It reminded me of some advice I recently got from my friend Pagan Boy. I was talking about (still!) pining away over Bill and he said that I reminded him of Lily Taylor from Say Anything, writing a million songs for that doofus Joe. That image may not keep me from reminiscing, but it should help me reduce the number of ill-advised emails I write this holiday season, and that is a victory in and of itself.
A few weeks ago, two events conspired to make it really hard
to have any faith in this process. I wrote a little bit about it here but I
find myself needing to return to the topic. Part of what inspired the sadness
of this post was HempRopes, the talented top who suspended me last month.
After we played together, he sent me the picture and let me
know that I’d been a vey good bottom and that he’d play again any time, so I
asked if we could make some plans. He responded enthusiastically, telling me it
was time to meet his wife so that I could be vetted to come over and play at
their house. I let him know that I was a ways away from private play but that
it was a possibility for the future. The exchange was punctuated with more than
a few smiley emoticons on my part.
He said that his November schedule was up in the air but
that he’d let me know. I saw his RSVP on a mid-month event but hadn’t heard
from him so I planned to go and play with Sweetie.
I should have had a blindfold on. We were at a very sociable
venue and I was distracted from our scene. People kept coming over to say hi
and for the most part I didn’t mind it until my friend Bubbly Sub came over and
gave me a happy naked rope hug, glowing and bragging about how much fun she’d
just had with HempRopes. She was all buzzy and glittery with happiness, and it
should have just made me happy, but it didn’t. I don’t know why their having
played bothered me so much, except that I couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d
chosen her first because she is 24, more pliable, more agreeable than I am.
There was no way I could ever get chosen if those were the desired traits.
The hurt brought me completely out of my scene with
Sweetie—I was struck by the sheer empty futility of standing there naked trying
to attract the attention of men, and most of the time failing, at least in the
long term. I know much more happy and healthy uses for my nakedness, but in
that moment of despair there were none to be had. I felt guilty for
interrupting our fun, but I had to get some care and go home.
There was no offer from HempRopes to really decline, since
he’d clearly forgotten that I’d asked for plans, but simply to hold myself to
my decision, I sent him a note with the heading “Not Cut Out for Bunnying.” He
responded that he certainly had had no intention to hurt me, but that he’d put
out a call (on FL) and she’d responded. He said “I tend to get myself a queue
when I put the call out, so I go in a “first come, first served” order.”
So BS was chosen not for her youth or cheer, but simply for
her ability to sit on FetLife and wait for someone to offer to play. So in a
way I guess it was her youth—no adult, professional woman would have time for
that nonsense. She was, in the truest sense of the word, easy—a thing I will
never be.
I didn’t say any of that, of course, I just sent a polite
note that a queue wouldn’t feel right to me. He wished me luck and I crossed off
another possibility, stunned by the callousness involved in thinking that he
saw both me and BS as nothing but a take-a-number bodies waiting to entertain
him.
The second blow to my sense of hope came a few days later,
after I’d already posted about my general worries and emptiness. I’d had a good
playnight with the Man About Town, and in my post-scene glow, I’d accidentally
sent a tweet about it to him instead of Twitter. It was a silly mistake and
since it had a hashtag in it, he took it as an invitation to look up this blog,
even though I’d made it clear that that was considered 29th base—I
wanted us to get to know each other better before I trusted him to read it
without trying to control it.
After ONE scene, either he thought we’d achieved that level
of intimacy or he didn’t care.
I felt trapped. I found myself workshopping emotions I
hadn’t had enough time to even think about yet, things it would seem INSANE to
share with someone new, especially someone I was casually playing with. He
apologized for “leaving marks that scared (Sweetie)” and it felt like this
awful, creepy, invasion into my married life. I would have expressed concerns
eventually, on my own terms, but having those insights taken from me felt
awful.
Still, it was a mistake from a silly mistweet and the whole
sex-blogger thing IS a tricky situation. If he would have apologized, I still
wouldn’t have played with him again, but I wouldn’t have been quite so bitter.
Instead, he was self-righteous, saying “I’m not going to apologize for reading
something that is basically public property, that anyone could just stumble
upon.”
Which would be a fair point if I hadn’t ASKED HIM NOT TO. I
keep coming back to that:
I asked him not to and he did it anyway.
After one scene, he felt entitled to renegotiate our terms
without me, to take what he thought he was entitled to, whether I agreed or
not.
It is supremely disheartening, that even the most new-agey,
married-to-a-high-priestess, referring-to-the-moon-as-She guy would still feel
entitled to my inner life after such a tiny amount of time.
