And he's lovely text company, sexting and otherwise. Last night, rope practice was extra fun because I was showing off for him. I chose this mermaid tie because I'm practicing to bind his arms with it, but he insists that's not going to happen.
Gold star to him for making my hot rope time hotter, what a good sweet boy. And gold star to me, he's right about the pretty!
I know we already skipped ahead to the ropes because Thursdays
exist, but it’s time to backtrack a little. When The Song Sender texted me the Sunday
morning before our Wednesday plans to iron out the details, I swooned. There’s
seriously nothing hotter than not having to chase someone down for logistics.
Plus, I thought it might mean he and his girlfriend were working on their
calendars, and that made me feel all warm and fuzzy, like welcome to polytown, TSS.
But really it was mostly about the logistics. I like
being all Virgo-y. I have calendar reminders set for every friend, for checking
on my niece who is going through her first breakup, for futile reminders that I
should vacuum a little each week. I like structure and predictability in ways
that run counter to how sex, love, and romance like to operate, though oddly
compatible with my BDSM mind. NOT compatible with some of the young millennial treats
who’ve come and gone this past year.
So yes, oh my goodness, plans. And a guy my own age! By
the time I was driving downtown to meet him, some of the dizzy unsureness had
simmered down, but neither of us was sure if it was a date or not. In the
neighborhood where we were meeting up, someone had stickered the stop signs to
say “stop giving up” and I took that as all kinds of different advice.
He looked tidy and gentlemanly when I saw him there
waiting, wearing a nicely-chosen blue plaid shirt. His grizzled mutton chops (Which,
along with his bear-size and insistent blue eyes, make him look like if you
looked up “dom” in the dictionary) were freshly trimmed—he’d already sent me a
post-haircut selfie.
We hugged hello and he let out an affable growl. There
was a feeling of being pawed-at even though I wasn’t, and that felt VERY
pleasant. I was a LITTLE more sure it was a date.
A few weeks ago, there was this dream. I’ve had
variations of this one lots of times--Pagan Boy and I were getting back together.
We had a whole sexy thing brainstormed, but then I stepped out of his apartment
for a moment. We lived in an art installation, the way you sometimes do in
dreams. I spent the whole rest of the dream (I think it’s Prozac that makes my
dreams so long and Byzantine…) trying to get back to his place. There was an
electricity map where you could check to see who was home. I thought I’d find
him back there, but there was someone else.
I woke up so sad. We’d finally made a date, we were
finally on-again, but I realized all over again that he’s gone. Passed away
from Covid last year while we were planning a remote friend-date to watch The
Apple. We’ll never get back together. We’ll never meet for coffee and
flirt. He’s just gone.
The griefs of Covid and its attendant tragedies take a
long time to sift though sometimes. Everyone knows the stages of grief don’t
come like a ladder, step by step.
Like any other lover, he… visits? during self-love
times, and that happened the other night. It was a real memory, a real day in the
summer of 1994. He was moody and I was crampy, but we went to the local naked
swimming waterfall anyway. We sat on the margins of the fun, barely stitched
together in our own misery.
I was self-conscious then about my tampon string, but my
present day remembers one moment with great warmth and shimmer. Pagan Boy
watched me from the shore or on a stone in the middle of the stream while I crouched
down in the shallow water and opened my legs to him. The cold water and his half
attention lit up my clit in 1994 and in 2022. He couldn’t really see me and I
couldn’t feel much besides the cramps, but still, an opening up, a fresh
opening-up.
We re-broke-up not long after that sunny sad day, but
we shared a bed as friends after club nights a few more times. His monumental
snores drove my roommates crazy, and I was smushed into the wall by our two
monumental bodies in the bed. The smush of him felt good to me, made me feel
real and loved.
We’d overhear the roommates fucking in the next room
and the air between us would get tense and frustrated, but still, he stayed.
Still, we slept.
By the time, in the twenty-teens, we were having
coffee in the same town where my sister lives, we were both poly and kinky. He
was an oasis of being myself in the midst of any family weekend. Without that
oasis, I really don’t know what to do.
But then, I got the ropes out. And this growly, bitey, throw-me-around dom let me put him in them. I really, REALLY wish I had taken his picture like that, not just because he looked so fucking hot but because it's kind of a trophy. I've spent eleven years being scared of him/wishing he could come over and give me what-for, and here he was, being so still. Ironically patient, maybe, maybe deciding how much he'd let me get away with it.
