Joints

In July of 2005, Master had His right knee replaced.  Making the decision to go ahead with that surgery was very scary, and we approached the date with a lot of anxiety and fear.  He was ferocious about the rehabilitation after that surgery, and today He has great mobility and use of the "bionic" knee. 

Now, however, we are getting closer and closer to the decision point for replacing both the other knee as well as His right shoulder.  Osteoarthritis is unrelenting in the progressive damage it does.  Probably, the first step will be to replace the shoulder.  Increasingly, it hurts Him to move it even a little bit.  Increasingly, it limits His ability to participate in the things He wants and needs to do.  Surely, it is cutting into our ability to spank and play as we might wish to do.  Spanking loses its appeal when it "hurts Him more than it hurts me." 

Healing, recovering and rehabilitating from shoulder replacement is a lengthy process.  We are hoping to wait until next summer to have that surgery -- there've already been two major surgeries in this year...  Everything we read says that, while the pain is reduced and relieved almost immediately, it takes up to a year to recover full mobility and strength in the shoulder.  Given that, it seems that He'll do shoulder replacement next summer and then get the knee replaced a year later. 

That's the long range plan for our family...  And that doesn't even begin to address the fact that T has a bum knee too...  No crystal ball needed for seeing the future here.
swan

Talking

"...we spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information.  This seems to be our most urgent biololgical function; it is what we do with our lives... It has become a tremendous enterprise... All 3 billion of us are being connected by telephones, radios, television sets, airplanes, satellites, harangues on public-address systems, newspapers, magazines, ... words got in edgewise... Already, there are no closed, two-way conversations.  Any word you speak this afternoon will radiate out in all directions, around town before tomorrow, out and around the world before Tuesday, accelerating to the speed of light, modulating as it goes, shaping new and unexpected messages, emerging at the end as an enormously funny Hungarian joke, a fluctuation in the money market, a poem, or simply a long pause in someone's conversation in Brazil..."

~Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell~

We spent an amazing ten days with morningstar as a guest here in our home.  She quickly came to feel more like family than a guest, pitching in to help with dishes and meal preparations, walking with me to carry the day's trash down to the dumpster each evening, keeping watch over Master and I as we walked each morning.  We touristed around our town and around our area, seeing things we wouldn't have if she had not been with us.  We laughed, we played, we watched lots and lots of baseball.  It turned out to be an interesting "vacation" for us all. 

An awful lot of what we did though, was sit and talk.  Exchanging ideas, stories, jokes, memories.  Some of that was just the silly and light chatter of people getting to know one another.  In other moments, we dived deeper, talking about the things that make us uniquely the people we are in the world.  To be sure, there was nothing particularly earth-shattering in the torrent of words we unleashed with one another.  We didn't solve the problem of world hunger, and we didn't answer any big existential questions.  We learned about each other, and we learned about ourselves. 

Did you hear us talking?  Did you feel the currents we created? 

Maybe not.  Maybe that's because, the conversations that we had here were really just part of the larger conversation that we are all involved in -- face to face, or here and there among all our various pages, we are each and all engaged in pouring out those words that connect and define and open us all up.  This is what we do...

swan

8 Years

Eight years ago tonight, He used a scalpel to cut His initials into my left shoulder blade.  It was an event that we'd talked about and planned together.  It was, in the moment, intense and powerful and amazing. 

I remember very little of the actual cutting.  I remember the sound of His voice.  I remember T's hand holding mine. 

We wanted the scars to form clearly, and we wanted them to last a long time.  The intent was to make permanent marks.  To that end, we worked to keep them from healing.  We'd been told that, in that way, keloid scars would form and be much more visible.  Each day, we scrubbed the wounds with a soft toothbrush and anti-bacterial soap.  That was a regimen that we continued for six weeks.  I am sure it was painful, although I don't remember it well.  I do remember that the cuts itched terribly for a very long time. 

The marks are old now.  Still they will itch if the weather is just so, or if my skin is particularly dry.  They've faded some.  They are not gone.  Will never be gone.  Will remain as long as I live in this body.

swan

What is it?

As we've visited with morningstar, some of our conversations have been about D/s and SM.  Imagine!
Inevitably, our discussion has come around to the way that our particular sort of M/s works ...  Because our dynamic tends to look different than what I imagine that most people expect (and we've said that here on a number of occasions).  Most people learn to do power exchange by reading about it on the Internet -- and the Internet is awash in highly sensationalized, often fantasy-based, everybody is doing it this way so it must be the right way to do it sameness.  If you have "learned" to do D/s by reading online, then you and yours probably are trying to live with a whole host of rules and protocols and rituals.  It is pretty common in the cyber-driven community to find rules like these:

1. what clothing is permissible to wear
2. what physical positions are prescribed for different settings/activities
3. how and when it is permissible to enter or leave a room
4. when and how it is permissible to speak
5. where it is permissible to sleep
6. limitations and restrictions on personal property/financial wherewithal
7. acceptable posture
8. when it is acceptable to make eye contact
9. requirements for forms of address and preferred use of titles and honorifics
10. limitations on use of furniture
11. restrictions on access to and use of the bathroom
12. limitatins on personal privacy
13. expectations regarding punishment and discipline
14. requirements for regular and defined types of sexual service

Master doesn't engage in the sort of power exchange that deals with any of that business.  It just isn't His thing.  He doesn't get anything out of it -- so it doesn't happen.  If you were to ask Him about all of that, He'd tell you, "I'm in control.  I know I'm in control.  T and swan know I'm in control.  If I have to do something to re-affirm that fact, I certainly can do that, but it is almost never necessary."

So.  When other people encounter us -- people who are "into" BDSM and power exchange, there is always a bit of cognitive whiplash.  They look at us, and they see exactly what we do -- and they see exactly what we don't do.  It doesn't look like the M/s that

everyone

knows about.  He doesn't care what I wear, unless He does -- and then He tells me.  He doesn't care if I come into a room, or leave a room, or go to the bathroom, or sit on the couch, or eat at the table.  He sure as heck does not want me sleeping on the floor or in a cage or in another room.  He wants me with Him.  All the time if that is possible.  It isn't, of course, but that would be His preference.  He values and appreciates my financial contributions to the income of our household.  He is proud of the work I do, and He knows that my work outside our home contributes in a significant way to the lifestyle of our family.  I have a bank account.  I have my own credit.  I own my own car.  In fact, the condo that we refer to as "mine," does in fact have my name on the deed.  It isn't that He couldn't eliminate "property ownership" from my set of options, but again, the question would be why?  What would He, personally, get out of that?  What is the upside to any or all of that for Him?