It’s enough to make me rethink my attraction to D/s
situations. While I do of course physically enjoy being dominated, I think I’ve
emotionally used dominance as a place-holder for things I’m not sure I can find
or deserve, traits I believed in a year ago—ideals of masculinity that I see in
friends and the husbands of friends but not in the men who are interested in
me—courage, chivalry, integrity, emotional honesty and strength.
So far, my experience of dominant men has been one of cold
cowardice—from Bill wishing simply for a chokeable fuck doll, to Fireguy
thinking that my expressing a point of view about my own experience was going
to wreck his entire existence, to HempRopes and his “First come, first served.”
I started with a fear that that I could never be what men want, that a man
could never be interested in my whole self, and I have found character after
character to confirm those fears.
I worry a lot about being perceived as a man-hating harpy,
and I’m sure that M.A.T. can commiserate with Fireguy to that effect, but I am
really, really trying to be flexible and kind. I don’t want to have such a
stunted view of men. I want to let someone real into my life; I’m just totally
at a loss about how to get there.
Sorry I didn’t get to finish the Old Timey guy story—it’s a
hot story but it just isn’t inspiring me. I just ended up feeling sort of empty
about it.
Empty is unfortunately the theme this week. Last Thursday
night I had a perfectly fun evening in Man About Town’s basement. He’s a little
sloppy with the knots, but he has other qualities, especially in the
holding-me-down department. He did a great job and was the first guy I’d
trusted with aftercare in a while, but I think I pushed myself too far. He left
ass bruises that scared Sweetie, and I ended up in a dark place and sobbing as
I was falling asleep that night.
Then, last night, I was at a party, in perfectly-knotted
ropes, alternately tickling a topless Sweetie and drawing pretty doodles on her
back, and I somehow felt invisible and abstracted from her. I felt so far away
from the warm, loving times that we have at home.
I stopped the scene even though she was enjoying herself.
The lonely-for-Sweetie part is easy to remedy—a
snuggling-and-hiking Sunday starts as soon as I’m done typing this—but what
about the missing man-affection? I like all of the guys that I have played with
recently, but only in a really superficial way. I don’t feel a real connection
and that feels like it is eroding something in me.
So what do I do? Declare a moratorium on playing with guys
until I find the man of my dreams or a time machine back to last year? Maybe.
I’ve been looking for guy-connection at kink events, which seems reasonable, but
maybe I need a good break from looking, some time to do other fun things and
see if I can reconnect with myself and stop feeling so empty.
So Punk Rock Girl convinced Old-Timey Guy that I should be
second. As I stood in the doorway getting ready to be shacked up, I said “Wait,
why am I wearing all these clothes?”
OTG instructed PRG to start getting me naked. “What do you
want off?” she asked me.
“Everything but undies and socks! Can (Sweetie) help too?”
It took a little cajoling, but finally Sweetie left her
looky-loo perch on the stairs to come over and help. She reached around me to
unbutton my jeans and as the two women gently took my pants off, OTG unshackled
me and pulled my shirt off over my head. It was a perfect wish come true of a
moment. I was so happy.
“You have choice whether you want your bra…” began OTG.
“OFF!” I interrupted.
I think Sweetie unclasped it and OTG took it off. That’s not
a collaboration I’d’ve imagined a year ago, or even a few months ago, but look
at us! Yay, me and Sweetie, we’ve come so far!
OTG looked at me appraisingly ran his hands lightly over my
nipples, alternating between gently grazing them and pinching. I love that
feeling of being examined and approved-of. The up went my arms back into the
shackles and out came the blindfold. I was ready.
He leaned up against me in the front and whisper-growled
“What do you want me to do?”
“Um, hitting?”
“What kind of hitting?”
“Around the ass area?”
“What do you say?”
“Please Sir.”
“Please what?
“Please may I have the strappy thing?”
OhmanIlove the strappy thing. Thwack, thwack, thwack, nice
thuddy, insistent impact. I wigged my ass for more.
It felt so good but it was hard to fully relax sometimes. I
felt nervous that I couldn’t check Sweetie’s expression. I had to resist the
urge to keep on calling to her to see if she was okay. Occasionally she’d laugh
or chime in with a sassy comment and I’d know she was doing allright.
Next: Barehanded spanking, a saw horse, a Hitachi, and
possibly an Otter Pop.
Last night while I was enjoying some quality time with the Big Purple Thing, who should happen through my imagination but Bill. He doesn't come out of my Spank Bank very often, so I was surprised to see him storming around my fantasy, giving me the what-for again.
It might be because the first time I wrote to him, it was the beginning of Daylight Savings Time last year. Yes, it is weird that I remember this.
It may not have been wonderland, but the evening did have
sort of a down-the-rabbit-hole feeling to it.
