the miracle of orgasms

A few weeks ago, I asked Joscelin to take away my vibrator.  Historically, it’s been the only way I’ve had orgasms.  When I owned Jos, we did go through a short period when I was having him give them to me, which we both enjoyed, but then I started using the vibrator again…and doing so makes it extremely difficult for me to come by other kinds of stimulation.  I kind of wanted go back, but giving up my ability to easily masturbate was difficult to choose at any given moment, so I didn’t.

I’m not under any particular orgasm restriction right now.  I am allowed to masturbate to orgasm.  But I have not succeeded at doing so yet (I think I’ve only managed it once or twice in my life), so in effect, all of my orgasms come from Jos.  And he gives them to me somewhat regularly, but not as often as I used to choose on my own.

And they are amazing.

One of the games I play with myself sometimes while masturbating is to force myself to relax the muscles of my pussy (the kegel ones), which is unnatural when I’m being stimulated.  It makes it feel like the sensation is washing over me and I can’t actually get hold of it.  It becomes more and more difficult as I get closer to orgasm, and if I try to come that way, a sharp pain arises that forces me to tense and have the orgasm (which will then be painful).  But generally if I am doing this with myself, I can’t make myself be relaxed all that much, so I just alternate for a bit before moving on to something else.

I let Jos in on this secret, of course.  He also knows that I come more easily when it feels like I’m not getting enough stimulation.  He also knows I will obey him.  He also knows he controls me completely.

When I ask him if he will give me an orgasm, and he says yes, I know that’s it – it’s like I’m strapped into the roller coaster and there is no turning back.  I have no control from that point forward.

Lately what he does is that he makes me relax the muscles and then he teases the everloving fuck out of me.  He strokes my lips and clit so subtly that it’s amazing it feels like anything at all.  He lets his finger just graze over the best spot and I can’t do a damn thing about it.  Sometimes he rests his finger right there and just twitches it ever so slightly.

It makes me insane.  It thrills me.  It is like all my masturbatory fantasies came true.  It makes me never, ever want to have an orgasm any other way.  It turns me into a hot submissive mess.

Last night, he did this, and made me keep the relaxed muscles until I was afraid I was going to come and not be able to control it at all, and when I told him I was getting close and fearful that this would happen, he kept going, but with less stimulation for a while, and then he ramped it up until it took absolutely every drop of my will power to stay relaxed, and when I told him again that I was going to come and not be able to control it…

he said, “That’s OK, you’re done for tonight,” and took his hand away.

And in between expressions of desperation, I thanked him profusely.

concerns

Is it difficult now to keep up with who controls whom in my relationship with Joscelin?  He’s in charge these days, and for the foreseeable future, if the whole thing doesn’t blow up.

I want to post about what’s going on right now. The truth is, I don’t know if I’m allowed to write this post.  I am under some new rules that I don’t really understand.  (I was given ample opportunity to ask about them, but I have so many questions and concerns that it was impossible to exhaust them, and like mushrooms they continue to pop up.)  Certainly I am not allowed to freely discuss my concerns or negative feelings with Jos right now, but I’m not sure whether that extends to blogging or not.

In theory, two new rules were added yesterday.  I’m not sure I can state them correctly, so I’ll give context for them, but for me, they actually make even less sense in context.  It’s possible I also completely misremember them, since they are muddled together in my mind.  These are the third and fourth rules in our system; the first two, as stated before, are

1. Be transparent.
2. Give willing and gracious submission.

Rule #3

The context for this rule was that I had been thinking about what is best to do when I feel like Joscelin is being unfair in a particular moment.  The truth is, we strongly share the same sense of fairness, and given a few hours or a day, we almost always (perhaps actually always) agree about things that have happened between us.  But in the moment, either of us might be wrong.  So I asked Jos for permission to, when I think he’s being unfair, simply submit to him anyway, and then bring it up the next day if I still see it the same way.

He was concerned that I might never bring it up the next day.  I proposed some countermeasure to his concern, but I’m not sure what.  I think the rule inspired by this says something like this:

If I have a concern (such as about fairness), I must either ask whether I may bring it up later, or ask to bring it up at that time.  When we do discuss it, Joscelin will ask me questions that I am to answer as simply as possible, and let him guide the discussion.

Points of uncertainty:

• Is this even what the rule says?
• Am I allowed to defer bringing up a concern without asking permission to do so?
• Does he prefer me to mention conerns on the spot or to not do so?

I have a concern about this protocol, which is that, even at this moment, working through my current outstanding list of concerns in this way would take, I think, hours, and I’m not actually sure that the process would ever terminate.  Ultimately I don’t think the relationship can possibly work if I can’t speak freely about what’s going on with me.

(I want to just trust Joscelin to figure this stuff out, or to make it work, and focus on giving him my willing and gracious submission, but, per the transparency rule, I’m not even allowed to simply not bring up my concerns at all – I think – and also I’m afraid moment-to-moment and don’t know which behaviors are allowed/encouraged/forbidden.  There are actually things I think may be mandatory or forbidden and I don’t know which.)

