strange dream

Joscelin and I were at some kind of a meeting.  It was in a classroom, and everyone was in desks, but I don’t think it was really a class-type class.  It was being led by someone we knew in the bdsm community.

It came up during class that this woman (the leader) really didn’t like us.  And, in fact, a lot of people in the class didn’t like us.  There was a lot of animosity.

I was allowed to go to the front of the room and ask what that was about.  Various people raised their hands and I called on them.  The only reason I remember for us being disliked was that our contact information on the website was wrong, which I thought I had fixed already.  But there were other reasons.

After I had called on everyone, I thanked them for the great opportunity to learn, and headed back to my seat.  As I headed back I could tell there were others who had remained silent but who did like us.  There was a kind of wave of support for us in the air.  And as I passed Jos’s seat, a twinkle passed between our eyes, and I knew the sex and other marvelous things between us were real, and recognized.

I had been awake for a few minutes before I realized this hadn’t actually occurred.

adding injury to insult

Wednesday night, Joscelin was already at home when I arrived.

“Hi!” I said.

“Hey!”

A moment later, he said, “Oh shit.  I forgot to greet you.”  He was grinning as he put his hands behind his back and lowered his head, the way he’s supposed to when I come home.

“Oh,” I said.  “Come here.”  I was smiling as we hugged.  I had completely forgotten.  “I’m, uh, not going to punish you for that, OK?  Since I didn’t even notice.”

“OK.”

“I hope that’s not adding insult to injury,” I said.

“Not at all,” he said.  “I was hoping you’d see it that way.”

“Oh, wait,” I said.  “Not noticing that you skipped a protocol, then punishing you, is actually adding injury to insult.”

“Exactly!”

nipple clamps, a tube of icy hot, and thou

Before I chained Joscelin up Saturday night, I told him exactly what I had planned.

“I’m going to chain you up,” I said.  “And I’m going to have you wear the plug gag.  And then I’m going to use some things – which I’ll show you in a minute.  Then I will unchain you, and make you go down on me.  Then we’ll fuck.  And after that I’ll have an orgasm, which you will not.  And then we’ll do aftercare.  OK?”

After that, I had him close his eyes while I gathered the things I planned to use on him.  Once I had them, I let him open his eyes.  I had nipple clamps (the ferocious kind, which he hasn’t worn in weeks), a tube of icy hot, vampire gloves, and the new translucent red plastic cane.

He thanked me for making such an effort to give him what he needed for the scene (i.e., forewarning).

Much later, in aftercare, he told me that when I had been showing him everything, he’d thought I was doing a wonderful job but also going far beyond what he actually needed in terms of communication.  It was only once the gag was in that he realized that, given his inability to communicate from that point forward, I had given him exactly what he needed and no more.

I absolutely love gagging him, but it’s always a danger.  He can safeword if he needs to say anything, and I can ask him questions and get basic responses, but all the little things he might say, some of which are useful, are left unsaid.  Being gagged traps you in your own mind, which is wonderfully headspace-inducing, but also slightly hazardous.  But knowing your victim can’t talk?  Delicious.

priorities

I had planned (with Jos) to clean the house this weekend.  We have guests coming next weekend.

Oh, who cares?  The guests are slobs anyway, more or less.  It’ll get cleaned well enough and just…who cares.

We had sex instead.

“That was everything I ever wanted in a scene,” he said afterwards.

It was good for me too.

Life is pretty sweet.

my life is eating my life!

A conversation last night:

Jos: Are we having a scene Saturday?

Me: God, I fucking hope so, but I don’t see how.

Jos: Me too, exactly. I need sceeeeeeeene.

Our life is currently eating itself, leaving no room for…any fucking thing.  No sex, no scenes, hardly any conversations (it feels like).  No energy.

Last weekend we didn’t get to have sex, but we did get enough (mostly low-quality) time together that I felt companionable and warm towards him again.  So we struggle along.

We still get to have some punishments, a few, since I gave him a new rule that is hard for him to remember.

Other than that, it’s pretty grim.

Next weekend, we have guests (my first serious boyfriend – from half my lifetime ago – and his girlfriend), and the next weekend we’ll both be out of town, separately.  (I’ll be in a warm place next to a river with swimming and tubing.  Bliss.)

I need the vacation.  I also need to have a boyfriend again.

honesty, now 25% more brutal!

Before I started dating Jos, when we were friends and I had no intention of ever dating him (not ’cause I hated him or anything, but because he was too young, plus already had a girlfriend, plus I wasn’t looking to be someone’s dom, plus I wasn’t sure I could handle his level of dorkiness), he told me that he wanted three things in a girlfriend:

1. radical honesty
2. sympathetic interpretation
3. a dom

Throughout our relationship, Jos has made it really easy for me to be more honest with him than I’ve been with anyone I’ve dated.  Just so we’re clear, I don’t think radical honesty is for everyone any more than, say, polyamory is for everyone.  I tend to think it’s actually right for hardly anyone.  But having a partner who encourages you to be radically honest, and who can actually handle it (thrive on it) when you are, is great.

