Kitten Versus. Ropes, Part One

 

This story happened like a month ago! I’m having so much writer’s block and so, SO much dater’s block. The algorithm and the universe keep matching me ever more beautiful men, but I cannot believe there are SO MANY people in the world who are not the right one! It’s so weird that I’m spending so many spoons of my beautiful life on what honestly feels like an impossible dream. Mary Oliver said “keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable,” so on I go.

Reluctant Kisser was a promising Facebook Dating match! He was tall with long locks, kind, blue collar, and lives not-too-far. He was in a hurry to meet!

Friends, I have really been dropping the ball on the rope practice. I love, love LOVE my youngest cat, but she cannot keep it together when the ropes are around. I’ve missed it so much though! So, one Wednesday, I decided it was time. So when RK asked if he could come over, I was like, yes, but this is what I’m doing tonight. I thought maybe he would enjoy getting a show and! Maybe he could distract the kitten for me! Adorable.

I’m still collecting lingerie, and I had a new set to show off. It was sheer so I wrapped myself up in my purple satin robe and opened the door. The vibe felt okay so I invited him upstairs pretty quickly.

I sort of warned him, “When I take off this robe, you’re gonna see pretty much everything. Are you ready?”

He assured me that he was. I found a second string (ha) rope for him to dangle for the cat, but she immediately lost her mind when I started working on my harness. One good thing about the kitten messing up rope time is that it’s so, so funny. The main memory about that night and others—laughing and “ouch” ing because the cat was so nutso.

The Reluctant Kisser looked so mystified that I wonder if maybe I should have sent him home. It must have been a LOT to take in! Nipples! Lace! Ropes! Laughter,

“This is weird, right?” I said, checking his eyes for the urge to flee. His look was more like that meme of the lady trying to math—curiously trying to make sense of what was happening.

“Uh, yeah, it’s pretty weird.”

Remember when I used to GO on adventures instead of BEING someone’s adventure? Sudden empathy for all those top-types who guided me through! This is so hard!

Goodbye to The Shy Ones

(art's a Rumi quote)
Time for me to take a little rest in the praise ocean.

My desire to love and be loved by them, whether it was the platonic love that I was just beginning to feel for her or someday being able to be loved by both of them, was so powerful as to be unmanageable. It was so big I couldn’t even see it until I’d started to let it go. I knew (Or was afraid I knew, it amounts to the same in the end) that it was too big a want, too feral a need to fit into their lives as they’re constructed. I was so scared of that big desire. It felt like Kaiju want, Godzilla love. If I was a movie, you’d have to pretend the buildings had been evacuated before they got smashed. This is a terrible way to see myself, I’d like to change it.

Maybe Mrs. Shy One felt that fear too, because when I, last Friday, the day after all the texting joy, asked her permission to blog about her, she decided I needed to check with her every time I thought of writing about her. From potential friend and metamour to editor, just like that. For the sake of “healthy boundaries,” for “honesty and transparency.” (LADY. You pretend your girlfriend is just a friend on your socials. Your husband asked me to do the same. Come ON.)

Mrs. Shy One reaching out to grab my writing process was, to me, the exact opposite of healthy boundaries. To put it in Downton speak, she was putting her oar in. It was clear to me that the only boundary she/they cared about was the one around me.

The bottom dropped out from the whole plan then, and I saw the situation for what it was, for what I was. To keep playing with The Shy One, I needed to be controlled. Managed. Shrunk or at least stunted. Even, my now-panicking brain added, snuffed.

The box I’d agreed to, their affable and understandable closet, was not going to stop shrinking around me.

The part that was absolutely NOT her fault is that I felt completely submissive about the two of them. I knew that they probably didn’t mean to try and control me, but I felt helpless, without a voice to negotiate. I did have a voice. The so-big-I-couldn’t-even-see-it desire combined with the submissiveness I couldn’t talk through without crying, made it feel impossible to listen to them or advocate for myself. It shouldn’t have been impossible, I know. My body was telling me that the options were to fall at her feet or flee.

So I fled. More accurately, I blocked both of their numbers so I could stop crying long enough to get through my workday and get at least a little bit of the story into paragraphs.

The next day, seeing where the paragraphs were going and not wanting to break things off via blog post, I asked The Shy One to come over or call. He couldn’t do either, he said, so we broke up by text. I told him the closet feels bad, that I want them to be exactly them and exactly where they are, but that I just didn’t fit.

