Knotty Thursday: Three-Braid Harness and The Shy One Sexts!

 

I think this one is so pretty! Definitely one of my favorite rope selfies so far! If I do it again, I might start with an overhand knot and do the first braid a little lower-it got too tight on my neck after a little while. 

I adapted the harness from this Rory's Brainworks tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6exY0MxmC8 It's one I'll probably refer to a lot, there are lots of different ways to finish it off, none of which ended up in this tie. I like how the weave-y bit looks kinda like armor, that part was my own fuzzy-headed creation.

Most exciting though! A wonderful first! I sent The Shy One the picture above, plus a face-showing version, and he took us to sextingtown! Where we've never been! I loved having GORGEOUS pictures of his cock, both under undies and free, to keep me company while I fired up the Rabbit. I loved learning about some more things he wants to try! I loved sending him a sleepy-grateful picture of my post-orgasm face snuggling up with my Snorlax squishmallow.  

I'd mentioned wanting to sext during our DTR talk week before last, and I'm so so happy that he remembered and went for it! I remain the luckiest Ma'am in the universe.

What I Want, Part Three

7. SEE ABOVE.

8. I want to keep getting better and better at the ropes, learn all kinds of new knots and harnesses. It’s time, too, to learn a little more about restraining the cuties. I want all kinds of Ma’am and Sir pleasures. And I ESPECIALLY want to tie The Shy One to the bed a BUNCH more times.

9. I want to take, send, and receive lots more superhot pictures. Lots of beautiful cute-iful pictures. Something about the way The Song Sender saw me made me super-smitten with selfie-ing. I got bolder in asking for and sending smutty pictures, collected so many new ways to photo-flirt! I’d love to keep that going. Photoplay was such a big part of my early adventures-- I can’t wait to see what lands in the Hidden Folder next!

10. I want good communication. I want to learn good communication. I’d love to break through my layers of crush and guardedness and just figure out how to say what needs saying, with way less angst and drama on my part.

That means figuring out how to say “I miss you” instead of panicking that I’ll be forgotten. It means writing though layers of old bitterness and hurt so I don’t take it out on the sweet people of now. I could be so much better at this!

I want to let people be in touch the way they want to, but I’d also like all the cute texts all the time please! With emojis. And pictures of flowers and trees and pets and clouds and hot, hot bodies. I want to know each dear is thinking of me and let them know I’m thinking of them.

11. I want to fall asleep easier when I have company in bed. I love being in The Shy One’s arms listening to him snore sweetly, enjoying the warmth and peace, but it’s SO hard for me to fall asleep that way! That’s partly because of the excitement, my heart won’t stop racing with him no matter how many (SO many) times I’ve come, racing with happiness and exertion and oh-my-goodness-how-am-I-so-lucky-ness! But I would love to relax into him, into any of them, and fell asleep. Not worry about farting. Not worry he’ll disappear. Just know he’s with me, and drift off.

 

Goth Synchronicity and a Hot First Date

Last weekend, I was lounging on the (regular) beach with Rainbow Pal when they asked, “So did you and (The Song Sender) bond over it being Kate Bush Summer?”

Not really—it’s hard to believe that TSS lives in the same universe with something as sweet and sincere as Stranger Things. I had to admit, too, that for TSS Part Two, (Electric Boogaloo), I was the only one sending songs. Supersigh.

Then, THE NEXT DAY, in just the same shoulda-wished-for-a million-dollars way that The Song Sender had appeared in real life after my subby-nostalgia convo with Rainbow Pal at the beginning of the summer, I found myself sitting beside the river at night making a new playlist on a first date!

I wasn’t even sure I was ready to try someone new. I was still mopey/traumatized about The Song Sender and I’m still processing all the goodness with The Shy One. Still, I was charmed that this nice elder millennial had picked an out-in-the-world date instead of a couch one, and that his username was another word for spiritual joy, so I picked out an outfit and rallied. So glad I did.

