Thursday night I meant to write about the time I got to spend with Devin. We’d talked about him coming over to my house for the first time, shattering the fantasy of never knowing where the key to his chastity device was held. He had said that he wanted to talk about things and I was sure we would get around to them. Unfortunately when we’re put together, there’s all kinds of energy floating around and we’re all kinds of smiles. I didn’t want to ruin all of that by talking about how dismal the outlook of chastity and Ownership was looking. I didn’t want to have him leave angry or upset. For the first time ever, I would be able to see what his body looked like all at once, instead of the bits and pieces he could show me while we were in public. I could see all the scars on his body that I’d been dragging my fingers through for weeks. I could touch him freely without getting that look from security guards or random people.
One of the first things I noticed about him when we met was that his shoulders are always tense. Always. So I helped him to relax. We got to do some talking. I didn’t just brush things under the rug. In my head, it was all going to have to come to an end soon anyhow. I didn’t want to watch him waste away, thinking that I was going to ruin his life forever. I knew I should just give it all back. I should have done it that night. But he was so sweet in my arms and so funny at dinner. Selfishly, I wanted him to make it to Monday. I wanted to take him and have him pierced. I wanted to leave an intentional mark on his body forever. I know he hates pain; I wanted him to do it for me. I wanted all of the suffering to come to an end at that point. I wanted to combine the mental suffering and the physical suffering together for me, a pinnacle of everything we accomplished, and then let him walk away from it if he wanted to. I knew he would. It might not be easy, but I knew if I offered it all back to him he’d take it. He’d be foolish not to. I just wanted to get this one thing out of it before I did it all. The night ended with laughter, a hug, a kiss, a text that he got home safe. Friday morning it was all over.
Weeks back he asked me if there was any way out. I told him there was one way out. He asked me what it was and I told him that I wasn’t foolish enough to hand the answer to him. If he honestly needed it, he’d figure it out. Without having ever discussed it, Friday morning’s text came in about how he couldn’t handle it anymore, he couldn’t take anymore. I told him I did so enjoy his suffering and I meant it. I meant it in the sense that I wanted him to think and learn and grow and challenge himself. I meant it in the fact that I derive pleasure from his suffering. I meant it because I knew it was coming to an end soon anyhow, whether he realized it or not. The next text came, full of protocol, begging to be released. Because of a stupid rule I’d made early on in the relationship, the beginning of the mind fuck, I had told him it was all or nothing. If he quit, if he ended things, I didn’t want to hear from him again. He asked for his release and I denied him so that it wouldn’t be completely over. I intended to turn right back around and release him myself, so that the protocol from before was null and void. Before I had time to type it out to him, he ended it all. I could hardly blame him.
That night I went out with Joey. We watched the game, I think. I don’t even remember because I was trying to figure out what my next move was going to be. Everything seemed so heavy, so abysmally wrong. There were feelings of guilt for what I had done and for not feeling entirely bad about what had happened. There were reasons and rationalizations and excuses and there were memories and confusion and there was no closure. I had to write him, excuse the protocol, explain that he could contact me if he wanted to. I didn’t expect that he would. I tried to lay it all out for him, to explain it all, but we got so wrapped up in misunderstandings, in failed communication, that nothing I was saying was coming out right and everything I was saying was carrying the taint of the possibility that I could have ruined his life. As I told both Joey and Blake that day, ‘Things with Devin are irrevocably ruined’.
Luckily for me, we both need closure. He came back so that we could talk. We decided that we could still try things out. We didn’t know where we were going or what we were going to do. For now, it was just good to have not lost him completely. The next couple of days were spent in strange territory and I knew we weren’t completely out of the woods. I tried to set up another day where we could just hang out and it seemed like things were going to go alright. It seemed like we might just be able to sit and talk and hash everything out. Hours before he was supposed to show up though, I got another dismal text, about how he could never have a lifestyle relationship with me. There was more to it than that, but at that point, when I’d read that, I was wondering why I bothered at all. I wasn’t even intending to push that at the moment (although to his credit I had made mention earlier in the week I would have had to give up Ownership at some point in exchange for pursuing an actual D/s relationship with him, so I totally knew where it came from), I was really just wanting to get things sorted so I knew how everything was going to work out. I asked if we could still be friends, the consolation prize, and he agreed to that. I figured that if he truly meant it, instead of him just being polite, he’d eventually contact me and we could go from there. Over Labor Day weekend, I heard absolutely nothing. I was going to stand my ground this time though, and did so well, and eventually it paid off.