Because.

If a particular thing doesn't have "value" for Him, then it is unlikely to be a part of our lives.  It just doesn't matter that the culture values it.  It doesn't matter that "everyone else is doing it."  It doesn't matter that it is expected.  It has no place in His world -- unless He says it does.

I understand the point of view that says that we should develop, within the lifestyle, a vocabulary that MEANS SOMETHING.  It is counterproductive for us to allow our specific language to be hijacked by those who insist that none of our shared lexicon should be defined in such a way as to clearly convey particular meanings.  I want to validate that perception.  I agree with it. 

So, I am sometimes torn when I label the relationship between He and I was Master/slave.  I live it, and I am fully aware that the thing that we call M/s is not "like" almost any other relationship that we'd almost all agree IS Master/slave.  On the other hand, I live it, and I cannot work my mind around to the place of discarding the label.  The truth is that, while He chooses to not invest time or energy in any of the trappings of Internet-driven stylized lifestyle M/s, there is no part of our lives that isn't constructed in exactly the way that He wants it to be.  Nothing. 

No rules.  Only expectations.  Based entirely in His vision of how the world, and His household ought to work. 

swan

Just Another Day in Paradise

He and I walk everyday.  Four miles -- round and round our condominium complex.  It takes us just over an hour.  It is summertime, and Cincinnati is hot (like much of the rest of the midwest and east coast here in the U.S.).  That being the case, we've been setting the alarm, getting up early and trying to get out to walk early before the heat really cranks up.

This morning, when the alarm switched on (set to the radio), the very first words we heard were, "It's going to be in the high nineties today, with humidity taking the feels like temperatures to 105 degrees." 

I groaned out loud and said, "Just another day in paradise!"  No sympathy...  He just commetned that it would be good to get moving quickly so that we could be out and back sooner. 

Grumble.  Mutter.  Pout.  Harrumph!  So, up and fixed the "before walking" breakfast, filled the water bottles, and grabbed a sun hat.  We trudged out into the suffocating heat.  Thank goodness there was a slight but steady breeze.  We made good time, did our laps, and then staggered back inside to cool down and rehydrate. 

Yup.  Paradise.

swan

Mirrors

It is interesting to spend time with someone who is not part of our day to day existence seeing our world.  Just having morningstar here, in our home, interacting with us as we go about our usual routines -- gives us an opprotunity to see ourselves though her eyes.  It is eye opening.

She and I had an interesting conversation this morning.  It revolved around the flogging frame. 

We set it up yesterday, in the afternoon, and played with the floggers, quirts and switch rod -- first me, and then her.  When we were done, He said to me, "why don't we leave it set up for awhile?  She'll be here for awhile and we'll be playing again..."  So it is that the flogging frame remains, sitting conspicuously, in the living room.  All of the floggers are hanging on the rack, and all of the other toys he had out yesterday afternoon are arrayed across the top of it.  We are simply wandering around it, peering through it to see the television, walking carefully so that we don't trip over it in the middle of the night.

This morning, morningstar wanted to know if it didn't give me some sort of pause; bother me somehow, to have it all just sitting there in plain sight?

I sort of blinked at that.  Took a deep breath and contemplated for just a bit.  Because, it had never occured to me...
The flogging frame lives in my world, cleverly disguised as a coffee table.  Even as we live with it from day to day, regarding it as "just a coffee table," I am always aware of exactly what lies hidden below the surface.  After all, I designed the thing.  Caused it to be built.  To my exact specifications. 

As for all those toys, lying around on the toy rack, they don't bother me, or particularly excite me.  I hardly notice them.  Really.  They are part of my world.  They hang in a rack on the wall in the bedroom.  They occupy hooks on the bedroom door.  Some of them hang on the wall as if they were works of art. 

Although we have to deliberately work to set up the flogging frame, we almost never engage in very deliberate, scripted, planned "scenes."  We play when the mood strikes Him.  We play when there is time and energy.  He might wander off into the bedroom, looking for all the world as if He is hunting for some innocuous this or that ... and return with an armful of implements, all ready to spank.  He doesn't generally feel the need for bondage furniture or restraints or the like. He's happy to pull me over His knee, of dump me over the end of the couch, or push me down over the side of the bed.  Nothing fancy. 

Noticing all of that stuff is a little like noticing the air.  It just is; part of the life we live together.

Timing It

His typical approach to spanking is to count strokes.  I know, going into a session, that He will count every stroke, and I know that He will continue until the stroke count reaches whatever number He has in mind.  In general, I know that He tends to work in increments of 25 or 50, often aiming to combine sets until the total reaches some nice round number like 100.  If He's selected a handful of implements, then I can pretty well assume that we'll be toting up something in the neighborhood of 500 or 600 or 700 strokes.  I tend to not count strokes because I know I'll likely hit the panic button long before He gets anywhere near the targeted count.

The other day though, as we got started playing, He fiddled with His watch.  He wears one of those watches that has a gazilliion buttons, and does everything but the dishes.  I teased Him about timing the spanking, and He simply looked at me and asked, "Why not?" 

So.  Over His lap I went, squirming and wiggling to get myself into a reasonable place.  For some reason, I seemed to have a problem finding a spot for my toes.

He got started, and it seemed to me that He was going gently, slowly, more deliberately.  I didn't analyze that -- I was kind of busy, after all.  In time, things ratcheted up, and I know there was a point where I was grunting and howling, quietly, through stroke after stroke.

I do seem to be doing better at it these days, finding my way to following His lead, and not getting so lost in pain and panic.  When it was over, and I'd thanked Him for my spanking, He patted me on the head and proudly proclaimed, "Twenty-five minutes!  That seems like a pretty good session, don't you think?"

And I did.  Yes.  It isn't a big deal.  Really.  Just something different for us.  Timing has never been an issue before.  Always before, we've simply spanked as long as it took to reach the requisite "count."  Another interesting twist. 

swan

Company is Coming

The ornaments of your house will be the guests who frequent it.

