every day a sun rises

"Yeah, maybe when you're old enough
You'll realize that you're not so tough.
And some days the seas get rough,
You'll see.
You're too young to have it figured out.
You think you know what you're talkin' about."

- the raconteurs, "old enough"

i don't mean to come across like a know-it-all. maybe a know-it-some, though.

there's some knowledge that literally only comes with getting older. not experience, even, but age. it's a matter of waking up every day to whatever-it-is-you've-chosen, seeing the sun come up reliably again, the moon rising and flooding every month. these are dependable things, in a life that is rarely stable.

here's what i would tell you, if you sat still long and quietly enough:

there are people who love you, no matter what you do, or how you act, or what you say. they won't go away, because they know who you are, and you are valuable to them. it's not worth picking fights with them, it's not worth being sad or even happy about them, because they do exist and they do love you. they may not be what you expect, or what you want, but in that form, they are yours.

there are also people who do not love you, and who never will. that's the other side of this coin. i don't mean that they will hurt you as much as i mean that they do not love you. they do not know who you are, and they will sift through people like sand and will never be satisfied with what's left in their hands - which is nothing. so get over them - you're just moving sand to them, nothing more.

he loves you. stop fighting so hard.

lace isn't warm, and other conditions

the season has officially turned, and i'm not really ready for it. storm windows aren't in place, and my leg warmers are nowhere to be found (don't mock me about the leg warmers - they work.)

i took the hottest shower i could stand this morning, and returned to get dressed warmly while i wasn't frozen. sorting through my underwear drawer, i began to curse.

i don't have granny panties anymore. the only stuff left is lacy, silky, easily-torn frothy stuff.

all i want is warm cotton snuggled up against my cold ass, and it ain't gonna happen.

somehow this happened without any conscious awareness on my part. kind of like how i now am a fan of cilantro. and how i like being (good grief, when did this happen?!?!) outside.

behavioral modification is a big frosty bite in the butt.

response, return

1. What is the image that brought you to the lifestyle?

there's a few from my youth, and a few that actually got me to *do* it, but it's not what you'd think.

i've always been about words. i can't remember how far back my feelings about submission go, hence my belief in the fact that i'm just wired this way. the image i cling to even now, though, is from my own brain, as described in the story of o...

face down on a heavy desk in the office he is taking her ass while the maid enters to ask him a minute question. he doesn't pause he doesn't hide, he continues his action while speaking benignly to the maid. she stares at o while he speaks her face expressing nothing, and then leaves.

yep, that.

2. Submissives: If you could only do one thing for someone . . . one action to serve them and show them how much you care, what would it be?

be a sounding board. i can do lots of things - clean floors, choke on cock, cry. but really what submission is about for me, is about putting my own personal needs aside, my own priorities and interests, and using theirs instead.

3. You have found the one that completes you, you are deliriously happy. They ask you to do one thing and you immediately leave and never speak to them again.

intentionally destroy someone or lie to them for negative reasons (yes, that's vague, but i know what i mean, and that's all that matters). it would undermine who i am as a person. i take issue with the "immediately leave" part, because i'm not sure where chronologically this incident hypothetically falls, and i'm not guaranteeing it's possible to leave.

i have to turn this question into different wording to make it make sense to me - something like, "what do you foresee being the incident that would break you down badly?" or something like that, since the nature of my relationship *currently* can't encompass a willful exit.

dance like no one is watching

"...she is a dancer
when she dances she is free
free in the moment
and clouds rise in the east
to Frank Sinatra
which your parents put on repeat
on repeat..."

-emily jane white

this started out as a piece about sacred whores. but instead it's about freedoms lost and gained and found and lost again and reclaimed.

i used to dance, when i was younger. i was one of those wishful ballerinas, white and dark and always looking at the floor to find my place. i didn't find comfort in the discipline of the rehearsal room, but in the blood found in my shoes when i was done. there was a reason for it, the pain and the sweat and the failings. and reasons for things were what i lived for. i still do. later, i would find myself in the middle of the night dancing in clubs high on whatever could be found and a straining violin above the electric noise.

if given freedom, if it is forced upon me, i'll dance.

gunshy

i have not yet learned whether or not my instincts are correct. i've fucked up too many times on too many important things to trust myself. maybe that's why obedience comes more naturally to me than independent action.

head, heart, hand

intellect, emotion, action

i'm glad you're feeling it, too. i know you are no different in this regard. yet again, we're on the same page.

these dreams

we're standing on a shore, a dock, a ferrydock, and it's one of those cool autumn mornings i think where it might be blue and it might be gray but since it's a dream it's all lit by low sunshine anyway. the ferry is coming, and we need to get across to the other side of where we are and the water is glassy and has a light choppy wave to it, but nothing i am scared of.

the ferry hasn't arrived yet.

which is good, because you are going around to the other side in your car. i trust your car, i know it will get us there. it's parked a bit away where i can see the green of it almost meshing with the landscape. i could go with you, in your car.

but i have this big steamer trunk. it needs to go with me, and it cannot go in your car. if i go with you, in your car, a reliable way, the trunk can't come. ever.

i could take the ferry, which in my dream inexplicably will make a stop in the middle of the water, halfway to the other side, and then leave the passengers there in the middle. my trunk can come with me, but there is no guarantee that we will make it to my destination. i, and my trunk, may end up stranded in the middle of the water.

but there's also the chance that the ferry would not stop, and get me there safely, trunk intact.

do i leave the trunk behind and go with you?
do i take the ferry and hope to get to the other side, meet you, and continue on?
will i be left in the middle with only my trunk for company, lost and never getting to where i want to be?

when i woke up at this point, no decision made, it occurred to me that there was no option of me remaining behind, with my trunk, but without you.

entrust this.

conversation with a friend the other that was basically about the nature of trust, especially when starting a new bdsm-related relationship. especially when you met online. and especially when everyone knows we're not laughing about it.

when i met my owner for the first time, it was in public. a dark groovy bar, sure, but in public, where the bartender knew me. we had already spent weeks talking - mostly about sex, but also about who we were, and what kind of people we were, and what kind of people we wanted to be. we both had parts of ourselves that had to be protected, but small verbal risks were taken.

we met in the bar, and i already knew his name. i already knew his face, and some other significant details about his life. he told me later that he'd deliberately done this, so that the risk i was taking by even meeting him in the first place did not put me at some obvious safety disadvantage. a few weeks later, when we met for our first official "play date", i trusted him enough to go into a locked hotel room and hope for the best. i don't know that i would have done that without all the prior information and meetings and obvious chemistry.

but all that being said, there was a point at which i had to let go of protecting myself. i do not advocate risk, but i understand it. there's only so far one can go into a power exchange relationship without deliberately letting go of control over it. when you know what you want to do is to surrender, it's very hard to take the smaller, protected steps beforehand.

i was lucky, and i still am. i never forget that.