Like a Slave?

It was a couple of nights ago -- late; moving toward midnight. 
We'd put some music on the CD player and He was awash in evocative memories stirred up by Joan Baez.  He'd reconnected with one of the knives from His collection -- one that He hadn't seen for awhile, and He was entirely caught up in cleaning and polishing and sharpening.  Under those circumstances, I can very quickly fade to invisible.  The simple truth is that, there are places that He goes in His mind where I cannot follow; places where I cannot reach Him; places where He is entirely content and does not need me. 

Honestly?  I just hate that.  It is a remarkably lonely and frustrating place to be.

As the minutes ticked away; as He sat there crooning softly to that knife; rocking to the rhythms of the music -- I wandered around trying to get things ready so that we might go off to bed.  Tired.  When, at last, everything was ready; I went to Him and suggested:  "Honey, let's go to bed and snuggle -- I'm so tired..." 

He waved me off with a flick of His hand; as if I were a pesky housefly buzzing in His ear.  So, I asked if I went in to bed, if He'd come in soon and join me.  He assured me He would.  I kissed Him and wandered off feeling hurt and dejected, went to bed feeling lonely and sad.  Hours later, He finally came in and joined me -- at nearly 3 AM.

The next day, out walking, I suggested to Him that it was not very romantic to wave off a woman (as she is trying to get you into bed) as if she were a BUG.  He was unimpressed.  He just chuckled and replied, "I'm sorry for treating you like a slave."  THUNK!

And there it is.  The fact is that He can "treat me like a slave."  That is the deal.  There is no requirement for kindness, respect, tenderness, romance, affection, regard, sensitivity, or gentleness.  None of that "stuff" is part of what a Master must do for a slave.  I get it.  I understand.  I even accomodate the times when that is the reality.

But I don't like it.  It doesn't make me happy.  It doesn't do a thing for me erotically.  Not my thing.  Really.

So.  Maybe I'm not "a slave."  Probably not.  I am His, and I will do whatever works to make Him happy, and I will obey, and I will serve.  I have come to trust that He loves me.  I have come to believe that being His will get me returns in affection and loving regard.  Even as He plays with me sadomasochistically, I want that romance and tenderness.  I really don't want to live without it -- not for long. 

So.  What does that mean?  Has everything changed?  Has nothing at all changed?  Has it always been this way, and I've just come to the place where I am ready and willing to say it plainly?  Maybe so. 

His.  I'm not sure how to describe His what, but I feel just as confirmed as ever in terms of my sense of belonging to Him.  I hope that whatever it is that I am for Him, it meets His needs, fulfills His desires, and makes it as happy as it makes me.  I also hope that I never reach the point where I am nothing more to Him than a "pesky housefly."

swan

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.