Too bad Jos doesn’t have a partner like that.

Lately it has been coming out how much undeclared “stuff” Jos has.  I mean “stuff” that, in an ideal world, he would have talked to me about and we would have resolved.  There are ways we used to do d/s, ways that he encouraged, ways I eventually backed away from, against some resistance from him, that make him angry and fearful to remember.  And he has other anger against me, I think, from the poor ways I’ve handled some of his concerns in the past.

Damn.  The way I’m writing this feels unfair to myself.  The truth is, compared to almost anyone, I am awesome at listening and addressing concerns.  Jos has reported, throughout our entire relationship, that he has felt listened to, heard, supported, and taken care of.

At the same time, I kind of suck.  I tend to hear things in all-or-nothing terms.  (“I don’t really like it when you X” translates immediately in my head to “You shouldn’t ever X again.”  This is very hard when it’s a kink activity.)  I tend to think things are about me, or about the relationship, when they are just isolated feelings or thoughts.  (“I’m disappointed that you never tie me up” => “I’m sad and angry about our disappointing sex life, which I hate.”)  I’ll eventually really address your concern (as best I can, which isn’t always that well – it’s hard for people to change very much, honestly), but I’ll freak out first.  (By “freak out” I mean cry, become stiff with fear, stop making eye contact, that kind of thing.)

Right now, we’re experiencing a strange dynamic.  Jos is opening up to me about this stuff more and more, and he feels more able to do so than ever.  (I’ve been making a lot of effort to be calm, listen, remember that not everything is about me, and so on.)  So he feels like things are more awesome than ever before.  On my side, though, I’m being exposed to a lot of knowledge I didn’t have before about Jos’s pain, anger, frustrations, and experiences with me, so for me, it feels like things are worse.

I don’t want to make it sound like I come home at night and Jos has some laundry list of my sins.  It isn’t like that at all.  It’ll go more like this.

Him: You’re really listening to me lately.  I feel so loved.

Me: Yeah, I’m trying.

Him: I feel like I can’t convey to you how good things are because I’d have to tell you how they were in the past and then…I don’t want to go there.

Me: So, there’s a lot of stuff that you were kind of angry about and you’re realizing it lately.

Him: Yeah, there is.  When I think about it.

Me: What kind of stuff?

Him: Dev, there’s really nothing you don’t know about.  Just…I think I told you things in the past, but too subtly.  I was afraid of what I would do to you, or how you’d respond.  You were the best I ever had.  And I didn’t even let myself feel some of it.

Me: Scary.

Him: Yeah.

Me: You have to be more honest with me.  It’s the only way it can work, if it can work.

Him: I know, just…yeah.  I’m working on it.

That is totally not a conversation that actually occurred — more like a pastiche.  But it is kind of how the conversations go.  We’re talking around the actual “stuff.”  (I do know the specifics, for the most part.  We just haven’t talked through it with the new understandings.)  I want to get into more of it soon, but we just haven’t had the time.

There are a lot of people — relatively secure, happy, low-drama people — who can have complaints or little fears or angers and just let them go.  You don’t need to tell your partner every little thing that bugs or scares you.  But Jos is particularly bad at letting stuff go, and instead tends to not talk about it (out of very legitimate concerns), but then become angry and afraid because he feels like he can’t talk about it.  If you basically suck at suppressing things, and you can’t let shit go, there’s not much choice but to express them, is there?

Of course, any time you say that your partner “can’t let things go” you risk learning that, no, they actually let a huge amount of things go, but what they need to deal with is the tiny remnant.  In other words, you’re so much worse than you ever imagined that even the 10% they have to discuss with you is overwhelming.  Cheery thought, that :-)

Anyway, I wish I had found a way to write this post with more content and specifics, but this is what we’re dealing with right now.  It’s an interesting time.

the party

We went to the party last night.  It wasn’t a sure thing that we would go – we were both tired, Jos was underslept, etc.  But I read a book of advice for teen girls once that said “Go to the party” and I think it’s pretty good advice.  If there was a thing you wanted to go to and now that the time is here you’re not sure – you might like to just stay home and veg – you should go.  Have experiences rather than not.

Aside from the part where I got confused and we spent 15 minutes hovering around outside not knowing how to get in (which included me leaving an idiotic message on our friend’s cell phone – along the lines of “gee, if you get this – which you won’t because you are probably setting someone on fire right now – send down some rappelling hooks, would you?”), it was great.