So then, I stepped out of dizziness and 2011-ness and into what was actually happening. I showed him how to put a harness on me and he sweetly did and undid the knots to get it right. It didn't come off til close to the end of his visit, so he must've done a good job tying the back!
The rest of the story of my second first date with The Song Sender is about the beautiful whoosh of submission visiting my mind for the first time in I don't know how long. But I could only get to that place because I had my whole voice with me, because I was solidly grounded in my own desire.
Last night felt like a graduation. I'm so, SO proud of the eleven years since I started kink, of going from a scared, desperate girl to...well still pretty scared and desperate sometimes, but with my whole voice to find my way(s) to happiness and pleasure.
I maybe should also stop being surprised at the way
people I’ve loved can stay in my body! It was a very chaste catch-up (I would
have to go on quite an internal journey to get to using video chat for
sexytimes! But I bet I can get there.) It only took a few minutes of talking to
him, for my body to remember what it was like to be tangled up with Mr.
Sweetheart—I felt the heat all the way down to my spine, a long-forgotten
Tantric-ish magic.
We both had breakups in May, his from a more serious,
long-term relationship, but we bonded over being heartbreak twinsies. The relationship
he was processing had been (maybe at her request?) monogamous, so he was antsy
to get out into the poly world again. Definitely know that feeling!
His sluttily-proactive idea was to make a list of
twenty people he might be able to snuggle with and just start reaching out. I
was tempted to do the same, but with a 20-sided die. (Which I have because I
teach math, I don’t suddenly have enough imagination to D&D!)
I tried a list, expanding it to include not just
snuggles but apologies-owed and estranged friends. I got to twenty, but only about
five of them were even a little bit advisable, so I’ll keep leaving my
adventures to Feeld and fate. (And hoping the Cute Guy at the Car Place someday
gets his act together.
I guess Mr. Sweetheart felt some of the same
past/present warmth, because he asked if we could be in each other’s maybe
piles. I said an unequivocal YES. He lives like 6 states away, but we’ve put
monthly video chats on the calendar. I could see going to visit him and REALLY
MAKING THE MOST of some summer weekend. I’ve already relaxed into his body
again, so there’s lots of fun to hope for.
Best of all, he’s going to join me in my knot-learning
quest! He’s already an excellent rope top (I VIVIDLY remember a REALLY good
handle…) but it hadn’t occurred to him that he could be practicing on himself.
I’m so pleased to be a good bad influence. Let the Summer of (Knotty) Romance
proceed!
Last Saturday when I was planning my self-date night to go see Downton Abbey: A New Era, I knew there were plenty of movie theaters with parking lots, with big cozy seats, with pretty good mojitos. But I wanted to go to The Artsy Theater, my favorite.
It was the one where I sobbed a whole lifetime at the
end of Boyhood not long after one of my cats passed away. The one where
I saw Her and decided I should break up with the boyfriend who existed
only on Twitter, then put off doing that for a while longer. It was where I
took comfort in the absurd romance of The French Dispatch while I was
getting over The Good Boy.
(It was also where I was subjected to a Woody Allen trailer
while awaiting The French Dispatch—why does such a thing even still
exist? What the heck, Artsy Theater?!)
But! They keep the Junior Mints in the freezer there,
and they have so many flavors of hot chocolate, which I never try, because let’s
be honest I need coffee to stay up past 9:30, especially in the dark.
So I guess the main swoon in this story is for the
theater itself, but when I walked in a little early for my 9:20 movie there was
The Song Sender, looking exactly as he had in 2011 when he said goodbye.
“I’ve seen you on every dating app!” I blurted out,
because if I’m going to live in a romcom I’m going to bring the awkward.
I had though. The last time I’d seen him, on Feeld, he
was even in my “likes you” folder, with his girlfriend right there in the
profile with him. The Song Sender, who’d dumped me ostensibly about monogamy,
had been brought to the poly team, maybe by this nice lady I should’ve snooped
more about before I sent him to the left. I thought he would probably be too
rough for me these days, but the update and the “like” gave me a nonzero amount
of joy.
Anyway, back to the movies, I went over and sat down
next to him, and my body didn’t think he seemed too rough at all. I felt cozy
and oriented, both like no time had passed and like forever had. I caught a
little whiff of the smell of him and it gave me a sense of surety and happiness.
