Down

When I am standing against a wall, a mantel, a cross, a bedframe, I get overwhelmed before it even begins. I start thinking about what's to come, what is about to literally hit me, and I start questioning my life choices. 

It's over in a split second or two. It's my opportunity to either let go, or stay. It's my chance to resist, refuse, speak the manipulation, voice the no. A fellow submissive said recently something like "I can either give myself over to it and let it happen, or stop now." Every day, every minute, is a submission. Every time I choose to move forward and submit and stay in place. There's no law that keeps me standing there. 

The other choice I have to is go away, and leave by body where it is. Disassociation, they call it. Stepping outside of my body and letting it happen to someone else, is what I call it. Except it's me, there's no avoiding that. I'm the one with the marks, the success or failure, the residual aching and arousal. So many times you have recognized where I am, and your hand on my shoulder or between my legs, or around my neck, reminds me that there are not two identities but one, and I must daily make peace with all of it. All the parts. The beautiful and ugly and disappointing and raging with joy parts. The hot and cold, the smooth and razor sharp gouges that everyone including myself has left. 

There's more to a beating than the physical. 

trigger

for the first year or so, it never happened. there was somehow a switch inside me that got stuck in the "off" position, and the slapped-on smile stuck to my face like it was cemented there. i could rattle off the details of what happened, and throw in some jokes besides.

almost exactly a year later to the date of it was the first one. i started feeling depressed, although the spring had come and was melting the ice with tiny rivers through it, usually my favorite time of year. i went back to therapy, because i couldn't shake the feeling of impending doom.

the last time before now was a bad one. it almost felt like my self had split into two beings - one, rational and able to speak pretty clearly and articulate what was going on, while the other one wept and shook uncontrollably. both selves took a moment to retch a few times.

it's almost like it's getting worse with each event. i was already overtired, and not feeling well. somehow the ability to remember that everything was actually okay and would not destroy everything i loved faded into the background like fog. i could barely speak, and the images and actual visual memories returned, like a slide show. at the time of the event itself, i cried. i know that much. but any more emotion than that went into lockdown, and i remember thinking that it was all unreal, and was probably a bad dream. i didn't get upset, particularly.

with every episode now, it's like my body rather than my mind is remembering what i should have felt at the time.

it would be easier to say that my extreme need for submission, masochism, and suffering was somehow a way to replay all of it in a more positive, building rather than deteriorating environment.

but it's not. i've always been like this. before, during, and after. those of us that have been through things like this understand in the cells of our body, not our minds, how what we do is simply not abuse.

choosy bitch

"do, or do not. there is no try."

-yoda

the nature of choice is a weird thing. i'm not so sure it's the same thing as free will. the concept of free will seems to imply that one is able to make any number of choices, from any number of options. in an M/s relationship one has choices. but not free will.

i can choose to obey, or not.

i can choose to sit down, take a breath, or wait until he begins eating before i do.

this isn't instinct, this is choice. maybe it's different when one is "internally enslaved", but since i'm not, currently, everything is a choice.

i'm a stubborn bitch, so i'm obedient. i'm hellbent and determined to make this dynamic work, so i... try? no, i choose.

every time i disobey, it's a choice. i know that. the choice isn't always based on the best intentions or motivations, and sometimes my reasons are stupid. once, i ate a scone, a sweet treat, when i was not supposed to. my owner was furious. when asked why i did it, i stammered something along the lines of "not thinking. don't know. just did it." and he rightfully pointed out the distruth of that - i was thinking, i just chose badly.

it's very trying.

these dreams

we're standing on a shore, a dock, a ferrydock, and it's one of those cool autumn mornings i think where it might be blue and it might be gray but since it's a dream it's all lit by low sunshine anyway. the ferry is coming, and we need to get across to the other side of where we are and the water is glassy and has a light choppy wave to it, but nothing i am scared of.

the ferry hasn't arrived yet.

which is good, because you are going around to the other side in your car. i trust your car, i know it will get us there. it's parked a bit away where i can see the green of it almost meshing with the landscape. i could go with you, in your car.

