Telling the Truth

I have a suspicion.
It is difficult to look at clearly. Because it makes me ashamed.
If you've read here at all for the last year, you have heard endless tales of my growing sadness and depression -- attributed largely to the aftermath of my hysterectomy a year ago, and the decline in my sexual response following that surgery. That hasn't been inaccurate exactly, but it also hasn't been entirely truthful either.
There was more to the story. There were secrets that I kept about my anger and my sadness.
The new year approaches and I want 2007 to be better. So it is time to begin as I mean to go forward.
What lives on in the archives here as "The Thang," but in my mind and heart as a terrifically challenging and intense passage, hurt me.
A person who approached me as a "friend" very quickly turned her considerable energies to building a relatinship with Master. Things intensified quickly and I did not adjust nearly as quickly as the evolving situation demanded. In the end, it all came to a very difficult and unpleasant conclusion. Our lives eventually settled back into our accustomed pattern and life went on.
For me, though, some of the wounds never healed fully. I sank into my own convoluted thinking and told myself stories that weren't necessarily true. I came away with lessons learned that have caused me real pain. I learned that people who claim to be friends may not be all that friendly. I learned that I can be dropped off the edge of an emotional cliff whenever the relational territory shifts, and I learned that can happen without any warning. I learned that all the rootless, unconnectedness of my life does not give me any claim to being held secure if what that requires restricts the "freedom" of the rest of the family.
All of that was there, still tender, still fresh -- and then the surgery knocked me down for emphasis.
I haven't played it fairly. Because I haven't told the truth about how hurt or angry I was. There it is.
My suspicion? I really probably have been depressed, but in some ways, being sad and depressed has given me control. I've kept Him close because He's been worried. It is a kind of power that comes from being weak and broken. A terrible inversion. Ugly and sneaky and destructive.
I want no more depression. I want no more anti-depressant medications. I want no more hours spent with the therapist guy. I want to live and BE again, whole and balanced and alive.
The time for living with an abiding suspicion of everyone who comes seeking friendship is past. The time for trying to chain Him down with my saddness is way past. I'll never get my chance to stomp the one I'd really like to stomp, and if it came to it, I'd probably not actually do it.
Time to let it go. Time to move on. Time for a new year.

swan

This Day

He and I have been off together this last week...and we've slept. All week. He's been ill with a nasty virus, and He has simply felt crummy. Many days, He has slept until almost noon, and then gotten up to eat something. After maybe an hour or two perhaps, He's gone back to bed and slept the afternoon away. There's been nothing much of any interest, and certainly nothing "exciting." We've wrapped up in each others' arms and simply gone to sleep. To be honest, I've been so tired, it hasn't been much of an issue. When I've been awake, I've tried to sort out the path that I need to follow in the next year so that things can be somehow more positive and less grim than this last year has felt. So the quiet days have been good I suppose. Not what we normally anticipate for these winter holidays, but probably needed...


By this morning, though, both of us were starting to feel some better. The possibility of some play and some sex had come back into the picture. When He woke up, He pulled me close and tucked me into His chest. There's a particular sort of "curled up" position He likes to get me into so that He can hump away on me. I'm warm and I'm cuddly and I'm really not supposed to do or say much in that mode. Just be still and let Him go wherever it is He goes in His mind ... I've learned (usually) to not think too much about it... I know He'll let me know what He wants next -- sometimes to make love; and sometimes to spank. I try to spend the time finding a quiet heart, getting myself into His rhythm. It isn't about me.


This morning, out of nowhere, He stunned me, by beginning to PLAY with me. Not hurting me -- playing with me sexually. I understand, from an intellectual perspective, that this is always a possibility, but it is just so out of the norm that it surprised me and completely blew my calm. I was startled. Very soon, as He caressed my clit and sucked my nipples, I began to spin off into a place I don't remember being much in the last year -- a place I've almost forgotten. I don't think it took Him very long to have me whimpering and moaning under His hands and fingers, and then the wave crashed over me and carried me away completely and left me shaking and sobbing in His arms. Even then, He wasn't done with me. He continued to tease and torment my quivering body with His knife, tracing the sensitive and hungry contours as I floated on the sensations He was evoking. Even as He smacked my tender places with the flat of the blade, bringing forth cries and tears, I only clung to Him in straining hunger, as all the flood of need that has piled up this year poured out of me.


