A (Naked and Sexed-Up) Rare Occasion Wherein I Enjoy Getting Advice

Almost as soon as I got to the Big Poly Conference, this conversation happened:

Mr. Shiny Eyes: “What are you doing at lunch?”

Me: “You?”

After a night and morning of snuggles with the Sweethearts, I couldn’t believe my luck was still this lavish. I felt like Wonder Woman for asking him and had an inner fireworks display when he said yes.

As I say every time I have it, I never get enough PIV sex, and even though a timer was set so he wouldn’t miss the next workshop, this was fantastic enough to hold me for a WHILE. (Okay, ‘til the next morning. But still.)  He has such a very very nice penis and he knows all the best ways to bend a girl around. It was so easy and bright and unselfconscious and special-occasiony. This was sex that made me feel like life wants to give me absolutely everything.

After we were spent, as the timer was snooze-alarming, we had a conversation that ended up being a bigbig breakthrough.

I mentioned an unspecified conference attender with whom I’d recently broken off a flirtation because he triggered some yucky feelings, which of course is a reasonable and necessary thing to do, but Mr. Shiny Eyes, having some insight into what it’s like to be told by me that he’d not a match, had this to say:

“You get really upset when you feel like someone might be seeing you out of a sense of obligation rather than desire. People jump to “not a match” sometimes when they could just share their emotions about the thing that triggered them.”

This was partly what I’d done in this recent situation, but I couldn’t quite get past the stomachache with the person, probably because it reminded me of the Steampunks among other things.

He continued: “And I notice that you tend to come from a place of self-deprecation, like whatever the person is doing is confirming the fear that they couldn’t possibly have wanted you in the first place.”

Uh, okay dude, thanks for workshopping my emotions while I’m still naked and tingling, but dangit if he didn’t have a point.

I ended up doing a lot of thinking on this trip about why I tend to break up with (and then unbreak up with) people I like, and he definitely had his finger on part of it. When somebody likes me, there’s still a big part of me that feels like it must be a trick, and I’m always kinda waiting for that trick to reveal itself. But the fact that so many of these breakups didn’t take is proof that the liking is genuine.

I have to stop and appreciate the characters who stuck with me as snuggle friends even as I went through such an ugly and harrowing year, even after they had to deal with rejections and (sometimes) overreactions. Sometimes someone isn’t a match (like when they use the “R” word while sexting and it’s not “ravish”) or isn’t a match right now, but it’s very good advice to slow down time, breathe and reflect when an alarm gets tripped, not just automatically run.

Almost immediately upon returning home, I had an opportunity to try this, and I like the results so far. So high five, Mr. Shiny Eyes, and thanks for being such an excellent 

Scene Failure and the Scary Party Part Two: Aftercare?

I was so angry and hurt and sad that I couldn’t speak. I got out the blanket (purple velvet with a white fleecy inside, I bought it just for our scenes) and climbed into his lap. It’s scary and stupid that I was relying on the same person who’d just fucked me over to help bring me back to life—this system is a mess unless you really play with the right person.

He brushed my hair and said nice things that sounded hollow. He said that he wanted me to be an important person in his life, that he’d find a cute pet name/honorific for me like he has for his wife (To him, she’s The Girl. Which is kind of telling...)

“If you wanted me to be someone important in your life, then why did you treat me like I wasn’t? Why did you act just like I wasn’t even there at all?”

“I want you to know my friends. I guess you should take some time with (Sadist Girl) outside of scenes.”

“You expect me to be friends with someone who just did that to me? I would punch her in the face if I could. And she should at least learn what my fucking NAME IS.”

“But you don’t understand. She plays at a whole different level that you and I do.” He said this with an annoying admiration in his voice.

“You mean a level without negotiation or consent?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

The thing I am tired of finding out is that guys SAY that they want to know what I want, that they want me to voice my concerns and needs. They SAY they believe in talking things through and having a real relationship, but what I keep finding at the core of them (Not ALL of them, to be sure) is a fantasy of no limits, for a sex doll who just shuts the fuck up and does what she’s told and never stops a scene or pipes up with a worry.

