Knotty Thursday: Tough Love and the Four Braid Harness

 I haven't written in a while. I've been lazy about learning and teaching the ropes, so I asked The Shy One for some tough love. He told me I couldn't see his dick until I learned the four-strand braid well enough to teach it to him!

The way Rory of Rory's Brainworks taught it just wasn't clicking, so I went over to Macrame You Tube and picked it up so quick! It's been a while since I had a big learning-a-rope-thing surge of happiness! There it was!!

When he came over yesterday morning, it was sooooo tempting to just fall into snuggletown and forget the rope lesson, but my Teacher Voice prevailed. I was stern and somehow got us vertical and focused. I put the harness on him first. You really REALLY wish you could see the pictures I'm keeping to myself, especially this braid-over-his-buttcrack situation I improvised. It was a proud, proud day.

His phone kept chiming and buzzing downstairs. Apparently his colleagues could not live without him for the morning. So after a moment of gently kissing his rope-decorated dick, I went downstairs to get him his phone. That's when this glorious thing happened:

I joked that that's what he should say, but I didn't know he actually said it until later. I didn't know it was a life goal of mine to cause that sentence! It may be my greatest achievement!

When it was his turn to tie me, the harness came just as easily. The ropes tried to echo the braids at the top and got tangled at the bottom, but untangling them was just another sensation for my superalert body to revel in. His hands on my shoulders and the top of my back. The stopping to kiss. The sex-and-crystal-store smell of him: salty, sandalwood, and something else. Jasmine? Gardenia? Definitely something sweet. 

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.