Only then, as I was reduced to jangling, quivering confusion, did He put me over the edge of the bed for a paddling and strapping. I was melted -- Until the first smack of the paddle. He hit me sharply with one of those nasty, evil Hanson paddles, and I came up screaming. Just for a moment, mind you... It only ever takes a flash of that fury and I'm back where I belong; back in position; back with the white hot fury leashed down tight and contained. He tried to talk with me -- I remember. I think I managed the required polite and appropriate responses. Mostly, I know that I was intent on staying on top of the volcanic anger that was threatening to drag me down. I know He started again. I know I was focused on "being good." And then it got dark. Dark. And I got lost. Somewhere in the darkness I got lost and scared and ...


I don't know much about it all. When I came back from the dark, He was there telling me to get back up on the bed. I was still where I'd started. I hadn't broken position. He said I'd been "noisy." I know I felt shaken and frightened and small. He held me. Used the rubber strap on me a bit, and let me calm down some...


Eventually, we did make love, and in one of those funny/magical moments that sneaks up on you when you aren't looking for it, I achieved the second orgasm of the morning even as He was finishing His own climax... He panicked just a bit and told me what I already knew: "I'm not in!" In the throes of my own very rare orgasm, I was (I'm afraid) not very concerned and replied, "I don't care -- it sucks to be you -- Sir..." and just kept on rocking. Somehow, lucky for me, and perhaps indicative of the desperately difficult time we've had this year, He found that hysterically funny. And so, we began this day.


swan

Nothing is Simple

I was awake early this morning -- 3:45, and unable to get back to sleep. Often in the last year, those wakeful, quiet, dark hours have given rise to spiraling and swirling sadness. This morning was calmer and more contemplative, as I looked back to the hours exactly a year ago when I was preparing for the surgery that has set me on the long path of struggle and discovery that has comprised this last twelve months.

I look back and I find it hard to sort and sift:

The things that happened because of the very real and very serious health concerns that created the move to seek out and agree to the hysterectomy in the first place -- and that continued even beyond the surgery itself, complicating and prolonging the recovery.

The initial lack of any sort of hormonal support or monitoring (on the part of my doctor) for potential hormonal impacts of the surgery. That left me completely unprepared for the disappointment that I encountered when I did finally get through the long recovery phase and then encountered the reality of a vastly diminished sexual response. It was at that point that I also discovered my doctor's lack of preparedness and/or willingness to address those issues.

So much "life" going on while all of that was happening: work stresses all around, health worries that just seem to keep on creeping into our lives in ever more insidious and increasingly tenacious ways, parents with all their various difficulties and needs and demands and issues, all the adult and nearly adult children -- don't we get to quit worrying about them eventually???, cars, clothes, teeth, plumbing, electrical, appliances, finances... Oh good grief!!!

We noted, pretty quietly and sort of in passing this month, that we've reached the 4-1/2 year mark of real time, full time, living together as a family. We've gotten "accustomed to" each other. There's a lot to be said for that. It is comfortable and mostly easy and predictable and mostly safe and secure. We understand each other and we know the rules and the expectations and the routines. There are more places where we are easier where each other. I suppose that seems odd to those who would imagine that BDSM (and M/s in particular) should not BE easy.

Perhaps they are right. I know He has left a very great deal of leeway for me this year. I'm surely not spanked like I might have been before. I know He is afraid for my well-being, both physical and emotional. He simply does not believe that I am sturdy. I've not been in the stocks for over a year. Not once. Perhaps in time. I miss it by times, but I'm afraid, too. If He doesn't believe in me, I don't believe in myself either. We spar more with each other emotionally, and verbally. I test more. I'm not as sure. I know that I am suspicious in a way that I never used to be. That is an artifact of our encounter with outsiders who, because we trusted and were open, were able to come into our lives in a very difficult and ultimately destructive way. It has made me afraid to seek contact with others, and that has led to further isolation.

I've come to the end of the year with a whole lot of new prescriptions. I am determined to end some of that as soon as I possibly can.

I've got myself a passle of paradoxes: woman without feminine sexual responses -- slave with an awful lot of choices -- mother without children -- spouse without marriage -- masochist who struggles with pain -- lonely wanting to avoid contact with other people...

