He just looked so beautiful sitting there on my couch.
His eyes were radiant with sadness, sincerity, mischief. He wrapped me up in
his arms, and when we kissed, it was easy and soft. I turned off Bob’s Burgers and put on my Dreamy Music
mix, which has far, FAR too much Radiohead—must remember to fix that!
I had been literally soaking wet for him for days, my
body just gushing affection before we ever met in person. That, in addition to
the pretty new pink underpants, was why it wasn’t too long before I sprawled
myself across his lap.
“Okay, let’s see what you can do!”
It had been SUCH a while and they were good spanks,
firm and kind, assured in a way I didn’t expect—I was surprised and delighted.
I love, love, LOVED the feeling of him pulling up the back of my dress,
smoothing my undies just so before striking. “You have an amazing ass,” he said
and I fully, fully believed him. With his left arm, he held me down in a
wholehearted way that brought immediate and near-existential relief.
But then, after just a few minutes, something in my
brain shifted and I felt darkness descend, felt myself freeze up with fear. I
climbed off, asked for a break, gave myself plenty of space, turned off the
Dreamy Music and put Hulu back on.
In addition to warmth and hope and general horniness, Comedy
Guy gave me a heartache I couldn’t quite place. It came and went throughout the
evening and would eventually become an insurmountable force. But first, I
wanted to try and surmount it.
So I know I'm leaving out the middle of the story here, but the nice thing I had going with The Professor ended this morning. Similar to the Mr. Makeout Music situation, he wasn't as available as he thought he was and we had disproportionate levels of excitement about each other--my enthusiasm will always probably set a high bar, for better and worse.
I may write more about it later on, but for now, I want to remember two things:
1. Phone dates feel like real dates and to me, sexting counts as real sex.
2. The night of the Cuddle Party, I had a piece of advice from one of the presenters written on my hand. It said: "Believe your own perceptions more than what he's telling you."
I think this is the first time I've ever pulled that off. I'm proud today of being honest with myself about what I want and letting him be honest about what he can give. Rainbow star of sad achievement:
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.
