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amusement

is it strange that i don't need a lot of people in my life?

there's a few folks scattered around who matter to me. i live with the most important of them, but i can count only a few more on one hand. i used to have a career where i was constantly in personal contact with hundreds of people. i feel like those days i was living in some sort of fog. my memory of it brings the words "survival instinct" to mind - my home life was going to shit, and i spent hours and hours at work: partly in avoidance of home, but also because it brought a numbing effect to my life, which i desperately needed at the time. but even then, i needed the constant interactions for a reason other than companionship.

i am not an extrovert. i suppose that's putting it mildly. i've been known to have agoraphobic incidents, but i've mostly squelched those. it's not like i'm unfriendly at public events, but i'm horribly shy, tongue tied, and often overwhelmed.

i'm happy to go to a movie by myself.

i love driving long trips and listening to the radio.

i could spend days on the property and never see another soul and not even realize it.

i don't know a lot of other people like this.

debasement

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on a scale of 1-10

one of the beautiful things about the internet in all it's twisty and winding ways is that we do not have to lie about what it is we want. maybe we're getting impatient, or bored, or unbearably lonely. but lying about facts won't help one's cause.

it used to be that if one was a masochist, one needed to "submit" to someone to get those needs met. perhaps that took rise out of the old guard, where the culture was based on respect, and there were things akin to rites that brought one from one level to another in the community. so, if you wanted pain, you gave respect to the one who could dish it out well, and relatively safely. that's not necessarily submitting, but as the kink world grew, it re-interpreted as such.

my point is that now, thanks to the internet and the endless clarification of terms, you don't have to call yourself submissive in order to get your masochistic needs met. BDSM is not all the same thing, it's an umbrella term that covers all sorts of types and fetishes. for some people the worlds meet, and in others, very separate.

using myself as an example: i am not a masochist. i do not get off on pain - i can't get aroused by being in physical (or emotional) pain alone. my personal fetish is control. my owner uses pain to reinforce his control over me, and it is in that regard that i "enjoy" it. if you put me with a top who giggled, i'd be out of there in a hurry. it's not funny to me. however, as a top, i'm definitely a sadist. i have just about zero interest in controlling another person, but i thoroughly enjoy hurting someone to the point where they grit their teeth, or possibly even scream.

so, i'm at one end of the spectrum for D/s, and the other for S/m. in my own brain, i understand this perfectly well. for years, i was with a man who was only a kind-of dominant, but a huge sadist. it was a horrible mis-match. my owner now is a good fit for me - the overall relationship needs for him are about control, but his sexual fetish is pain. without the control, it undercuts any painplay that might happen, and de-values it. i've found that we have less pain-involved play, but that's probably because the *primary* need of D/s (extreme control) is being met for satisfactorily for both of us for now.

i get frustrated by people who seem (i can't prove it) to *use* D/s or S/m to get to the other, seeing them as part of the same continuum. if you're not interested in D/s, don't manipulate someone into a relationship who needs it. if you don't want painplay (for example, a dominant who abhors really hurting anyone physically) don't get involved with a masochist.

please. be honest about your needs and you'll have better luck getting them met. i promise.

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.

good news

from the financial end of things. while it's not exactly paving the sidewalk outside the house with gold, it gives me something more than a shaky ladder to stand on. so, yay. being a good, truthful person sometimes actually works, even if it takes twice as long.

a family of deer stopped by the brook in the yard for a drink of water. they had their heavy gray winter coats on, and stopped cold while i went outside for more wood. i stopped cold too, and we all paused while a chickadee bravely jolted around the trees for us. i'm not surprised by the animals, but it was my first interaction with something alive all day on the property. i didn't want it to end.

my finger tips are cracking from the dry air and the cold. yes, i'm remedying it, but the soreness actually reminds me of the work i'm doing.

i heard an interview on the radio yesterday, about a guy who lives out in the country somewhere with his wife. they've reduced their circumstances - heating only with wood, growing food in the gardens, no more fancy trips - the only logical conclusion of the constant layoffs and belt-tightening. he said, "someday we may one day make that six-figure income again, but we'll still live this way. we've realized it's a lifestyle choice, not just a necessity."

yeah.

photo credit: Ache Of Trees by Kevis Somo

What the hell is wrong with sex?

i'm annoyed.

most of the public play spaces i've been to in my time are pretty cool. great equipment, nice people, big spread of snacks for the sugar-dropees. but no sex. even in the places where it's not a specific rule, it seems somewhat uncouth to fuck there.