 We live pretty simply.  Our home isn't fancy.  Comfortable, but not fancy.  If it is true that the ornaments of a home are the guests who frequent it, then beginning tomorrow, our homes will shine with the presence of a longtime friend -- one of the gifts of our blogging efforts.  Morningstar will arrive tomorrow to spend some summer days with us.  We've got plans for things to do and meals to share, but mostly we are looking forward to being together face to face. 

The guest room is all ready.  The corners have all been dusted.  Things have been spiffed and shined.  All that remains is for her to get on the plane -- and for us to make our way to the airport to meet her.  The adventures begin tomorrow morning. 

swan

Advice?

Bella came back and commented on that Choices post (the one that was generated from her comment about my advice to my 20 year old self).  As sometimes happens in this medium, I misunderstood some of what she was asking, and so she clarifies --

Ahh you misunderstand me, my fault. I am divorced and have had a white picket fence. Not what I am looking for. I married a musician, and then a Master, and had houses and children. Now 17 years old. I am not looking to live my life over, just wondering about my future. I don't know guess i want some advice.

I feel bad about that, actually.  I think I can hear the desperate wanting in that "guess I want some advice," and I am afraid that I (and we) are likely to disappoint.  I have no advice.  We don't give advice here.  We are just people, living our lives, and we continue to insist that we are not "gurus." There are bloggers who DO that, but not us.

It is one of the inherent risks of writing this sort of ongoing personal journal.  People read here, sometimes for awhile, and come to see us as larger than life, worthy of imitation, wiser than we will ever likely be.  When a person stumbles across this place, depending on what is going on in the moment, I suppose it is possible to assume that we "have it all together," and "know what we are doing."  That is very much an illusion.  On another day, another reader might find us mired in conflict and misery and confusion, and conclude that we are just a pure mess.  Neither assessment is accurate. 

We are, for all that we live a uniquely configured life, pretty much just like the people you might know in your day to day life -- your neighbors, co-workers, friends.  We have joys and sorrows, triumphs and challenges, moments of angst and times of high humor.  We are human beings with human faults and failings. 

We describe some of our life in this place.  But... not all of it.  There are things we do not share, for a variety of reasons.  Some of it is boring.  Other parts of it are tender and too sensitive for us to lay in front of the eyes of strangers.  Sometimes, it is just too embarrasing to lay out on these pages.  Occasionally, whatever it is, we don't manage to find the words that will make it live on these pages.  No one should ever assume, having read bits and pieces here, that they actually know what we are about.  It is impossible.

So, no advice for Bella or for anyone else.  All we really have to offer is the possibility of acquaintanceship, companionship, and sometimes even friendship. 

As for that question that Bella asks so plaintitively:  "I am not looking to live my life over, just wondering about my future," it is hard to know what to say.  The future is as opaque to me as it is to anyone else.  I generally try to remind myself that it (the future) really doesn't exist yet -- except in my imagination.  I think; I hope; that I have some measure of control in creating the future that lies ahead of me, but I don't know for sure.  I know, looking back along the path I've traveled to this point, that as desperate and hopeless as I felt at 35 (Bella's age), no one could have convinced me that there was any sort of joy and happiness out ahead of me.  I felt stuck, trapped, defined by all the choices I'd made -- and I was sure that there was no hope for anything to ever get better.  I could not see, from that long ago place in my life, this future.  I dreamed it, but I never really believed it could happen for me.  I was too busy trying to keep myself and my children afloat on a sea of trouble to enact even the smallest part of "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams..."  So.  No advice.  Perhaps only this bit of hard earned wisdom -- today is only today; it is not a prediction.  The future can hold all the dreams that you can dream.  There is no cost to imagining, dreaming, hoping, and planning.  And it is really true that doing those things makes the path to the life we imagine. 

swan

M/s, Trust, Change -- Really?

I know that I really ought to just stay away from Fetlife.  Every time I let myself get swirled into the conversations at the place, I end up shaking my head in disbelief and frustration.  It is summer time, and I've been back, cruising around, finding myself engaging in the whole tussle again.  Here's the latest bit to get me into that head shaking business (emphasis is mine)--
I say that whatever a Master and slave agree to before the slave becomes owned by said Master then T/they should both keep keep to that agreement. If the Master breaks any part of that agreement, then the slave can no longer trust that Master, no matter how big or small it is. No trust equals no relationship.

I just keep reading it and thinking, "REALLY?"

Now, I'll admit that I have a bias.  I've seen negotiation in the scene.  I've seen people do extensive negotiation before a scene.  Extensive.  And detailed.  But, to be honest -- there was very little that would have looked like negotiation between He and I prior to our entry into our Master/slave dynamic.  We'd spent time together, getting to know each other, and we knew pretty well what we were about.  The relationship evoloved and we pretty well went with it.  We didn't have a goal in mind at the outset, and we neither one ever took the initiative to try and drive and shape it in some pre-determined way.

So.  I can't really talk about how that prior agreement thing might work in practice.

I have, however, lived in long term relationships and I can say this with certainty:  there is no such thing as keeping to whatever was agreed to "once" without any deviation over the long run.  To ask a Master or a slave, or any other partner to promise to never, ever change in ANY way, is simply unrealistic and naive.

Things change.

People change.

LIFE is change. 

Master and I have been together, in real time, for the last 8 years.  Neither of us are the same as we were in the beginning.  I am not the same sturdy masochist as I was then.  Not as hungry.  More tentative and more fearful.  He is not as singularly enthralled with me as He was in the beginning, and that does live between us.  We are both older.  We've both undergone changes.  Phyiscal and emotional and personal.

What, I wonder, when I see people who seem to me to be young and relatively unmarked by life's vagaries declare that ANY deviation from the agreed upon "way things will be" is an unforgivable breach of trust, do they really expect?  Are there people who actually believe that two fallible human critters can sit down together and iron out every minute jot -- and then agree to never, ever, under any circumstance allow anything  between them to change.  REALLY?