He met me at my favorite bridge and was, like most people are, cuter than his profile picture. A little shorter than me, with dark hair and those fluffy eyelashes I can never resist. Columbian, he’d tell me later. He was wearing a shirt that said “Mordor”—you know I can’t resist the grumpy boys.

The walking and talking and playlist-making were PERFECT. I mean, other than having to hear boy-opinions about Captain Marvel. I thought it was so cute when he ruled out The Smiths from our playlist, since Morrissey grew up to be a nightmare.

But the best part was when we sat in my car a moment to say goodnight. This is usually when I would bring a first date home, but I had to get up early Monday morning. I had assumed I was going to dominate him, but he turned out to be a wonderful instigator. He started with a firm former-massage-therapist (!) touch on my arm, asking how to care for my tricky right arm during d/s situations.

Then he was all like “But you want it here, don’t you,” then went for the back of my neck, where the sub switch is!

He kissed me so insistently that I thought I would never get away, never stop, never sleep that night or any night. He was so powerfully in charge that it took me SEVERAL ardent tries to pry myself away and say goodnight. Not sure what happens next, but WHOA what a first date.

Knotty Thursday: Nice Tall Boy, Athena Harness

It's been a while since I've had in-person Wednesday company besides myself! This nice new boy did such a good job! Even tidied the ropes as he was helping to take them off!

This harness is a favorite, and I think I'm getting better at it every time!

There's this thing that the thirty-year-olds do, where they come over for the older-lady fantasy and/or to try the ropes, and that's that. I hope this one isn't like that, but even if it was, he was warm snuggles, sweet kisses, an eager and just-slightly-hair-pully blowjob. 

I think it's so sweet and generous to come over and be such a good canvas, whatever happens next!

I think I'm getting somewhere with this weave-y thing I made up, but it's a little sloppy here. Better practice some more!

He asked how I manage to tie myself up, so I had no choice but to show him! Also, I need more ropes.

What I Want, Part Two: Being a Romantic Slut

4. I want submission.

Near the beginning of the summer (Before it was even Kate Bush Summer!) I was on a mini-road-trip to The Fancy Garden with Rainbow Pal. I haven’t gotten to write about them yet, but they’ve been central to helping me dream up the creative sluttiness of the past couple of months. We’re both tenderhearted artists and I believe we might be platonic soulmates—they’re right up there with Angel Face when it comes to transformative friendships.

Anyway, as I was driving us home, they were telling me about a dom they used to have, and WHOOSH I remembered.

The hush of letting someone take over control. The precious, adorable feeling of being small, so small I’m almost nothing. And yet, seen in a slutty, delightedly filthy way that really happens to me so rarely. As anyone who reads me knows, I’ve been playfully spanked, had my hair pulled, been called a “good girl” during rough blow job practice, but none of it was THAT FEELING. Surrender. Pushing myself to bend and please. And that clearheaded feeling the next day, the one I didn’t realize I’d been missing.

And the DAY AFTER that conversation with Rainbow Pal, I ran into The Song Sender at the movies. So many aspects of subbing that I LOVED him for in 2011 came back again, and so many new games and desires sprouted up in my filthy heart. I assigned myself homework. I told him lovely, rough-to-sweet, elaborate slutty stories, fiction and not, in person and over text. I lost my mind and sent him poems about mystical submission to god. Aaaaaaaallllllllll the pictures I sent him, naked and not.

It’s confusing to have felt so seen by someone who will also never actually see me at all. To have been so fulfilled by someone who both feared and actively got off on disappointing me.

Somehow, in all of that, I got a taste of what a loving dom might feel like. I don’t know if it will be in the context of a romantic relationship (I hope so!) or if it will be its own thing. I’ll never find anyone to replace The Song Sender, yay and sob, but I hope to find a kinder, deeper, more sustainable version of that beautiful, BEAUTIFUL feeling.

5. I WANT ROMANCE and synchronicity.

The night I had dinner with The Shy One and we decided to be some kind of a thing again, it was like eleven million degrees out. But he’s not a PDA guy, so I had to put him in my car to kiss him. We kissed like it has been two years instead of two months. He smelled so him, and we were both dressed up so nice for dinner, and we were SWEATING. But it was so hard to let him get out of the car.

