Love and M/s

He and I are deeply, passionately in love. That reality continues to be the core of our relatedness, even now, just over seven years after our first encounters with one another. We part with great reluctance each morning to go off to our jobs in the "real world," and we come back together with huge joy each evening. Whatever the stresses and strains and challenges that life throws at us, and however exhausted we find ourselves, we take simple, honest delight in the daily gift of being able to wrap up in the security and physical comfort of one another, knowing that we are blessed to have come together in this lifetime. He is my strength, my best friend, my safety, my partner, the one who makes me smile, the all of my world. I don't know what I would do without Him. I am the luckiest of women.

There are those who believe that love and BDSM, and particularly total power exchange lifestyles, are imcompatible. I don't want to dispute the validity of that experience. I only know that it has not been ours. We love and we live as Master and slave -- at least by our lights.

Of course, we don't let the world tell us how to do that. Never have. So perhaps that is part of what saves us.

We didn't begin by defining our relationship in terms of the power exchange. We called one another "friend." And, I asked if He would teach me, or guide me into the lifestyle because I was so new and so inexperienced and so uncertain what it was that I wanted -- or even who I was in the beginning. So, we started with very little in the way of expectation from one another, and a very great deal of openess to the process of sharing information. We never saw the train coming that knocked us both flat.

In the beginning, I struggled mightily with the labels, that today, I wear with relative ease, and sometimes even pride. I had terrible trouble coming to terms with the knowledge that I was masochistic. The reality of my submissive nature was not much easier to deal with. He shared information, and shared His story. Mostly He shared who He was. Too, I was married, and I was a prickly and defended upright and uptight bit of a firebrand who set absolutely inviolate limits -- DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE!!! And He respected the lines I drew. Entirely too much of a gentleman for His own good. And mine.

It took us months and months to get to the point where we admitted the truth of our love for one another. What a cataclysm that was. For us. For T. For our world. Things changed radically and forever on that day. We began in that moment to redefine who we were to each other and to reshape our view of our lives and our path and our future. Nothing was ever the same from that moment forward.

We still hadn't spoken about anything that resembled a formal power exchange at that point. We knew some of the outlines, but that part, for us, was still in the future. There were clear indications beginning to show though... It was only a matter of a few months when He and I were in an IM conversation, discussing the timing of the necessary move from Denver to Cincinnati. I was hemming and hawing about the logistics of such a venture -- opining that it would probably require something on the order of a year and a half or two years. Suddenly across my IM screen came the oh so serious exclamation: "Do you think we will live forever? Get here next summer!" There was clearly no room for argument, and even though that was March, my entire house and household was in place in Cincinnati in June.

Still, we resisted calling ourselves Master and slave. We talked about Dominance and submission. He cut His initials into my flesh, and still we called what we did D/s. We played and we talked and we lived and we loved and we simply could not bring ourselves to define ourselves by what felt to be the "overheated" language of M/s. Until, one day it seemed to fit. And then it did and we did. It wasn't that we'd changed radically, or that we did things so drastically differently. We had simply arrived at a point of solidity and stability and maturity with our relationship and our dynamic that it felt appropriate I think. We knew it to be true for us. We didn't really mark it at all. It was just the truth.

I doubt even now that there is much that anyone looking in from the outside would notice about us that would tell them who or what we are with one another. Certainly, we do not fit the stereotypical image that I once had of a Master and slave -- or that I can still get if I read very far online these days: I still work out in the world in a career that requires me to take significant responsibility each and every day, and I earn a good salary that goes into "my" bank account. I still operate as the household "checkbook Nazi," paying our household's bills and managing our accounts. I still get up everyday and pick out "my own" clothes and drive "my own" car. Sometimes I call Him Sir, and sometimes not -- although ALWAYS in session. I sit on the furniture and I order my own food when we dine out. In many, many ways, I manage my life, and it would most likely appear that there is much more power in my hands than is appropriate for a "slave" to have. He likes it that way. He has no interest in micro-managing my life. It isn't His style, and He gets no "charge" out of those kinds of interactions. The expectation is that I will handle myself within those arenas as He would expect, and as is appropriate to the situation and my station. End of discussion.

Perhaps it is that He is so sure of His power that He is willing to give me such range. He is like the Archer. He sends me with sure hands out into the world, knowing that I will go exactly as He intends. He is not afraid to pull the string taught, but neither is He afraid to release it. I can lie easy in His hands. He will not break me, although it lies within His power to do so. We are calm with each other. Confident. Our trust carries us past the need to continually up the ante, peer around us at what the world tells us we "ought" to be doing. Ours is a path that is determined by His will and His skill.

We've learned. Together. There is a deep darkness into which we understand that we can travel together. We know about it. We know that together, we are strong enough to travel those pathways and come out on the other side with wisdom that neither of us can obtain alone. We also know the risks of going there. We understand things about protecting what is fragile and valuable and irreplaceable. Some pain can be transmuted into pleasure. Some rage can be harnessed for healing. Some grief can be nurtured into acceptance and even joy. Anything is possible when you love faithfully and well.

swan

Leather

He has reverted to leather. Tawse and heavy paddle.
I am in heaven. Leather is my delight. There is something about the pain that leather brings that is deeply delicious and warmer than all the other evil stuff that fills up the arsenal of implements.
It isn't that He can't bring me to tears, to screams, to sobs, and the near panic that makes me think I can't hang on another stroke with leather toys... He can surely do that. With leather, though, my skin doesn't seem to break and bleed. He gets that glow He loves, the color that He likes; the heat that makes Him hot -- and there's no blood to clean up.
So, this rarest of mornings, when there was nothing at all on the calendar to drag us out -- nothing pressing to force us up and at it, we came slowly up from deep and dreaming sleep to contemplate -- breakfast. Sigh. We've gotten so old. So tired. So worn, that, when the time is given, there is simply no energy left for passion anymore. Old age sucks. Stress has gotten to us finally I think.
I am a good slave (at least I try). I have quit complaining most of the time -- quit pouting. I climbed out of the bed and headed off to brush the teeth and become presentable. It was as I stood, naked at the bathroom sink, brushing my teeth, that He finally noted "the butt," and decided that perhaps there really might be some value in spanking me this morning. Back to bed we went. An hour or so later, well spanked and with the appropriate morning "ministrations" completed, we were finally off to a breakfast treat -- crab cake benedict at a favorite nearby eatery.
Maybe we are not quite as old as that after all.

swan

Community

We often wish for more opportunities to socialize with others with whom we could be open about who we are (our life and lifestyle choices). We bemoan the lack of "community" here in our area, and by that we mean very specifically a BDSM-friendly community -- a kink community. It isn't that there aren't kinky people in the area. There are. There are groups within an hour or two of us in several directions. There are even a few people right here in the immediate area that we might hook onto if we were inclined to do that.

So, our isolation is not a function of there being NO local kinky people. It is related to decisions and choices that we make, and that is in spite of a deep longing to be connected to others who would share some of our interests and understandings -- who are "like" us. So, knowing that there are linkages that we could make, we remain unconnected and isolated.

There are, of course, reasons; examined, and otherwise.

Part of the problem is defining exactly what it is that we mean when we talk about community. In the sociological sense, a community is really just a group of people linked together and sharing some common interest or goal, and small or local enough to provide a sense of intimacy, safety, or belonging. Really, communities should provide both security and freedom, and so encourage individuals to want to invest in them and share of themselves.

Theoretically, a community can form up around almost anything that a set of folks share in common. In my childhood, it was common for neighborhoods to become communities as people came to know one another and children roamed from house to house and schools and churches formed the gathering centers for everyone in the area. That sort of physical definition isn't as typical anymore and so communities don't seem to form up around geographical locales as readily as they did when I was young. I know some people who use their bowling leagues or bridge clubs or Red Hat Ladies Groups as the focal points to make up their community. Those kinds of "interest" related groups can work if that is your thing I guess. Probably, that would be the nature of the community that we would be looking for when we go looking for "kinky" people to create community with for ourselves.