He was just as kind. He told me I deserve to love without guardrails or artificial limits. That made me feel appreciated for who I am, and not Godzillalike at all.

I know there’ll always be guardrails and limits because humans are involved and nobody needs to be falling off a cliff.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about him, and I know I’ve got lots of Unicorn Stuff to paragraph out, but for now I’m just sad, grateful and quiet. I don’t think it’s kind or helpful to compare myself to Godzilla, but for now I’m happy to be back in the sea, at rest.

 

In Which I Realize I Am Really Lucky to Have Had My Adventure Years, Part Three

That week, while my creative coaching client was collaging through her blocks, I made this. Both a staircase and a trapped butterfly, seems about right.

It should be said, friends, that my almost-year-and-a-half dry spell was a literal dry spell as well—I’ve always been the squishiest, but there was a while when I was so dry that I thought I might be starting menopause. I could just have stocked up on lube, but the idea of always having to was something I wasn’t ready to face, so I got by on spit and determination. From the moment I met J, the dry spell was over. I came home with soaked underpants every time, wetter than in all my adventures. It felt like a reunion, like a second chance at being alive, to be coursing with so much life, to be opening up like a flower. That’s why, no matter how it ended up, I’m glad I let my hoo-ha make the decisions for a while—that part of me (literally and figuratively) has been neglected for so long, I’m glad I didn’t begrudge myself a perilous treat.

When I met him, I was in a delicate but thriving state. It was the first time in my adult life that I could say I was truly happy to be single. I was teaching poetry in my pretty apartment, spending lots of time with my friends and at church, and starting to have faith about where I was going. However, back in February I had to resign from the school district due to acute stress disorder, and I’m still pretty jumpy and prone to panics about once a month. The fact that J. was triggering space issues seemed like it was partly due to my own recent and distant past, but typing the story to you makes it seem less likely that that was so. I am still brokeny, but I think I was scared of him because he was (unintentionally, I’m almost sure) scary—sometimes it’s not that deep.

Anyway, the day after our beautiful but ill-ended flower date, he sent a text apologizing and citing grief. I conceded that not everyone can be besties with their exes the way I (somewhat unhealthily) am with Sweetie. (Currently she and I work at the same three-employee store, she’s my boss, and we spend about an hour each morning processing my feelings about various things. All this with a person I once jumped out of a car to get away from. I know.) I told him to give me some time,  that I’d have to do some soul-searching, so we went to radio silence and a love poem proceeded to pour out of me in a way that hadn’t happened in a long time. I felt jangled but fired up. I made art all day that day.

(When I second-drafted the poem with my friends in poetry class, I noticed that it accidentally implied that I wanted to have babies, including feeling the vibration of his Apple watch as “Another little heartbeat.” and, seeing the children in the flower garden wearing glow bracelets, responding with “I want one” meaning but not really meaning the glow bracelets. I hid it pretty well before I posted it, but still, I was like, nicely done, subconscious! Got it.)

Anyway, maybe latent baby-wishes were what inspired me to give him a chance, or his prowess at planning dates, or the cuteness of his texting style. (It was the first time I’ve dated with emoji involved, and I can’t overstate the adorableness of a good morning sunflower rainbow kissy face…) Maybe (probably) it was just plain lust and curiosity. That Sunday, I took a beach trip by myself, to clear my head and make the right decision, and I knew (I always know things best in the ocean, even if it is with a bathing suit on these days.) that if I let him go, I would always wonder if there could have been something real between us. Also I have to admit there was the stupid “What if this is my last chance?” feeling that comes from being socialized to think of myself as ancient at almost-forty-one.

When he asked me a couple days before the date what I was in the mood for, I very brazenly and honestly said red meat. He sent me a couple of menus for fancy places I could dress up for, with very grown-up prices, and I thought, “Is this what regular dating women get all the time? I should start expecting more from life.” That was the central lesson of him, and I hope I can see it through.

The day before our third date, I had an enormous panic attack. The first week of classes is pretty much the only busy time our college bookstore job is stressful, just because of all the extroversion and sometimes-getting-trapped-behind-the-register it requires. The one rude kid on our super-adorable campus found me and I found myself with a pounding headache, unable to work or get myself home. A kind coworker brought me to the campus infirmary, where the nice nurse asked me why I had neither a therapist nor meds. Reasonable question. I got some good rest before the date, but I carried a residue of fear under my pretty black polka-dot dress. (Hello again, red satin heels!)