People get so tripped up by the word romance. I think it freaks a lot of people out because they think it’s about wedding dresses, and babies, and all the other Relationship Escalator things. Those things ARE a kind of romance, but they’re not what I mean.

Back to that road trip with the submission conversation, Rainbow Pal and I talked a lot about the Romance of Life, and that’s what I mean that I want. Beauty, sensuality, pleasure, awe, those things are all around us, whether we are partnered or not. When The Song Sender wasn’t passing the Turing Test or when somebody I wanted to date turns out to have been a hookup, I still always have flowers, the ocean, the intricacies of clouds.

There’s always a song that comes along and gives the exact right message. There’s always the advice I give myself in dreams. There’s always the Tarot deck to unstick my imagination when it’s getting stagnant.

I love the romantic moments I share with partners, like when The Shy One texts me flowers, but I’m also SO GRATEFUL that this list item is one I can keep giving myself.

6. And to that end, I want to keep dating myself. It was one of my 10 goals for 2022, and it has opened my world up maybe more than any other goal ever. I would love to keep giving myself the beautiful moments I deserve. Each time, I know a little deeper that I deserve them.

Knotty Thursday: Pretty Half-Hitch Pattern!

 

TMI alert: I'm deep in the hot-flash woods of perimenopause, and what that has meant this month is that I've had my period for THREE WEEKS. I had to get special medicine to make it stop. Along with end-of-the-world heat and a broken car air conditioner (now blessedly fixed) plus last week's breakup thing, I felt achey and crabby last night all the way to my bones.

I found this nice futomomo pattern that I liked:

(Did you know that futomomo literally translates to "fat leg"? Love it.)

But I wasn't feeling bendy enough and I kept worrying that I was going to bleed onto my pretty new post-breakup sheets. It took me a loooong while to accomplish anything, but finally, I put on my trusty lo-fi mix and settled into just practicing the pattern--I think it turned out lovely!

What I Want, Part One (The Easy Part)

There’s always a certain amount of futility in these lists, because the next characters who come along could knock me on my ass just as much as any ever have. If you’d told me in June that “summer fling with The Song Sender” would be in the cards, (Literally. The Lover and The Devil! Yikes and yay. Yay and yikes.)  I would have laughed in your face and told you about a dream I had a few years ago, wherein I was explaining to him: “We just call it strangling now.” More about that guy in part two, but for now, the easy things:

1.     I’m solo poly, and not necessarily destined for the kitchen table, at least not right away. I like my space, and I’ve discovered in the past few weeks that I like each combination to have time to grow before stirring my darlings’ darlings into the mix.

 

That doesn’t rule out future deep relationships with metamours or even some magical unicorn miracle, but I want to take my time. Every person is a LOT. I am A LOT. I would like any given combination to have its feet under it before I start to learn the next humans. Because I will LOVE THEM TOO and that will be, you know, a lot.

 

2.     I definitely do want polyamory. I would love to stop trying to wedge myself into monogamy every few years out of—self-protection? Weird poly/bi phobia left over from my divorcing years? There have been such LOVELY combinations of humans, such bursts or yes-this-is-exactly-it happiness that I would love to see some more.

 

The Shy One, The Song Sender, and a hookup whose name I barely remember but who made for a fucking GLORIOUS week. This Charming Man, The Lovely Guy, and that other hookup who gave me the wrong name. The Good Boy, The Southern Charmer, and The Adorables. Ideally, most of those would have lasted a lot longer, and I know that humans are NOT art supplies, but I felt like an artist working in the medium of slut, and I would lovelovelove for that to happen again.

 

3.     I don’t necessarily want The Relationship Escalator, but I want feelings. Lovey-dovey feelings, friendly feelings, and d/s feelings. Nobody has to love as easily or as quickly or as thoroughly as I do, but I want them to not feel/seem like a trapped animal when the warmth and affection come into play. Talking about relationships the other night, The Shy One said “I just go in kamikaze, and if it doesn’t work, I just try again.” BFF-Formerly-Sweetie has always called my same strategy “jumping in with both feet.” I don’t always, but when I do, I would love to hang around long enough to let them see if they can catch up.