Except that there are a few challenges to the whole business of creating a community that is wrapped around an interest like "kink."

The first one that we run into all the time is that "kink" isn't easily definable and describable. Our kink is not the same as your kink, and just because you are kinky and we are kinky doesn't mean that you and we will necessarily like the same things or each other. Not at all. Once we get past the "we are all into something kinky" part of things, the odds that we are anywhere even remotely on the same page become almost astronomical. Then the odds that we will have anything much in common, and/or enough to spend more than about 15-20 minutes in anything even remotely approaching a conversation becomes just about laughable.

Then there's that "safety" thing. We need to feel safe and secure. Chances are, if we decide that there is something that warrants us all spending a bit of time together, we are all going to want to talk. That implies contact. Real, live, honest to goodness, human contact. Contact means that there are levels of risk. We will need to talk and/or meet eventually. For us, and for you, there are risks associated with that. We tend to take the chance on a regular basis, but we know each and everytime we do it, we are putting ourselves on the line. We know that the people we meet and talk to are doing the same. It is the cost of having to live undercover -- coming out into the open, even a little bit, becomes scary and threatening. Doesn't matter whether we meet in a restaurant, or make a phone call, or invite you to our home for a meal -- we all still lay it on the line each time we reach out and say, "hello -- nice to meet you."

The other problem with getting "into" the community is dealing with the created structure of it all. We come together artificially, in secret, often with assumed identities, for stolen bits of time, in borrowed venues. We cannot risk being fully who we are or being seen or recognized. We lose our identies from "outside" and come, stripped of our reality, into a world we create from whole cloth. That fact requires us to make up whole new structures and new hierarchies. And we do: new leadership and new rankings and new status levels. Just as it was in Junior High School, there is jostling for power and prestige, and inevitably, there is an "in-group" and an "out-group" image and connection become everything. Being part of the right circle becomes part of the game.

One local group that we are sort of loosely attached to is pretty well "run" by one couple. They recently announce on the group list that they would be attending a showing of a particular movie at a specific theater. Soon, the list was flooded with answering "me/us too's." Since we knew nothing at all about the particular movie, we went to check and saw little or no connection to the lifestyle, or any real reason for everyone to be flocking to see it all together. Clearly, it was a case of wanting to be seen in the company of the "cool kids." Ewwwww.

We want company. We want friends. We want to be able to socialize and spend time with others that "get" who and what we are about. That would be simply a given if our lifestyle were part of the mainstream. Clearly it isn't. We aren't interested in running naked theough the local pizza restaurant, or creating a scene at the local mall. Isolation feels like a factor in forcing us into weirdly contorted relating styles with our peers and would-be friends. And around and around it goes.

How does a person create simple friendships with others IF one is kinky? That's the dilemma. Our lives are not one dimmensional. On the other hand, they are kinky; they are different; they are not "vanilla." We know, that we cannot bring our work asociates, our unsuspecting social acquaintances home. They would not understand. We know that we cannot bring all of us to company dinners and school functions and the like. It is too complicated to explain. We know that our "vanilla" life and our "kinky" life must be kept radically separated in very definitive ways or there will be real and cataclysmic consequences.

It is interesting. Effective banishment. Shunned, and we cooperate and collaborate. We can choose a community that is difficult to connect with, prickly and strange and cliquish. Or we can remain in lifelong isolation. What a tangle.

swan

Communication

It is probably the most ubiquitous advice within the lifestyle, whatever your kink: communicate, communicate, communicate. We all understand that it is not only good advice, it is necessary if our kind of relating is going to work. But simply telling someone to "communicate" does not answer the "how to" questions that come up in the trenches when people actually try to do this. It just isn't always as simple as it sounds.

We've been working our way through a problem that has challenged us for probably the last year and a half. It has shown up with a lot of faces, but at its root, it has been an issue of communication -- or more correctly, a series of communication miscues and misses. I think, WE think, we've got it figured out now, but I'm going to try and describe what we've been through. Maybe some of this will be instructive or interesting or just useful to someone else in some way. Maybe not. Whatever. It is part of our story together.

I think there are a few parts to the problem we've had. Part of it is that my own thinking isn't always that clear. It is hard to communicate when what you ought to be communicating is a wordless tangle of stuff in your gut and your mind without much form to it. Communication that sounds like a wounded animal shrieking is just not a whole lot of use to the average Dominant. The second part of our sometimes struggle is that His own thinking process is very quick and very direct. He wants words, laid out neatly, in nice straight, simple lines that make sense. He has very little patience for my sort of round about, image driven, fishing for words and pictures. Then there is what I think is a very natural barrier between Dominants and submissives (although I imagine He might disagree with me on this one) which is that we are not the same in our most essential natures. I believe that Dominants and submissives simply see and experience the world differently.

Perhaps it began long before it actually began. I came here, over 4-1/2 years ago, with a simple black leather collar. It was not a collar that He gave me. It was purchased early in my explorations, and worn whenever my husband and I ventured out into public to play. For me, that collar said to the world that I was "submissive," and that in those days, when I was with my husband, that he was my "protector." Nevermind that he really wasn't up to the job, that collar made it possible for me to explore, to learn, to grow, to go safely in the community where I first spread my wings as myself. I invested it with a very great deal of power and significance. It was a powerful talisman for me. Admittedly, there are other pieces that served as "collars" between my husband and I. Most of them have significance attached to that relationship and do not bear the same weight that the leather collar does. I don't ever wear any of them, and we don't use them for anything, either. Because, in the early going, I learned my way into my submission largely by myself, that leather collar came to be VERY powerfully weighted in my psyche.

He has always used it as a restraint. Along with matching wrist cuffs and a simple metal fitting, the leather collar has always served to hold me physically in place for our SM play. For Him, that is what that bit of leather is for. It is a practical piece; a nice addition to the toybag. It has no particular significance and no emotional or relational weight. He didn't give me that collar. It doesn't mean anything special to Him. As far as He is concerned, the collar that matters is the chain mail collar that He gave me -- and the cutting marks on my back. The other is meaningless. Dominants are like that I think. They see the world from an entirely different place than submissives do sometimes.

So.

It was nothing at all for Him to take the restraints and use them AS restraints a year and a half ago with *j*. It wasn't anything that was discussed between us. I wasn't part of any of it. There wasn't any reason why I should have been. He was going to play, and so He used the restraints -- including the collar and cuffs. It was purely a practical matter. AND, after all, when it comes down to it, slave's don't OWN anything, so there shouldn't be a problem with it, anyway. He'd do it again, will likely do it again with anyone He chooses to play with.

Practicalities, shouldn'ts...

In the beginning, it wasn't anything that I really noticed. There was so much brokeness; so much damage to clean up; so much to attend to just to survive the initial aftermath following the mess with "j", that I didn't really pay any attention to how I was feeling about any of it. Things all seemed to happen quickly. Then I started having real medical troubles, and then there was the surgery, and the aftermath, of the surgery, and the very long and difficult recovery.

Except that there was more and more and more difficulty with our SM connection. It started very subtly at first. He would put that collar on me, and I'd begin to struggle. I would gasp, and sweat, and my stomach would clench. I didn't make the connection at first. I didn't make any connection at all for a very long time. I'd simply fight down the reactions and hold on and get through it all. I really didn't even "get" that it was the collar that was triggering it all. Over time, the reactions escalated, from a bit of queasiness to a full on gagging reflex, to an almost overwhelming sense of impending nausea. The idea of having that collar around my neck began to make me ill, began to make me angry, began to be an obsession that I simply could not make go away.

And I knew it was all just crazy. I knew that if I told Him what was making me so nuts, He'd send me right back to the creepy shrink guy again, and I'd have to do all that icky psychobabble crap all over -- and for what? It wasn't going to change a single freaking thing. Somehow, I knew that I was going to have to get through the place in my head where the leather collar meant more to me than it did to Him; figure out how to stop feeling like having it on was like wearing someone else's used underwear...