Rule #4

Two nights ago, Jos and I were talking about his strong preference that I make a point of submitting to him first and then raising concerns later.  (I’m not really clear anymore on what we discussed, but it was something like that.)  When thinking about that, I worried that I would “get out of” things by just crying or freaking out.  Last night I tentatively asked Joscelin to forbid me to cry (around/because of him) except with permission or during aftercare.

The fourth rule:

I may not cry because of Jos’s actions except during scenes (aftercare included) or out of joy.

But there’s more.  A bit later I asked, more for reassurance than anything, whether I was allowed to express negative feelings like anger or sadness (for instance, by saying “I feel angry”).  And Joscelin said that for the sake of “simplicity” (?) the answer, for now, was no.  I guess this is probably an addendum to the third rule rather than to this one, though that’s how I interpreted it at the time.

Overall, I don’t feel like I know how I’m supposed to proceed, even though we discussed this endlessly and I had (as I said) ample opportunity to raise concerns (which I did).  Last night I sat and wrote up a long list of concerns I had at the time, but I’m not sure I didn’t already violate a rule by saving them for later without asking for permission to do so.

I want – I really want – to just give this a try and see what happens.  I hope that I can do that.  I’m just sort of overwhelmed with confusion and distrust and anger.  I’ll be underslept today because, once I woke up this morning, I had too many feelings to get back to sleep, and I couldn’t shut my thoughts off. I’ll need to bring these up with Joscelin when he gets up, I guess, but I’m trepidatious about that given that I feel like the conversation would need to go on for hours just to address the current list, and I don’t have hours to spare because I need to get a lot of schoolwork done and I’d rather not be a wreck.

Perhaps I can ask permission to remain silent about these issues and just see what happens.

what I want to remember

Last night, Joscelin and I decided I would dominate him for the next couple of days, starting this morning.  He backed out this morning, but, after further conversation, backed back in.  I don’t want to chronicle the entire day, but some really cool stuff happened that I would like to remember.

The rules I gave him:

1. Trust yourself.  [Note: this was an accidentally ingenious way to get something I wanted--a more relaxed/trustful (yet not casual) state--and it seemed to have some effect.]
2. Be open and honest.
3. Tell me what you’re feeling, especially bad things.
4. No making fun (by either of us) of ourselves or each other.

I was intrigued by the notion of pushing him in ways that would be psychologically difficult.  One of the first things we did once we’d discussed these rules was that I did a questionnaire with him.  I asked him to tell me three things he hoped to experience during the day (the most interesting of which was my will, determination, strength, vision, etc.), and to tell me his four best qualities and one thing he didn’t like about himself as a submissive.  (There were more questions, but some ended up being covered in the opening discussion.)

We had a scene, naturally.  Some highlights:

In the beginning, I restrained his hands behind his back and had him lie on his side facing me.  I asked him what he had fantasized about that morning, when he’d woken up and been unable to go back to sleep because of excitement.  And then I asked him the kind of question that is typically very psychologically hard for him to answer: what could you do right now that would please me?

He named one thing.  I was playing with his nipples.  He said something like, “I can think of other things but nothing specific.”  I held his nipple between my nails and said, “I’m patient, tell me more.”  And he did.  “What else?” I asked, still hurting him.  And he gave me more still.  He was very, very good.  I liked how his face changed when we did that.

Later, I found the nipple clamps in the toy box.  He begged me to put them on him, and I did.  He was restrained fairly helplessly.  He then asked me to take them off.  I did so quickly but gently, knowing what would follow: he said he didn’t want me to take them off, and asked me to put them back on.  This cycle repeated itself a few times.  We were talking about how it was – how much he hated them when they were on, and how much he wanted them when they were off.  I said, “Yes, that’s a lesson you need to learn, and I’m teaching it to you.”  (Hot.)

I beat a particular spot inside of his thigh with a small double leather strap (like if you cut off the ends of a leather belt at an angle, then doubled the belt over and beat someone with the open ends).  He hates to be hit in the same spot over and over, so I informed him I was going to do exactly that.  The spot I chose was near the place where the leg and buttock meet, which is a place he hates to be hit, so that some strokes hit there a little and others missed it.

When I started, he took it for a bit and then I pushed him harder and he begged me to stop.  He also moved and evaded me, not completely but noticeably.  I stopped when he asked me to, and he immediately reported that he felt bad/ashamed for having stopped me.  I told him he had done exactly right, and that I was going to hit him again until he begged me again, and that he’d better not move.

I started hitting him again and even though I was obviously hurting him pretty bad, he wasn’t asking me to stop.  I didn’t want him to need to safeword, nor did I want to traumatize him, so I said, “You’d better start begging.”  Once he did, I encouraged him, saying, “Good, keep going,” but also kept hitting him, leading to more begging.  Then I said, “Stop begging,” and he stopped (which was obviously hard) and I gave him a few more strokes and then stopped.  It felt very deep for us both.

If we were continuing with this, what I’d want to be teaching him is to ask for what he wants and then accept that he might or might not get it.  (It’s often harder for him to get it than to not get it.)  I’d want him to learn that it’s out of his hands.  As it was, I wanted to create a deep experience between us, and I wanted part of that, for him, to consist of someone training him in that way.

