Blood

In Goethe's poem, Faust, our hero enters into a pact with the evil powers, represented in the poem by Mephistopheles, the emissary of hell. Faust strikes a bargain with Mephistopheles, signing the deed with his own blood. Faust, in the beginning, considers it all a great joke. It is Mephistopheles who describes how seriously this particular bargain really is: "Blood is a very special fluid.”

Blood is a very special fluid.

Blood has been on my mind more and more in the last few weeks.

I've been remembering that, in the early days, when I was just beginning to explore BDSM, there was a woman Dominant with whom I played just a bit. In the "negotiation" stage of our relating, she asked if I had any limits. I don't recall what all I told her, but I very clearly remember going immediately to, "I don't want to bleed."

Of course, that mindset evolved. Not with her, but surely as Master and I became partners. I most definitely have bled for Him; in a variety of ways. Most significantly, of course, was the ritual cutting that left His initials on my back. We captured the blood flowing from those cuts on white silk handkerchiefs, and mounted and framed them. That "blood" became, for us a very evocative piece of art. Clearly, the "limit" of wanting to not bleed was vanquished in the connecting to Master.

Here lately, He's been talking now and then, about re-doing the cutting. It has faded. Part of me wishes He'd decide. The experience was so intense, but it was also a hugely bonding time for me. Everytime He gets close to deciding, He backs away. It is faded, but still visible. Not yet.

Too, I've developed a number of weakened places on my butt that frequently break and bleed in sessions. I can't tell it. It doesn't hurt any more than anything else He might be doing. But I do think that my bleeding impacts on Him. I think it is hard for Him to see me bleeding and not become concerned that I am being harmed.

Of course, for all of us, during our adult years, there is the regular reality of menstrual blood. I battled my own periodic flow of blood for years and years. It was never an easy, simple passage for me. I bled profusely, and there was never a single "feminine hygiene" product that I ever found which wasn't, ultimately, defeated by my bloody femininity.

We are currently involved with a group of young marketing professionals who are donating hours and significant talent to help create a new marketing strategy for Master's agency. They've put us through all sorts of exercises to try and define the "marketing equity" for the agency. It is like a one-line catch phrase that is supposed to define the "product." One of the very dapper young guys is a marketing "whiz" for Proctor and Gamble's Tampax line. He, in an effort to illustrate to us what "product equity" was, explained that the equity for Tampax is "white panties." That simple. That's what they sell.

Now, I've got to tell you that in the grip of my raging bleeding days, white panties weren't the goal. I never imagined that there might be a feminine hygiene product that would give me something so unobtainable as "white panties. I tried Tampax. I used the biggest, hunkiest sanitary pad known to man (I called them 5-day, turtle neck, sanitary pads), and I went through cases of Insteads. Nothing kept me "white." I'd have been happy to achieve something like "not publicly embarrasing." Hemohrragic bleeding is an ugly thing.

And I would give anything -- ANYTHING -- to have it all back. That battle was central to the business of being female. Without the blood, I'm terribly "neat and tidy," but essentially sexless. I'd happily bleed again if I could have my sexuality back.

Which is, at the heart of it all, I think what makes me contemplate what it would mean to create bleeding for myself. Yes, I do obsess these days on cutting. On bleeding. Would bleeding restore me to some deeper, more essential, important sense of being a woman? Or would it simply end up being some disappointing, grand-standing bullshit call for attention? So far, it has been my inability to answer that question that has kept me from checking it out. That, and the belief that He'd react badly to me going that way.

Still, late at night, in the dark, I wonder about the nature of blood. It is, after all, a very special fluid.

swan