I tried to tell Him a couple of times, but couldn't get it to make any sense because explaining all of that in few enough words, clearly enough and concisely enough, without a whole lot of emotional burden so He would sit through it all just seemed to be beyond my capacity. I just hadn't had any luck making it clear to Him what my problem was. All He was getting was that our sessions were breaking down and that I was falling out of "position" in a rage most of the time. He was concerned but not sure what the issue was.

Confusion was sitting between the two of us, creating havoc.

That's where things were last weekend when He got out the restraints and strapped me up. I was in trouble immediately, physically repulsed AND furious. He had no idea that there were storm clouds brewing, and set about with a rubber strap. That was enough -- the floodgates burst. I couldn't do it anymore. I began to try to rip the leather from my neck, flailing and tugging, wrenching the evil thing every which way -- determined to get it off of me. Snarling and spitting, I shrieked my anguish at Him: "I don't care what You do! Take j's fucking collar off of me and You can do whatever you want! Just don't make me wear her goddamn fucking collar anymore!"

It didn't save my ass. He went right on with whatever He was doing. Left me bloody and bruised and welted. Broke the cane over me in the bargain. Finished. I think I remember hearing Him say something about it not being her collar, but maybe I imagined that -- I was still shrieking and trying to rip the damn thing to shreds. Afterwards, He held me, rocked me, stroked me, made love to me. Said nothing at all about any of it.

Later in the week; days later, He told me: "Order a new collar -- choose a two-toned colored one so that we will be able to tell it apart from the other one. Then there will be one that will be only yours." End of discussion. He heard me; loved me enough to honor the depth of my pain and fix the problem. I am the luckiest of women.

Sometimes communicating takes hard work, and lots of patience, and more than just a little time.

swan

Polyamory Observations #5

Once you create the kind of multi-branched poly relationship that we have, you simultaneously create a multi-faceted sociological phenomenon as well.

We seem to have come with a variety of strands, attached to all kinds of other folks that we love and care for. In a couple, those strands of relatedness can get complex enough sometimes, but when you start adding more people into a "family" group that is about something more than just a little happy lustfulness, then those relationships need to be "handled." That can get sort of interesting sometimes.

I don't think that you can do this if you haven't got a pretty good set of fully operational brain cells between the bunch of you...

So, a story. Indulge me.

If you've been following along, you already know that we have Grandma and Grandpa, both in their late 80's. Grandma is well along into Alzheimer's, knowing less and less about the "real" world, or any of us all the time. We've just gotten her settled into a local nursing home in the last couple of weeks. Grandpa, who lives in an assisted living facility, is moving this weekend to a smaller apartment.

Grandpa is a fairly health guy for someone approaching 89 years of age, but managing a move is beyond his capacity -- even if that move is only one door down the hall. So, it has been necessary for us to step in and offer a significant amount of assistance, and that's where things get interesting. Our cast of characters is not what you would call "normal" -- you see. Along with a lot of much needed and welcome muscle provided by Master's 18 year old son, we've had a whole lot of help from "our ex-wife." Yes, Master's first wife, the mother of His children, pitches in and helps out when the olagers are in crisis, and works side by side with T and I to make things happen.

So, today, when it came time to wade through the "crap" in Grandpa's place; to sort out Grandma's clothes; to determine what could go to Goodwill and what could be sold on E-bay; to figure out which bits of Grandma's old jewelry might be kept for the day when daughter and/or a someday daughter in law might appreciate Grandma's pearls; there we were -- wife, slave, and "ex-wife,' working in perfect concert to get the job done (after sending Master and Grandpa off to shop for a recliner for his new place). It is really hard work, but we enjoy each other. We laugh and we chatter, and we tell stories. We do what I imagine women have always done... slip into the easy camaraderie of homely talk and silly gossip, and it is as natural as stream water over stones.

We never really talk about how that happens. Much of it is because T has worked really hard for years to create the ground for that relationship to exist. None of us really look at it very closely. It is so shimmery when it is going on that it feels as if there are unicorns in the room -- the oddest incarnation of "the three graces" ever to come into being. I can feel my mind tickling about it, but being reluctant to consider it much. I am quite sure that if we pointed directly to it, it might vaporize.

In some very odd way, another sideways benefit to our poly relatedness, is that "our ex-wife," who, in many ways, is a very prickly, difficult, seemingly lonely woman, gets a couple of sort of girlfriends to hang out with every now and then. Interesting. Amazing. Wondrous.

I am entirely sure that IF you could bring in someone to observe the whole business, and they didn't know any better, they would assume we were all sisters. On the other hand, IF you could bring in an observer who was completely cluedin to the dynamics and aware of the relationships, I very much doubt that they would believe what it is they see us do so easily and fluidly. Perhaps, that disbelief would be well founded. Maybe it really isn't all that easy. Whatever. It really is worth whatever energy we all invest in the civility, the kindnesses, the reaching out to one another, the simple thoughtfulnesses. Back and forth -- across our various connections, we are weaving a "family" that defies all the expectations, and that continually surprises even all of us.

swan

Rant

I cannot stand arrogance, ignorance, intolerance, or condecension. It is particularly noxious when it comes robed in the garb of "civility" and acts to put itself out as if it has been somehow injured. My friend, morningstar, participates with an unusual group of bloggers in a community that calls itself (for reasons that are not entirely clear) Freedom's Place. She got herself into a bit of a tussle with some there about the use of the word "vanilla" as a descriptor within our community, and that has caused a fair amount of angst. She's apologized, and been way more sweet and accommodating than I would have been under the circumstances. I admit that I don't read there regularly, and don't really know most of the contributors -- I peek in upon occasion... but a day or so ago there was This Bit, and I have been fussing about it ever since.

So. If you do not want to read the rant that has been going on in my head, go somewhere else now.

The person who wrote the "charming" and oh so typically dismissive piece at "Freedom's Place" punched so many of the buttons that society uses to dismiss and marginalize those of us who pursue a lifestyle alternative that is seen as other than the norm. As I read first morningstar's response to footpad, and then the others that followed, I noticed that nobody seemed to find that what he had to say was offensive. Honestly, that surprises me. How dare this person just assume that he has the right to make these judgements without even a scintilla of a question as to whether there is a foundation for the reasoning behind all of this drivel? And why does everyone just go along for the ride, and pat this whiner on the head and chime in with "oh, poor thing..."

So let me just go through my issues:

• The "Freedom's Place" writer states, "I am not in a submissive, nor dominate, relationship...and I want neither. Nor do I particularly want to participate in a community that makes such a relationship, well, important." Such a relationship? The implication behind this must be that it is just "our kind" of relating that is out of bounds. Other relationships, I assume, would be perfectly acceptable to discuss, consider, dissect, encourage, support, and write about at whatever length. Traditional marriages, and all the vagaries and issues associated with them would, presumably, not trouble this individual, and would be entirely acceptable topics of discussion. Never mind that these relationships are all fraught with their own, usually unacknowleged, power exchange, dominance and submission issues. So this is just not good enough. If you are going to disallow one kind of relationship dynamic, then it must be that all relational dynamics must be unacceptable topics of discussion for the blog forum. So, just do not talk about any person with whom you relate, regardless of gender or marital status. Do not discuss children that you may have given birth to or raised. Do not mention any concerns about any family members of any age or relational status. Do not bring up any of the worries or sorrow or joys that may come about as a result of being a human person involved in intimate relationship because that is somehow "inappropriate."

• Then, footpad writes, "Over the years, I've been involved in many online communities, each dedicated to different (technical) issues. I've not squaked about them because I've been truly anonymous with them. However, this one has my RL photo associated with it." So, if you are anonymous, it doesn't matter what a community does? There is only a need to hold yourself or the community to a standard if you have a "face?" Let me make it clear -- if that is the standard, then what I write can be counted on to be absolutely up front, because here at "The Heron Clan," you have our faces, my neck, and my ass on the line. I'm willing to back what goes on here with the full credibility of my own heart, soul, and yes, face. No hiding behind the cowardice of cyber anonymity.