I had him fuck me.  I told him ahead of time that if he stopped, I was going to beat him with the strap (on his ass/flank) until he continued, but that he wasn’t to come, and I would punish him if he did.  I stressed that the beatings for stopping weren’t punishment, just a consequence.

And then we did exactly that, and fuck was it ever hot.  When I started playing with his nipple, he begged me to stop, because he knew it would make him close, which would lead to more beating.  I really, really enjoyed hitting him that way – like crazy much.  (I started calling him a horsey.)  He hated the hitting and was completely trapped.  He said, “I do love a predicament.”  Eventually I grabbed his nipple and said, “Come now, little horsey,” while beating him rather hard with the strap in my other hand.  He came begging me not to hit him.  (I could pass out from how hot that is.)

So, that was my day.  It wasn’t all sunshine and roses – I ended up struggling a lot with rule #4 myself, and having to apologize a lot, which he was quite gracious about.  But overall, I had a really exciting and nice time.  Joscelin is a good slave.

Mara’s questions

Yesterday, Mara (Joscelin’s other romantic interest, previously known as “New Lover X” or just “X”) left a comment on my last post.  (Lest anyone should wonder, I greatly appreciate that she left a comment – it’s very cool.)  In it, she posed some questions, which I would like to attempt to address.

1 – Have you considered reading and talking to people to clarify for yourself what kind of relationship you want, and then looking for a partner who wants the same thing, rather than vise versa?

This sounds very sensible, but there is something about me that makes it not work for me.  I have found in the course of my life that what kind of relationship I want is heavily dependent on who my partner is.  I tend to want the relationship that makes sense with and for my current partner.  That’s not to say that I don’t have my own preferences and parameters.

But mainly, I guess, I am sort of crazily attached to Joscelin.  It’s interesting, because I haven’t really been this way in previous relationships, even quite serious ones that lasted a long time.  Maybe it’s that I broke up with them and so I was done, but here I was broken up with and I was not done.  But I felt nearly done at the time, and I don’t feel that way now.  I think there is more here to experience.  I also think that Jos is very close to my heart for some very, very good reasons and I am loathe to give up any little bit of that.

I also don’t have much interest in trying to meet someone or whatever.  It’s too much work for the expected payout, and when I’m in school I really don’t have the time and emotional energy to spare.

2 – What objection do you have with yourself as you are now? That is, why in the world would you want to change your fundamental makeup “tin” into someone else’s ideal anything?

For me, the “tin into flesh” idea isn’t about making myself into Joscelin’s ideal, which sounds kind of creepy to me.  It’s about becoming a more authentic version of myself and becoming better according to my own values.

I would like to be more self-disciplined, but mainly I would like to be less self-centered and self-conscious.  I want to be humble and hard-working.  I want to learn not to think of myself with constant judgment (bad or good).  I want to be less competitive, less judgmental, less inclined to one-upping people.  I want more patience, compassion, and gentleness.

3 – I think I understand the traits that Joscelin finds appealing in a submissive, as you describe them above. Are those the traits that you also find appealing in a submissive? If not, why would you aspire to them?

This is a very cogent question, Mara.  If I had to take a stab at describing the traits I find appealing in a submissive, it might look something like

• courage
• self-control
• a tendency to go into crazy headspace and show it
• an approach to pain that resembles my own (submissively-oriented masochism)
• verbal expressiveness

I am not that attracted to Joscelin’s vision of a submissive.  The submissives who catch my eye are not the ones modestly and beautifully waiting on their knees; they are (more often) men who are currently being painfully beaten.  Or the ones kissing a partner’s feet with crazy subbie eyes.

I don’t aspire to become Joscelin’s vision of a submissive, at least not…in the obvious ways.  Some of his vision I can definitely get with; I’m blown away and excited that my current rules are “be transparent” and “give willing and gracious submission,” for instance.

Participating in the aspects of his vision that I don’t share, and that I may even find unattractive, has the feel to me of something like a religious ritual or purification.  Letting someone outwardly transform me into something I don’t like is an exercise in letting go of my need to protect myself, my front, my image.  It is like a form of mortification of the flesh.

4 – Are you a TPE submissive, or partly inclined toward being a TPE submissive? If not, what’s your objection to enjoying the hell out of being sexually submissive in bed, and doing whatever you want with the rest of your time?

It’s safe to say that I’m partly inclined towards being a TPE submissive.  I have no objection to enjoying the hell out of being sexually submissive in bed and then doing whatever I want with the rest of my time – none whatsoever.  I’ve done that in the past and it was great.

But what I’m doing right now is a really special and (for me) unique experience.  I’m not wedded to doing it for the rest of my life; in fact it’s hard for me to imagine making that choice.  But I want to experience it and see what it has to offer.

I hope this was interesting.

are we crazy?

After the three posts (here, here, and here) I wrote during our scene Tuesday (a scene that consisted of conversations and my being assigned to write those posts), two things happened.  Three things, actually:

1. Graylion commented on the third post about how disturbed he (she?) was by what I had written, and how much he (she?) feared for me.
2. Jos’s New Lover X, who seems reasonably experienced in the bdsm community, told him (as I understand it) that what we were doing was misguided.
3. Jos started to ask, “Are we crazy?”