Sadist Girl popped back in throughout aftercare. The Man was making an effort to be attentive to me, but she kept asking things like “Where should I take a pussy-eating break? The bathroom?”

“Yeah, whatever,” he said, taking her security armband for safekeeping. Not to be a stick-in-the-mud (Though that seems to be my role in this story.) but at a no-sex party, the answer should have been “Nowhere.” He is truly not awesome with boundaries.

Sadist Girl stopped back in later (Presumably after the pussy-eating) to stand over us and say “Isn’t that adorable. Isn’t that just fucking adorable.”

I guess I should say at this point that I didn’t get the idea that he was attracted to her or anything. She’s trans (I think that’s why he thought we’d like each other, because all queer people are automatically friends somehow) and he seems a little bit overly straight for anyone creatively-gendered. I couldn’t figure out the weird energy between them. It was like he was in her thrall—he acted like a toadie and it’s hard to respect a toadie.

All of this confusion and bad energy was heavy on my heart as we kept kissing and talking and trying to get back to something good. I knew it was over, full of the same dread that I’d had that last day on the couch with Bill, but I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to just blame Sadist Girl or the venue, but was hard to deny that he’d made things the way they were.

I called Sweetie as we were getting ready to leave, trying to figure out what to do. It must have taken enormous strength for her not just to insist that I come home. I feel terrible that she had to experience a call like that.

“Come home with me,” he said as I finished my phone call. And we kissed and pushed and shoved and struggled against each other in the room with the good music.

“See, if you’re angry with me, I want you to be angry. It’s better than when you are all helpless and can barely stand. Then I just don’t know what to say.”

I did like shoving him around but if HELPLESS is a turnoff then a. Why a submissive? and b. Don’t be a douchebag and wreck a scene with some meaningless nonsense that has nothing to do with anything! Is what I wish I’d said.

Sadist Girl came by and he lead her sweetly away by the elbow. The conversation started with “I fucked up,” but I didn’t hear the rest. She came back to pack up her gear and said goodbye without apologizing, so I decided to talk to her about it too.

“I don’t think that I was in a position to really consent. You can’t just change a scene in the middle like that.”

In an authoritative voice she said “Actually, you can. You really need to work on your…”

And I have no idea what she was going to tell me I needed to work on because by the end of the sentence I was snapping at her semi-coherently. I could not believe that this stranger was telling me when I could and could not consent.

“If I were you,” she snarled “I wouldn’t come back to MY place.”

The Man hustled me out the door. I felt so ashamed, behaving like a Real Housewife of BDSM, sniping at another girl at a party and causing a (ha) scene.

Dignity wasn’t happening that night. I yelled at him on the way to the car, all about consent and respect and triggers, balling up my fists and jumping up and down in my pretty red satin heels. 

“GOD DAMMIT.” I snarled “What was I not doing? Why can’t I ever just fucking be enough for somebody.”

I was so lost and frustrated and livid with him for fucking up the worthwhile thing I thought we had.

I have to give him credit for getting in the car with me when I was in that state.

Sometimes my city driving is a little iffy, but on this drive, I had the motherfucking eye of the tiger. I turned up the music, seethed, and drove.

Scene Failure and the Scary Party, Part One

I really wish I’d been telling this story while it was still happy-it would’ve been so much more fun to write. I liked him so much that I was even calling him Emotionally Available Guy in my fb updates. Our first scene together was so close to being my dream come true that it was hard to be myself afterwards—I felt like he could finally be the guy to give me what I needed. Except.

Remember the episode of Doctor Who where the little boy keeps everything he’s afraid of locked in a cabinet in his room? That’s what one of the local play parties has felt like to me for a while—there are no boundaries anywhere, anyone feels free to waltz into any scene they see fit, so I’ve left there on more than one occasion feeling exploited and trampled. On the other hand, it’s also the place where I had my amazing first public scene with Fireguy, so it can’t be all bad.