I sure wasn’t woozy or helpless the way I’d been back in my 2011-and-headed-towards-divorce
apartment with him.
It took me a few minutes of being fairly inappropriate
before he told me he was at work and therefore couldn’t tell me every detail of
his adventures like I’d asked. I still showed him my hidden photos folder with
some of my rope creations, and he unsurprisingly liked them.
As I was going into the movie, he snapped a selfie of
the two of us because his girlfriend wanted to know who this girl was who was showing
him pictures. I gave him my number, which felt both like a crazy thing to do
and the most natural thing in the world. Whether as a friend or as a…whatever,
he was missing from me and now he isn’t.
The movie was perfect, of course, and so was the rest
of my date with myself. I walked a dreamy few blocks through the historic
district to my favorite bus route, which I love even more than I love The Artsy
Theater. When I walked from my bus stop to home, the moon was almost full and
big in the sky. The flowering trees were giving off their late-night smells. I
saw my first lightning bug of the season.
That walk from the bus stop made me sure that whatever
happens with any character, past, present, or future, it’s within my power to
make this a Summer of Romance for myself. So in the name of the Dowager
Countess and the first firefly of the season, that’s exactly what I resolve to
do.
My heart has no sense of perspective about kind touch
or attention to detail. It’s why I asked-out-then-befriended my massage
therapist. It’s why I have had a crush on Cute Guy at the Car Place for SEVEN
YEARS, ever since the first time he put my keys back on the key ring for me.
Kind touch and attention to detail are where all the
swirly/woozy/glittery emotions about the Shy One came from, what makes him so
hard to move past. Warm affection, carefulness, specificity. The first night
with him, after the pretty ropes and lovely sex, in the cozy glow of peace and
satisfaction, I leaned back onto him and he said “I love your body,” running
his hands over my shoulders, my arms, my waist, my hips. Firm, warm touch,
easily given—I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s gotten a hundred girlfriends since
we broke up in mid-May.
That first night, it was so easy to learn the Heart
Link harness because A. He didn’t mind me rewinding a YouTube video a bunch of
times trying to figure out the hearts! And B. He was so still! Excited and
engaged, not impatient or judgey. Encouraging. Sweet. I don’t think too much
about dad energy, but maybe that’s what it was.
The night of all the presents, our third date, after our
month of sunsets, was one of the most powerful instances I’ve felt of arousal
being intertwined with joy. He had the condom on and was ready to go in, but I told
him to stop. Just stay there. Wellbeing fizzed up through me as he paused, hard
dick resting on my vulva. I put my arms around him tight, kissed him, and felt the
full force of whatever bond that month of mostly-chaste flirting had built.
It was a feeling of wholeness that, somewhat vexingly,
still occupies my entire body. Any time I’m quiet and calm, I can feel it in my
toes.
To paraphrase Lady Mary (spoiler alert!) when her
suitors were closing in and she was still deep in grief over Matthew Crawley, I’m
still full of The Shy One. It’s true that The Hipster jangled loose a lot of
stuck desire and made me want to start a summer sex rampage like the hot kaiju
that I am, but even as I move into this new stage of why-doesn’t-so-and-so-text-me
flirtation/vexation, The Shy One is still with me. He’s not just in the limbo of
my Feeld inbox, being all “This human has deactivated their account,” he’s in
my soul’s inbox, in my whole heart. Both of those places are very crowded, but
still.
That third date was the only time he slept over, and
in the long process of saying goodbye, he sat on the floor next to the bed to
hold me and kiss me while I was still under the covers. That morning was THE
WHOLE DREAM, a distillation of why I started this blog in the first place, the
CLOSENESS, the ROMANCE, the being adored. There was another time, on our second
date, we were all wrapped up in each other, when he looked me in the face (I’m
sorry but NO ONE was better at looking at me than he was.) and got still.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“Nothing. Well, I am thinking something. I like you.”
It’s hard to imagine any new feelings ever coming
close to that, though there’s never any need to compare feelings. I know every connection
is its own universe, every new match a fresh start, a new mystery.
Two days ago, I wished long-absent Mr. Sweetheart a
happy birthday on facebook, the most low-stakes interaction possible, and to my
delight, he reached out to say hello! We’re planning a catch-up Zoom! He was excited
that I remembered his blog nickname, and I said “Of course I do! Once in the story,
always in the story.”