Just not simple... not anymore. Maybe never was.

swan

A Special Kind of Pain

In just over two weeks my daughter, my youngest child, will have her 29th birthday. She will spend it, as she has spent so many important occasions (in her life, and in that of our family) during the last 16 years, incarcerated.

Addictions of an almost uncounted variety are the facile explanation. She drinks and she uses and sells a whole range of illegal drugs. It has been the truth since she was just twelve or thirteen years old.

Before that, from the time she was a very small child, an infant, she was different... always. I took her from doctor to doctor, from test to test. No one could explain what was going on with my child.

She hurts. She self-medicates. She refuses all help. She has been destroying herself for years and years, and I have, despite every effort, been unable to stop her or help her or save her. I've always thought, that I was one of the few people who could have parented her well... she was so difficult; such a challenge and such an enigma -- but I failed her in very real and very critical ways.

I sometimes think that I've learned to live with the reality of it; come to some kind of peace with it. I haven't. There are days (weeks of them strung together even) when I walk through my life
without shrieking my grief, but it always comes back to wash over me afresh. I want to make it better. I want to make her well and whole and strong. I can't, and it breaks my heart.

swan

About dignity; About grace; About integrity

I've come to the conclusion, and not for the first time, that finding your way into this lifestyle in public gives one an unalterably different point of view than if you "learn the ropes" in the cyber realms. There are just somethings that can only be learned (I am convinced) in the actual presence of real humans -- face to face. It has to be seen, absorbed, watched carefully, heard, felt, modeled, pondered for awhile -- and then absorbed, watched carefully, heard, felt, modeled, and pondered again and again.

I was lucky to meet Master and T very early in my explorations, and then to be quickly introduced by them to the public scene. When I left them after that first headlong dive into the deep waters of the real live, public, practicing, BDSM community, and traveled back to my home in Denver, I worked hard to find others who would help me learn and grow in my understanding and knowledge of my budding self-awareness. I learned more than could ever be written in a whole library of books by simply spending time with those who "did" BDSM in a variety of ways. I came to know many, many people (in many walks of life) who identified as Tops/Dominants/Masters, or bottoms/submissives/slaves, and some switches -- both male and female. Most were happy to share and guide and teach and mentor. Even those with whom I had no direct conversation, taught me by the fact that I was able to watch and learn from the way they conducted themselves.

I learned about dignity; about grace; about integrity. I learned about how those on both sides of the power exchange dynamic ensure that the bridge between them is crossed with intention and understanding, so that they arrive at their mutual destination with awareness and agreement and consent, not abuse. I learned that one can bend and bow, endure excruciating pain, submit to all sorts of torment and humiliation, and remain entirely noble and self-contained if the spirit knows the truth of who it is. I learned that service, done well can be art, I learned that slavery is not "just" any one thing -- not just sex, not just pain, not just fetish. It is connection, committment, growing in knowledge of what is pleasing and helpful and needed and wanted. I also learned a whole lexicon for the "critters" that come to the life with broken personalities and immature value systems who only want what it is they want -- the would be's and the wannabe's and the won't-ever be's; the lookie-loo's (who only want to watch), and those who come to "stand and model" in all their fancy fetish wear. One of the most interesting of all these is the do-me queen. A "do-me queen" is someone who usually claims to be submissive, but who is generally exceedingly needy and demanding. They have to be "done" on a regular, and usually escalating schedule, or they get unhappy, pouty, and bratty. A do-me queen can wear a Dominant out in short order. Talk about topping from the bottom! Whoever and however they showed up in all their glorious variety, they taught me and helped me grow. I've come to value their various contributions to my path, and know just how rare that part of my education really was.

These days, isolated in the conservative hell that is Cincinnati, Ohio, I miss that thriving public, real-life, community. To be sure, there are a few of you here in the cyber realm, who have come to be such good and valued friends, but you are a rare treasure. So many others, in this odd "universe" don't share the culture that I just assume is part of this life. There is no common ground of protocol, manners, dignity, grace. I find it disconcerting and frankly baffling. Somedays, I just feel old. And then again, maybe I just miss my friends, Dear Gabriel and kaylem, and His wry observation that it wasn't all about "blow jobs and butt sex." How very, very true.

swan

Clan Holidays

The wheel of time has turned and brought us back around again and we are back to Christmas time...