The Man (as in the Man who brings one down) is the head of security at this venue. I was thinking that being with him would make me safe, rather than realizing that he is part of what makes it so chaotic. I was excited when he invited me, thinking it could help me to heal my creepy feelings about the place. Still, I hemmed and hawed about going, especially when he sprung it on me that his wife (who I didn’t know very well yet) would be going too. She didn’t end up going, and after much coaxing and reassurance, I decided to go, even though I worried that it might be the end for us. I really wanted to spend time with him and I wondered if the badness of the Bad Party was all in my head.

When I first got there, there was already an emergency—a woman had been getting her boobs whipped and she started to bleed, needing stitches. She was all woozy and no one could find the first aid kit. We ran into her in the aftercare room later, asked if she was okay, and for some reason her “I’m happy!” rang hollow, like, really, do we have to put ourselves through this?

As I was signing my waiver, The Man introduced me to Sadist Girl, a member of his security staff, who referred to me annoyingly as “Ribbons,” part of my Fet handle, instead of my real name, which I’d given her. “She knows you from FetLife,” he explained, “and she knows why you’re here.” Cue the foreboding I’m-in-trouble music.

At this point (actually at many points before this night) the horror movie audience would be yelling at the screen: “Get out of the house! Run DOWN the stairs, not up!” But I trusted him and you know what? He smelled really, really good. It’s amazing the lengths I’ll go to for a good man smell, let me tell you. I wanted to please him so that he’d notice me, so he’d really make me someone important in his life, so I’d know that he would stick around.

He led me into a harshly lit red room where people were kind of crowded in, but there was a free spanking bench. I didn’t really care for it because it wasn’t very showoffy/safe and it was away from the really good DJ that usually makes the place bearable. The beginning of the scene wasn’t like the first one or the nice time that we’d had in my living room earlier in the week. He didn’t stop and look into my eyes or ask me what I wanted. He didn’t brush my hair with the brush he’d requested the previous time. He didn’t stop and connect with me at all—it was like I was a chore he had to get through before he could get back to the real fun of working security. I should have stopped the scene or at least moved to another room.

He was complaining about the people talking around us, so I asked if he wanted to move and he said no. He told me to keep my mouth shut even though I’d told him several times that it was a hard limit. I don’t know why, but I kept my mouth shut—I am ashamed of how desperate I was and how much I compromised. I wish I could get in the Sex Tardis and save myself, but it is always too late.

It was an okay scene, if uninspired. Flogging, handcuffs, hairpulling. I had on my shorty pajamas that I always wear and my shirt was pulled up, exposing my nipples. “You’re my sweet girl,” he kept saying, “My good, sweet girl.” I melted. I was so happy in that moment—I’d dreamed of being his and he was saying that I was.

Right about then I heard him talking to Sadist Girl and handing her his soft leather paddle. I don’t know why I said it as okay. It certainly hadn’t been negotiated beforehand or even mentioned as a possibility. I would have said no if I’d been asked outside subspace. I don’t know why I did any of this. He held me tight from the front as she hit me all stingy, not the thuddy the way I like. She slapped around the edges of places so that it was hurtier, the sides of my thighs, the back of my knees. I don’t remember her hitting me in the crotch but it was bleeding after. I liked being tight in The Man’s arms, sobbing and screaming, and I liked feeling like I was giving him what he wanted. Sadist Girl tried hitting me on the bottom of my feet and at least I remembered the word “red” for that. She kept calling me “Ribbons” and it was making me mad. “Why do you say you’re not a masochist, RIBBONS?” “Huh, RIBBONS?

I started to really really not like it so I whispered to him that I wanted to be with just him now. She stopped hitting me but wouldn’t leave. They stood around talking as if I wasn’t there. She was listing off the people she had grudges against, talking about how they’d have to ban them.