Trust is not some fragile bauble that can be shattered by the slightest bump in the road.  Trust is a deliberate, conscious, and intentional investment.  Choosing to make that investment requires courage, commitment, and loyalty for the long haul.  Of course it is only wise to study and investigate before choosing to invest in a relationship, no matter what the shape of the power flow.  No one with any sense would invest their financial capital without doing the appropriate due diligence, and we should be at least that careful when we are choosing potential intimate partners.  However, I find the continual drumbeat of angst-ridden fussing about trust and broken trust disingenuous.  There is no way to guarantee a particular future for ourselves.  The future is unknowable, existing only in our imagining.  Life carries us where it will.  The adventure might not be safe.  The challenges come hand in hand with the joys. 
swan

Choices

Bella, responding to my advice to my 20 year old self, wrote this comment --

I wish I had chose someone safe, but I went with my heart and chose musicians, bad boys and Masters who were wrong, and now I am 35 and missed out on what I actually wanted. I didnt want much, just a house, a couple of kids and a husband who loved me. Watching my son play football Friday nights, and sending my daughter off to the prom. Making christmas and halloween, and thanksgiving, but now its all too late because I took chances. I,m looking backwards and it makes me so sad. I wish I had the last 20 years back, because my next 20 is going to be lonely.

And then sin added this --

Swan, I read your piece and while part of me agrees, I kept thinking, 'yes but if you had made those risky choices, you might have regretted it that you didn't choose safe.' So it's very interesting to me that Bella says exactly that in her comment.


Maybe we need a platform of safety to jump from?

I'd suggest that there is really no "platform of safety," as sin suggests, from which to jump into life.  Life is not safe.  Relating to others is not ever safe.  My seemingly "safe" marriage turned out to have a variety of very distinct and very specific pitfalls.  Most of those "pitfalls" were invisible to me at the outset.  Expecting to be able to predict the path that life will take is a fool's game.  All of our very best laid plans can be blown away in a simgle instant.  So, yes, if I'd made riskier choices, I might have come to this point with another collection of personal regrets.  Probably so.  Funny how that works.  We don't get to wander our way through life without encountering adversity and challenge.

Too, Bella imagines, from her perspective, that if she'd eschewed all those bad boys and musicians in favor of some safe, responsible, sensible fellow, she'd have ended up with "a house and a couple of kids and a husband who loves" her.  That is the fairy tale fantasy of "happily ever after" on which so many of us were brought up.  That marriage dream is so ingrained in our shared consciousness that it is rare to find a woman who does not imagine that marriage, family, and the house with the white picket fence combination is the absolute path to ultimate happiness.

It just isn't so.  The whole elaborate industry around marrying would have us believe that there is some magic to the whole business.  Marriage is not a solution; not salvation; not the be all and end all of relatedness.  Marriage is, at the simplest level, a contract.  It defines the technicalities of inheritance and parentage.  We've come to accept the notion that the "institution of marriage" is founded in love and mutual committment, but that is a very late overlay to what has been, through a very great part of human history, primarily a political and financial instrument.  Some of those alliances work out well. People find each other, create the contract, and go on to build families and lives and homes and all the rest.  Others run into all sorts of difficulties, and only a very few of those are visible to most of us.  To assume that that path is somehow "safe" is just naive.

I don't know the answers.  I only know that if I'd known when I was 20 how very iffy it is that life can be managed in such a way to make one safe and secure and happy and serene, I might have been willing to contemplate other paths and other possibilities and other configurations for my life.  Maybe, if I'd known, I'd have been inclined to trade the illusion of security and safety for a life that affirmed me and fulfilled me and allowed me to nurture and embrace the biggest dreams of my life.

swan

Here's What I Would Tell "Her"

Greengirl pointed to an interesting piece on National Public Radio...  some young college student asked older readers of her blog to write letters to themselves at the age of 20.  I've been contemplating what I'd say to myself if I were able to write such a letter, and I'm thinking that my advice would likely be pretty blunt, and probably not nearly as inspiring as most of what I was able to find related to this conversation.

That young woman that was me 35 years ago was hell bent on entering into a marriage with a young man who she deemed "safe."  That safety thing was a driving force for her back then, and because she was young and inexperienced and naive, she had no idea what she would have to trade for the illusion of safety.

If I could talk to her, I'd tell her to turn away from the possibility of living life in safety, and stay open to the possibility that life could be rich and full and exciting.  I'd tell her that, whatever she'd been told to the contrary, there is very little in life that isn't about sex and power and being fully present in these bodies we've been given.  I'd tell her not to waste her time with that poor, limited, broken, safe looking boy.  Instead, I'd tell her to pack a (very light) bag and strike out looking for adventure and fulfillment and pure, deep, honest, open, vulnerable connection.  I'd send her heading off in search of the wild-eyed young revolutionary that I didn't find until we were both well past our youth.  I'd tell her to eat great interesting foods; drink something more exciting than strawberry daquiris, fuck a whole lot more, take a chance on those hallucinogenic substances that she so assiduously avoided, dance and party and sing and fight and march and believe that the world could change just because she was willing to work to make that change happen. 

If I could talk to that version of me, I'd tell her to be less afraid.  I'd tell her to dream big dreams, and I'd tell her that it was important to nurture those dreams and give them life. 

I know that, if she had made those kinds of choices, then things would have been different for me.  I know that perhaps that set of choices would have meant I'd not have been "Mom" to the two children I bore -- although I'm betting that the karma we share would have brought us around together somewhere and somehow.  I know I'd have been drawn away from my beloved mountains -- and maybe never been able to find my way back.  I know I'd have learned different lessons, and traveled different paths.  I know there would have been other joys and different sorrows.  I don't know what my life would look like today if she'd been braver and wilder and more free -- but I'd be willing to take the chance that she'd have made an interesting life out of that path, and oh my what a glorious dance that might have been.  Who knows, perhaps somewhere she's walking that path parallel to the one I did choose.  Could we someday connect, cross paths and share notes?  How awesome would that turn out to be?

swan

Spanking as...

We often spank before sex.  Master is sadistic, and spanking turns Him on, so the juxtaposition of spanking and fucking is just sort of the natural way things are.  It makes sense. 

I have, as I've worked my way through these post-hysterectomy years, come to think of spanking in just that way -- as a prelude to sex.  It has remained, for me, the only pathway to sexual release.  I just don't seem to respond very intensely or reliably to "vanilla" intercourse.  Too, when I masturbate, the images in my head are almost always of pain and control and submission. 

So sadomasochistic play has pretty much come to equal sex, and that is good with me.  I figured that was pretty much the way of things, and I've not spent a lot of time contemplating the ins and outs (interesting pun that) and finer points of all of that. 