Last night, Friday night, when at last, we were finally all home together, we celebrated what is for us the beginning of the celebration of the holiday. We'll spend the weekend and the actual Christmas day, running from place to place, getting to all the various elements and branches of the extended family. It will be an extended replay of the Thanksgiving weekend in terms of hauling meals, and parts of meals, hither and yon. When we get home on Monday night, we will most likely drop into an exhausted heap, and give thanks for an end to it all. So, last night was just for the three of us.

Last night, when we got T home from work safe and sound, we sat down together to a "special" dinner: steak oscar (except for T, who doesn't eat asparagus and so had sugar snap peas with hers), baked sweet potatoes, good hot tea, and a glass of good merlot. Master had spent the whole day tormenting poor T about the possibility that we might open presents, and she was like an excited five year old -- barely able to eat her dinner. When we'd finished eating, and He'd judged that she'd squirmed and begged and cajoled and pouted long enough, Master (the other five-year-old in the family) relented, and we headed over to the big tree where all the presents have been piled. T (our youngest) passed out all the packages, until all of us had piles of goodies, and we set to work ripping (or carefully cutting with a knife in Master's case) the paper off each one in turn. What great loot! When it was done, He had lots of new sharp, pointy things, T had lots of new cooking goodies, and I had a whole wardrobe of soft, fluffy sweaters.

We finished up, tidied up the trimmings and wrappings, and made a fresh pot of tea (Chocolate and Hazelnut) and sat down for homemade cream puffs for dessert.

Today, we're snuggled in together, getting ready to go off on the first of our "family" visits. We're all sort of sick with respiratory crud, and so the energies are low. Probably that one is my fault... One of the down sides of living in a household with a school teacher is that "we" teacher-types bring home all kinds of nasty bugs, which unfortunately get shared with everybody in the house. Dang! The bad news is that we are likely to share them with the rest of the family who really do not need this icky stuff. Oh well.

We look around, and know that we are together and living the life we choose. We are (except for a few wayward bacteria and the things that come with age) well this year and happy. When life slows down a bit and we can take a moment to breathe, we are knowing this is true.

Wherever you all are today and throughout this season, may happiness and peace and strength and health find you. For the kindness and friendship you have shared with us this year, many thanks. We wish you all a very happy new year.

swan

Thoughts on "orgasm denial"

There are lots of number tricks that a person can do if the inclination strikes... Here's one: by the time we get to the end of April next year, our clan will have achieved a cumulative "age" of 160 years. Oh goody!

One thing that you can read about pretty regularly, if you read much about people involved in power exchange, is orgasm control or orgasm denial or restriction or somesuch. There are as many variations and reasons for the practice as there are people who engage in it. Sometimes it is about punishment. Sometimes it is about establishing control and a sense of power and ownership. Sometimes it is about upping the ante and increasing the intensity when "things" are restored after a period of abstinence...

It is not a place that we have ever gone together. For this, I am now, deeply and everlastingly grateful.

Whatever the rationale for the practice, each time I read about it here lately, I find myself with an increasing sense of disquiet and angst. I keep fighting back the surging bile that comes boiling up in me, and gasping down the urge to shriek at all the randy, arrogant young fools who are wasting the riches that nature has so profligately bestowed on their unappreciative souls.

Let me assure each and every female submissive and slave that ever chances upon these pages-- permanent and irreversible orgasm denial is, most likely, your destiny. Whether it comes to you naturally in the course of time, or suddenly and surgically, time will still the hormonally driven engine that makes it possible to reach the heights which you now, by times, choose (or have someone allow to choose for you) not to scale when you have the power to do so.

