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. 

Supersweet Election Love Story: Part One

I spent a year hardly thinking about romance at all, but there’s always a perfect character to come along and break me open again, so that cartoon hearts swirl around my head and I remember who I was born to be. Like the election, this story didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped, but I’m reopening the blog to make sure none of the gifts of this experience slip through the cracks.

I work in my local library’s afterschool program. It suits me much better than teaching because the kids and I spend most of our time on art and I never have to make anybody do anything, except be respectful and kind. I can smile all day and tell the kids “I love you” without being accused of being too soft. The library is my happy place and my biggest source of love, pride, and friendship.

About a year ago, a new security guard (I know! Me and security guards.) transferred to our branch and the first time I saw him, I thought “Yep, that’s what a man should look like.” African American, beardy, glasses, locks, sigh, swoon, giggle. One of my goals for 2016 was to flirt daily, and I felt like I’d finally found a worthy recipient. I tend to sing out my coworkers’ names, so I wholeheartedly sang out his name whenever I saw him, chatted when I could, accidentally told him how very much I like the scene from The Avengers where Black Widow breaks out of the chair.

Eventually, he started hanging around. He would spend his breaks coloring with me and the kids and talking about music, helping me build up my ongoing playlist of kid-friendly love/friendship/inspiration songs. Lord help me, he owns vinyl. He kept suggesting songs that were either too emo or so R&B dreamy that I could barely walk after listening. I made fun of him for his makeout music, but it kept finding its way onto my personal playlist, turning my early morning walks into dreamy movie-sequence mushfests.

He was with us in the children’s department whenever he could be, and started telling me apologetically when he was scheduled elsewhere. (I found out later he’d been making the schedule specially to spend time with us! <3 <3 <3) We painted galaxies, flowers, we drew mandalas. We did coloring pages that said things like “Follow Your Heart” and “Don’t Stop Believing.” He’s in college, (This is as good a time as any to tell you he’s twenty-five and I’m forty-two…) so he’d sometimes just bring down his homework, talk to me about what he was working on, and then happily let me distract me from it.

In the way that sometimes happens when you make a truly great friend, I kept telling him way more than I meant to. He became my safe space, someone I could confide in about my election struggles, my feminist rage, my religious questiness, everything that was the most important. I hope that I was doing the same for him.

I’d gone through a good spate of not caring at all what I looked like, but I started to want to look cute when I got to work. I stopped wearing shlubby T-shirts and became more likely to put on lipstick and blowdry my hair. Eventually he told me he wanted his to be the only name I sang out, and that was both very sweet and probably a bad sign.

A Joyfully Bratty Mantra and a New Talisman

It’s standardized test time at work, and this means that school has been more stressful and shaming than usual. On Friday, our rooms were inspected and everyone who didn’t have every single thing off the walls, bookshelves covered, and students completely silent was subject to shaming announcements over the intercom and nasty write-ups.

When I opened my write-up and read it, something surprisingly joyful bubbled up in me. I don’t know if it was the awesomeness of my date the night before or the kind colleague who offered to stay after work and help me finish my room. Whatever it was, it added up to this bright phrase shining out of my heart: “Go fuck yourself.”

But it wasn’t the sort of “Go fuck yourself” that comes from anger or makes you want to fight. It was almost made out of love. In that moment, I knew that everything I’d given and everything I’d accomplished so far vastly outweighed any snotty letter or post-test chattiness. Even a month ago, I’d’ve been devastated by that day, and I’m sure I’ll be devastated by many more, but for now, what a surge of self-love.

One accomplishment that got me to this proud point was a fabulous student I’ll call R. He transferred to our school a few months ago and brought so much happiness to our often-snipey classroom. While I’m hesitant to categorize a third grader like this, the kid is clearly as gay as the day is long. He’s also one of the most centered and confident people I’ve ever met. He gleefully practices dance routines and cartwheels with the girls while the rest of the boys are trying to sneak in forbidden games of football.

He’s thoughtful and kind, participates in class, and has the neatest handwriting you’ve ever seen. Yet his behavior grades from his old school were low, as was his reading level. Working with R. really helped me to understand that it’s not just teaching skills that I have to offer, that what really can help a child to thrive is welcome and approval in the midst of a narrow-minded community that often offers none. That’s something I can do even on my worst day.

We do live in a very homophobic area, (and I’m pretty sure every school is a homophobic area) so he often tells me about the boys calling him names. The other day when we were lined up for lunch, he sadly told me that another student had called him gay. I had to choose my words carefully so as not to ruffle any school or parent feathers. I told him that anyone who makes fun of an entire category of people is a prejudiced knucklehead, that he’d meet gay people in his life and they might be good or bad, that being gay wouldn’t have anything to do with it.

I made him repeat all that back to me so I could be sure he’d heard it. He seemed satisfied with my explanation and went in to lunch. the next day, he brought me this very blingy ships-wheel ring that I immediately decided was my moral compass.

R’s behavior scores at his old school made me think of my own assessments and self-assessments, how someone or something good can be kept from thriving just by being in a hostile place. It reassures me that no matter where I am next school year, I will be able to learn and grow as a teacher and as a person, but the more barriers I remove and the kinder I am to myself, the better I will be able to blossom and be present for the R’s of the world, and I guess for the less-fabulous students too.