but i have this big steamer trunk. it needs to go with me, and it cannot go in your car. if i go with you, in your car, a reliable way, the trunk can't come. ever.

i could take the ferry, which in my dream inexplicably will make a stop in the middle of the water, halfway to the other side, and then leave the passengers there in the middle. my trunk can come with me, but there is no guarantee that we will make it to my destination. i, and my trunk, may end up stranded in the middle of the water.

but there's also the chance that the ferry would not stop, and get me there safely, trunk intact.

do i leave the trunk behind and go with you?
do i take the ferry and hope to get to the other side, meet you, and continue on?
will i be left in the middle with only my trunk for company, lost and never getting to where i want to be?

when i woke up at this point, no decision made, it occurred to me that there was no option of me remaining behind, with my trunk, but without you.

entrust this.

conversation with a friend the other that was basically about the nature of trust, especially when starting a new bdsm-related relationship. especially when you met online. and especially when everyone knows we're not laughing about it.

when i met my owner for the first time, it was in public. a dark groovy bar, sure, but in public, where the bartender knew me. we had already spent weeks talking - mostly about sex, but also about who we were, and what kind of people we were, and what kind of people we wanted to be. we both had parts of ourselves that had to be protected, but small verbal risks were taken.

we met in the bar, and i already knew his name. i already knew his face, and some other significant details about his life. he told me later that he'd deliberately done this, so that the risk i was taking by even meeting him in the first place did not put me at some obvious safety disadvantage. a few weeks later, when we met for our first official "play date", i trusted him enough to go into a locked hotel room and hope for the best. i don't know that i would have done that without all the prior information and meetings and obvious chemistry.

but all that being said, there was a point at which i had to let go of protecting myself. i do not advocate risk, but i understand it. there's only so far one can go into a power exchange relationship without deliberately letting go of control over it. when you know what you want to do is to surrender, it's very hard to take the smaller, protected steps beforehand.

i was lucky, and i still am. i never forget that.

the high cost of gasoline.

"Subdrop is a state of depression and moodiness that often occurs after a heavy scene or where the submissive is away from their dominant for an extended period of time. Subdrop can happen quickly or it may not manifest itself for several days after the scene. It may also appear as the result of being away from a relationship where feelings of love and submission are particularly strong."

other voices other lives

in another life, i would have become a farmer. i swear this is true, despite the misgivings of everyone i've ever known, and the fact that i have what is commonly known as a "black thumb".

it's not so much that i'm interested in dawn-to-dusk physical toil, or that i enjoy being outside in all kinds of weather. it's that it's a ritualistic way of life. there are things to do at dawn that must be done, ablutions and salutations and sacrifices. i'm down with that. there are things that must be done at dusk, too - closings, endings, and yet more sacrifices.

it takes bravery to really live your life. i was going to write about how it takes bravery to be a slave, or a dominant, or a mother, or an artist.

but really, whatever form it takes, you need to be brave to get through it. what this life has handed me has made me brave and courageous and proud.

something came up today that i am ashamed of. for no obvious reason - it's an aspect of myself i am still coming to terms with, and my owner has challenged me to determine where the shame comes from, because it is incongruous with the rest of me.

i don't know yet. i'm working on it.

(photo credit to Chris Johnson, "Mirror")

together forever

i live in a town with a lot of colleges nearby. it's almost labor day, and there's a lot of youngsters and their parents milling around, reading maps and checking out cute new england - stuff.

a lot of moms and daughters. one of my favorite things to see is a mom and daughter duo walking down the sidewalk, looking like younger/older replicas of each other. i wonder if they see each other, and see what they'd have looked like in different clothes, in a different era.

i don't get along with my own mother. oh, i do - in a superficial hugs-when-we-meet kind of way. i know this is heartbreaking for her, as she seems to want nothing more than to be able to say "i am close to my daughter." but we're not close.

i've been ruminating on my limits, my reasons. and a recent experience made me recognize that who i am as a woman, the kind of woman i am, has a great deal to do with my mother, but in the opposite way you'd expect.

i will not be afraid. i will not anticipate the wrongness of life, dread oncoming pain and trouble and fear. when bad things happen it is not because i deserve it or because the fates hate me.

the fates are neutral, and blind, and will weave my fate as they see fit. be here now, and bring it on, i say.