I fully and completely understand the urge; the compulsion, the willingness to submit to the power and control of One who owns "body and soul." I know the joy of falling fully into the embrace of surrender and submission. I also know the sense of futility that comes when one looks back at a path that cannot be walked ever again and realizes what cannot be retrieved from the mists of the past. I only hope that those who are years behind me along the age curve; who are still young and fresh and wet and responsive and horny as hell, will heed me well -- live this part of your life to the absolute fullest: fuck joyously, take all the pleasure that you can from every moment and every sensation, revel in your bodies and your lusts and the sensations that rock through your lives. Scream and grunt and sweat and squirt and then do it all again -- as often and as long as you possibly can. Don't waste a single moment. Do that much for me, please. If that would happen, the last year would have not been for nothing.

swan

Strange Conversations

Sometimes it gets lonely. One of the realities of this life is that there is often a shortage of "outside the family" folks to talk with. The people that I interact with socially and professionally must, necessarily, be kept entirely in the dark about the truth of my life. It is not that I am ashamed, but revealing the facts of how I live would jeopardize us financially and perhaps legally. So isolation is the price we pay for safety. I am not a social butterfly, but I do, by times, long for conversation and companionship -- for the simple comfort of talking with others who understand what it is to live life as we do.

Lately, I've been spending time in a BDSM chat room. I've never really done the chat room thing before. It has been an interesting experience.

For starters, I'm generally one of the oldest people in the room, if not THE oldest. Sometimes that means that no one talks with me at all. Sometimes. When that happens, it gives me the opportunity to observe the goings on.

I understand that the majority of participants in the room at any point are probably not there, as I am, simply for the sake of companionship and conversation, but good grief! The place is not a "chat room" -- it is a meat market where those who are nominally dominant and submissive are clambering (in a cyber sense) over one another to get to each other. That's just fine, if that's your thing, but I find it oddly distracting and disturbing somehow.

A couple of examples of the exchanges I've been involved in during the bit of time I've spent --

One young woman, who claimed to be submissive, and who stated that she "had" a Dominant, was all over the place, making over every would be "Master" in the room. Most were more than glad to "play" with her -- an interesting phenomenon, but she seemed to not mind it in the least and cavorted gaily from one to another. Finally one enquired if her Master did not mind such antics. she replied that He was not a master -- "just a DOM." I was stunned. No one else seemed to question the logic of her statement, but I wondered at the devaluing of the D/s relationship that she had entered into with the person to whom she referred as "just a DOM."

On another occasion, I was hanging out, just observing. Most of those who were in the room were male. Eventually one of them asked if I were male or female and I replied that I was female. Then he asked if I were submissive. I told him I was The Heretic's slave. He wondered if I had permission to play with others, and I told him, "no -- that I enjoyed talking and came for the companionship." I thanked him, politely for asking. He was accepting of that and did not make an issue of it. Shortly someone else came into the room, and essentially the same conversation was repeated. And then there was a third repetition of the same gambit. This time however, the fellow was not at all accepting of my polite declining of his wish to play. He became angry and beligerant -- "why was it that everyone in the room was already attached and not available?" The room would soon fall to ruin; people would get bored and stop coming, yada, yada, yada... I chose to simply have no further conversation with him -- seemed no point. One other man in the room did comment to me that he had a slave of his own who would have behaved the same way. He told me that he admired my sense of faithfulness and decorum.

It is strange. I don't find it bad or wrong or inappropriate so much as just disappointing and shallow. When I did finally find my way to the BDSM lifestyle subculture, I found (very quickly) people who were living it in real life. I found people who went to public dungeons; or more correctly, private clubs and practiced the arts and disciplines and techniques of the life WITH other people. There were protocols and there were acceptable norms and there were expectations. I "grew up" with a community understanding of decorum that suffused everything. We understood that what we did was sexual and erotic and alternative. We also knew that it was social and interpersonal and communal -- that we relied on and needed one another and that the rules that governed our interactions were important and protected us all. Top, bottom, Dominant, submissive, Master, slave, switch, male, female, gay, lesbian, transgendered -- each of us honored who we were, and we honored one another. In my experience, that is still mostly true in the public scene. Cyber seems to lessen people's sense need for rules or norms. I think we are poorer for it.

swan

Cages

It was a while ago when morningstar wrote about the challenges of making sometimes sudden transitions from working "out in the world" as a professional, competent, in charge, assertive adult, to the "at home" slave on call without any (or much) control or choice about one's personal time or life or comfort. She pointed to and then proceeded to discuss the complexity and emotional "whiplash" that making that shift can sometimes entail.

She went on to write (not a lot later) about needing to make that transition pretty much on her own -- because her Master, like mine, tends to have the expectation that she will simply "be there" when He calls upon her in that fashion. **Knowing nods** around the circle of those who "do it" this way, and then we shall move on... Every variant of this dynamic has its challenges. We all know this, and there is no intent here to dismiss, disrespect, judge or belittle anybody who does anything differently than we do -- I am merely identifying a significant break in reality.