First, there were a lot of people there and some of them were very intriguing.  There was a skinny woman in chaps and a cap that I wanted to kind of eat up.  There was a shy nerdy boy – probably too nerdy and shy, but he did complement my shirt.  There was a person of extremely ambiguous gender presentation that I couldn’t keep my eyes off of.  There were fine-looking men I’ve seen before.

Jos asked me, before we left the house, how I wanted him to dress, and I had an answer.  He wore jeans, a white undershirt, his collar, black shoes and a black belt.  He was pretty.  And on the way over, he asked me what he could do for me when we were there.

I told him I wanted to mingle and be social for a few minutes, and then I would put his leash on.  And once I put his leash on, I wanted him to be wide-eyed.  Headspacy.

“All right,” he said.  “That’s what you can do for me.  But what can I do for you?”

I told him that a lot of our sex, for me, is me pushing him to respond various ways and then feeding off those responses.  And that the three main things I push him to feel are headspace, pain, and arousal.

Underslept, he got worried.  Didn’t this sound just like the pattern I’ve complained about having with other men, where my sexuality is about theirs?  We sat in the car in this kind of art/warehouse district and talked before going in (or, rather, before trying to figure out how to get in for 15 minutes).  A few blocks in front of us, the light rails kept passing across on their elevated track, making it look like a whole different (cooler) city.  Or a movie set in the future.

For me, as I explained to him, there is an important distinction between doing things and enjoying the partner’s responses, on the one hand, and being consumed with my knowledge of their experience and thoughts on the other.  I brought up my cats.  I pet them, I tease them, I play with them, and I enjoy their responses.  But I’m not constantly putting myself in their heads and trying to figure out what they want me to do and trying to do that thing.  I don’t over-empathize with them.  (In fact, I empathize just enough so that I can get the kinds of responses I want, which is hardly at all.)

So, once we went inside and said hello to the people we knew and (in my case) tried but failed to speak to the intriguing people we did not know, I put Joscelin’s leash on him and sat down in a comfy chair.

He was headspacy almost immediately.  Oh, was he ever.  It was beautiful.  And it went on and on.

Mostly, we kissed, or he caressed me.  I have never enjoyed his touch as much as I did last night.  (I actually love that kind of context for being stroked.  It’s obvious I’m not going to reciprocate, and I just kind of sit back and absorb it.)  At one point, I pulled my shirt and bra away and had him lick/suck my nipple for a long time while I just looked around the room, feeling alternately aroused and another sensation – the one like thirst.

I had brought a few restraints and pain-causing toys, but I found myself not wanting to have a scene.  I felt I was in this perfect bubble of romantic headspace and beauty and I didn’t want to descend to a world filled with carabiners and spray bottles of sanitizer.  And I was tired, and it felt good to be relaxed, with my slave on his knees in front of me.

Today I am feeling a lot of extra love for him.  He’s so…mmmmm.

this and that

Ever since we switched back, I’m finding it hard to find things to write about.  It’s not that nothing is going on, or that things are bad, just that everything is pretty normal and I’ve already written so many posts about us.

So! Many! Posts!

So, a few brief thoughts on unrelated topics.

After I wrote the post about leashes, I got kind of pissy (I guess that’s the right word) about Joscelin’s response and some of the other comments.  It was nebulous and hard to figure out why I even felt what I felt, but I felt unheard, unable to assert my own sexuality, and so on.  I kind of let Jos know that I was feeling annoyed about it, and he got kind of annoyed at me back.  But we didn’t really talk about it that night.  The next night, before I came home from work, I was feeling upset about it again, and then I kind of thought, Geez, Dev, think of the actual situation you are in.  (No, I did not actually call myself “Dev.”  I have a real name.)  And then I was over it.

***

Jos and I are going to a play party tonight, hosted at the dungeon of our pro dom friend.  She has different kinds of parties – this one is “more for people who want to play than for people who want to dress up,” so it is not advertised as widely as usual, so that people will have room to swing things.   Cool!  Jos can expect some hot leashing action.  Also some hurting.  Definitely some hurting.  We are supposed to walk around and look at art first (a common activity in that neighborhood).  And they have super nice comfy couches in that place, which is a huge bonus for me in terms of how a dungeon is configured.

***

I miss Thumper.  When is he coming back? I was getting used to my daily dose.  Is he not writing because everything is good or because everything went to shit?  Enquiring minds, etc.

***

I still consider myself a feminist, but have more understanding than ever before of why some women I’d consider feminists don’t.  I have found I no longer care, at all, what feminism has to say about my sex life.  I don’t mind answering their bullshit radfem questions, but I’m basically done with ‘em.  They’re not interested in the actual experiences of women, and when you start being uninterested in the actual experiences of actual other people, well…that is when I tune out.  I guess.

***

In a couple of weeks, I am going on a vacation to a warm place near a river where there will be tubing, camping, and the best parts of my family.  I’m looking forward to it a lot – I really need the R&R.

That’s it for today, folks.