Well, if we were, it wouldn’t be the first time.  Someone recently said that we must kink on dysfunction, or we wouldn’t have so much of it.  I actually disagree, for the most part, that we are dysfunctional.  I think we are highly functional – so highly functional that we get into all kinds of crazy scrapes as a result.  I do think we are both drama queens who are into heavy relationship work.

I’d like to describe what I think are the current understandings and desires between us, and I’d love to hear from commenters whether we actually do sound insane or not.  I’m sure this description will be incomplete, and it may turn out wrong in some particulars, since I’m going to be speaking for Joscelin as well, but, if nothing else, he may find it illuminating to see what I think is going on.

Joscelin and I had a whole 3.5-year relationship (documented in the rest of this blog) in which he was my slave approximately 99% of the time, with varying degrees (some quite high) of success.  It stopped working recently, and he broke up with me, which seemed like a good idea to me at the time, but ended up filling me with regret and heartbreak.

The few times that we switched and I was on the bottom, it was very hot for me, but also challenging, and in some cases I was left feeling angry or disappointed at how things had gone, feelings that are not uncommon for me after having a scene on the bottom with anyone.  I am sexually submissive to the bone – certainly I never have an orgasm without thinking about bottoming – but I am also allergic to sexual submission when it comes from a woman.  (I’m not proud of this.)  It kind of grosses me out and raises my hackles.  This effect is very mild when it comes to other women, but can be pretty strong when the woman involved is myself.

Joscelin sees himself as a slave, or at least he historically has.  His fantasies, however, are all about female submission.  In his younger days (and perhaps now, I’m not sure) he always was a woman in his fantasies.  However, he seems uninterested in being or being made feminine in real life.

I have never quite hit Joscelin’s buttons, in the general sense.  He says he did not have New Relationship Energy with me, though as I recall he simulated it extremely well, so that I had no idea I was alone in it at the time.  He often hasn’t been sure whether he loved me, but at other times, he clearly does love me very much.  He’s been a great friend to me always, by far the best lover of my life, and I’m usually content with his feelings towards me.  (Lest he should sound like a jerk, this is honestly not game-playing on his part.  He’s just a confused little guiltbucket.)

So here we are, broken up.  We had a scene with me on the bottom and afterwards, I just couldn’t let go of the role.  And he let me stay, and encouraged me to stay, and we’re trying to figure out (partly) whether we want some kind of a committed relationship, or whether we want to just keep living together, being friends, and having hot sex however we like it at that moment.

It’s momentous for me.  I’ve never gone this far in submission–not even close–and it’s been very moving and very hot.  And at times it has been very difficult.

We were talking yesterday, I think it was, about how Joscelin does not trust me, partly (I think) because I say so many different things.  It was a hard conversation for me.  He also doesn’t believe I know the meaning of commitment, which is fair.  Eventually I said, eyes closed, “Then let me earn my collar.  And don’t listen to what I say, since you don’t trust me.  Just judge me by my actions.”  And that is what we are doing right now.

These are my motivations, as best I understand them, in no particular order:

• I’m in love with Joscelin and I want to be in any kind of relationship with him.  This is a particularly intense kind, which suits me well.  I want him to love me and keep me.
• Submitting is super hot.  So is being controlled and dominated.
• I’m curious whether I can actually be submissive on anything like a long-term basis, and what that would be like.  I honestly can’t quite imagine myself choosing to do this “forever,” but I don’t want to lose the opportunity to try doing it.  I don’t have doms lining up at my door to try owning me, and nobody understands me like Jos.  I have crazy trust for him – maybe enough to overcome my own prickliness.
• I’m attracted to the idea of someone being in a godlike role to me.  I want to feel that someone deeply understands me, accepts me, and is strongly, irresistibly pushing me in a positive direction.  I want someone to “turn my tin into flesh.”  I want to be unable to lie or hide anything about myself.  I want to learn humility, get over myself, learn to be neither proud nor ashamed.
• Did I mention that it is hot?

Some of Joscelin’s motivations, as best I understand them, are as follows.

• He’s attracted to my “turning tin into flesh” idea.
• He’s always been interested in my relationship to my own submission, since I’ve always been sexually submissive (or been able to be; obviously I was dominant towards him for most of our relationship), but have also always been conflicted and somewhat in denial about it.  He wants to push me to figure out what I want and what I am.  I think from his perspective I am a self-hating submissive and he wants to teach me to love and be proud of that part of myself.
• He’s very attracted to the idea of the slave who knows her place and occupies it perfectly, who submits graciously and willingly and is beautiful doing it.  The idea of taking someone and transforming/training her into that person is very appealing.
• It’s ridiculously hot.

So that’s where we are – just trying this crazy thing.  How crazy does it sound, folks?  I’m genuinely curious.

service tasks

As a bottom or submissive, service tasks are typically an un-favorite of mine.  Yet one of the most easily enjoyed benefits of having a submissive at one’s command is having the ability to order someone to do something you actually want done that isn’t purely erotic in nature.  Having someone to fetch you a glass of water or make your lunch is amazing.