Yesterday afternoon, though, He and I played together and it was different -- at least from my perspective.  He had me over His knee, and He had His usual collection of straps and paddles.  He began a bit more slowly than is usual, and I'd been wanting Him to spank me, so I was "in the mood." Still, for me, spanking usually just hurts in the beginning.  Sometimes, or maybe even most times, it just hurts all the way through.  I get my "goodie" out of something besides the pain...  It's complicated. 

Yesterday, I was working my way along that beginning battle with the pain, when I suddenly noticed that He was rubbing me, and stroking me, and scratching me -- and it felt good!  It surprised me.  It is not the usual way of things.  He kept on playing with me, alternating between pain and pleasure, and I was simply enchanted.  No panic.  No anger.  No frustration.  No sense of injustice.  I was able to catch up and catch on and just go along with whatever He was doing, and it was as if every single sensation was a single thing...  There was no past to be angry about and no future to be afraid of.  There was only this one moment, and this one feeling.  And then the next.  And the next.  And.

When He finished, with all the paddles and all the straps; when He tapped me on the shoulder as He usually does to signal me that the session was ended, I was surprised; almost startled.  I kissed the paddle, and thanked Him for my spanking, and laid there across His lap trying to find my way back to the "real world." 

We got up and headed into the bedroom, and we made love.  It was more than just sex.  It was love making, and I felt good and relaxed and alive and completely connected to Him.  Almost from the very first, I could feel the heat rising in me, and it wasn't long before I reached that oh-so-rare orgasm.  He was right behind me, and we giggled together like a couple of happy children.

Later, as we talked about what had happened, He said something about it seeming to go better -- maybe because there had been some decent foreplay.  FOREPLAY!?!  The word stunned me.  I just hadn't thought about it in those terms.  I hadn't considered that spanking could work for us, for me, as foreplay.  I've been going along figuring that foreplay was some foreign, mythical thing that was for other people.  But there it was...  foreplay.  Us.  Wow.  Perhaps having that word in the mix; knowing that it isn't just spanking before sex, but spanking as foreplay can work that magic spell again.   Mmmmmmmm.

swan

Baseball and Power Exchange

I have a long history with the great American pastime -- baseball...  For those of our readers who do not enjoy the game, or understand the game, I apologize.  This piece will be some combination of personal history and walk down memory lane and meditation on the conjunction of my power exchange relationship and that selfsame game -- baseball.

Baseball is, probably, in my genes.  My father played minor league baseball in the years before World War II.  He was a catcher, and I well remember that in his waning years he blamed his baseball years for some of the struggles he had with rheumatoid arthritis.  Still, for all of that, my father's love of baseball came down to me.  I learned it at his knee, practically as I learned to walk and talk. 

As I grew up, totally in love with my Daddy, baseball was just part of the vocabulary that he and I shared.  I was the oldest child in my family.  Not one of the three younger brothers was ever interested in the game, and so my Dad lavished his love of the sport on the only one of his children who cared; who shared his fascination with the game.

I remember being in elementary school.  We were gifted with a marvelous new technology -- the portable transistor radio.  Every fall, as the World Series of baseball would come around, I'd gather on the playground at recess with great circles of my classmates.  We'd listen intently to those tiny wonders that allowed us to listen to the games for those precious snatches of time, and be whisked away to wherever the boys of summer were battling it out.  We were, of course, never allowed to listen to those little magical boxes during school time, but the playground was a free zone and the radios were such a link to a world that enchanted us for a space each fall.

During all those same school years, the springtime brought gifts of free baseball tickets for students who maintained "A" averages.  Each spring, my pair of free tickets allowed me to go off to a Denver Bears baseball game with my Dad.  We'd sit in the ballpark, and he'd explain to me about strikes and fouls, and double plays, and fly balls, and earned run averages, and batting averages, and all the arcane bits and pieces of baseball as religion. 

My one (yes, ONE) high school crush was on a handsome, lanky, sharp faced baseball player.  His name was Mike Evans, and I was head over heels in love with the boy.  He never knew I was alive.  I went, faithfully, to every single game through all the last three years of my high school career.  Sitting in the hot sun on Saturday afternoons, watching the beautiful boy play ball.  I got sunburnt, week after week, all for naught.  I was rejected by the guy I thought I loved, but never the game.  The game remained as pure and unsullied as it ever was; even in the face of unrequited love.

When I grew to adulthood, I hoped to pass on my love of baseball to my children.  Our young family was always struggling to make ends meet, but we could purchase tickets to watch the renamed Denver Zephyrs baseball team for $2.00 per seat.  A bag of peanuts cost us another dollar.  It was inexpensive entertainment, and so another generation of the family was indoctrinated into the esoteric world of baseball.

When I look back over all of that long, long association with the sport, it seems somehow prophetic to me.  My life now revolves, from May to October each year, around the Cincinnati Reds.  Unlike football, which is a weekend occupation, baseball perfuses through the entire season.  They play 162 games, and there is rarely a night when there is not a game.  From opening day until the last game of the World Series, He watches baseball.  We don't go out, we don't make plans, we don't schedule social engagements without first considering the baseball schedule.  He loves football, but baseball becomes the obsession -- win or lose, the game enthralls Him, captures Him ... and so, by extension, captures me. 

I watch baseball with Him.  I talk baseball with Him.  I listen to Him rant when they lose, and I join Him in the giddy, hopeful, almost mystical fervor of rejoicing when they win.  Early in my association with Master, I sometimes fussed about how much time baseball took up in our world.  Quietly... However, as our time has gone on together, I've come to understand that I spent a lifetime preparing to share His love of the game.  Is there a power exchange component to the absolutely insistent committment to watching every single game; to my acquiescence to that routine and regimen?  Perhaps.  It doesn't feel onerous to me.  Does bowing to the power dynamic require that it feel difficult?  I don't think so.  Would I watch every game left to my own devices?  Probably not.  I love the game, but I'm not that intent about it.  On the other hand, my watching it with Him makes Him happy and that seems just fine to me.

swan

You Are What You Are

We've had two comments on separate posts in the last couple of weeks -- one on the If a Tree Falls post, and the second on the post about How Do You Define Your Relationship?