"we're not swingers." "we wanted to differentiate from the swingers." "we do bdsm. not fuck strangers." as if there was something horribly wrong with swinging. or fucking strangers for that matter.

here's the deal. while i don't have a lot of experience swinging, it's not from lack of trying. i'm a heartfelt polyamorous owned cunt, and i like sex. in private. in public. with pain. with torture. with multiple partners, preferably in the same night, with a generous dose of humiliation.

i am so sick of people acting as if sex is something that does not belong in bdsm. jeebus - we do this because we're turned on, right?

what's a girl gotta do to find a fuck-friendly kink fest?

recycled trash

okey dokey. i need recommendations. please comment with a blog you love that i may not know yet. please. i need smut. and full sentences. please.

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.

all the time

"I never worry
Now that is a lie..."

- rhcp, under the bridge

i've been thinking a lot about this whole 24/7 concept. i'm not all that interested in changing anyone's mind about their own definition of it. i'm also not that interested in making changes to my own relationship because of what someone else thinks it means. recently i was reading a blogger who i respect a great deal, and their (what i consider to be) rigid opinion of this disappointed me. i'm just not one to argue the point, but it's made me think about it.

so here's the thing. conceptually, a "24/7" arrangement is one where there is no break. there's no time out, there's no re-negotiation, there's no aftercare (in the sense that there is no "after"). but the challenge becomes how we think about obedience, service, and control.

there are vanilla relationships that are 24/7. those people are never *not* in the relationship because they aren't living together. parenting is 24/7. but when your kid is, say, at overnight camp, or visiting their other parent for a visit, you're not not a parent. why is it any different with M/s relationships? the assumption seems to be that unless you are directly under someone's use and control you are not in a 24/7 arrangement.

i think that's crap. unless you have your slave literally in your line of vision or otherwise chained up while they are not.

my point is, that i am not doing my owner's bidding every.single.second. because (surprise! shocker!) he doesn't have the freakin' time to direct when i take a breath, eat a cracker, sigh, or sit. sometimes his directions are simply to take care of it myself. i am 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week, doing what he wants. and sometimes that's to just leave him in peace.

isn't that the point of being a slave? a slave is what i am, not what i do, or where i live.

parting

i'm struck by the fact that i'm not new to this.

one of the most intense parts of play for anyone, i think, is that raw breaking feeling you get when you meet someone for the first time - the shakes, the giggles, the mouth-parted-eyes-focused newness of it all. your cunt is wet, your feet are dancing in their shoes, and you're wildly terrified, blown away by your own audacity and opportunities.

i could be new to someone, but no longer new to myself. i treasure each act i've never done before, each new scenario, every touch he gives me, every new season we're doing this together. but it's not the same thing as being brand, spanking, new.

Scott

i used to know this guy named scott. scotty. the diminutive was ironic, i suppose, since scotty always seemed well above 6'2", built like a brick wall, and had a flatness in his eyes that implied a past life as an executioner.

he had a slave. well, she was never explicitly called a slave to my knowledge, but looking back on it now i guess she was. i didn't know either of them that well - in passing, enough to say "hihowareyou" at a play party, but i'd heard the gory rumors of the way they played, what they did in private. but i never asked them directly, i just fantasized about the gossip and what they might be doing.

a few years later, they'd apparently "broken up", if you can call it that. all i knew was that they had been a unit, and assumed relationship of an assumed dynamic, and then they - weren't. on occasion i saw her and and her new partner, a lover, a switch, so it endlessly confused me how she'd gone from one extreme dynamic to that.

maybe she fell in love. maybe she fell out of love.

i saw scotty later, on occasion, as well. one momentous scene at a huge play party was a turning point in my own life. i was well-involved in the middle of the room, single-tailing my girl's back with ten bloody stripes. later, as she cuddled against my boots, i watched scott and his new play partner in a alcove in the same room. he'd put black plastic garbage bags lined up against the walls. it wasn't until later when the blood started flying against it that i realized why he'd done that.

