swing of possibilities. Mismatched to twinset to offset. The nipples wake up at unexpected times, and only on confident days do I wear the close white tanktop to the office. The aureoles' tiny bumps look like scatterings of medium grain brown rice, hiding under the skin for the opportune moment of surprise or chill to announce themselves.

When I lean over, my breasts hang straight down, and tiny rips in the skin, remnants of growth spurts, march whitely down their sides. A cartoon explosion in reverse--all the straight lines arrowing down to the nipple. Bent over, fullness seems to drain away, as if it were never there. All it takes to restore the plumping is to straighten up. A bizarre reaction to living on the surface of a massive magnetic core. A bizarre feeling, to be female. Cloven cleavage, the deep round well of scent and seduction.

Because I'm younger than you, prettier than you, and I have better tits than you do, the young and oh-so-flattering one said to me cheekily, explaining why my boyfriend-the-jerk had invited her over despite my protests.

Breasts. Mosquito bites, buds, A-cups, tits, boobs, B-cups, melons, jugs, C-cups, mounds, pillows, the girls. Protrusions from my upper front, pointed but rounded. Still, offset.

Hangover worry from my teens: should I wear bras to prevent sagging? Or should I not wear them because if I do, then muscle fiber never really develops and they sag anyway? And I took the road most traveled by: sometimes the bra was on, sometimes it was not. I am not matched now. Perhaps it was never to be. Don't we all have pectorals? Layers of muscle tissue, designed not for strength but for support.

Self examinations were first curious, now knowing. Layers of muscle tissue, hard threads of connective tissue, soft spots, tender spots. Ow, at the wrong time; hmm, during the right times.

Don'tbreathedon'tmove, he whispers to me as the clamps go on. I shriek without making a sound. A silent yell in my head, owowowow. Compression. Bite marks from teeth of all kinds. Love bites in 38C diameters.

Mammograms don't really hurt, per se. They compress the tissue. Any discomfort will be momentary. I worried, my first time, about the effect of the compression. If a lump was found, a tiny sac of potential poison, wouldn't compressing it make it explode into the surrounding flesh? The white mychorrizoid network I see in the mammogram looks like the denseness of a sudden summer lightning storm, all jagged lines streaking through the sky stalking across the ground in bundled short sharp shocks. Round spots of shadow and light form a nebula in the galaxy below my skin.

The technicians' hands are always cold, like the metal and glass of the machines, as they pick up the breast, redistribute it, arrange my arm, arch my shoulder over the cold silver plate, turn my chin.

"Don'tbreathedon'tmove," they say each time, the words running together before the technicians move silently behind the screen.

starting to post, perhaps

2007-11-07T17:56:00.002-05:00

I generally blog at LiveJournal, but some posts there are suitable for this blog here. Here, there, everywhere...you won't get a lot of personal detail, but there are some (ahem) decently written things, perhaps, that a reader might like to see.

2007-09-18T19:52:00.000-04:00

I don't blog here. I blog at LiveJournal. I have this blog to read others here.