Of course I had to try out those living room shackles—there
was no use even trying to be cool about it. The first time, it was clothes-on,
just goofing around. Old-Timey Guy made ticklish threats without touching me,
and I squirmed and giggled. I’m still really surprised that this tickling
business appeals to me at all! At that point I got the most (Well, maybe not
the MOST) disagreeable nickname—“Twitch.” Sweetie was the one who said it, but
OTG saw that it bothered me and decided to go with it. I’d have to earn my way
out of it, he said, by being less squirmy. I didn’t see a lot of not-twitching in
the near future, and I was correct.
OTG is always trying to goad me into admitting I am not
entirely adultlike:
“Are you a good girl?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Are you a good little
girl?”
“Uh, no Sir, I am TOTALLY an adult.” The pigtails and the
fact that I punctuated this statement with a little foot-stamp may have hurt my
argument. Also the fact that I spent most of the night giggling.
He continued with the diminutives the rest of the night, and
I was careful to disagree every time. “My three little girls, “he said, as he
was setting up his electroplay toys to demo them.
“Two.” I said. “TWO little girls.”
(It occurs to me that this is an odd stand to take,
considering that my first dirty-talk pet name was “brat.”)
One of those little girls, Squeak, took my place in the
shackles, now naked except for a teeny-tiny black thong. She’s an electro-slut,
they explained, it’s her favorite. I’ve always thought violet wands are pretty,
but I hadn’t yet had occasion to try one.
How it works is, the “wand” is plugged in, and various glass
implements are screwed into it. It is a very mad scientist-type situation.
Nothing happens if you press someone’s skin firmly to the glass, but if you
hold it near them and graze lightly, little tiny sparks leap out. He held the
wand and its flat-headed bulb against Squeak’s nipples and she wiggled, sighed,
and yes, squeaked. Then he held out the wand for Sweetie and me to try.
I don’t like the feeling. The sparks are tiny and don’t
hurt, they’re more like a tiny, prickly irritation—it’s weird how something as
strong as electricity could give me the soft-touch heebie jeebies.
It was really fun sitting with Sweetie watching Squeak enjoy
her torture. Usually in these sorts of situations I feel protective/defensive
of Sweetie, or just impatient with her, but she really seemed at ease, and not
just because Punk Rock Girl was serving her some really fancy whiskey.
As Squeak was getting taken down from the shackles and
warming her hands up in OTG’s kilt, I said that I’d like to go in the shackles
again please.
“It’s (Punk Rock Girl’s) turn next,” said OTG, but bless
her, PRG said that she’d go third because I was the guest. I was really
flattered that she seemed to want to see me play!
Sweetie and I were sleepy and at loss for something to do
Saturday night, and I was feeling the way I usually do on the weekend, which is
buried in homework. We’d just been to the library so the temptation to spend
our extra Daylight-Savings hour in bed pretty compelling. But! Old-timey Guy
and Punk Rock Girl turned out to be having a last-minute party because one of
their events got cancelled—and they live right near our neighborhood!
So Sweetie and I did something that we hadn’t done in a
shameful while—we bought a bottle of wine and headed over to our friends’ house
to pal around. It felt great.
It ended up being a teensy party, which appealed to both my
introverted half and my love for hogging attention. Punk Rock Girl answered the
door in a gypsy skirt and corset, with nothing covering her pretty boobs. We’ve
seen each other nearly naked lots of times, but this would be our first chance
to play together sans nipple tape—hooray! Hooray for boobs! Is how I felt
walking into their house.
As I hugged Old-Timey Guy hello, his other slave came
bounding down the stairs. She’s a green-haired Muppet-adorable girl I’ll call
Squeak. She had on a collar and a little black satin nightie. She had kind of
an undergrad way about her, but not unpleasantly so. OTG is the same age as me
but his slaves are in their early 20s, which feels a little annoying to me, but
who am I to judge. (Answer: the inner judgey part of me that spent many parts
of that evening with arms folded, pondering the ethics of nearly consenting to
being called a little girl, but I’ll get to that in a bit.)
“Welcome to Wonderland,” he said, “If my shtick gets too
much for you, let me know. I generally rein it in at (the public dungeon.)” It
didn’t look too wonderland-ish, except maybe for the rather large number of
hats. It was a stonerish house like I went to a million times in my
college-townie twenties. They had beanbag couches, the TV tuned to Bugs Bunny,
and shackles up in the wide doorway between the living room and the dining
room. OTG’s spanking implements were neatly arranged on a rack next to the
stairs. Cozy.
As often happens when you visit a BDSM person’s house, we
were given a tour of the basement. No Scooby-Doo style trick bookcase, but
these was a “Naughty Room”—a chilly stone room furnished only with a dropcloth,
an ominously tiny chair, and of course loops in the ceiling. Perfect for some
Buffy and Spike actions, but we went upstairs.