It’s not that I object on principle to being asked to do tasks, nor am I unable to enjoy them.  But I do tend to be lazy (I just don’t want to do things; I especially don’t want to do something for Jos that would be too much trouble for me to bother doing for myself), and I tend to feel easily transgressed (why am I cleaning this up when it’s mostly your crap?  or, how come back in 2008 when I asked you to do this that one time, you balked, but now I have to do it?), and I hate negative surprises (how can you ask me to get you a glass of water when I was specifically planning to look at that catalog as soon as I got up the energy to reach for it?).  These are not really positive traits in a human in general.  In theory I want to work on them, but in the moment, it’s hard to want to do anything I don’t want to do.  I mean, by definition, you know.

But, mmm, when I like giving service I really like it.  It gives me a quiet, good feeling inside that I don’t get from other d/s activities.  It’s a sort of soft and gentle feeling.  I’m not sure how to describe it.

I like it best when I can excel at it somehow.  Jos asked me today whether I ever want to be of service and to be pleasing, and if so, when do I tend to want it?  And my answers were that I want it when I can surprise him with it, when he’s not around, or when I know he doesn’t expect it.

The first task he gave me today – making him some pasta for lunch – didn’t go very well.  He asked me for it right as I was finally heading to the kitchen to make my breakfast, which I was very hungry for.  I asked for and received permission to make and eat my breakfast first, but I still felt grumpy about what a pain in the ass it is to make pasta and heat up some sauce.  That’s what led to our conversation about it.  (On a positive note, I think I did manage to be relatively respectful and gracious in the conversation, even though all I had to impart was negative information.)

Jos pointed out that I can exceed his expectations by consistently meeting them, which is an interesting perspective that I hope I can make some use of.

We had some more conversation tonight that I should possibly write about later, but one of the end results was that we are now operating under two rules, to wit:

1. Be transparent.
2. Give willing and gracious service.

Afterwards, he asked me to clean off the coffee table and take out some trash.  I thought he would enjoy it if I cleaned off the big end table as well, so I asked if I might, and he agreed, and I did all of those jobs well.  Though it was a pretty small set of tasks, I felt amazing and full of energy when it was done.  I wanted him to ask me to do more, but I decided to simply go do more, so I cleaned the kitchen counters and stove (he had done the dishes and left it pretty clean otherwise).

I want to learn how to get more in touch with this soft, gentle part of myself that is happy to be of service.  I really did feel amazing after doing those things.  But at other times I feel very unwilling, irritable, and resistant.  It’s something to work on, I guess.

my third assignment

Joscelin and I are still having our scene, which has no whips, chains, naughty word, hot sex, etc., but consists of these deep conversations and the blog posts that I have been assigned.  I am having a little blood sugar crash now, but sipping some soymilk, and I think it will pass.

I have been assigned to answer the following question: Why must submissives sometimes earn their collars?

I will say first, as Joscelin knows, but you, dear readers, may not, that the question kind of grosses me out.  Something that we often run into as we go forward here is that certain aspects of d/s as typically conceived arouse a kind of prickly, resistant response in me, which I’ve been calling “gross” or “icky” as a  shorthand.  (This sometimes has the unfortunate side effect of egging Jos on–he has both honorable and kinky-selfish motives for subjecting me to things I find icky in this sense–but I am commanded to transparency, so I can’t hide it.)

So…”earn their collars” – ick.  But I will try to respond earnesly and without regard for that prickly self.  I would also rather not talk about why I think people actually do it that way–which would force me to talk about the old leather guard and what people think is conventionally required and what people think is hot from reading certain fantasy novels, and so on.  I’d like to write from the heart with my most sympathetic interpretation of why it should be so.

It is a bit like the C.S. Lewis I quoted earlier:

That is why [Christ] warned people to ‘count the cost’ before becoming Christians.  ‘Make no mistake,’ He says, ‘if you let me, I will make you perfect.  The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for.  Nothing less, or other, than that.  You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away.  But if you do not push Me away, undestand that I am going to see this job through.  Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect…This I can and will do.  But I will not do anything less.’

You don’t know what you are getting into when you commit to submitting to another person.  It isn’t possible to really know without doing it.  In the process of earning your collar, you get to find out.  You can walk away in that time without having broken a serious commitment.  If you stay, it gives you practice in having tried and worked.

And, of course, it is the same for the dominant.  Is the style of this person’s submission something you can accept?  Are their problems, flaws, and weaknesses ones that you can work with, or would it be beyond you to help them become something pleasing to you?  (Do you even like them enough in the role?)  If they are trying to “earn” a collar, you can see, perhaps, whether they are able and willing to work hard for something abstract.  If you find that the answer for you is “no,” you can walk away without breaking a commitment or abandoning your pet or your property.  It is dangerous to allow someone to become your property if they will ultimately fail.