Anyway, I think the business of needing to go out regularly brings with it a sort of "tight-rope walker" kind of need to maintain one's balance and sense of internal identity that is sometimes particularly challenging. To me it sometimes brings me back to the memories of my earliest experiences with significant bondage.

When we first ventured into "real" bondage, I had great difficulty. I found that, in spite of my fantasies about it, the reality put me into full on panic. The knowledge that I could not escape terrified me at first and I would rage and hyperventilate and throw myself against the restraints until I'd fall into a state of total exhaustion. It took a good deal of time for me to come to understand that restraints could provide me with some security and comfort, and actually lessen the level of responsibility that fell on my shoulders to "stay put" and actually manage whatever else might happen -- with the bondage, I had no choice and could simply go with whatever came along. I began to sometimes ask for the restraints, and to welcome them.

Likewise, I have long read about those who use "cages" of various kinds, and simply not understood what it is about exactly. Here lately, though, as I have struggled with my own emotional stability, as I have struggled with a small, but insistent internal voice that comes in the midst of my darkest moments and urges me to get in the car and drive and drive and drive until the road runs out, I am beginning to understand the comfort and security of the cage. I know I will not listen to the nagging, small voice. I know there is no shining road for me; that my place -- always and all ways -- is here. Still the only "cage" that holds the swan is the one that I erect out of will and heart and committment. How easy it would be, sometimes, to know that the bars were strong and secure and the lock would hold fast, even when I was too tired and too scared and too lonely to be entirely sane...

swan

Saturday

I've been trying to write the experience of last Saturday for days now. It is difficult to write because I just can't get it to hold still or come into focus or take on any sort of reasonable sequence. It is a jumble to me -- like a pile of snapshots that I maybe dropped and can't make any sense out of at all...

Forgive me then, if this seems dreamy and confused; that's the reality for me on this one.

In very many ways, we are having to start from something close to the beginning and recreate our path together. Neither of us are as we were a year ago. That is the reality.

We remain linked. Bonded. Promised. Committed.

Exploring is sometimes exciting, but can also be awesomely scary. There are no maps for how to go forward into this realm if you are not young and "hot" and still able to respond in all the usual ways. There are enough messages to tell people who are "alternative" that they really ought to get in line and join the mainstream. When those same alternative people cross the river into "maturity," the drumbeat grows insistent and the incredulity that one encounters at almost every tunr is almost overwhelming: "what are people like you doing still DOING it?!?!?!?!" ARRRRRGH!

Oh well.

So.

Saturday morning we began to circle warily toward the center of sex and SM. It has been a place of defeat and disappointment for far too long. I've long since stopped expecting anything good or joyful to happen. I submit and serve, knowing that there is nothing there for me except the knowledge that I am giving Him pleasure. It is enough, but it is not what it was and we both know it. We both miss what used to be.

This time, He wasn't willing to let it go at that. He broke from our usual pattern and began to focus on my level of arousal. To be honest, my head wasn't in a great place to start with. I'm prone to let myself get into some pretty dark places... perhaps that can be grist for another post, but I was feeling low and wishing we could just get on with it. Of course, I didn't SAY any of that, thank goodness!

Eventually as the responsiveness He was looking for just did not materialize, He suggested that it seemed that what I needed might be nipple clamps. I heard Him, but wasn't sure whether He was serious or not. I simply waited to see what He wanted. It took Him a few minutes to ask where they were.

I had no idea. We haven't had them out for ages.

I thought that perhaps they might be in the basket on top of His dresser, or maybe in His top drawer. I really wasn't sure. After those two spots, I had a list in my head of a half dozen spots that I might need to look to hunt them down...

So, He suggested a "game:" He'd give me a good paddling and then send me off to find the nipple clamps. If they were in the basket, as I'd first suggested, I could bring them back to Him. If not, He'd paddle me again, and I could go look in the next place I'd mentioned, etc., etc., etc. He loves that sort of thing, you see.

He began with the Hanson Paddle that was my nemesis so early on in our relationship, and I struggled mightily to hang in even for the very beginning set. This was not a good sign. Then it was off to look through the basket...