So, dear Shy One, who is probably not reading this, same
thing. Once in the story, always in the story. You’ll snuggle and read about
history and watch your true crime shows and love and work and hopefully see
flowers and think of me every once in a while. I’ll learn to let you go, to
forgive myself for not finding a way to fit, but you’ll still always be with
me. Your generous touch, your giggle, your expert tongue, your supercute butt; always
a little bit mine. And my heart, slutty though it will surely be, will always belong
a little to you. I’ll love you. Forever. That’s all.
 |
| I'm sorry to post another blurry one, but if you saw the face you'd see why I was a little flustered. |
His playlist was SO GOOD, almost nothing that took me out of the moment, except to ask how he, at 31, knew about The Cardigans.
He was kind of an antsy rope bottom, excited to get to everything that came after the ropes, which is fair. I really like the woven thing at his heart, I just wish I'd finished the harness off a little neater.
The Hipster made it clear that he's Not For Dating, to the point where I felt like I needed to check if he'd cuddle after sex. (He did, but I felt like he had an internal timer set.) But he was such a lovely treat and I hope we get to play some more, even if it's just for the soundtrack.
As I’ve been going through some old unicorn and/or metamour stories (What a very nice assignment I gave myself!) two things became clear: 1. I’ve been a little reluctant to admit the kinds of closeness I wanted because 2. My early adventures are steeped in the confusion and grief of my divorce from BFF-Formerly-Sweetie.
Looking back at the story of The Steampunks (This gold-star
breakup that didn’t really take is a good example: https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-girl-crush-wall-of-grief-and-gold.html?zx=592a17ae48503cbd
) I had forgotten I was drawn to both of them. I only pursued him, though, partly
because I was hankering for dudes after all my time on Lesbian Island trying to
fight the bi-ness, but partly because it’s easier for me to learn one person,
at least at first.
But I also had this imagined binary in my head, a loyalty-like-thing
to BFF-Formerly Sweetie—I felt like an attraction to a woman was
extra-betraying her. Since I’d given attraction to men as my main reason for
divorce, it didn’t feel fair to still be attracted to women too. Embarrassingly,
I still sort of feel this way sometimes, like liking a woman would be the ultimate
betrayal of Sweetie. Being a divorced bi lady who mostly likes men is really
weird sometimes.
The couples aspect of being bi still feels too big and
too out of reach, too outside the boundaries of what I’m allowed. This isn’t
because of anything BFF-Formerly-Sweetie said then or now. Playing with a couple,
the possibility of belonging to a couple, through any combination of romance and
friendship, seems like asking for too much. Even boyfriend-and-beloved-friend-metamour(s)
seems too much to hope for, but I hope to learn to let myself own that wish.
In my gratitude for The Steampunks and the perspective
that’s come from the last nine years I forgot how painful the breakups from
them (There were four different breakups from Steampunk Guy, I just couldn’t
stay away. This is part of why I’ve gotten good at staying away now.) were, how
much it hurt to be told I couldn’t play with him after I divorced--“We only
play with partnered people.” is truly one of the cruelest poly rules I’ve
encountered.
I can see why the tears poured out when I was worried
about Mrs. Shy One vetoing me, about not truly fitting into The Shy One’s life—those
fears were mixed up with divorce grief and shame at wanting so badly to be
approved of and the losses and indignities that came from past couples.
But every dater, every human, is walking around with
past griefs and indignities. Though I’ve been journaling about past
constellations privately, I don’t want to spend too much time focusing on the
losses of the past, on the bitternesses that bloom out of couple privilege and
my own mistakes and garden-variety thoughtlessness. If I did that, I would truly
never make it to the next snuggle.
Instead, if I should encounter another couple I’m
wildly drawn to, I’d like to give myself the compassion and space to absorb
those emotions, to acknowledge the monumental size and power of that particular
want. I’d like to learn to believe that a loving couple or
boyfriend-and-metamour(s) romance is something I deserve to hope for. Of
course, that doesn’t guarantee that I’ll get it, but if I do, I’ll do my best
to welcome it in with kindness and an expansive heart, and most of all, a deep
and boundless care for my tender self.
I used this one in the crotch rope for last week's tie! In addition to being so pretty it's a gorgeous match for my clit. I might have to make a date with some stopper knots tonight.