• Then, the "Freedom's Place" writer brings in the children. "And, yet, I find myself hesitating to let my children read the posts herein. Look, I don't really care what you do in the privacy in your own bedroom. Nor do I want you prying into my own." Sigh. Why is it that people do this? Don't they understand that children above the age of about 8 or 9 are simply awash in all sorts of influences that they cannot control anyway, and so they'd best be proactive in discussing and explaining and "parenting" around that, so that the lines of communication remain open for them to have some reasonable influence? Do they live in homes with televisions (Desperate Housewives, Fear Factor, etc.) and radios and I-pods and all the various media? Do their children go out and talk and interact with other children? If, as a parent, you would prefer to not allow your child to see certain things on a certain site or on a certain television program, etc., then take steps to make that happen, but do not bring that out as a club to limit the participation of other adults in that site -- or to constrain the discussions or conversations of those adults. Again, I am uncertain, why this writer has problems with some of the content at Freedom's Place (in relationship to children -- BDSM specific) but not other topics (drinking perhaps or smoking for instance). It's an interesting double standard. Further, I wonder what, exactly, it is that is so horrible about what has been written so far by morningstar, that children of a certain age could not be engaged in talking about it with a responsible, caring parent. Sex and the variations of how humans relate to one another are topics which children and adolescents are appropriately curious about. Parents and caring adults in their lives are the absolute best people for them to discuss these questions with -- assuming these people remain available for those conversations. Sadly, too often, those people make themselves unavailable because they convey that these topics are "off limits."

• Then the "Freedom's Place" writer gets truly incoherent as the ultimate meltdown begins to show up: "My personal hope for this space was to engage in interesting discussion with different people from a variety of cultures different from my own. Yet, what seems to be taking place is more appropriate for the letters page of various and sundry adult publications or a singles bar. A couple of you were pretty defensive about your personal interests. If this community is to become another avenue to reach out, rather than embace, to "non participants," then I need bow out and (as graciously as possible) disassociate my photo and my support from such as place.Look, I frankly don't care what you do behind the bedroom curtains. But I really have to ask if it's completely necessary to lead with your sexual interests. Would you walk into a new situation and say (essentially), "Hi all, I'm a sub and your OK?"I don't think so. IF so, well...um...Thanks for sharing.(I guess.)Is this making any sense?Look, Freedom's Place is a new community and it needs to determine what, precisely, separates it from every other community in the 'Sphere. If it's to become yet another place for soft porn, OK. That's where's it's citizens choose to go. Obviously, there is no desire to be with anyone who is that "different." The only different people this one wants to get to know are the acceptably different sorts. Clearly, the view has been forever distorted by too much time spent with "porn" which has defined the understanding of what it is that WE must be about, and so there is no need to get to know anything about our sort of people. OUR "culture" isn't of any interest, and that has been pre-determined before the trip even gets off the ground. This writer employs exactly the same argument/implication that was used to keep gay and lesbian people in hiding for so long: "must you TELL everyone about your lifestyle?" It is the belief that everything we do is by definition sexual and pornographic and therefore somehow relegatable to the bedroom. Under this rationale, our orientation can be hidden from view and separated from the rest of our lives. If this is the requirement for US, then, why is it not the requirement for everyone else? Why are others allowed to discuss their marital status, their partners, their household living arrangements, etc.? And why are these things not considered to be inherently sexual? Yes, some of what goes on with BDSM is sexy and sexual. I'll not deny it. However, as I recall, some of what I did as a "vanilla" wife and mother was sexy and sexual, too. If we are going to disallow everything that hints of sex in relationships, then why is it that we do not admonish the "vanillas" in our society to keep all references to their lifestyle out of sight? Why is it OK for them to openly declare that they are wives and husbands; to flash titles like Mr. and Mrs.; to go about proudly boasting that they've given birth to two, three, four or more children (clear evidence of having participated in vaginal intercourse). Why is it that we have no problem at all with the clearly erotic celebration of traditional marriages and the power exchange oriented religious/traditional wedding vows that follow the form:

Priest say unto the Man:
Wilt the have this Woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God's
ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt the love her, comfort her,
honour, and keep her, in sickness and in health; and forsaking all other, keep
thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?
The Man shall answer: I
will.
Then shall the Priest say to the Woman: Wilt the have this man to be
thy wedded husband, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of
Matrimony? Wilt the obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in
sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so
long as ye both shall live?

I'd submit that the "perverted-perception" of all of this is in this writer's mind. Not ours.

I imagine I'll not be invited to write at "Freedom's Place," but that's OK. It's a hell of a lot more honest right here.

swan

Broken Cane

Amateurs break their toys. They play with ping pong paddles and cooking spoons and paint stirrers and other bits and pieces of whatnot that are never really intended to stand up to the stresses of serious impact play, and so they break their toys.
We have professionally crafted implements. They do not break.
I break, but the toys do not break.
I break in a variety of ways: my skin breaks, my resolve breaks, my emotions break. It is not uncommon for me to come to the end of a session drained, shaken, sweaty, bloody, teary, gasping for breath, completely without any resources left.
The paddles and whips and straps and canes, however, seem always to come through completely unscathed, whatever invectives and threats I might hurl against them. However dearly I might wish to see them serving as firelplace kindling, they remain ever sturdy and indestructible foes in my world.
Until yesterday morning.
We'd had a difficult session not too long ago. I'd not done well at all, so He'd strapped me down and restrained me against a repeat. Then He'd gone about administering what was an intense, but not a particularly over the top, paddling, strapping, and caning...
We've all been in emotional deep waters these last days and weeks and no matter what my logical intentions are going into a session, the actual event taps whatever I'm holding onto. It wasn't long before I was roaring and growling and snarling -- rages that I'd been incubating for a long time. I was well into it, fighting the restraints, determined to rip them apart.
He paid no attention at all, and laid into me with the lovely rattan cane that we bought when we were at Thunder in the Mountains. Soaked in linseed oil, that cane is marvelously flexible and whippy, and beautifully finished. It delivers a wicked sting. As I swore and snarled, He must have gone after me with a vengence -- because when it was all over with, my butt was in tatters, and the cane was broken.
Now it sits, handle all akinbo, atop our headboard, bearing mute testimony to our final struggle. It may well be days before I will walk, sit, or sleep comfortably -- but the cane will never recover.

swan

Polyamory Observations #4

One thing that can be a challenge is that when you live a life that doesn't match up with social expectations or assumptions, you find that you don't fit anyplace. We encounter that phenomenon just about everyplace, and in almost every setting. It really just doesn't matter where we are or who we talk to. People who know us, in whatever context, and people who do not know us, make assumptions about us, that are almost never accurate. That can result in some interesting, and sometimes very awkward situations. We've gotten pretty good at bouncing with most of it, but it wears over time.

Master recently described some significant part of how we experience this pervasive social circumstance in a piece He wrote on a local poly list that we participate with. It was midway through a conversation that began because someone had made the (relatively common) assumption that "poly" equates to "promiscuous." As the exchange went back and forth, with the clueless one insisting that it was ABOUT SEX, Master wrote:

"I think too, we wonder if we will successfully
match up with other poly folks. We wonder if our relationship, a heterosexual
committed 24/7 poly V BDSM M/s, D/s), DD lifestyle (vanilla translation: we
three live together in our home in a straight Mf relationship, with a defined
authority structure, and we like to bind each other up and spank erotically and
disciplinarily, among other expressions of fun, excitement, and intimacy:)We'd
like to have friends with whom we can be who we are without pretext. We would
too like to be able to help others who are exploring polyamory. I don't think
that answers we've found for us are necessarily generalizable to others. I have
seen too much, especially in the BDSM community, of folks who feel that because
they have been active in a lifestyle for years, they must therefore be "experts"
and "teachers" of others. On the other hand I/we would frequently have liked to
have had others with whom we could have related, confided, observed, and learned
from (either by emulating them, or saying "that would never work for us") We
know for us as we began our family, and as we continue for that matter (we've
been together about 7 years now-- 2 years long distance and about 5 years living
together....and we expect to be together the rest of our lives), there are very
few resources or supports, to assist us, and we suspect, others, as we/they
encounter life challenges. We have the same life challenges as any middle-aged
family of suburban professionals.............it's just they are all different
with the addition of the poly dynamic superimposed on a world with a presumption
of dyadic heterosexual monogamy. Many of our challenges are not romantic/erotic
(although if you've read our Blog, you know we have those too) but are health
related, legal, professional, social, recreational, spiritual (no we are not
looking for a church:), etc. I'm always interested that discussions of polyamory
always seem to become about sex. Now don't get me wrong. I get it. I know that
the primary thing that makes poly different from monogamy is that there are more
than two adults who are intimately involved in relationship. Paraphrasing the
Clinton campaign, "It's the sex stupid." I'm far from oblivious to that fact,
nor am I a prude. We're very experienced, have played publicly in BDSM dungeons
and conferences, and even demonstrated some amazingly intimate sexual variations
with audiences, so it's not that we want to repress that major aspect of our
lives and our unique intentional relationship. The fact that we are poly doesn't
mean we want to play with you or become romantically involved. The fact too that
we are not inherently "available" doesn't mean it is unimaginable that life
could evolve to include intimate play or more in depth relationship with others
too. (How's that for simple clarity?:)Last November we took all three cars to
the tire store (all new in 2004 and so now getting worn). People find it odd I
have three cars and two women who drive them:) or at least that is the
perception they have. I am rather medically informed because of my educational
background and profession. We have interesting times with health care
professionals when I go to both T's and s's Dr. appointments. S recently went to
a new gynecologist who does not permit men to accompany patients to the exam
room. This won't be a long term medical relationship. All of life's challenges
are different and have extra-normal dynamics within a poly lifestyle. It would
be good to share information with others dealing with them."

I think that describes what it is to be a family that doesn't fit. We run into the "square peg" phenomenon all the time. There are several issues for us, really. When you talk about "poly, " you may have to deal with some or all of them. They all are founded in basic assumptions and expectations which, in turn, lead to biases.

The first set of assumptions that we find are the most obvious, and the ones that we expected from the beginning. These are the social/legal norms related to relational numerosity. The simple reality is that our society assumes, from the moment each of us arrives on this speck of dust, that we will live out our adult lives in one of two numerical relational formulations: we will either pair off, two-by-two, or we will remain single (or else return by times to that state). We learn it as we hear the fairy tale stories of our childhood. We absorb it in the "romantic/lusty" music that we are immersed in as young adults. The messages are pervasive throughout the entertainment industry. Inescapable. So, we do not fit the mold. We are NOT paired. We are NOT coupled. We are NOT two. And we are also NOT single.

Three is just not a number that is expected. Anywhere. It makes life complicated, and sometimes just comical. Some examples:

• We go out for a meal, and the wait person most often looks at the bunch of us quizzically and then gives up and asks, "Will this be one check or two?"


• There is absolutely no way to list two partners or beneficiaries or spouses on an insurance form or emergency contact form or next of kin blank space when you are filling out that sort of documentation.


• When we travel, we have to make sure we question hotel reservation clerks very carefully about the nature of hotel room sleeping accommodations. Two queen size beds work well. Two regular size beds can be made to work. One king-size bed will not work very well. We need more than the usual complement of bath towels that a hotel room offers; more than two water glasses, more complementary soap/shampoo, etc.


• Business give away prizes and complementary passes and the like in even numbered increments -- two's and sometimes four's (but never three's).


• In the medical care realm, there is ALWAYS an issue when two of us show up to accompany a third to an appointment or a procedure or a surgery. In medicine, humans are dealt with in pairs. So it is written.

We were prepared, sort of, for the number thing. It seems obvious. What we did not anticipate, and what has been almost as difficult for us to handle has been the set of challenges that have arisen for our household because of assumptions laid on us about gender relatedness in our family. There has come to be an expectation that to say that one is "poly" is equivalent to saying that one is also "gay" or "lesbian" or "bi-sexual." It is my belief that this is an expectation that has been in large part fostered within the "poly" community, although I think it creates a degree of anxiety/fear/prejudice outside our ranks. It happens that our triad is heterosexual. We have to explain that on an ongoing basis. People simply assume that T and I must be bi-sexual. We have come to understand that the liklihood is that a good deal of the remarkable acceptance that I find within Master's extended family is based on the probability that they believe that T and I are "involved." Somehow the family has an easier time conceiving that T and I might be sexually linked than they do imagining Master and I in the same way -- and they are way more OK with that notion. Conversely, my own mother's recoil from our arrangement may be largely founded in her own identical assumption. Too, we have noted more than once, a certain emotional recoil or whiplash response when would be "friends" first discover that their assumption about that orientation just wasn't true. It seems to go back to that "poly" is "sex" bias. People note that we are all together, and the image they form is that we must all be sexual with one another. How limited is our intimate vocabulary and how souless our relational imagination, that we cannot conceive of loving another without it necessarily being sex-based in every case.


At another level, other expectations creep into the picture. For me, this is the realm of the "availability" fallacy. When I came into the realization and recognition that it was possible to participate in and embrace more than one mature, loving, intimate relationship simultaneously, I found that to be healthy and good. I think that making the choices that led our family into this dynamic gave us the opportunity to love richly and joyously, and it allowed us to broaden our lives rather than narrow them. Making that choice, and doing the work to bring it to fruition does not mean that any one of us gave up our ability to be discriminating, sensible, intelligent, rational, or demanding in terms of what it is that we want or need from an emotional / intmate partner. If there is one thing that we have learned in doing this, it is that making good relationships work is a demanding and serious undertaking. It has its very definite rewards, but it is not simply a matter of genitals calling to one another from afar. So, I am continually stunned when I tell someone that I am poly, and I get that sort of "Do you wanna..." response that isn't anymore sophisticated than my 6th graders are managing these days. Excuse me? Or, and this is almost as annoying, the flip side of the coin, which is the one that goes: "you are already in a relationship, and I'm looking for sex, so I don't even have the time to talk to you." Call it the UNAVAILABILITY assumption. Our family is stable and committed. We are not "trolling" for partners. It doesn't mean that we wouldn't consider it if something happened. But it is real surely unlikely to happen if you assume either way without so much as a polite "Howdy, my name is _____________________." We all know what we have going for us, and we know what we bring to the table. IF we consider opening our hearts and our household, we'll be wanting to add a partner who enhances our lives and our loves.


Add the other oddities of who we are: a bit older, and into BDSM, and just a little bit outspoken, and prone to be left-leaning liberals, and who knows what all else, and well, we just don't fit anywhere much. Not that we couldn't, but you would have to get to know us; talk to us; learn about us, and let us learn about you -- it would be a little like building a relationship, or a friendship. That's how we got started with one another. That's how we think love grows.


swan

Grrrrrrr

One of the great myths of BDSM is that power exchange eliminates friction in relationships. The story usually runs something like this: all you have to do is establish who is "in charge," and everything smooths right out and harmony and peace prevail. Almost always (especially in relationships where power exchange is introduced into formally "vanilla" partnerships -- or to individuals who had only been "vanilla" previously), this happy story is filled with glowing accounts of how the lust levels go way up and the romance flows back into things and life gets good, no better, than it ever was before.

Sometimes, that really is true. Variety is the spice of life after all, and we all know that some of this stuff is sexy as hell. Still, I'm gonna be honest here. There are days when power exchange notwithstanding, there is enough FRICTION around here to rub all my fur backwards. Grrrrr...

And, I know I am not the only one. I know because I have a few friends out there who every so often get right down and tell the truth of it -- kaya has been known to admit to those stray thoughts that begin with "If I were a normal wife..." There are other ones out there, I am sure of it. There just have to be.