I started to feel exposed and violated. I tried to work my shirt down over my breasts even though I was still cuffed. I told him again to get rid of her. He looked annoyed and she looked pissed off but finally went away. I told him to get me out of the handcuffs and I got dressed. I should have left as soon as I could drive, but I didn’t. Even though he’d broken our agreements and ignored my safety, I still wanted to be with him.

Things Go Haywire But a Good Scene Anyway, Part One

After I ran into the Mayor of Kittentown on the beach the weekend before last, I got seriously concerned about dating someone who is not poly. I’m not usually a jealous person, but when monogamous ladies become involved, an icky side of me comes out and I don’t know how to stop it. I haven’t quite regained confidence since that day at the beach, and I’m kind of turning things into a train wreck.

As soon as I realized I had these concerns, I was sure to schedule some extra talking time with Mister Hazel Eyes before our play party date last Saturday. Before that happened, though, facebook happened. I wasn’t even clicking on him, I swear! Just, a picture of him popped up in my newsfeed, looking all cozy with a pretty, earthy girl at some kind of formal event, maybe a wedding. I clicked on his page to check for a status change, and there was another pretty girl all over his wall. We hadn’t gotten to the point of exchanging dance card info yet, so I texted him to ask.  It turns out he is seeing a Nice Girl, and she was neither of the ladies pictured.

I told him that I was scared and that we’d talk, but I spent the rest of Friday intermittently crying. I know it isn’t a competition, but I just couldn’t figure out how to compete with this woman. I feel like because I’m not available all the time, I’ll just never be good enough. I feel so guilty sometimes because I don’t have my whole self to offer, even though (other than timewise) I do have my whole self to offer. I can love lots of people 100% but sometimes guys just don’t understand that.

By Saturday, I felt a little better. I just wanted to make sure that we got some stuff ironed out. I needed to tell him that I had some feelings for him, we needed to go over our dance cards together, and we had to somehow meet in the middle about communication—he is not a good texter/planner, and that’s actually the thing that seems insurmountable. I don’t need someone to be in touch ever minute, I just like little conversational touches that let me know what the plans are and when I might hear back. It’s hard to explain without feeling superneedy, but most people just text in my preferred way naturally.

All that, plus negotiating a scene—maybe a lot of pressure for two folks who are brand-new together.

Mister Hazel Eyes had a flat tire on the way over to get me and complained that it had been “More than he wanted to spend to go out tonight” so he seemed a little begrudging about dinner. I had sympathy about car trouble, but I felt a little hurt and not-date-like at the mention of money—it made me feel a little like a burden, which was a hard feeling to shake.

Anyway, I told him about my facebook fuss and how I’d unsubscribed—it’s a lot easier to ask someone what’s going on than to extrapolate from incomplete online info. He went over who the various girls are, and I hated feeling like he had to explain himself to me. Does he? I don’t know.

I told him about Mr. Popular and the other guy in my maybe pile, and he said he’d try not to be jealous—I said I feel fine about jealousy, except when it makes people go away. He told me about Nice Girl, who is brand new. I couldn’t stop myself from asking:

“So when (Nice Girl) wants to go steady, what happens to me?”

“I don’t know, how do these things usually work?”

“Well, in my happy magical dreamland, she knows about me, and we share, and everything works out great. What usually happens is that the monogamous girl wins and I go away.”

I told him how much our concert date meant, and that I was having real feelings for him. He said it meant a lot to him too, just being there with me. I said I was scared and then said one of the worst poly no-no things I’ve ever said:

“(Nice Girl) is probably easygoing, I’m sure she doesn’t need this much care.”

I am really not a fan of myself in a lot of this story. Please know that I know what I was doing wrong.

We lapsed into a worried silence and Badfinger’s “No Matter What” came on, which made me laugh because it was so ironic and sad. I turned it up anyway and made him pull over in a parking lot overlooking the river and kiss me until the song was over. It sure didn’t feel like a no matter what. It felt like the beginning of another long goodbye.