(photo credit: gwyneth paltrow and her mother, blythe danner.)

care and maintenance

you take good care of me.

you take damned good care of your chainsaw. i saw that first, and then made my choice.

i had no doubt that your care and maintenance required for owning a person would be any less attentive than that. sometimes, when i stopped to think about it, i wondered if the fact that what *i* would deliver as care and maintenance would be different, mattered. this amounted to me discovering that i didn't always agree with your choices about how to care and maintain - me. would our goals be similar? did that matter?

but damn, man. look at your chainsaw.

thingness

i've been involved in some conversations on the 'net lately in which i've clarified my "major" kink (if indeed a person can have just one) as objectification. i thought it was control, but really, i suppose, that's just inherently a part of the basest element.

this isn't about being turned into a piece of furniture. that's not particularly hot in an of itself. i'm talking about losing one's person-hood, one's individuality, their sense of self and separate-ness from the rest of humanity.

i am too much inside my own head - i've always lived hard inside my skull, and i'm often told i think too much and too fast. i have always felt separate and alone and different and not-quite-with-the-pack. in a backwards kind of way, being objectified and turned inside out into something that i cannot achieve on my own brings me closer to the world around me and i am able to feel a part of it, and have a purpose.

we all wear masks, all the time. when you objectify me, mine is stripped off. i am then whole and home in my body and living in truth.

ocean

i had a sudden moment of missing the ocean. i missed the smell so badly all of a sudden i could taste the tang inside my nose despite seeing only birch trees and tadpoles in the small stream. i suddenly missed the moment when you sit there on the beach and realize the world is as big as it is and there is no controlling it or anything in your life so just let it happen.

sometimes you hear words over and over again and they mean only one thing. the fact that this is not about what i want, and that it somehow *is* what i want gets mixed up until it's the same thing - what i want and what i don't, in a big tangled ball of need. but then in a small tiny second or two it means something else entirely. it means i will always have what i want, and i never will.

being a slave means that i will always have what i want, and i never will have what i want.

can i ride the tides of that?

i don't have a choice in this, any more than anything else. i'm helpless and overwhelmed by too many facts of life, too many observations.

"Love and a dress that you made
long to hide your knees
love to say this to your face,
"I'll love you only"
for your days and excitement,
what will you keep for to wear?
someday drawing you different,
may I be weaved in your hair?

Love and some verses you hear
say what you can't say
love to say this in your ear,
"I'll love you that way"
from your changing contentments,
what will you choose for to share?
someday drawing you different,
may I be weaved in your hair?..."

-iron and wine

get what you give

"can you feel your heart pumping
when it goes fast, you go fast
when it goes medium, you go medium
when it goes slow, you go slooooooow..."

-LS

i've had a few people recently point out that i'm very lucky in my relationship with my owner, and that i've found some balance and peace lately. there's no question that i am very, very lucky. my owner is an amazing person, we seem to be fitting together very well so far, and despite the every day challenges of daily existence, i'm a better person all around for this. there's a note of envy sometimes with the comments, and sometimes i hear the question behind it.

it's pretty simple, i think. you get what you give. it doesn't really matter the particulars of what you're looking for in a relationship, ultimately - because you're only going to receive what you're putting out there. so, my shop-worn faux-zen advice:

- want someone to love you? love yourself.
- want someone with an aesthetically beautiful body? make damned sure you're pleased with your own.
- need financial security in your partner? be able to support yourself if it comes down to it.
- want someone who will be obsessive about controlling your every move? be able to keep your own self under control when necessary.
- looking for someone who is happy? BE happy.

BE happy.