I've been in one of those places in the last 24 hours or so. Don't get all crazy on me here, friends. We are not in crisis. I am just having a "moment." Nowadays, I can't even blame it on hormones. Maybe it is the kids at school, maybe it was the absolute idiocy of the drive home in the "blizzard" last night (left a grand total of 5" of snow) which put these idiot Cincinnati drivers in a nearly catatonic stupor on the roads, maybe it was my incipient migraine and the medication I took to head it off, maybe it is just the accumulated stress of these last weeks, maybe it is the conjunction of the planets, maybe it isn't anything at all... Whatever, in my head the insane, completely irrational babble goes like this:

• I hate this!
• Fuck it.
• Let someone else get beaten...
• Cpaps and humidifiers and coffee makers and ironing boards -- blech
• I want a weekend -- whine...
• Master is a pooh-head
• I want to move to Cancun!!!
• on and on and on and on and on and on and on

Oh Please! Even I know all of that is just nuts. Time to go take the freaking Christmas trees down.

swan

Polyamory Observations #3

One of the hardest things to do in talking about "poly" is to get through all the variations in terms of language and perception. We have found, as we've done this, that there are relatively few people who define themselves as "poly" AND mean stable, committed, long-term, multi-partnered loving relatedness. Many people use the term to mean creating intimate (read sexual) relationships with lots of partners, and everybody's fine as long as everybody knows about everybody else. Often those situations are shorter term and multi-directional. I don't have a problem with that, but it isn't what we mean when we talk about poly. We tend to find that our sort of live in, longview, lifestyle arrangement tends to make other poly folk nervous. We're not naive and we're not prudish. We understand that poly implies sexual relatedness TOO (or at least potentially) -- it is just that we tend to insist that there must be more to intimacy than how many people can be added to the "team" roster in that arena. We keep harping on the need to create "connections" as a prerequisite to making sure all that "friction" is really sustainable; and then watching people's eyes glaze over. Talk about feeling "old!"

There is an adage among poly folk. It has become almost cliche' to tell one another that "more love makes more love," and there is some validity to that. It is the clever phrase that we use to refer to the potential for multiple and additional relational dynamics to add to the love within poly interactions rather than "diminishing" in some way. We use it to assure (or perhaps reassure) one another and ourselves that there is no need to be fearful of new loves in the lives of our partners; that those new relationships will add richness and joy and potential to our own relatedness, and will not result in threats to our own love and happiness. That is all true as far as it goes.
What we've discovered is that, unfortunately, more love does not make more time. More love does not make more energy. More love does not make more space. There is only so much time, energy, space. Relating is time consuming. It requires work. Building a stable, committed, enduring relationship that will withstand the vagaries that life can pitch at us, does not happen overnight, or even over the course of a few breathless "dates."

We tend to not think too much about how we do the dance of accommodation for our demanding schedules -- all the various kinds of juggling and holding up of one another that allows us to keep it all together. And we don't keep "score." We simply give as we need to, trusting that over the very long haul that is our life, it will all come out in the wash. But, then, we've been together long enough to have survived the early going. We aren't caught in the heat of the early days of romantic infatuation when being together demands a very great deal of attention to keep it alive and healthy. We know there will be tomorrow and next week and next month and next year. That kind of knowing comes only from miles traveled together.
What that means is that tonight, we'll eat leftovers from the weekend in shifts so that we can shuttle cars to and from the repair shop and get to the nursing home to visit Grandma. It means that T and I buy Christmas, Valentine's day, anniversary, and birthday gifts for each other (and cards) so that "Mr. Romance" is never left in the awkward position of not having the appropriate gift to give one of us. It means that we do each other's laundry. She keeps the social calendar and I pay the bills. We each shop for the household groceries and we pick up everyone's prescriptions at the pharmacy and we all go to each other's medical appointments by times and we cook and clean for each other... mostly I do the weekday meals and she does the weekends, but that shifts depending on scheduling. We haul each other's trash, and we clean and we worry in fluid and shifting patterns. We try to never, ever, ever make life harder for one another, and we gently nudge when we know somebody is feeling tired or strained or tender -- and we interpret for each other (and go to bat for each other) when the need arises.

The truth is that we know each other so well that it is pretty seamless for us to just ebb and flow with whatever comes up. We do it without much effort and without much thought. We understand the economics of it all. We know that while it may not be true that "time is money," it is surely true that it is a currency that we exchange between us, and we work hard (with intent) to keep the balance of trade equitable.
These are hard realities when a brand new and exciting potential relationship comes into the picture and a poly person or a poly family/group (like ours) is confronted with the sometimes touchy business of dealing with what to do about limited energies and limited time. A new love doesn't diminish the love between partners, but it will (inevitably) shift the time/energy/space economy. We've smashed head on into this once or twice, and it can be really tough; especially in the beginning stages. It is tough on a couple different levels.

New folks, who are sincere, do not want to "upset the apple cart." Those who are less than sincere generally claim that they don't want to upset things. AND they can't help but do so anyway. They will change the dynamic. The demands on everyone will be there. It requires open acknowlegement of the benefits as well as the costs in terms of time and energy to incorporate new relational directions in existing flows. The new currents take time to settle in. On the other side of the equation, existing partners have to be able to distinguish between feelings and words that convey the sense of change and reactions that look like jealousy. The two are not the same thing -- although they can look similar.

Brand new, shiny, exciting, hot relationships bring with them an intense kind of energy, often referred to as "New Relationship Energy" or NRE. NRE feels like the most wonderful thing in the whole world, and the tired, old, mundane routines of the tried and true can pale in comparison. It is normal, natural, and entirely human for folks caught up in NRE to want to be where the bright lights and glittery glamour of the new and exciting shines so enticingly from the arms of the newly discovered shores. That's the thing we've dealt with from internally.

Of course, the new partner coming in from the outside is all excited too. They have all sorts of NRE as well, and they want lots of time to get to know their new love -- it is all romance and hot sexy fun... In our experience, the business of keeping demanding schedules, and picking up the car and making it to the doctor appointments, and the late night meetings and the nursing home and on and on and on... are almost never the things that new loves get all hot and squishy about after a couple of iterations. And so things get dicey. Quickly. In the beginning at least, it is usually the new love that gets a lot more of the goody, and the rest of us pick up the slack. That can be sustained for awhile, but sooner or later things have to shift back to something closer to normal. That, we have found is when new ones either prove their mettle or stomp their feet and start making demands. So far, no one has stuck it out through the passage.

Love. Yes.

Time, energy, space. Those too.

swan

Polyamory Observations #2

My Dear friend, morningstar, asked the question which we are very often asked wihich is, "how do our housing arrangements work?"
The simple answer is that we own two, basically identical (although mirror-imaged), condominiums, that are side-by-side, which we treat as one household. For us, this is so much the normal way of life that we really don't think much about it, and so it seems quite obvious. It is a bit of a stretch for us to comprehend how it must be for all of you, peering in from outside, to "picture" just how it all works. So, in this edition of my poly observations series, I'll try and make our housing arrangement a little bit clearer.

The condos really are side-by-side, at ground level. There are no stairs, and we've put stepping stones in front and out back. We can go out our front doors, or out our patios in the back, and be within about twelve feet of the doors to the other side. Those stepping stones are essentially like outside hallways, and that's exactly how we treat them. During the waking hours of our days, the doors are open, and we go back and forth between the two sides pretty much like they were one house. We keep intercoms on the counters in both kitchens, so we can call back and forth without walking from one place to the other. All of us have keys to all the doors. We use both kitchens (where we have nearly anything you could possibly want to prepare almost anything you can imagine between the two of us), all four bathrooms, both refrigerators, both stoves, both garages, the multitude of closets are full (mostly of His shoes and His clothes), we do laundry on one side, keep a major storage pantry on one side, a guest room/cat bedroom on one side, an exercise room/library on one side... You get the idea.

We often refer to "my" side and "T's" side, or the '67 side and the '69 side (a shortening of our addresses. Sometimes she jokes that her's is the "storage" condo -- where Master stores all the stuff He is not immediately using. I respond then that mine must be the "hemherroid" condo -- the place where all His piles are... We laugh a lot. Mostly those designations are "geographic so we can keep track of where people are...

The exercise room is on "my" side.