My previous posts led to some pretty deep insights for me, but I’m not sure this one has.  I don’t know that I have a deeper or further answer to this question, even when I internally frame it as sympathetically as I am able to.  But maybe I can expand on the last sentence of the previous paragraph: “It is dangerous to allow someone to become your property if they will ultimately fail.”

Sera, in her comment my first post today, was confused over my talk of commitment.  Because Jos and I broke up, one of the ongoing questions for us, or at least for me, has been, now that we are doing this crazy hot good deep new thing, are we going to get back together?  (It might seem like a silly question given that we live together and are having constant awesome sex and love stuff, but it’s still a thing.)  Jos has been saying all along that he isn’t sure he can commit to me, but a few nights ago he said that he would need me to commit to him, in a way that I’m not sure I can, or that I want to become able to do.  We have talked about this a lot more today, and I’m…significantly more in favor than I was, let’s put it that way.

But I don’t know how or if I can bind my future self.  The voice that wants me to be independent, strong, a shiny tin man, and also, of course, unburdened by constant little service tasks, and unconstrained by someone else’s whim, is not going to go away no matter what I agree to or promise.  And it’s not a straightforward matter of just ignoring that voice.  That voice might be right.  There is certainly a threshold for quitting, so I need to keep listening.  I’m not interested in being locked in a cage I really can’t ever get out of.

So…I certainly am afraid that I would fail.  Is that why he asked me the question about earning a collar?  And yet I don’t see how that would or does really help, exactly.  I can do anything for a while, maybe.  By contrast, I don’t know if there is literally anything that I can keep up indefinitely.  I have trouble even making myself floss continually.

We’ve been talking about courage, largely with regard to this amazing TED video that he showed me as part of our scene.  It seems like this commitment requires, at least from me, more courage than anything else.  Trying, working hard, etc., are necessary but definitely not at all sufficient–not even close to sufficient.  It takes courage to sustainedly direct the effort in this direction rather than some other.

strength and independence

I have been instructed to follow up my last post with more in-depth thoughts on this paragraph:

I decided to focus this year on becoming strong, and, as I explained to Jos today, I associate strength with independence.  Putting your improvement into the hands of someone else, letting them judge your progress, letting them determine your worth – these are not the acts of a strong person.  When the person is your ex-boyfriend who you still hope will take you back, it’s even worse, isn’t it?  I want to focus my year on being stronger and in more control of myself.  (Is that a pipe dream anyway?)

Jos asked me, “Why do you associate strength with independence?” and I’ll admit, my first response was something along the lines of, “Well, duh.”

A few minutes later, I commented to him that he considers my cats weak.  He doesn’t really like them, and part of the reason is that he can’t respect them, I think because they are eternal supplicants, asking us for attention, food, etc.  They don’t seem to have any dignity.  Yet what are they but pets?  They didn’t choose to be pets, and who knows what kind of feral personalities they might have had?  And their species has been bred for thousands of years to be (among other things) pets.  (And of course I adore them, and they are exactly as I wish them to be, for the most part, but this post is about strength and independence, not the merits of cats, which are in any case too numerous for a single blog post.)

It also strikes me as intersting that, while identifying as a slave, Joscelin chose to name himself for the Jacqueline Carey character who is only a servant as far as his own honor demands.  Joscelin Verreuil is not at all up for being judged by other people – he only serves his own god and only submits to his own honor.  He is completely self-directed.

Since I began with a particular version of Christianity as my touchstone, let us posit for the moment that it is metaphysically true – C.S. Lewis’s God exists, pretty much as described, and putting oneself into his hands to be turned from tin into real flesh is a real thing.  (This avoids the questionable aspects of doing so with another little tin man.)  Is it stronger to hold back, or to submit?

We still have too many background assumptions.  In the Christian view, God created us, and he alone knows how we can be made into flesh, and what that flesh looks like.  He is the operating manual for our species.  If one’s maker is good and the above is true, should one shy away and pursue one’s own path blindly?  Perhaps not.

Let’s alter the theology a bit as a thought experiment.  Everything up to the birth of Jesus, say, accords with the atheist vision.  We evolved from animals and all of that.  (I am an atheist myself, in case that’s not clear.)  God, a supernatural being, or one with powers we can’t comprehend, but not our creator, showed up at some point, surveyed us, and saw how we could be improved.  He came down in avatar form, as Jesus, to see what it was really like to be one of us.  And then he made the offer to us – follow me and be saved, or go your own way.

Now, assuming that we trust God, is it stronger to accept the offer?  He knows things I do not.  He can see me from a perspective from which I cannot see myself.  He can strip away my false outsides and make me into a more real creature, more humble (which I do want), more self-disciplined, more able to choose right over wrong.  It comes at the cost of making myself completely his servant.  I trust that my service will be only in the cause of what is right and good, but I won’t be able to see for myself exactly where we are headed.

There certainly is a strong trend in our mortal world, our modern American world, to reject that vision.  In college, I was a fucking Objectivist, for God’s sake.  (Or, you know, distinctly not for his sake.)  I’m still a social libertarian.  Why would I submit myself to someone else’s goals for myself?  I have my own goals.  I have my own judgment.

No, really, it’s a real question: why would I submit myself to another person?