 

To accomplish that, I would like to not get so mad at myself for the feelings. I would like to give myself space to feel them and be a little less quick to flee.

 

And yes, I would like some of them, eventually, to adore me. To love me wildly, emphatically, and forever. Please.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s Not a Pet, He’s a Bird Who Flew in by Mistake: Part Two

 

Pink is for subbing, green is for domming. A looooot of pink on that romance bar! From Enough to Make You Blush: Exploring Erotic Humiliation by Princess Kali

“It just feels empty without the rest of the fantasy.” I said to The Song Sender, before we even got out of bed.

I felt stuck on whatever had shifted him from liking me to feeling obligated, from sweetness creeping in to not even trying to put the phone down when we were hanging out post-sex. (Yes, I did play Animal Crossing for 20 mins, but that was an anti-anxiety strategy. Maybe his constant checking was too.)

This was maybe the most talking I’ve ever done with him, just kept yammering while we put our clothes on, while I got some ice coffee to keep me up for the longish drive to his girlfriend’s house. (Dear Universe, I’ll take guys I don’t have to drive around next, please! I guess that’s up to me.)

Speaking of the girlfriend, I didn’t ask him the thing I’ve always wanted to ask, in 2011 and in 2022—why do other women get to be people to him, and I don’t? What is it about me? If he’s been with this woman for five years, he can’t have been distant and cruel and thoughtless the whole time, can he? So why is this kind of opportunist assholism reserved just for me? It probably isn’t.

(It’s not a great habit to wonder what secret to worth other women have that I can’t fathom, but it’s a very old habit, and he triggers it the worst. On good days, which is most days, I can be all neutral and just-a-bad-match about it, but inferiority to the other ladies is, I guess, a sore spot I can’t always help poking at.)

I kept yammering as he meekly navigated the way. I will very much miss his not-backseat-driving! Seriously one of the hottest things about him.

He wasn’t going to navigate my life, but I asked him to:

“Tell me what to do. I don’t want to let you go again.”

“You don’t have to let me go, just…”

“Well I have to let go of SOMETHING.”

What I was thinking was: Twice. Twice is how many times he gets to break my heart. No more.”

For such a toxic combination of people, it was a really sweet breakup. Re-break-up? Just a break-off since it was new? But also not? I pulled over twice during the drive, once to cry and say: “I tried so hard. Then and now. I just couldn’t get it right.”

“It’s not your fault.” He said, “None of this is your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know.”

(I should say, there were other, bigger, heavier things going on in his life besides the easier-sexting-girl. Or, he was doing a scam an I just wasn’t doing the offer-to-help-with-money part of the script. I do listen to too many scam podcasts.)

The second time I pulled over, it was to say a proper goodbye—I didn’t want to rush it with traffic coming up behind me on his girlfriend’s narrow street. I wanted a real moment, and he was kind enough to comply.

I gave him as big of a hug as the car would allow. His body still felt warm from afterglow and affection. He still had that smell I can’t resist.

“Well, sweets, I think I have to get over you again.”

We kissed. He held my hand. He held my hand over his heart and kissed it, which was either a dear sweet gesture or a thing a psychopath had learned from movies. Probably the former?

I got to do that thing where I told him he’ll always be in my heart, to warn him that it’s crowded in there.

When we got to his girlfriend’s, the seatbelt chime went off well before I stopped the car.

“You can’t wait to get away from me,” I laughed. This bird had flown.

The best case scenario after I hit on him at the movies would have been kismet, romance, and gothy playlists forever, but a lovely goodbye is something.

When I got home, before I got out of the car, I did the ritual: Delete the text thread. Block the number. Delete the contact. Block on Instagram. I was sad, but it was a beautiful sad. In that kind and very talky goodbye, he’d let me love him just a little. He let us out of the cage of our gorgeous violent fantasies and jangled, impatient minds, and he let us do part humanely.