The first, from greengirl, asked:

I realize that this is really a rhetorical question, but what you've written feeds into some other things I have been trying to think out recently: how does one come to the point of deciding that this is the path that is right? That what is fulfilling for you is "just slaving?" And that it will remain so?

And then there was this almost question from an anonymous commenter on Sunday:

I got some things to think about too. I'm in a new relationship, my first of this sort, ... I don't know weather to call myself Dom, Master, or Top, but I find it a little oxymoronic to be in the "in-charge" role in the relationship and be inexperienced...

As I have thought about those two bits, it occurs to me that they are really asking the same question from two different perspectives.  From the Top and bottom sides of the power equation, it seems to me that both these commenters are trying to get to the question, "How can I tell who/what I am, and how do I know how I fit into relationships with regard to the inevitable power dynamics of intimacy?"

The simple answer, to both questions, as the title here implies, is that you are what you are.  It can seem pretty complicated in the event, but the truth is that there really is no way for any of us to live our lives as something we aren't.  Each of us comes, pre-programmed in a sense, with all of the traits and characteristics and preferences and natural inclinations that make us the unique person that we are.  One of the biggest stumbling blocks that people encounter in the lifestyle, is that they become taken with a role or a personna, and then they try to assume that for themselves -- and quite often they try to impose some corollary role on their partner.  When those facades are radically or notably "other" than what is natural and real for the individuals, it almost always ends badly.

So, to greengirl's questions:  "how does one come to the point of deciding that this is the path that is right? That what is fulfilling for you is "just slaving?" And that it will remain so?"  I don't think that there is an actual "decision" point.  There is the work of coming to know, over time and with some significant personal work, who you really are.  Some of us have the natural tendencies that fit us for living as slaves, and I do not use that description in the luridly sexualized sense that is common online.  Those who are inclined this way, share some common habits and responses:  they tend to be patient, good listeners, observers of other people, naturally quiet and introspective, able to live contentedly within themselves.  Slaves are strong but also flexible.  It requires courage to let go of those things that we assume are "essential" to our own freedom and personal happiness, and then follow a different path to being fulfilled.  I think the natural slave thrives on bits of affirmation.  The occasional word of praise or acknowledgement will take a slave a very long way, but a slave is a bit like a camel -- able to keep on even when there is nothing much available to quench the thirst.  Slaves are self-contained, self-aware, self-directed, and self-disciplined.  When they give control into the hands of another, they retain the capacity to manage themselves (as needed) both externally and internally.  Slaves are the quintessential low maintenance partner.

If slaving is "right" for you, then it may show itself when the appropriate partner appears and allows that to  be manifest.  I don't believe it is possible to LEARN to be a slave, although it is surely possible to learn to slave for some particular person in some particular fashion.  I don't think that everyone who has the requisite personality traits will find their way into living that sort of life.  There are very few real slave types, just as there are very few opposite numbers to that personality type.  Slaving only becomes the "right" path when it encounters the "right" partner who makes it safe to BE slave. 
When that happens, it becomes fulfilling to "just slave."  Not necessarily easy -- slaving is work, and can be dull, repetitive, boring, and frustrating.  It can still be tremendously fulfilling.  Think of those who famously have lived out who they are:  however hard the work of writing a symphony, I imagine that for a Beethoven or a Bartok, that work was fulfilling.  There are times when no one knows or notices or acknowledges the work of slaving; when it has to be sufficient to know for oneself what it is and what it is worth.  For those who NEED external validation, slavery will never be fulfilling, and will never be the "right" path.

Just as it is true that the one who finds fulfillment as a slave is manifesting the essence of who they really are, the opposite number (the Master or Dominant) must likewise understand and know who they truly are.  As Master made clear in His Is You Is or Is You Ain't post, dominance is a personality trait that cannot be learned.  Our anonymous friend who wondered what to call himself:  "I don't know weather to call myself Dom, Master, or Top, ... and be inexperienced," was pointing to a very common misconception.  People tend to believe that Dominance comes from knowing how to swing a flogger, or how to tie a perfect rope harness, or managing to purchase the just so perfect leather pants and vest.  It is the classic confusion about the difference between DOING and BEING.  Dominance does not change with what the person is doing.  Strength, power, intent, ability -- all of these may change with circumstances and time, but the inherent propensity to control and be in charge of absolutely everything never seems to wane. 

I've lived in intimate relationship to two men.  My ex-husband had a number of fine qualities, but dominance was not one of them.  It simply was not part of his personal way of being in the world.  Master, on the other hand, has no move that is not Dominant.  He manifests that personality in everything He is and everything He does.  I think that in the deepest part of the night, when He is completely and utterly asleep, He remains, at some level, still in control...  I think that there are people who find the true Dominant personality to be difficult.  Dominants are people who never question their own judgement; who know that they are always right (even when they might be mistaken); who always know their own minds; who want what they want.  Dominants can seem, hell they can be, self-absorbed.  They are not particularly inclined to romance.  They may be remarkably perceptive, but they often choose very deliberately which perceived reactions and responses they will respond to in others.  A Dominant is the most amazingly secure and sure of human beings.  It isn't learned.  It is the absolutely "right" path for those who are IT.

swan

Dominant -- "IS YOU IS, OR IS YOU AIN'T?"

One anonymous commenter to the last post observed:

I got some things to think about too. I'm in a new relationship, my first of
this sort, and I have not yet attended any sort of event or become part of the
scene. I don't know weather to call myself Dom, Master, or Top, but I find it a
little oxymoronic to be in the "in-charge" role in the relationship and be
inexperienced. For now, what we're doing is working, and we are both exploring
the possibilities and loving it, and the labels are less important., but this is
good food for thought.

My Anonymous friend, your comment is evocative, and I have some input for you about your feeling it is paradoxical to be Dominant and "new at it." Everyone of us has a starting point in actualizing this orientation. This is as trite as the classic, "We all were new once."


I well recall my early days of coming out into the BDSM community in reality. I too was very inexperienced, but I WAS DOMINANT. I've always been Dominant. I remember laughing when I was recently reunited with a cousin who had been a playmate when I was a young boy. She told me her memories of she and me included that when we played we always had to do things the way I wanted them.


You see, I have learned that either you are Dominant or you are not. If you are, you cannot prevent yourself from Dominating. If you are not it is not a skill you can be taught. Dominance is a personality style. It is, if you have it, your character. Like all traits it can be a true asset and simultaneously a burden. Being in control all the time is very exhausting. I know for me the only thing that is more draining is my not being in control.