Because it’s hot?

Because if someone beats me if I (e.g.) overeat, maybe I can really lose weight and be healthier/fitter/better-looking?

Because it will help me become humble, which I want for reasons that are not clear to me and probably aren’t particularly practical in themselves, but which satisfy a deep emotional need?

As a gift to the other person?  (This motivation has relatively little appeal for me.)

Because he knows better than me?

That last one is interesting.  Does Jos know better than me?  Of course the immediate answer is no, but is it?  Am I allowed to answer yes?

Assuming that we are essentially equal (neither of us is vastly smarter or more perceptive than the other), then of course someone who is not you can in some ways make clearer judgments about you than you can make about yourself.  That (plus training) is partly the idea of therapy.  Another person can see the mote in your eye.

But I do also in some ways think he knows better than I do independently of that.  I see him as being “good all the way down” in a way I don’t think is true of me.  (Do I just know myself better?  Perhaps, but I don’t think so.  I’ve known him for a long time now and this perception has remained constant.  I see his deep kindness towards other people and ideas all the time.)  He claims to have an internal compass, which I most certainly do not.  (Yes, I can often decide right from wrong, but I do this by comparing various conflicting ideas of right and wrong and deciding which applies.  And I do not have a compass that points me along my own path, at all.  I take whatever path seems more likely at the time.)  Of course, being righteous, tolerant, and committed to an arbitrary path could be viewed as signs of weakness, or just pretentious bullshit, but I don’t see it that way.

So that’s interesting.

But I feel I’ve gotten off course a bit, perhaps, from what I was meant to address.  Can submitting be a kind of strength?  Of course in the BDSM community the answer is always yes.  It’s practically a dogma.  I go along with it just like everyone else – oh, of course, being submissive is just terrifically strong.  Well, it’s certainly hard, but that doesn’t make it an act of strength.  Cutting is hard but not (in my view) strong.

I don’t mean to imply, of course, that making someone else submit to you, accepting ownership of another, is strong, either.  What’s strong about that?  Again, it’s hard.  Ideally one brings commitment and a host of other good qualities to the task.  But does it make you strong that you’re willing to play that way?  Not really, I guess.

Getting back to my original paragraph, I wrote, “Putting your improvement into the hands of someone else, letting them judge your progress, letting them determine your worth – these are not the acts of a strong person.  When the person is your ex-boyfriend who you still hope will take you back, it’s even worse, isn’t it?”

I imagine explaining it to a non-bdsm-practicing friend.  “Oh, yes, I have to do xyz, because Jos makes me.  Why?  Oh, because he’s making me a better person, and someone he likes better, someone who is more pleasing to him.”  And then they ask me why I put up with that, or tolerate it, or whatever.  And I say…because it’s hot? because it works? because I’m so very fucking strong that I can take a path to self-improvement that goes entirely through another weak little mortal like myself?

But you see, I think the desire to be strong, or to be seen as strong, is itself part of the “front,” part of the tin body, part of my ego.  If I were submitting to God, part of it would be not caring whether I am strong, trusting God to make me, or help me to be, as strong as he needs me to be.  I would be humble.  I wouldn’t be looking at and judging myself all the time.  I would be letting go of the need to judge myself in these ways.

From that view, it all comes down to the original question: be the best tin man I can be, or be made into flesh?  You can’t submit as a way to be strong any more than the tin man can do it to make his tin shinier.  Whether it requires more strength is undecidable, but, more to the point, immaterial.

Sir, I think that is my final answer.  The question you should have asked isn’t, “Why do you associate independence with strength?” but rather, “Why do you care about being perceived as strong?”

turning tin into flesh

It has been an interesting morning at the home of Dev and Jos. I awoke needing to have a conversation with him about, essentially, whether he can continue to dominate me in the 24/7 way we’ve been doing given that I cannot make any commitment about it, now or in any future I can easily imagine.  He awoke angry at me, for reasons he won’t share, and formed other thoughts and ideas I have no access to.

The conclusion of the conversation was that we are having a scene.  The scene consists (at least so far) of my writing a blog post about the topic of turning tin into flesh, which I mentioned to him in a different conversation a day or so ago.  This is that post.

C.S. Lewis’s book Mere Christianity moves me deeply every time I read it, despite my fairly entrenched atheism.  I am attracted to Christianity as presented in that book, and I think part of the reason is that Lewis appeals to my submissive self. I have observed many times in the past that my ideal model of submission comes largely from his writing.

If you haven’t read the book, this excerpt by itself may not mean much, but here is the bit about turning tin into flesh.  This is an analogy, for Lewis, for what God means to do with us:

Did you ever think, when you were a child, what fun it would be if your toys could come to life?  Well suppose you could really have brought them to life.  Imagine turning a tin soldier into a real little man.  It would involve turning the tin into flesh.  And suppose the tin soldier did not like it.  He is not interested in flesh: all he sees is that the tin is being spoilt.  He thinks you are killing him.  He will do everything he can to prevent you.  He will not be made into a man if he can help it.