Next: Somehow we make it to rope class.

Cuddle Party Part Three: A Very Chaste Threesome

Writing about this particular adventure made me notice a contradiction I’ve got going—how does my desire for lots of respectful elbow-room jibe with my desire to be mauled and ravished? In the years where I thought about men but didn’t do anything about it, my fantasy was always to have a guy who’d push me, take me, ravish me, to not be able to put up all the barriers I am usually inclined to put up. (but all in the spirit of friendship and fun) I’ll probably always love Bill for fulfilling most of that fantasy, but I didn’t realize until later just how dangerous it had been.

But still, there was a daredevil purity to what he and I were doing—no negotiating, very few spoken limits, often getting pushed past no—it felt good, it was a relief at first, to be free of the way I’ve mostly held passion at arm’s length. Even after all these months I still can’t square the gleeful, nasty pleasure of that relationship with the way that it plunged me into blackness, made me totally hate myself. Part of it was that every time I truly go into sub-space, it dredges up issues from my subconscious, but I know that darkness came from actual real-time him as well.

I’ll never get to be devoured like that again, because I’ll always have to take care to have a voice, to communicate. There’s no such thing as just being able to abdicate all of my power to someone, and I am honestly a little disappointed about that. But to really love and be loved (and ravish and be ravished) I have to create some inner structural integrity, a fidelity to myself. So that’s what we’re working on here.

When it came to the part of the welcome circle where we were to join two other people and negotiate a cuddle, I was delighted with who I got triaded up with—just the two that I would have chosen: The Lady of the House and Massage Therapist Man. Two of the prettiest people in the room. We had eight minutes to both negotiate and cuddle. First, we had to take turns saying what we wanted. They looked at me to go first (I like to go first, it helps me listen better) but I was suddenly speechless. I didn’t have the words for what I wanted to ask for. The LOTH said that she wanted to be hugged and held, and MSM said that he wanted to make a “heart circle.” I had to ask what that means and he said that’s when you put your hands on each others’ hearts and run energy between them. That sounded nice. I still equivocated and couldn’t quite get to what I wanted—“smushed” was the closest I could get. I said that I usually want to be rougher than seems appropriate for a cuddle party, and thus the phrase “rough cuddling” was born.

LOTH said that the heart thing sounded best to her, and I agreed, so that’s what we started with. I welcomed the chance to physically experience loving male and female energy at the same time—that’s a goal I’ve been inching glacially towards for a long time.

It takes a lot of trust to put your hand on a near-stranger’s heart. For each stage of the hand-placing, we had to ask “”May I put my hand on your heart?” “May I put my hand on your hand?” and so on. We sat like that and breathed and sort of circle-swayed, MTM making breathy yummy noises. I didn’t feel any jolt of energy running through us, but sitting with them that way felt so soothing. I was I was able to lose myself a little in the circuit of us, until time was called. Then it was time for free cuddling.

Next Time: A Foot Rub, Some nice Reiki, and! Wrestling!

Response to BDSM Safety Discussion

This is a FetLife post I just did in response to a BDSM safety talk we attended last weekend. The talk was given in response to local predator issues.The letter touches on a lot of the stuff I’ve been working on here.

"What a great night (Sweetie) and I had on Saturday. Rope class, the discussion, and the play party were all so much fun. Thank you for having us.

I’ve only been in parts of the various safety discussions that have been going on, so I’m sure I’ll repeat some stuff that’s already been said. Feel free to correct me if I heard anything wrong…

First I wanted to say a bigbig thank you to (Rope Boss and Party Mistress) for hosting the talk, and to the people who participated, too. It was wonderful to get to sit around and talk about some of the things that had been concerning me, and it made things seem less scary in general. I was worried that I might not want to play after a discussion that deep, and the fact that I was ready to strip right down after speaks highly of the feeling of safety you’ve created.