I have had the experience sadly, of watching a number of relationships in which a submissive woman and a husband who was not Dominant try to forge a D/s relationship where he was trying to "learn" to be Dominant to please his partner. Now there is a paradox. If you are dominating to please your woman, it is she who is the Dominant partner -- not you. Most of these relationships have unfortunately dissolved in break-ups or divorce. My swan's marriage ended just like that. It was like watching a slow motion train wreck as they both came to recognize their needs and personalities were inherently mismatched, and always had been.


Dominants are secure in their identities. I think the ultimate expression of a secure Dominant is the ability to switch and play from the position of bottom partner. Not only is switching useful in learning to empathize with SM activities when you are playing in your normal role as Top, but learning to bottom and realizing that, even then, you are still Dominant leads to realization of just how deeply your Dominance is rooted.


Certainly there are things one learns along the way. You can be taught technical aspects of various forms of SM play. You can learn the lexicon of words, labels, titles and protocols that are common in the community. You can learn how to cane or whip someone safely and effectively. There are many learning's in this life.

There is no shame in not having yet had those learning experiences and, by the way, the path to learning all the aspects of this life, is wonderfully fulfilling.


It is however not oxymoronic to be inexperienced and Dominant. If you are Dominant, you are Dominant. You will be that. You will not be able to be anything else. If you are not Dominant, no amount of knowledge will make you so. On the other hand, if you are, more information will simply enrich and enhance your life.


All the best,


Tom


Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

How Do You Define Your Relationship?

CarrieAnn wrote a piece recently that she called Risk. It is a thoughtful inside look at the balancing that happens within a long-term, committed relationship when it is based on power exchange. The white hot core of truth in what she wrote seems to me to be this:

The weight of giving yourself to someone is heavy.

The weight of owning someone can only be staggering.

Following up on thinking generated by that post, morningstar framed her recent relational transitions in the context of CarrieAnn's notion of the "one hurt too many" number that no one really knows is there until it is there.  She wrote:

...I have been analyzing what ... really happened ... It is never easy ... to have absolute power over another human being ... hurt me guide me love me care for me ... When I open myself up to the total vulnerability of turning over...... the wrong kind of hurt can ... shut me down ... make me doubt ...

Between the two of them, and a whole collection of other bits and pieces I've gleaned from reading here and there, I've felt a bit baffled about the whole business of how we describe our relationships with one another -- and why.  It seems a uniquely human sort of behavior.  Other critters do not seem to worry about this.  The robins outside my back door do not appear to have best friends.  The bullfrogs out on the pond seem happy to advertise for available ladies each night, but I can't ascertain that there is any sort of going steady or dating or boyfriend/girlfriend action happening on the shores of my little bit of water.  Even the ants, who during the summertime seem determined to mount daily sieges on my kitchen, manage to relate just fine without any wedding frippery or marriage licenses or legal documents to set them up as a limited liability corporation. 

WE do this.  We define every single distinct interaction, and we label them and name them, and we intend for others to understand precisely what it is that we mean when we call someone brother, aunt, mother-in-law, boss, cousin, child, wife, ex-husband, domestic partner, boyfriend, nephew, neighbor, friend, acquaintance, co-worker, pastor, therapist, personal trainer, stylist, doctor, etc.  I imagine that the fact of the matter is that we only exist, for all practical purposes, in relationship.  A single one of us without all of those connections is just about impossible to imagine, harder to describe, and likely to become, in very short order, totally crazy.  The very worst possible thing we can do to another is to "put them in solitary confinement," and we have the almost apochryphal shared knowledge that our infants will die if we feed them and care for their physical needs but do not provide them with simple human contact. 

Given our natural inclinations in this realm, it is not surprising that we get persnickety about our most intimate relationships.  The labeling that we do in that context carries a weight of meaning and implication that, oddly, almost never makes things more clear and frequently ruffles our respective feathers.  As talented as we are as makers of language, we burden our relational tags with so many demands that it is just about impossible to carry it all...  So it is that we insist on the differentiators -- always with layers of meaning and intent (notice that our words describe status but also duration and authenticity):  engaged, newlywed, married, widowed, divorced, single, co-habiting.  We have ways to designate who is "legitimately" in a relationship, and who might be illicit.  So we talk about wives, second wives, and trophy wives.  There are men who we designate as players and scoundrels and cads ... and it is all about how they conduct their intimate relating.  We retain the centuries old "mistress," even as we grow more and more accustomed to the fact that people do relate intimately outside of traditional marriages.  I found one question, posted to some online site, where a young woman wondered what to call the male friend who she hung out with socially, "hooked up" with occasionally, liked but wasn't thinking of in terms of any sort of long-term sense...  Was he, she wondered, a "friend with benefits, a fuck buddy, a boyfriend, a sex partner, ...?"  Goodness!

With all of that, it gets even more complicated when, as happens in the lifestyle, we begin to want to be able to describe our relationships in terms of the various connections, but also in terms of the gender orientations and power dynamics involved.  We have our own, esoteric lexicon to tell us who's who and what's what within our own ranks.  So if you hang around the lifestyle for just a little bit, you will likely encounter people who are "into" Daddy/boy, Daddy/little girl, Owner/property, Dominance/submission, Top/bottom, Master/slave, HOH/surrendered wife, and I don't even know what all else.  Some of us construct elaborate webs of interconnections within which we occupy a whole host of different roles in relationship to different partners.  It is fairly common for people to suppose that there is some sort of hierachical pecking order to the various configurations.  Hence we will talk as if there is something MORE valid about total power exchange relationships than those that are perhaps more negotiable.  We'll insist that the 24/7 dynamic is better and more "real" than the one that happens in discreet time intervals with periodic separations.  We'll compare, with great fervor, the relative merits of cyber and realtime relationships. 

We seem to be absolutely convinced that there is "one true way."  Most of us have some kind of idea in our minds about what constitutes a "good" or "correct" version of our kind of relating.  We collect, socially and culturally, a whole set of intellectual baggage that tells us what our relationships "should be like."  It makes me wonder how much better off we might all be if we could release our hold on the need to label, and simply find ourselves into the kind of relatedness that is "right" for us and our partners.  Too, we'd be better off if we simply acknowledged that what is right today might not have been right five years ago -- or might not be right in a year from now. 