As I followed my GPS to the suburbs, everything started to look familiar, especially when I turned onto J’s block. Remember way back whenSteampunk Guy pulled over on a quiet suburban street for car sex? THIS RANDOM OKC GUY’S HOUSE WAS THE HOUSE WE PULLED OVER IN FRONT OF. J was one of the nice people I was trying not to wake with my sex yowls three summers ago. I didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one, but I’ve never been more sure that my love life is a labyrinth. So where had I returned to?

I can’t overstate my delight at being properly dated, to be out in the world being shown off in a fancy outfit, being treated like someone who’s someone instead of a dance card afterthought. I ate rare filet mignon and felt like an animal, like a sexy lion, like a woman who’s thoroughly alive. He ordered a good pinot with the inauspicious name “Writer’s Block” but I seem to be overflowing with paragraphs nonetheless.

The conversation turned again to his writing, which was a tricky subject. He’d told me before that he wrote erotic novels, and I (somewhat hypocritically) was scared to read them—I had a feeling we wouldn’t be able to go on if I read his stories, and probably I was right. He confirmed that “Well, let’s just say it’s not all consensual.” I didn’t ask him who in the stories was not consenting to what, only told him I was now A. Scared and B. Too tipsy to flee.

“But sometimes someone just needs a little…push…”

Okay, so this blog wouldn’t exist if that weren’t a little bit true, but I didn’t like hearing it from him. “That’s not up to you. It’s not up to you to decide what someone else needs.”

He rightly pointed out that he’d written it, not done it, but still, I felt so let down and sad. “I just want there to be one guy, one guy, who wants a real person next to him in bed.” Yes, there have been plenty, but I was having tunnel vision, heavy with the burden of trying to keep myself not-raped. In the do-over version, this is where I have the waitress split the check, wait around a bit to sober up, and grouse about it to my friends at brunch the next day. But as he paid the bill, the conversation simmered back to happy somehow and I admitted that what I wanted most in the world was just to tear. Him. Apart. I was getting in that pool, and no stupid thing he said was going to stop me.

Next time: Big moon, hot sex, more stupid things.

Progress/Grief/Progress: A Year After the Big Therapy Project

One Saturday last April it seemed as though a fissure in my psyche released, healed, and closed, and with it, the door to all I’d experienced in my three years of adventure. It was a triumph and loss all at once. As I page and edit through the beginning pages of the blog to start wrangling it into a book, I miss the person I was at the beginning of the story, aglow with adrenaline, defiance, and denial. As I face the story for what it really is, the end of a marriage, a labyrinth path to things generally being healthier but less exciting, I have to grieve for what it wasn’t, for what I may never have—a story of belonging.

After I walked away from that festival last spring in what an uncharitable commenter called a tantrum but what felt like both defeat and acceptance, I really did walk into a happier life, in almost all ways. It felt the way I imagine being newly sober might feel—missing the thrills but welcoming the lack of roller coasterness, the feeling of belonging to myself, to my own life.

I spent almost every weekend last summer at my aunt’s beach house, bonding with family, swimming with my cousins. I felt entitled to be with my own family in a way I never had before. I went to my sister’s for a no-reason visit, walked along with river with my niece and nephews. I sat in the yard at my mom’s dream country house and watched hummingbirds for hours.

I didn’t make it as a teacher, didn’t get to be the change I wished to see. Despite everything I’ve learned here, I never figured out how to not be blamed for every single thing—in the fall, a student pushed me into a door, and somehow I ended up being made to apologize to him. Another child tried to push a locker onto me, and I was told to “stop putting myself in harm’s way.” Eventually, I started having real panic attacks. On my second to last day, I went to the emergency room because my heart hurt. A doctor told me I could stop panicking, if I stopped going there, so I did.

I say this to say, so many times in the last few years I’ve jumped in with both feet, fallen in love with every single person and thing around me, then unequivocally rejected the whole thing, the social equivalent of a bad donor heart. I guess that’s kind of what I’ve been.

As I begin turning the blog into a book, the big emotional risk, the scary part, is not the scary stories that await me—I feel safe from all of those fears and panics, perspective and strength did come as I’d hoped, right on schedule. What’s hard to confront is the love, held in there like so many bookmarks. Though at time I saw those adventures as a transformative dream, it wasn’t, it was real love, even in the most baroquely fake situations. And with real love, real loss. I held every single character in my heart, just like I loved the teachers and students and entire causes I walked away from this winter.

