From a Friend

A friend sent me these song lyrics over the weekend (Thanks, Tangerine!):

Without words

I use my tongue to tell the tale of us

Tracing your shadowscape

Kneeling before you

my eyes feast upon your masculinity and

All its divinity and

I praise you

Because all of that is for me

Jose Nunez ~~ Bilingual

In her note, my friend commented that she thought that perhaps, given the poly and M/s nature of our relatedness, these lyrics weren't entirely applicable, but that somehow, she was reminded of Master and I in the reading of them. So, I went back and spent time re-reading and thinking about them. I can see her point. There is a powerful undercurrent of "possession" to these passionate lyrics. There is the absolute certainty that the object of the song is "for" the singer, entirely. The fire and the heat that comes from the words is only partly in the purely sensual appreciation of the "other," it arises equally from the way the two lives are seen to entwine with one another to the exclusion of all else.

Surely, that is contrary to the way that most poly people see their way of relating. Surely, it is inappropriate for a slave to have the sense that Master "belongs" to her. There is a decidedly vanilla set of thought patterns here. Nodding...

But the words DO speak to me, and I believe they DO speak about the kind of powerful and passionate connection we share.

I think it is a fallacy to insist that poly loving needs to somehow be detached loving. That intellectual trap is very easy to fall into as one begins to explore the dynamics of loving polyamorously: "if I am going to love more than one, and if my lover is going to love others, then better (and emotionally easier) that I not invest fully in the whole business." Too often, under that set of assumptions, poly loving becomes fragmented and compartmentalized with lovers reserving bits and pieces of themselves and their lives for the various partners -- never really leaping fully into an all-for-all relationship mode. Doing that results in patchwork quilt relationship webs and piecemeal love matches where no one ever gives or receives the whole that is potential. It doesn't have to be that way if we really believe what we say about "more love makes more love." It does require great courage...

In the same vein, there is, among people within the BDSM community, the pervasive belief that in power-based relationships, the "bottom" partner has no ownership interest in their beloved. I understand that there are relationships that are modeled on power dynamics without the emotional burden of affection or love, but they are, in my limited experience, in an extreme numerical minority. Most of us, love simultaneously and congruently with our power exchange orientation. It is one thing -- a whole fabric from which we fashion unique and powerful relationships. My slave self strives to be wholly at His service, even as my lover self rejoices in the sheer wonder of His being "mine." Admittedly, He is "mine" because He dwells in my heart and my head in such a way that He could never be separated from the reality of who I am. It is, of course, a different sort of "having" than His ownership of me, but no less real or valid for all of that.


Mostly, these words speak to me of what it is to love passionately, completely, and joyfully with the whole of one's being. It is for us to celebrate the great gift of loving and being loved in all the ways that can manifest. It is an awesome, simple, human-animal thing to do: to become fully immersed in the present reality of the one we love, and to engage fully in all the sensory, emotional, intellectual, spiritual delights that can come from the encounter.

swan