We relate for all sorts of reasons, and we accomplish all kinds of things in the creation of our closest relationships.  Maybe there is a more informative way to think about describing our relationships -- maybe it is possible to think in terms of what we GET out of our relationships, or hope to get out of them.  Knowing that might tell us more than the labels we so commonly use.  Consider:

• Some relationships are about survival.  The partners may feel like they can't make it on their own, and almost anyone available will do. People who enter into these kinds of relationships are most often "broken wings" of one sort or another -- perhaps addicted, perhaps victims of abuse, perhaps mentally unstable... 
• Other relationships are primarily about validation.  In these kinds of relationships we are looking for affirmation of physical attractiveness, intellect, social status, sexuality, wealth, or some other attribute. A validation relationship might shore up our  self-esteem in areas where we feel inadequate or doubtful. 
• Sometimes, especially in the scene, relationships are set up in some sort of "scripted" fashion.  We pick out the roles that seem most attractive or most intriguing or most exciting, and then the relationship is configured around the partners living out their expectations for the roles they believe they are supposed to play. They have the right toys, go to the right events, and carry out all the right scenes and protocols.  These kinds of relationships are often plagued by power struggles.   Endless arguments develop as the partners struggle to maintain the illusion of perfect "whatever-ness." 
• Another kind of relational model is based on acceptance.  In these kinds of relationships, we trust, support and enjoy each other. Within certain boundaries, this kind of relationship allows us to be ourselves. Partners in acceptance relationships allow for the vagaries of their human-ness, and they simultaneously refrain from pushing those limits that erode the trust of their partners, strain their enjoyment, and weaken the bonds between them.
• Some relationships revolve around the assertion of each partner's wants and needs, as each person focuses on personal growth -- seeking their own and supporting their partner's.  These relationships require each person's acknowledgment and appreciation of their differences.   Roles tend to be flexible and boundaries tend to be somewhat permeable.  The ability to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty is the hallmark.
• There are also models for relationships that are usually of short duration.  We don't always need to invest in an "until death do us part" lifetime contract.  Some of what we need, as organisms, can be handled just fine in relatively short interactions with the "right" partner for the moment.  These relatioships can help us heal, allow us to experiment, give us a path to making a transition, permit us to avoid unhealthy committments, or just let us pass the time in some sort of pleasant dalliance. 

 I don't know where all of that comes from or where it takes me or us.  Part of me would bristle at those who would look at my relationship and assert that it isn't what I say it is.  On the other hand, there are days when I look at my relationship and assert that it isn't what I say it is.  There are times when it feels like it does exactly what I need it to do in this place and this time, and when that happens, I am happy and fine and it really doesn't matter what anyone calls it or me or us.  Then there are days when I am feeling empty, lost, uncertain, frightened, sad -- and I can feel all the various barbs.  I can feel the lack of equality in the way our society defines marriage, I can feel the judgement in my own mind when I measure what I do and what I endure against what others report, I can transmute His occasional disappointment and discouragement into a death knell, and despair of ever getting it right.  What an exercise in chasing my own tail! 

Ours is a perfectly imperfect connection.  We are both entirely human, with entirely human attributes -- both positive and negative.  I can go down the list and take note of my broken places, feel acutely aware of my insecurities, acknowledge my attachment to the roles to which I've laid claim, rejoice in the acceptance I find in the life I've chosen, and treasure the growth and personal validation I've gained in the matrix of "us."  The relationship that He and I have created between us is not so easily labeled; is not simple to describe; does not fit neatly into one of the tidy little boxes.  I bet we are not unique in this. 

When we put our labels on our lives, our loves, our hearts -- call ourselves out (as He and I do) as Master and slave; set ourselves up immovably into a duality/dichotomy, we belie the truth of our own volatile, variable, and vital humanity.  Sometimes the slave finds the well runs dry, and sometimes the Master wearies of the need to manage the all and all.  We each give what we have when we can, and we each take what we need when it is offered.  Grown up relationships are like that.  They change.  They adapt.  They shift. 

I think I may have confused myself.  Maybe all of that stuff didn't really go together after all.

swan

Independence Day Everywhere in The U. S Except Texas

Each year we in the United States celebrate the anniversary of our nation's Declaration of Independence. Unbelievably bright, literate men, knowing full and well that committing treason against traditionally tyrannical British monarchs, had always resulted in the death of those who engaged in such treason, and knowing the likelihood of their successfully vanquishing the greatest military force in the world at that time, The British Army, took an amazing leap of faith by declaring that the American British colonies were a sovereign nation separate and independent of Britain called The United States. Every American on this 234th anniversary of that event should know and thrill to the words of the beginning of that declaration:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness"

This wonderful document makes it clear that it is the role of government to enforce and assure these rights and that should a government fail to do so, it is the absolute right of free men to abolish that government, by force if need be, and to institute one dedicated to these principles.

As we head into this 234th celebration of this astounding act of visionary courage, The G. O. P. in Texas (for those of you not familiar with U. S. political idiom, this is an acronym for the "Grand Old Party," i. e., the U. S. Republican Party, analagous to a conservative or Tory party in other democracies) has developed its platform for the election ahead this November. It has declared proudly that these precepts are valid other than in terms of the "All men" provision at the beginning of The Declaration of Independence. It is clearly exempting people who are gay, people who have disabilities, and people who choose to intentionally create families differebt that just one man and one woman, declaring that all of these lack the inalienable rights set forth by the U. S. founding fathers.

It is important as we look forward here in the U. S. to the second Tuesday of next November and, as we eat our hamburgers and hot dogs tomorrow, and watch fireworks displays and gloriously symphonic concerts of patriotic music, that we study exactly what it is the Republican Party stands for. It is rare for the G. O. P. to come out of the closet and transparently state their beliefs and values. It is clear that the Republican vision as elucidated in Texas, were it to come to fruition would result in a government that it would, were we to adhere to the Declaration of Independence, be the right of all free men to abolish and recreate.

You may read the Texas G. O. P. platform here:

http://static.texastribune.org/media/documents/FINAL_2010_STATE_REPUBLICAN_PARTY_PLATFORM.pdf

We have work to do still today 234 years later to preserve freedom from would be tyrants.

All the best,

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.