In some ways, these two post-teaching months have been the happiest, but I’m restless not really knowing what I am, having these vast reserves of unexpressed something waiting  in case true love or vocation miraculously come along. Though I’m by and large optimistic about what’s ahead, I get overwhelmed sometimes about the whole population of lost loves behind me, the series of identities I’ve slipped into and out of so quickly—the loss and loss and loss.

Today my beloved therapist, whom I’ve seen sporadically since we finished the project, had to cancel our appointment. She’s been doing that lately, switching my times around and so on, and today, I was done. She wasn’t one of my people anymore, somehow. I let her go and I felt something in my brain heave and swirl, maybe it was the real end of the story, maybe this is being free.

I’m new to the world again. I’m taking everything slow. I don’t know what I’m here for, except to write and eat brunch and pet the cats and take pictures of flowers. My type-A side wants a mission, my creative side wants to be a kite, seeing where things take me next. I honestly don’t know.

Awesome Calendar Item: Reading Smut Out Loud

Of course the naked times get most of the credit on here, but I just wanted to stop and celebrate the thing that's been doing me such a consistent amount of good: our monthly local erotic reading. Of course getting to read posts in public appeals to my showoffy nature and lets me re-experience awesome stuff, but listening to other sex writers is what fortifies me the most.

Yesterday I came home from work completely zapped in body and spirit, but I nudged myself along, put on lipstick and went. For some reason a lot of the women last night were on the theme of reclaiming and celebrating sexuality after trauma, and I had to high-five them all. My body filled up with chi and love and pride and I felt all of the worries of the day and the years float away. I'm so proud to be in it with those girls, with all the girls, with all the people, kicking the crappy stuff's ass by being as authentically and gorgeously slutty as we can manage. Am I allowed to say "go us" to posts in a row?

A Veto and a Happy Accident, Part Five: He’s Sweet and She’s the Boss of Me

You know what I’m really coming to appreciate during all of these paragraphs? For all his aloofness and the other things that made us not work out, SG is a really good guy who gives me just what I want whenever he can. I’m grateful and I want to be awesome for him. Though he never complained about having to know me as the broken mess I was over the summer, I was so glad he got to see me the way I am now, no longer weak and desperate for him but confident and happy, enjoying him and myself and my friends. Since he’s kind of my sluttiness-muse, I liked him watching me spank my Winggirl, hit on a cute couple, and otherwise move through the place with ease. This is how I’ve always wanted to be.

While the crowd gathered round to bid in the live auction, SG started putting a harness on me, similar to the one he did back in June, a pretty woven design at the center of my chest, four ropes as straps over my shoulders. We were situated just behind where the auction was taking place, and while I know the crowd was looking at the items up for bidding and not at me, I got such a nice bonus center-of-attention feeling from them all facing in my direction.

When the bidding started on my own painting, I hid my head against his shoulder until I was relieved that it had gone above the minimum bid. My pals and I had been referring to it as a picture of my soul, and one doesn’t want one’s soul to go for cheap. I was glad to go back to being manhandled, having successfully contributed to the evening’s cause. As he ran his fingers over the supporting ropes to make sure they were in the right place, I felt a little pulse of electricity in his fingertips.

Once the harness was done, he pulled me into his lap to watch the auction. I sat with his arms around me, petting his hands and wiggling my ass against his (jeezImissitabunch) big hard cock. It was just like my dream, the feeling of contentment and release, and yes, closure. Summer is over. Whatever this is, it’s not that, and there’s no reason in this world not to enjoy each other, as long as I can see it for what it really is.

The fancier downstairs part of the venue is usually closed to the scantily clad on dungeon nights, but tonight it was open—there was a silent auction and also some charity spankings and such. SG wanted to go down there and, feeling a little bit vulnerable to rejection all roped up, I asked if I could come too. I held his hand walking through the crowd and felt so proud to show him off.

Friends, I really had myself convinced over the summer that he wouldn’t want to be seen with me. He thinks that’s silly and so do I, but at the time I just thought that since he and Steampunk Girl are so hot, and presumably all of his other ladyfriends are equally sexy, that I just couldn’t measure up. Again, the more I want something, the more I assume I’m unqualified for it. It’s kind of cool how, despite giving little-to-no praise, SG has helped me to dismantle so many unhelpful assumptions about myself. His actions just kind of make me confront my not-unhotness. Anyway, walking through the dungeon holding his hand meant a lot, but I also think maybe it should not be such a big deal.