i'll never forget the sounds and screams she made. i'd never heard anything publicly so close to nonconsent. i had no idea what prior arrangements, negotiations, agreements, they'd made - only that it sounded very much like it was dark, and bad, and that he had no intention of stopping. i was horrified, and caught, by the sight of what was happening.

no one stopped him.

fifteen years later, i'm at a different place in my life.

i wonder what would happen if i met scott again now.

overheard/read

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YKINOK

most of life is compartmentalizing. before or after. old or young. pretty or ugly. vanilla or kinky.

good or bad.

one of the inherent differences in western philosophy as opposed to eastern philosophy is the concept of opposite things having different values. things that are "good" have a high value, and things that are "bad" have a low value. eastern philosophy as i understand it doesn't necessarily make that valuation - it's more about understanding that opposites exist, and that one has no more value than the other.

in the last few weeks, i've written some things that have caused controversy. not surprisingly (to myself, and anyone who knows me personally) this was surprising to me. i come at issues and topics of discussion fairly neutrally, from an "eastern" perspective: both sides of the discussion are neither high- or low-value (since that's really only relative to each other) but being unaware of all the facets of the issue and/or ones' own self is the lower valued perspective to me.

okay, i'm getting to the kinky part ("finally," you're thinking.)

when i started playing publicly, and acknowledging more about myself and the life i wanted to lead, the community i was in had a term called "YKINOK": "Your Kink Is Not Okay". when people used this term, it was usually meant derogatorily, against someone who was making a value judgement when they had no leg to stand on. "calling the kettle black," kind of thing.

there are so many different ways of playing that don't work for me: puppy play, sensual eroticism, religious role play, mummification, scat play, incest role play. finding someone who likes (mostly) the same things i do is obviously high on my list - matching up sexual chemistry is pretty damned important to someone who's lifestyle is based on sexuality. i'm lucky in this regard - i've made zero compromises with my owner about what works and what doesn't (although that's a larger conversation), and i like to think the same is true for him.

your kink is just fine with me. and while this would, literarily speaking, be the place for me to say something like "so please be respectful of mine," i'm not going to say that. because you're right;

i don't care what you think.

pet peeve #2

maneuvering through the internet is like bumper cars. you're just zipping along nicely, not really with any destination in mind, once in a while gently bumping, backing up and going again, and then BLAM! sideways, and you're suddenly outta the car and hafta figure out how to get back in while not being run over completely.

i've learned a few things, small tiny things, that help me filter through to the folks i can somehow connect with:

1. if you refer to submission as a gift, we're not on the same page.
2. if your primary picture is of your genitals, i'm probably not sure where your head is at.
3. if you write in all caps, then you're too old for me to have much in common with.
4. if you write in sentences that include "u" for "you" and "r" for "are" you're too young for me.
5. if you feel the need to write a novel in your introduction, i'm probably reading it with a huge sense of enjoyment, and marvelling at the time you've got on your hands.
5. if you include physical motions in your writing like this:

:::smiles:::
:::smiles softly:::
:::rolls eyes:::

'nuf said.

a new place

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pioneers

it is indeed a new world. figuring in polyamory, power dynamics, gender issues, heteroflexibility, and social responsibility, it turns out i'm juggling a lot. for the most part i muddle my way forward, and on occasion realize i have no idea what the hell i'm doing, i'm just doing my best. there's not a lot of role models in this arena, and we all have to make our own way.

i think i'm taking a slight left fork in the road of polyamory, in that i'm starting to look more closely at the theory that it's not really about setting up a particular family style, as much as it is being open to the possibilities each person i run into brings with them. if i threw everyone into a big pot and called it an open family, would that suffice? in the past year i've changed my opinion about a hundred times about what it is i think i'm searching for, and maybe i should just stop searching and enjoy.

i've faced the fact that if i had a choice in the matter, i still probably would have chosen egalitarian heterosexual monogamy. as hard as that is, submissive heteroflexible polyamorous ain't such a piece of cake either.