(song credit to a beautiful and happy 5 year old who's wise beyond his years.)

the angry erotic

i wished he was angry at me. angry, i know how to deal with. when someone is angry with me, i know how to absorb, deflect, or distract in whatever way i deem necessary in order to gain control of the situation. i'm used to angry - i've seen a lot of it in my life - and it's a reaction i'm very familiar with.

it can be kinda hot. i mean, angry and passionate and sexual and dominant can all go in the same basket, no? i can eroticize anger, even when it's misdirected to me (see previous writing re: "grudge slave/fuck"). i like angry, because it's very very dangerously close to something the angry person cannot control. and danger is hot. yes, circular argument.

but my owner is not, in general, an angry man. i can count on one hand the times i've seen him actively pissed off. but bizarrely, i suppose, these incidents are very very erotic to me. it emphasizes my shame, my degradation, my suffering - it's quite the masochistic attention whore's dream come true.

i have little experience with men who are even tempered, for the most part. they're harder to read (read, control). one of the ways my owner controls me is by using his negative emotions sparingly. i hate to admit that, because it's acknowledging that i am susceptible in ways i don't like to see. i fear and desire his anger at the same time, and because it is something i want on that very warped plane of slavish existence that is indescribable in truth,

i don't always get it.

for a friend

compost

i picture you among the debris
she left
turning it over and over until
it's something rich for you
to grow again in

a piece of peace

i always pictured myself towards the end of my days in a remote lighthouse somewhere. someone rowing supplies over periodically, where i could rock in my rocking chair, watch the waves and read.

where you live, who you live with, the stability you find in your *home*, is a big facet of control, i think. *where* i am in this world has a direct connection to *how* and *who* i am, as well.

i wasn't recognizing the huge-ness of that.

if i am a slave, i have no right to call a home my own. how's that for a think thunk.

photo credit to jen lemen from flickr series titled "letting go"

zen moment

"We're here to get our present model repainted a little bit. If the car of our life is deep grey, we want to turn it into lavender or pink. But transformation means that the car may disappear altogether. Maybe instead of a car it will be a turtle. We don't even want to hear of such possibilities. We hope that the teacher will tell us something that will fix our present model. A lot of therapies merely provide techniques for improving the model. They tinker here and there, and we may even feel a lot better. Still, that is not a transformation. Transformation arises from a willingness that develops very slowly over time to be what life asks of us.

Most of us (myself included at times) are like children: we want something or somebody to give us what a small child wants from its parents. We want to be given peace, attention, comfort, understanding. If our life doesn't give us this, we think, 'A few years of Zen practice [please substitute D/s, slavery, submission, whatever, here] will do this for me.' No, they won't. That's not what practice is about. Practice is about opening ourselves so that this little 'I' that wants and wants and wants and wants and wants - that wants the whole world to be its parents, really - grows up."

- Charlotte Joko Beck

just breathe

i asked you if you saw yourself here, or if you saw the character of you in this story i'm writing. but i didn't have to ask, i knew you saw it. your words reappear in type, framed and characterized by my perspective and the frames, the rules, i live within. i suppose it must be something like rose-tinted glasses, seeing yourself this way.

if i gave you my breath, if i gave you my life, if i gave you the clicking tocks of the clock while you hold it for me, what would you do? each time, now, as your hands catch and release it, and when i try to control my rasping breath now able to grab for comfort again, i know you're pushing my hair gently out of my face to watch me suffer for you. everything is a physical manifestation, a representation of an unnameable interior dimension - you, holding my breath.

no, i could not take a breath if you did not want me to. but more importantly, i wouldn't want to.

photo credit to ilyssa skye tonnessen

polly

it was brought to my attention that while i've referred to "Polly" a great deal, and she's quite a character who's come to represent a whole thing about jealousy and polyamory all mixed together in one warped package, i've never actually posted the story i wrote about Polly.

Polly didn't exist when i wrote this, sometime last summer, way before even the start of my contract. i don't really feel like defending the difficult parts of my psyche that produced this, so if you're thinking i'm way too sick and twisted because of this, then, well, don't worry too much.

i already know that.

Enjoy.