Not the miracle I wanted, but a miracle nonetheless.

 

He’s Not a Pet, He’s a Bird Who Flew in by Mistake: Part One

 

"He’s not a pet, he’s a bird who flew in by mistake." That’s what I told myself in a dream last Saturday morning. In the dream I was talking about an actual bird, sort of a muted, pastel painted bunting, but I knew right away who dream-me was talking about. In a span of a few days, The Song Sender had gone from an actual-date-offering, text-attentive Sir to barely passing the Turing Test.

There was truly some beautifulness between the aftercare panic-and-flee of our second date, the un-break-off that I initiated, and the true end on Wednesday night, when I probably should have been practicing my knots instead. I’m equal parts irritated to be spilling more paragraphs on him and ecstatic to have so much to say.

I’m even sort of comforted knowing there are a few people out there (Looking at you, Steampunk Guy!) who truly cause me to take leave of my senses. Not in a cute, aw I’m crazy about you sense, but the actual departure of my mind. This time, thankfully, I guess my mind hadn’t gone TOO far away.

I was surprised at how amenable he was to making an aftercare plan. He even signed the paper during our dinner in a nearly-completely-empty pho place. But, he was even harder than usual to talk to, and he said there would be a little more negotiating to do when we got to my car.

He told me that he didn’t have space in his life for something as intense as I wanted, that we could only be really casual, if at all. The reason for the robo-boy texting was at least partly because a lady who’s subbier, easier, and less available (just cheating on her fiancée rather than expecting anything relationshippy or, you know, ethically non-monogamous) had popped back into his life.

I mean, as has been THOROUGHLY documented here, The Song Sender is actually pretty awful, he really is, but I thought, why not? Why not get dominated once a month or so and free myself from endlessly worrying about the tone of his texts, endlessly worrying that he was forgetting me. It seemed fine.

So I took him home and it was..fine. The hair pulling and the “pretty little slut” and worrying about bruises but not too much. He kept “forgetting” that my right arm has been broken and dislocated and can’t deal with quite as much manhandling as the rest of me. That fucker was definitely going to dislocate my wrist someday if we’d kept on.

In between finishing himself off and getting up to pee, he asked me if the song Goodbye Horses was on the makeout mix I’d made us. I listened to a few notes while he was in the loo and deemed it perfect, until he was like “It’s time for a movie moment, I have to show you this clip from Silence of the Lambs.

“UH, maybe AFTER aftercare?”

Sadistic or just stupid? Maybe both. I stayed this-is-fine cool and did my aftercare steps, and they simmered me right down. And then there was the clip, in all its lotion-in-basket, rotten, viciously transphobic horror.

“All these queer kids going around liking this song ironically, or unironically,” he said, “Not realizing this is where it’s from.”

Honestly, fuck you FOREVER. I still stayed cool. I had on my slutty-brave armor and it would NOT be disrupted by this fool. We lay there semi-snuggling and looking at each other’s Feeld profiles. It was kinda fun.

Knotty Thursday: Broken Heart and Untangling Break

This, but make it poly. Luke tells Lorelai she'll get the whole package, and she does.

I haaaaaaaaate it when a date starts with a breakup, and I don't let myself know it til the end of the night. If then! The Song Sender sensed I was having the feelings, and said he wanted things to be much more casual. I thought this would be fine! 'Twasn't.

Twice is enough times for The Song Sender to break my heart. I can't regret any of it, but it's time to give myself some space for the hurt and sadness.

I'm long past due for a "what I want" kind of post, but for now I'm tired and bitter and I have to get ready for a long work day.

 

Back to the Nude Beach, Part Two

Taking all of my clothes off didn’t feel like such a big deal, though it seems like progress that I was unashamed of my tampon string. It felt like an even bigger milestone that I set up my beach umbrella on my own and it didn’t fall down for most of the day. (Of course, when it did fall down, there was a nice man who smelled like The Shy One to help me put it back up!)