Winggirl One wanted me to watch her get spanked, so we situated ourselves at the corner of the bar where we could see the whole room. The rope top girl and her boy were a few stools down, still all dreamy-faced and content. I went over to flirt some more and she looped the boy’s wrist-ropes through the top of my harness and I said “Now you’re The Boss of Me.” and then they were named. Naming him “The Boss of Me’s Boy” makes me feel slightly less sexist about all the “so-and-so’s girl” type names I’ve come up with.

Maybe my favorite moment of the night was when Steampunk Guy made sure I went over there and asked them if they were okay being written about, so I wouldn’t have to leave anything out of the story. It was him being a friend, kind of a Dom, a partner-in-crime and (maybe best of all, I’ll admit) a reader all at once. Almost better than snuggles.

Shortly after that conversation (or maybe it was before) The Boss of Me came up behind me, started rubbing my bum and moving my panties up. I leaned all the way over the bar and put my head on SG and he held it, petting my hair while he watched the crowd and The Boss spanked. The combination of the two of them was a bi-girl fruition, and I got sleepy with joy. I may have even heard a line of praise from him (“Yeah, she is hot, isn’t she?”) but he just as easily could have been talking about someone else.

I sure felt hot, no matter who he was talking about. Like SG’s spanks, The Boss’s were more sensual than hurty. I was destined to end the evening feeling more loved-up than dominated. Except.

She yanked me up by the back of my harness and with one quick, fluid motion pulled me around to Steampunk Guy’s front, pushing me hard into his lap and against him. I gasped at her force, panted and he held tight, panting too and losing his cool beneath me for a tiny second, an out-of-breath crack in his armor that I just fell right into. He held me roughly and she spanked harder until they both declared me finished and she pulled me up and kissed me a little more. I thanked her, clinging to her arms and feeling dizzy.

Next: A thing that can happen sometimes.

My First Sexting

I may have mentioned this once of twice, but I’m enjoying Mr. Sweetheart so much. Last Tuesday when I was walking home from work, he texted to ask how I feel about sexting. I told him that it was on my goal list for June. (I do monthly goals with check-boxes. Some of the goals are all virtuous and gym-related, and some are…not.)

So he sent a picture of his lovely junk (First time I’d received such a text—he’s so many firsts!) and I was so happy to see it. I wrote back “For me? What shall I do with it?” but since I’m the sex-blogger he insisted that I be the one to tell most of the story.  (“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be the dominant one?” “I’m instructing you to amuse me with your creativity.”)

Clearly he is a full-service muse.

I got home and started dinner as I started to spin the story. I think I did a pretty good job. I was making tortellini. As I put the water on to boil, I told him about some fictitious Hello Kitty underpants already complete with a wet spot. As I grated the cheese, I tried to convince him to tell me what to do, but he insisted that I tell him what he was telling me to do. As the water started to boil, he sent me an evil grin, and I texted back a bratty eye roll and let that sit while I ate supper. He was excellent dinner company.

After I was done eating, I sent him a picture of my nicely-made bed and got in. Just like he did in the story I was telling him, I pulled up my shirt and down my bra. My nipples were sticking straight up, ready and bright, bright pink. After a few tries, I got a good picture of them and sent it over. I played with my boobs while I waited for the next text to come.

He sent back a try at dirty talk and I rewrote it so it was nastier.

I was conscious of trying not to borrow from scenes I’d already had and written—it was fun to try fiction, to write a fantasy just for him.

It occurred to me that it would be awkward for Sweetie to come home in the middle of this so I called to get her ETA and give her a heads-up. Also I accidentally dialed Mr. Shiny Eyes in the process. #togetherness

Sweetie was a half hour away and I was soaking wet. My fingers slipped around inside my plain flowered undies and inside myself—I was ready for him. There was plenty of time for me to come but I kept losing track of time—texting, playing, texting, playing. It’s kind of magical that I could be that turned on by him even though he’s such a long way away.

Sweetie came in before I was finished but was unfazed—she just closed the bedroom door and went to make herself supper. Mr. Sweetheart asked me where I wanted his cum.

“Well, I tried to swallow for you but you pushed me away and it went all over…”

He texted: “As your reward, I lean in, lick your cum covered tits, then offer you a creamy kiss. :) <3 <3 xoxo”

It was a good reward. I was unsure of the etiquette for ending such an exchange, other than to let him know that I’d come. I told him that next time we’ll have to think of a way to metaphorically snuggle afterwards. I’m excited to write him some more stories.

More Tantra! Moremoremore!

I'm still in the middle of trying to write about last weekend's adventures, but I went to a Tantric writing workshop last night and it reaaaaaly hit the spot.