**edit** i posted this the other day in my other blog, forgetting to put it here as well. the response there was hugely dramatic. apparently the polly story touches quite a nerve, almost like my anger post a while ago.

i never said it was pretty, living inside my head.

-------------
_rules_

"That's the door. Go get it." I quickly glance at you, I have no idea what this is about. I go to the door, and let her in. You're smiling - you're happy. That makes me nervous, when we play.
"This is Polly," you say, looking at her, smiling. I think, who the fuck is Polly? I'm quiet, I'm down. I'm not sure what this is about, but I know that it's a surprise meant for me, and you like surprises. I don't.

"Polly's here to teach you a lesson," you say. My mouth drops open. We've talked about this - while we've agreed that there's no real limits, I'm surprised at the girl. You laugh. "No, no. Not like that," you say. But you're practically giggling, and I'm still a little in shock, because I don't know what the hell is going on.

Polly does, though. Polly's cute. Polly's clearly in the know about the situation, and she's looking at me with a mixture of naivete, lust, and curiousity. She's happy, though. I look down at the floor. You grab my chin, pull my head up to look at you. You say clearly, "I want you to get a good look at Polly. Polly's here tonight because of you. Polly's going to teach you a valuable lesson." You let go of my chin, but grab my hair, twist it around so I'm looking at Polly - her mouth is open, wet, and she's watching me, and her breath catches. "Get a good goddamned look at Polly." you say again.

You bring me to my knees by my hair, and push my head down to the floor, and then get down next to me to whisper in my ear. "You thought I'd forget about our conversation, didn't you. You thought I'd forget you said you'd lied." My heart pounds, my mouth goes dry. You continue to speak in my ear. "You thought I'd think it was no big deal, with your big speech about no punishment and no rules." Your hand pushes on my neck down so I'm mashed into the carpet. You speak into my ear, quietly and carefully. "You thought wrong, you little bitch."

It's much later, and I'm bound tightly to the chair. My legs are splayed out, my arms snug, and you've shoved a gag in my mouth. I'm crying. Polly's been watching me, but now she's more interested in you. You've gotten her to strip, you've put her in her place, and now she's facing me on all fours, on the bed. Her face is a perfect picture of lust as you play behind her, smacking her lightly while she groans. You're watching me as I weep. I can hear you speaking to her lightly, and she twists and bucks against your fingers. You push her closer to me, so we're almost face to face, and then you're speaking to me.

"This is your punishment." you say, as you ram into her while she groans and yells. "Watch this," you say. "Watch what's happening, what's yours, what you wanted." The words are spinning in my mind I'm sorry I'm sorry stop stop and I'm watching you fuck her harder and harder. "Don't you turn your face away, bitch," you say and I don't. I'm dripping onto the floor while I watch you take her and I know what I've done, who I am. I'm crying through the gag, and your eyes grab mine and don't let go.

what it's like

when it thunders through my skin right after i'm pricked by a thousand needles and i'm not sure i can breathe, every muscle in my body pulls tight.

sometimes you watch me. sometimes your bright eyes fasten on my face, an invisible leash pulling. your breathing is quick and untroubled, you watch my cheeks flush and neck arch. i still don't know what it looks like. i never watch myself then, unable to bear witness to that intimacy of myself, the orgasm. as much as i'd like to say each one is a gift for you, it's not. you force them from me, and take them away - my version of bon-bons, i suppose.

i want to tell her that that's what it's like. i want to tell her that the release following, when your body expands as far as it will go and holds there - the beating of your heart a sonic wave that roars out everything else...

the letting go. letting it happen. letting it happen *to* you. there is no longer a sense that anything belongs to you, even of the things you don't want to happen, the things you are most afraid of.

you don't allow me to filter what i'm thinking - there is no privacy. i may not have walls up, i may not be secretive or private or choosy with my words.

i want to tell her this: that if she is yours, if she wants this, she will have what she wants and craves. and also,

everything she doesn't.

photo "the art of losing", credit to kaddy courtesy of flickr.

the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

-leonard cohen