Naked on the beach for the first time in about nine years, I didn’t feel the happy abandon, the instant adrenaline-rush pinupness I used to. It took me a little while to settle in enough to enjoy the day, but I never did fully settle in. The water was gorgeous and cool and I felt like a beautiful free mermaid, at least as much as you can when industrial ships and a big city skyline are in view.

Turning to float facing the shore, I saw a guy holding his cell phone up, probably just talking, but maybe filming—I fought the urge to flee. 2022 nude beach might be too different from 2014 nude beach, or maybe the difference is in me.

The first time I walked up the hot hot sand and back to my spot, I felt judged. The men, the boomer white men who are always there, reminded me too much of my Trumpish uncle. In the midst of all this freedom and diversity, they felt predatory and malevolent.

Yes, I’m nine years older and at least 50 pounds heavier, but neither of those things make me feel less hot or more judged on a day-to-day basis. But my perspective has changed, for good and for ill. It has been such a long, long almost-decade.

It’s harder to feel good-humored about the boomer guy who’d made himself tourguide of the surf, (Is it always the same guy or does it just seem that way? BFF-Formerly-Sweetie says it’s probably a different same guy.) “reminding me” that it’s important to splash my boobs before diving in so the cold water won’t be too much of a shock. Dude, there’s SO MUCH internet. You don’t have to do this!

Back at my towel, in the imaginary privacy of the umbrella-shade, I was able to settle into my own skin a little more, to enjoy my own nakedness. I took a selfie for the boys. I got gently turned on, but then it ebbed into a more serene pleasure. I listened to the combining songs of three or four different radios, until Beyonce’s Halo stood out. The song of my Summer of Romance. (Sorry, Running Up That Hill. You’re very nice too!) The song of kindness and pleasure and treasuring everyone, but especially of treasuring myself.

My day at the nude beach was a lot. I couldn’t concentrate for long to read either of my books or just gaze at the sea. This was a beautiful adventure, but a sad one too-after all, so many of the old nude-beach friends are gone from me, for life reasons or politics reasons or both. And this will always be the place where I decided that Sweetie and I needed to get a divorce.

I think I might prefer to be truly invisible on the beach, in my cute auntie-style swimdress, more concerned with the dolphins and the waves than with the humans. It was a moody-sweet drive home, so I put on the moody-sweet playlist I just made for The Song Sender. I grieved for the past and pleasantly longed for the characters of the present. I was glad to get home.

 

 

Back to the Nude Beach, Part One

A few weeks ago, The Shy One texted me on the way to The Nude Beach, and just picturing his cute little butt there convinced me it’s past time to try and go back!

I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be the nudist I once was. Until yesterday, the last time I walked around naked outdoors was my ill-fatedsecond visit to The Sparkly Festival of Awesomeness, but a LOT of things have changed/regenerated since then. I'm not out here looking for a husband, that's for sure!

Even still, I knew that in the course of this 2022 beach trip I might find myself feeling too vulnerable, raw, overexposed. So I planned myself detailed during- and aftercare. I packed glitter sunscreen and spray sunscreen, lots of good snacks, iced coffee, two different beach books. I brought lots of tampons because OF COURSE this day coincided with a rogue perimenopause superperiod.

I even put grapefruit-scented face wipes and cotton candy lip balm in a cooler in the car for before the drive home. I was well-loved and well-cared-for on this riskier-than-usual self-date, that’s for sure.

I got a little lost at first, looping around the state park where they keep The Nude Beach. My GPS was like, no thanks, but I eventually figured it out. The walk from the parking lot to the beach wasn’t as long as I remembered. The sky was perfectly blue and decorated with very fancy clouds.

When I got there and claimed a spot (A little too far from the water, it was CROWDED) there they were, the dear, dear bodies, even more beautiful than I remembered them. Every category of human and every body type. The proud penises and the shy ones. All kinds of cute boobs in various states of tan-line-or-not. Enough adorable butts for Tina Belcher’s whole entire the right number of boys for me is more lifetime.

The tattoos winding across backs and down arms and curling around sweet ankles. The fat hips. The drape and spryness of age. The chaste affection in all kinds of constellations. The boldness and ease—yes please.