The laundry room is on "T's" side.

The guest bedroom/cat bedroom, where Prazer holds court is on "T's" side.

The BIG dining table, where we sit down to eat with crowds, is on "my" side.




And the smaller table, more suitable for just the three of us, or where we eat when we want to be near the fire place, is on "T's" side.











Of course, another question that comes up frequently is the question of who sleeps where. In the beginning of our relationship (when we were still a "quad"), we followed/used the very common poly notion of calendar driven alternative nights... where Master spent one night with T and the next with me. He actually kept notes in His planner as to which of us He'd be with from night to night, and played roaming Dominant each night. In time, He came to be very weary of being the Dominant without a room of His own, and He became increasingly resistant to being moved from place to place. He found that He never knew where His things were, or (in truth) really where He was. Too, His inclinations and sleep mode led us to eventually evolve toward a decision point: He is a snuggler and a cuddler; He likes to have His sleep partner pulled in tight, tucked in under His chin and wrapped up in His arms. He likes to throw a leg over and keep them all rolled up in a ball. It is not a sleep style for those who are claustrophobic, restless, or particularly warm-blooded. I was the one who not only tolerated that sort of thing, but actually enjoys it -- the warmer the better. Plus, I am the one who likes (sort of) to get spanked.
So, gradually, but very definitively, over time, we moved toward the point where He came to spend His nights with me, and would get up early when I would leave for school, and go snuggle in the early mornings with T. We've learned that is works best for us to make "snuggling" time for the two of them when and as they need and want it, and to recognize "sleeping" time for old folks like us for what it mostly is -- sleeping time.
When we were first three, just after my divorce, we were convinced that we wanted a BIG bed that would allow us all to sleep together. So we went out and shopped and found this king sized bed. We actually wanted something larger, but couldn't find anything. The poly "wisdom" and gold standard at the time was "three in a bed," and so that was our goal. It is a great bed. Unfortunately, we quickly discovered that we do not sleep comfortably all together in one bed. We CUDDLE quite happily in the big bed all together. WE have a great time watching TV on Sunday morning or late at night. But sleeping was not going to work. So, back to "coupled" sleeping...

That is just the tip of the iceberg of course. This evening we'll cuddle up together near the fireplace to watch the Super Bowl. We'll cheer for The Bears (in lieu of The Bengals), and T and I will privately celebrate because the Super Bowl marks the date when we are finally allowed to take down the Christmas Trees. Himself would, I think, have us keep them up all year long if He could figure out a way to justify it. Super Bowl is just the most recent latest date for taking the evil monsters down. She is a little ahead of the curve because she at least has the ornaments off of hers in anticipation.

So, that is a glimpse into the way we do it around here. It is not the way everyone might do it. Not even the way we imagined ourselves doing it in the beginning. There are times when we think about owning a single house (especially when we are hauling laundry and groceries back and forth across those "outside hallways" in the dead of winter), but there are other times when we value our spaces and our private places. All in all this works for us quite nicely.

So there, now you've had the virtual tour of The House of Heron.

swan

A New Month

It is February finally; a brand new month. January, if I may be blunt, sucked. For all of us.

Sometimes, the soul of slavery is in simply waiting. Some of you will understand what I mean when I say that one of the tougher things to learn (and remember) is that it isn't "all about me." T and I both have kept ourselves focused on what was needed to make things easier for Himself as He has struggled to stay on top of all the many demands pulling Him every which way. It has seemed to both of us that what has been asked of Him in these last weeks has just been beyond the power of any human person to sustain -- and so we have tried to be there and anticipate and support and take care and not make things any more difficult or demanding.

Still, I do think it is important for Him to know that, when time and circumstances allow it, I still want Him and need Him and will be happy to be back in THAT place with and for Him again. I want to find a way to let Him know -- without there being any sense of demand to it, that I am not "glad" to have circumstances be such that the SM part of our lives has to be put on hold. Hence, a couple of weeks ago (or maybe a bit more) I told Him that I needed Him to put me "on His calendar... " because I was in need of His hands and His touch. That "appointment" and what it portended has been there between us ever since, although we've not spoken about it at all.

This morning, at last, we had an hour or two when we were able to erase some of the longing and hunger we've been living with for a long while. I can't give you much in the way of details. I've never been good at that anyway, but I've gotten even worse lately. Partly, that's because I've gotten so thin skinned - literally. Everything seems incredibly heavy and brutal on my fragile skin, that I can't distinguish the different implements as I used to do. I know there was some caning involved -- that I CAN still pick out. I know that He used the LeatherThorn Paddle, partly because I think I can pick that one, and because He likes to use it since it has a heavy wallop but doesn't tend to cause me to bleed as heavily as some of the others. I saw the heavier of the wooden Hanson paddles with the holes in it, and I know that He had the lighter one at the end... And I also saw the heavy rubber strap out. Did He use all of them? I can't truthfully say. All I know is that the hunger that had burned for so many weeks is less tonight. Not gone. Less.

Spanking and fucking. Nothing fancy. No costumes or role plays. Just simple and elemental and primal. This is, for us, a thing we miss so very much when it is out of our reach for whatever reason for long stretches. It feels good to be back into familiar territory and regions.

swan

Polyamory Observations #1

A couple of entries back I implied that there was probably no real interest in or value to a discussion of the day-to-day "stuff" of poly living. I simply couldn't imagine why anyone would care about things like who buys the groceries or makes dinner or pays the bills.

Roy, in commenting, suggested that it would be helpful in fact to hear the nuts and bolts. Plenty of folks have "theories" about how poly SHOULD work, or MIGHT work, he said -- but that's a far cry from how it actually DOES work, and he thought it would be instructive and useful if we would share our experiences in the living of a real 24/7 poly life. Now, one person asking, is hardly a groundswell, but then, maybe he does have a point...
So, consider this the beginning of a series of entries -- "Poly Observations," that will detail the ways we do our lives together as a family and a household (not that we haven't done a fair amount of that anyway). I intend these pieces to be not so much discussions about "theory" as commentaries about the practicalities and actual realities of how we do what we do.

Call this edition "Resources." I'm starting there because that's where my mind is this week, this day. Our family has been stretched to the limit in the past few days, physically and emotionally, AND we've managed it. We do that because we know what our resources are, and we've gotten very good at using them wisely and well. We work together to get our business and our necessities handled, so when things get intense, we don't have to spend a lot of time and energy fussing about who will do what when or how -- we know that we can count on each other. We fall into place and into patterns of behavior that carry us through, even when we are sad, tired, worried, and strung out. It works. That it works is largely testimony to the fact that we have, in calmer times done the work needed to figure out what we have in the way of assets, and then put those things to work in service to one another and to the entity that is our family.
It is my view that there is no way that a viable poly relationship is going to last for long, past the point of the hot and lusty sex, if the participants don't evaluate what they have in the way of resources and then figure out how to best use those resources in support of the relationship. Actually, I think that is true of any relationship, no matter how many partners and directional arrows are involved.
So what do I mean by "resources?"
It isn't as straightforward as I think some people tend to assume. I think we believe too often that the only real resources worth counting are financial. If there is a wage earner; a bank account sufficient to maintain the household, then fine and dandy. For many, the BDSM fantasy usually pictures a "slave" ensconsced in the Master's realm, and in that vision, the assumption has to be that the economic support is being supplied by the Master or by some outside source... It can be a "pretty" picture at some level; enticing to dream of being swept away to some walled off inner sanctum where all one need be concerned with are the demands made by the "Owner." It isn't our reality, and I just don't think it is the reality for the vast majority of people. I can read the governmental economic reports, and the raw statistics tell me that the bulk of us have got to bust our collective butts to keep afloat economically out here these days. So, for all that "castle" and "dungeon" imagery that we find so evocative, the hard truth is that we've got to figure out how to pay the mortgages and the electric bills and all the rest of it.
And that isn't even the half of it if the truth be told. There are vehicles, homes, lawns, wardrobes, appliances, etc. to be maintained, schedules to be kept, records to be organized and tracked, outside relationships at multiple levels to be managed and facilitated, familial and organizational and civic and social obligations to fulfill, health care needs to be attended to, unexpected events to adjust to and "finesse" -- the list goes on and on. We are social creatures and we live in social environments. The interconnection of our lives creates both joy and stress -- often simultaneously.
One of the great advantages, for us, of being a poly household is that there are more heads, hands, and hearts to tend to all the many complexities of our lives. On the other hand, because there are three of us, sometimes, there are simply more complexities. We've all got pretty intense and demanding careers. We have still got four elderly parents between the bunch of us. We have four children -- all 18 years old or better, plus a raft of neices and nephews (and "steps"), some of whom insist on having babies of their own. And T and I have a collection of evil "baby" brothers who are all nominally adults, although no one would know it by their behavior for the most part. The extended family dynamics can get weirder than bat-shit somedays. I keep calculating that, by the time we complete this year's cycle of birthday celebrations in April, we will have obtained a combined age of 160 years. If it is true that "with age comes wisdom," then we ought to be approaching the edge here somewhere soon I would think. In these last few weeks, we've needed all the wisdom, patience, fortitude, and simple, pure solid stuborn, Irish-German-"Don't let the bastards wear-you-you-down" stick to it-iveness we could scrape together.
In the last couple of weeks we've been just a little busy:

• First one and then the other of Master's parents have spent several days in the hospital.
• Then His Mother moved directly to a nursing home (likely for the rest of her life - ending what has been until now a fruitless search for such a placement). That was good news, although she has had dreadful falls each of her first three nights there -- two of which have resulted in all night trips to the emergency room for her and Master.
• Our friend died and was buried.
• Master's advocacy agency continues to struggle with funding and staffing and a wide variety of political challenges.
• My daughter is once again embarking on the path of living without hallucinogenic drugs, and outside of the correctional system.
• T recently attended a funeral with her Mom for a long time family friend of theirs.
• There was the evil, who knew what the hell it might be, breast lump.
• T had her birthday and mine approaches this weekend. Hooray!

All of that is on top of the normal routines of our daily lives: the jobs and the chores and the stuff that has to be done to keep any household running relatively smoothly. It's a lot. It would be a lot for any family; for any relationship. The reality is that these kinds of things happen in life. Whatever our fantasies might be, whatever we dream, LIFE has a way of imposing sometimes daunting demands on us all.
If we were three single adults, living our lives out alone, we'd each of us have to deal with these dynamics as best we could -- alone. Or we'd call on friends for whatever support they might be willing or able to offer. If any of us were a couple, living in what is viewed as the normal, traditional "marriage," then we'd have to juggle the demands between us. I know that I did that for a lot of years. It was sometimes OK, and at othertimes it was nearly impossible. The upside is that society endorsed my "normal" marriage, so there was no onus on me BECAUSE of the marriage itself. Our triad family, because it is stable and functional allows us flexibility and strength that is not available in other family configurations. During these last few days and weeks, we've frequently split up, heading off in three different directions to fetch and manage things at different locations and in different arenas so that all the parts and pieces could be taken care of in a reasonable fashion. We know that we can all call on one another without any questions being asked and without apology or hesitation. It frees us up to use our whole set of resources when we really need to.
So how does someone who is thinking of building this kind of relational model think about resources? I looked at how the word "resource" is defined, and this is what I discovered:
available source of wealth; a new or reserve supply that can be drawn upon when needed

• a source of aid or support that may be drawn upon when needed; ``the local library is a valuable resource''
• resource, resourcefulness, imagination -- the ability to deal resourcefully with unusual problems; ``a man of resource''

If we think of "resources" in the first sense, as primarily financial, then within a poly family, it becomes essential to consider the economic resources that are available. The reality is that there are some "economies" of scale to living as a poly household, but there are probably not as many as a starry-eyed poly dreamer might want to believe. As my dear old Dad used to tell me on a regular basis, "two can eat as cheaply as one -- if one doesn't eat." The same goes for three or four or... It makes sense to evaluate the soundness of your earning potentials as a family. Poly families that expect to reside together need adequate housing. That means sleeping spaces, living spaces with communal and private areas, social spaces, storage areas, cooking facilities, laundry facilities... A very close, and happy couple can make do with a one bedroom apartment; a poly family is going to need a bigger space, and more space costs more money. If you all intend to live and work as a family, everyone needs to have safe, well-maintained, appropriate transportation. We all have phones, and computers, and radios and ...

Too, the financial side of things involves such questions as who manages the bills, how are banking matters handled, who makes decisions about investments, who is and is not named in wills and as beneficiary on insurance policies, who is on titles to properties, etc. How the financial matters of a poly household are structured is not typically a simple thing. Depending on the perceptions and intentions of the members of the relationship, such questions may be fairly stratightforward, or they may entail some very complex negotiations and legal advice and documentation to manage. There is no "one size fits all" solution. We've not yet resolve all the questions, and we find as we go along that the questions evolve and sometimes change.

As to the second meaning of "resource," as an aid or support that can be drawn upon when needed, this is the hidden gem of poly relating that doesn't get much play because it just isn't sexy I suspect. We count on each other for all those prosaic kinds of things that you do for people that you care for deeply: aid, assistance, help, and refuge. Sometimes it means that I call home because I am at school in the middle of a blinding migraine and I can't find my medicine. Master has, on more than one occasion, dropped everything, and driven across town to bring me the single pill that will keep me functioning (and all too often helped me find the one that was invisible to my headache stricken sight, and there in my purse all along). Or it means that I scramble across town with the tax forms to meet T in the parking lot on her lunch hour so that she can sign them -- and then I tear madly across town to the post office to get them mailed under the deadline. Another time it is T cooking and feeding us as Master and I struggle to turn out a proposal for funding for the agency -- working until the wee hours of the morning to get all the bits and pieces just right. We use all our resources -- all our considerable talents and gifts in service to and support of each other because, honestly, the world is a tough and demanding place and we need all the help we can get each day.

I shake my head when I hear about people looking for poly relationships, and I see the lists of "qualities" that people put together. Most of the time, those lists are full of the sort of characteristics that make for a really great fuck buddy. That's great if that's what your after, but I'm increasingly sure that if what you intend to create is a long term relationship, you better be thinking about the kinds of qualities you want in a partner that you are going to be doing some hard traveling with. It is really important to know what you bring to the table, and what you want in return. Probably it is important that whoever you create a relationship with not scare the bejeezus out of you first thing every morning, but far more important is knowing with absolute certainty that you can pick up the phone anytime and know that whatever it is you need -- it is yours for the asking.

The third "sense" of "resource" is the idea of resourcefulness or imagination -- the ability to deal with unusual problems in creative and unique ways. I think that part of what keeps us afloat in the face of all the rest of it is our ability to laugh; to not take ourselves too seriously; to find the spaces where we are OK as just exactly who we are. We somehow have the wonderful gift of finding the quiet shoals where we come up into the sunshine and notice what we've got in one another and take great joy in that. It is enough, and it keeps us going in the face of a very great deal that might give us an excuse to throw in the towel. We thrive on "family" jokes, on "family" traditions, on "family" stories, and in our "family" spaces.

So, to begin this series, at what I thought would be the end of a very trying week for us, there you have some thoughts and observations on poly resources. We've never done an "inventory" as such, although I think we've tabulated a lot of that in one sense or another. We know a great deal more of it now than when we first began. I think we really didn't conceive of a lot of it in the beginning, and no one really talked about it with us. We don't hear it discussed much anywhere either. It perhaps is less of an issue for those who do not propose to live together as we do. Shared housing and fulltime living together creates the need for routines and financial arrangements that occasional connecting does not necessitate. Still, I think that sustained relationship building goes better if the parties understand from fairly early on that they bring gifts and assets, talents and treasure, to the bargain as well as needs both conscious and unspoken. How much better and more honest to work together, with intent, to try and create dynamics where the resources of the family are dedicated to meeting as many of the needs of the denizens of the place as may be?

swan