No luck. Back for the first paddling. I got through the second set, and was off to hunt through the drawer. Only this time He asked me if I wanted the next set with the paddle or the cane. I told Him it didn't matter. I was already in despair because I had no clue about where the clips were and knew that this could go on and on and on. I was already verging on panic and we'd barely begun.

Perhaps He heard it because, even as I began to dig about in the drawer where He tosses bits and pieces of "guy junk," He opened a leather box that He keeps on top of the dresser, and there they were! The nipple clamps! Relief flooded through me in that instant!

"Did you know the whole time?" I asked Him, tearfully. He told me no, and I believed Him. I flew into His open arms for a hug, simply thrilled that they'd been found, and the whole long swirling list of places where I might have to go and hunt for them was swept away. I was giddy with the relief of it.

It was then that He reminded me that they hadn't been in the drawer where I'd thought they might be -- that He'd found them, and not me. So, of course, there would have to be the requisite paddling. Of course. But first, He wanted to put them on, so I climbed back into bed and tried to ready myself for what I knew would be the shock of clamps applied after so long...

Futile! There's no way to get ready for the suddeness of nipple clamps when they first bite on tender flesh; no way to ride through the burning -- it is what it is. I dropped almost instantly into the red, still, fire and simply lay there next to Him waiting for whatever would come next.

He waited for a bit and watched me I think, and then He asked me how they felt.

"They hurt. They burn," I told Him.

"How long do you want to wear them?" He asked.

"Not very long," I replied.

He told me then that all I could decide how long I would wear them. All I had to do to have them removed was ask Him to paddle me. Simple. But I was torn. I was afraid that if I asked too quickly, He would be disappointed in me; think I was wimping out. I didn't want Him to be angry with me. I didn't know what He wanted me to do; didn't know what to choose, or how to please Him. I told Him all of that, and He assured me that He would not be angry either way, that it was fine...

I waited a very little bit (I think), and then I asked, "Please paddle me, Sir." The clips were dreadful as they came off. Always that seems true. He commented that it seemed the first time in a long time that I'd asked for a paddling and really sounded sincere about it.

I think there was something said about taking the paddling like a good girl or being put in the stocks. I'm not sure. I know that threat came up sometime. Anyway, I was good this time. Near the end, something touched me and I spilled over into deep sobbing. He gathered me up and held me and rocked me and soothed me while the tears flowed as they would. Once I'd recovered a bit, He told me that I'd received the first set of three sets. Sometimes that sort of thing panics me, but I felt past the panic point somehow. I was wrapped around His voice and His words and His touch and the warmth of Him near me.

I think it was for this set that He told me to respond to every stroke with "Yours always and all ways." He began slowly at first, and with each smack I'd repeat, "Yours always and all ways, Sir!" I have no idea how long it went on. I only know that it seemed that things got faster, and that I was racing to keep up; speeding through those "Yoursalwaysandallways,Sir!"s as fast as I could go; gasping for breath; breathing Him in; focusing on the words and the sounds and the moments; not thinking at all really -- just being.

And somewhere along the line there were cane strokes. I think because they were lighter. Maybe. But I don't remember when or exactly how... because I know He told me that He was suspending the third set, so I just am not sure when the cane strokes came into it all. He told me that I could come to Him later in the day and ask Him for the rest of the paddling -- unless I wanted more now. "Did I want more?"

The voice I haven't found for a very long time; the energy that has been gone; the heart that has held itself apart spoke from deep within me with a strength and a clarity that I've thought gone for good: "Yes, please, Sir." Just that simple.

"Well, alright then!"

He began to paddle me again, and I was aware of the rhythm of it, but not much else -- only the percussion, and the sounds I could hear myself making, and the sense of rushing toward the edge... Then I was over and into the place where everything expands and goes liquid and quiet; the place where I can simply allow myself to be carried on the tide, knowing it is all fine and that He has me completely and securely in His control.

I never know much about what is beyond that point. I know when I come back, He is always there. I know that, this time, there was heat and soreness and blood. He told me I'd broken in many many places and it was clear the blood had splattered widely. I rested for a good bit, wrapped snugly against His chest. Content, quiet, easy.

Then we made love, and I achieved that most rare and elusive gift of release just at the moment that He was reaching His own climax.

Glorious!

swan