trigger

it's been a week of discovery. unexpectedly, so the impacts are somewhat more powerful.

i'm a relatively placid person, nowadays. i have occasional moodswings, but nothing like how i used to be. i suppose you could say that i've found some peace, and balance. i'm healthier in mind and body than i've ever been, i think, and a lot of that comes from being a fastidious member of the cult of truth. i don't lie - to myself, or anyone else. that's not to say i'm perfect, but that when i know in my guts something is true, i won't push it away into a closet.

i've long since come to terms with my sexuality - at least as much as i'm able. i've been bashing away at various versions of bdsm for (jeebus) 16 years now. in public and private. i'm familiar with the "kink aware professionals" list, i carry a leather pride flag on my keychain, and the few vanilla friends i've got left are well aware of who i am and what i do.

when it was intimated today that perhaps i had something to be shameful of (not by any of my loved ones, you can be sure), i freaked out. reacted in a way that was inappropriate, disrespectful, and completely unhelpful to an already-difficult situation.

that, i am ashamed of.

lesson learned. trigger noticed. defensive attitude adjustment upcoming.

history

i'm uncomfortable writing this. but i don't really know what else to do with this....thing. i've been holding it in my hands for a few days now, distastefully, and i can't put it down. so it goes here.

i do not have an abusive past.

well, to clarify - i've lived through serious physical abuse (and you can be damned sure i'm clear about the difference between bdsm - even the 'nonconsensual consensual' version - and abuse). i'm not proud of all the choices i've made, but i can daily remind myself that i am joyful in the life i have chosen. because sometimes it's easier to feel joyful when reminded of the opposite.

but. my childhood? mostly fine. i have the usual complaints about neurotic parents and a few touchy father-daughter moments that i can point to as significant moments in my sexual awakening that potentially contributed to my twisty-turny perverted sexuality. but there's nothing that indicates a straight line to where i am now. i was not abused, physically, emotionally, sexually, as a child, adolescent, or teenager.

believe me, i've thought about it.

so many women. so many girls, and boys, have this in their history. for some reason, it seems prevalent in the bdsm community - or maybe we just talk about it more. and specifically the women submissives/slaves/whatevers i meet that "play" at an intensity level i am familiar with, have a personal history that makes my stomach clench. it occasionally makes me sick to my stomach to recognize that some of my fetishes and perversities are things that actually happened to people, children even, non-consensually. how does one reconcile that? it got to the point where i even at one point wished it had happened to me, so i would at least have a reason for all this darkness and shit in my head.

but i don't. so it means i am left with a painful acknowledgement that i am, truly, wired for perversion. what i am aroused by, what sinks through my brain in a erotic fog with obsessive qualities and quantities is twisted. there is no reason for it. there is no justification.

i'm still working on accepting that.

terms of endearment

i've spent a lot of the last year examining the terms i use to describe myself - my "identifiers". i came to love my labels, mixing them up at will and sorting them out. sometimes i'd throw one out the window, only to chase it down later and add it to my pile. others i've clung to for years, and finally managed to eradicate.

but i'm stuck these days on the other part of the formula, the ones we use for our - ah - "tops". now, in my training oh-so-long-ago, a top was defined as the person on the do-er side, rather than the do-ee. generally, this was understood to be the sadist, the dominant, the master, the pirate king, the knot-tying-expert. not all together, necessarily, but the person taking on that part of the scene or relationship. the concept always interested me, because you didn't have to be dominant, for example, to be the one wielding, say, the signal whip, (this fascinated me for reasons obvious to those who know my history and - ah - skillset - with signal whips.) and you could still be considered a "top". i'm not sure if this theoretically made/makes me a switch, but as someone Important says, whatever for that.

now i'm thinking through the difference between "Master/Mistress" and "owner". i've come to terms with the idea that i am "property". i'm not currently a slave - and i'm okay with that - but definitely property.

so what makes someone a Master rather than an owner? i'm thinking that it's partly by owning a slave that one becomes a Master. that would be interesting, because it's a backwards way of defining the "top". i'm open to thoughts on this - yes, it's mostly semantics, but with common terms and language, our perverted minds can explode that much faster.