A lot of the advice that I heard is so valuable, especially the need for subs/bottoms to know how to say what we want and don’t want. Being reminded to treat ourselves like we are worth caring for and protecting is good advice for anyone. I liked the insights that I got about others’ relationships, and I’ll be glad to keep learning more about you and yours.

However, I did feel like the talk was a bit unbalanced. In addition to what bottoms can do to make ourselves safer, I would like to have heard more about what tops’ responsibilities are beyond just the physical “don’t break your toys” rule. Those kinds of conversations would be really helpful to me because I would love to know what the norms are, what’s reasonable to expect.

Focusing mostly on what bottoms can do to protect ourselves had the (unintended, I’m sure) effect of feeling a little bit like blaming the victims. I think it’s important to say that no lapse in judgement, no rookie mistake, no foolish leap of faith will ever mean that someone deserves to be violated, physically or emotionally. Whether we’ve known someone for four months or four minutes, the right to be safe is the same.

I was especially bothered by the advice of “Don’t go over to a guy’s house unless you are ready to have sex with him.” First of all, it sells guys so short—I would have missed out on so many good relationships and friendships if I looked at life that way. Even if I’m ready to have sex, there might be aspects of play that I still need to say no to. Besides, I may be ready for sex, but I’ll never be ready to be raped. It’s just not the same thing.

For the most part, people don’t hurt each other on purpose. It seems like a lack of respectful communication leads to the majority of troubles between partners. For that reason, I feel that fear-based prevention ideas such as and “Warn people of what the consequences are if they violate your limits” are not the way to go. Approaching someone like an adversary doesn’t seem like a good way to begin a trusting, collaborative relationship. Fear may be a way to keep us safe in the short run, but in the long run an us-versus-them attitude is just going to lead to more miscommunication and hurt.

So I guess what I’d ideally like to see is kind of a team-building approach. What are the ways that men/women tops/bottoms, etc can work together to foster more communication and respect?

Thank you again for the discussion and everything else that you do. I look forward to more talking and more fun in the future."

Negotiation Results: Yay!

The other day I realized I wanted us to be a more welcoming couple to my potential partners, and the resulting negotiation was hard. We got to a good result, it just took a lot.

The poly family we know best, the one that Adorkable and Heartstrings are part of, is wonderful and big. Their lives are very interwoven. It's beautiful and something to aspire to, but it can also be overwhelming. I almost dated two different members of that constellation, and sometimes texting one of them felt like texting ten people. Games of poly telephone (She said that he said that you said...) were sometimes hard to avoid.

Anyway, sometimes when I'm angling for more welcomingness, it turns out Sweetie pictures that, rather than a gradual progression of getting to know one person (or couple or whatever) at a time.

Once we figured that out, we agreed that I should make more of an effort to introduce her to potential whatevers, but that if I find a love match, it might take her a while to warm up to him.

The first step is my favorite part: she suggested that I invite The Mayor of Kittentown over and he said yes! He's coming over for Scrabble next week. I can't wait for him to see our apartment and meet the cats. It's adorable to wonder what two of the shyest people I know will find to say to each other.

A Little Renegotiating With Sweetie

After my vexing date with Mr. 93% yesterday, I realize that though I am much more transparent and honest than he is, my household is not quite as welcoming as I wish it was. Sweetie is very glad to send me out on dates and other adventures, but she is usually very standoffish when it comes to spending time with the guys. For example, she is a pretty big fan of the Mayor of Kittentown's contribution to my life, but she has never actually met him. I want to be able to give potential partners some kind of eventual place in my family, so I think this needs to change.

We argued about it but eventually agreed that there's probably some middle ground to be had here. We're going to sit down over ice cream tomorrow night and see what we can come up with. I do worry a lot that the tension between her introversion/monogamy and my generally-wanting-to-snuggle-the-world is too much, but we've done a good job of making it work so far.