A later passage is inextricable from this meaning, for me:

…When I was a child I often had a toothache, and I knew that if I went to my mother she would give me something which would deaden the pain for that night and let me get to sleep.  But I did not go to my mother–at least, not till the pain became very bad.  And the reason I did not go was this.  I did not doubt she would give me the aspirin; but I knew she would also do something else.  I knew she would take me to the dentist next morning.  I could not get what I wanted out of her without getting something more, which I did not want.  I wanted immediate relief from pain: but I could not get it without having my teeth set permanently right. And I knew those dentists: I knew they started fiddling about with all sorts of other teeth which had not yet begun to ache.  They would not let sleeping dogs lie, if you gave them an inch they took an ell.

Now, if I may put it that way, Our Lord is like the dentists.  If you give Him an inch, He will take an ell.  Dozens of people go to Him to be cured of some one particular sin which they are ashamed of (like masturbation or physical cowardice) or which is obviously spoiling daily life (like bad temper or drunkenness).  Well, He will cure it all right: but He will not stop there.  That may be all you asked; but if once you Him in, He will give you the full treatment.

That is why He warned people to ‘count the cost’ before becoming Christians.  ‘Make no mistake,’ He says, ‘if you let me, I will make you perfect.  The moment you put yourself in My hands, that is what you are in for.  Nothing less, or other, than that.  You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away.  But if you do not push Me away, undestand that I am going to see this job through.  Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect…This I can and will do.  But I will not do anything less.’

That is powerful stuff, for me.  It’s not what I would normally express to a dom (though usually I cannot really submit on the level at which I am currently submitting, or anything close to it), but since Joscelin has been forcing me to be transparent and, in essence, tearing me down to the molecular level and examining the parts, well…a few nights ago, I said, “I want you to be God to me, Sir.”  And this, along with the transparency (for what is God if not omniscient?), is a big part of what I meant.

What it means to me is that Jos would force me to let go of my pretenses, at least towards him, my prickly ego-resistance, my pride, my “front” if you will.  (Many of the most amazing and fulfilling parts of what we’ve done so far these past few weeks have consisted, at least for me, of exactly this.)  And he would improve me in the ways that he saw fit.  He would take care of me, and he would not break me, and he would pay attention to how I responded to things, but he would push me relentlessly in the direction that he wanted me to go, and it wouldn’t matter whether I felt I could do it or not.  And he would make me better.

There is a bit of a conflict here, right?  I’m asking (perhaps) this man to be a god to me, in this particular sense, but this man is certainly not the Christian God.  I also want to be used for sex, made to suffer pain for no reason other than his (or our) pleasure, and so on.  Perhaps the real Christian God is a selfish, kinky bastard, but that’s not how I envision him. But somehow I feel this objection can be gotten around – I’m happy enough taking bits and pieces of my relationship model from different places.

I am not sure, in any case, whether turning my tin into flesh is something that is, or may be, on offer from Joscelin.  But I’ll assume, for this post, for now, that it is.  Can I choose that path?

One problem I have is that some of Jos’s stated plans and desires are, for me, strictly at odds with this vision.  He wants to degrade me.  We had a conversation about this the other night that essentially turned into a scene for me (the conversation itself) and then he used me sexually and afterwards I sobbed, not believing that aftercare could even exist, because I was so sucked down into this model where I can be made into nothing.  Being made into nothing, made to feel like nothing, is not part of my vision.  Having my beautiful tin body turned into a single point mass is not…what I have in mind, if you will.

I have long considered Jos to be “good all the way down,” but he took pains in that conversation-turned-scene to make sure I know he is also (these are my words, not his) bad, or mean, or cruel all the way down.  Is it safe to entrust one’s tin to such a person?

Last night, I was resolved to break this off.  Jos spoke of needing a commitment from me, during that conversation-scene – not in order to go forward at all, but in order to be in a committed relationship.  I don’t see this as something I can, or could ever, actually commit to.  I’m not sure it’s even OK to want someone to commit to being owned by you.

I decided to focus this year on becoming strong, and, as I explained to Jos today, I associate strength with independence.  Putting your improvement into the hands of someone else, letting them judge your progress, letting them determine your worth – these are not the acts of a strong person.  When the person is your ex-boyfriend who you still hope will take you back, it’s even worse, isn’t it?  I want to focus my year on being stronger and in more control of myself.  (Is that a pipe dream anyway?)

Totally separate from that is the question of commitment itself.  As Lewis says, I have free will, and I can push Joscelin away.  If I were to agree to have my tin made into flesh, how could I possibly trust myself not to just stop when I stop liking it, when it’s not hot for a while, when I’m just tired, worn down from my semester, lacking in energy for it?  And would I then feel like (or actually be) a failure?

So these are the crossroads at which I feel I am standing.  Maybe I don’t have a choice to make at all – maybe Jos is not interested in turning my tin into flesh, at least at whatever cost I would ultimately impose.  Maybe we are just too incompatible for it to work at all.  And I have no way of making the choice “once and for all” – at least not the “tin into flesh” choice.  But I feel as though there is some choice here – to become the best, strongest, shiniest little tin man I can be, or to put myself as a toy into the hands of another person and see what becomes of me.