Monday night he messaged to ask how I was, how I was doing. I had to admit that in regards to everything that had happened, I was over him, so to speak. I had to be. If all I could be was friends with him, all the feelings that I’d had surrounding him had to be tempered so that they wouldn’t get in the way. The feelings that I had regarding the chastity, the Ownership, whether I was in the right or in the wrong, those things I was still dealing with in a bad way. I was contemplating whether or not my selfishness could have truly ruined his life. He’d had a journal post that had made me angry and I was busy mulling over why I felt anger towards it at all. He told me that he was still a mess. The conversation wasn’t too long, but it seemed to break the ice and put us on neutral ground, which was exactly where we needed to be. Tuesday night we messaged again, this time with me leading the conversation regarding chastity devices I was looking at with another friend of mine and he asked if he could see. We talked a bit about chastity, how he still liked the idea of it, but how he didn’t think he could ever do just a simple key holding arrangement. To him, chastity was Ownership, and he wasn’t ready to be owned.
For the next while, I made sure that the conversations I was having with him were mostly vanilla. I wanted to ensure that he understood that I was interested in him as a person, outside of chastity, outside of kink, outside of any kind of sexual play. I was afraid I hadn’t made it clear enough before. We talked a lot about sports. We talked a lot about religion and the things he liked to study. We talked about music. We talked about how great our baseball team was doing and I was telling him how I wanted to see a game before the regular season ended. I knew he liked baseball and figured he would be trying to see one as well. Eventually we got smart and decided to go see the game together. I was optimistically hesitant. It was exactly a week ago that planned day that everything had ended the second time. Would something come up this week too, would he realize who he’d asked out? Would everything collapse as soon as I saw him?
The one sticking point in all of this, in all that had happened, was how the Ownership came to be. It was supposed to just be chastity. It was just supposed to be for a few days. For the longest time I was citing the fact that I had told him I wanted all or nothing and he chose all as the turning point and in a way it was, we can both agree (I think), but not in the way that we’d been referring to it originally. There were references to him feeling like I was trying to teach him a lesson about negotiations, which would have been a fantastic lesson for him to learn (and as a side effect learned despite it not being the point) but that didn’t even have anything to do with the Ownership that he’d found himself in. There were accusations that I just took anything that wasn’t clearly defined, which…I can understand why he felt that way. I thought I knew how he liked for me to communicate and I was trying to communicate on that level, in that way, which left me unable to say what I really felt, which would have solved this problem we were having ages ago. Finally I was able to articulate what had happened exactly. Ownership occurred when you bought into it. One night it was me telling him that I may never unlock the device and what could he do? I had the key around my neck. He bought into it. Another night I told him that I wanted to put him in a solid metal device, like Thumper’s, so that he couldn’t even see my cock anymore. He bought into it. The longer it went on, as the days passed, it was something more intense than before. You may never have another orgasm. You may never see that fleshy bit between your legs again. You may never have intercourse with a person ever again. Each new thing made acceptance of what he’d done and what he agreed to harder and harder for him to bear but it wasn’t until he stopped buying into it that it was over. It wasn’t until he realized that he could walk away from it all that Ownership ceased.
The game was fun, but awkward. Neither of us really knew in what capacity we were going out. I was just happy to look into that man’s eyes again and to see his smile. I got to buy him a beer, sit close to him, and squeal over my favorite baseball player while he rattled off stats and answered trivia and sang (poorly ;) ) to the music that was being played. We had a good time. After that we went out for dinner. After that he came back to my house. After that, he told me he had his toy bag in the trunk. Vanilla date was over. We didn’t do much, we didn’t go far. I just wanted to see all his toys and what he really looked like in that hood of his. I watched him melt when he was touched, listened to the sounds he made when he was touched. We stayed up talking until way past pumpkin thirty*. I made jokes about how he made it over on a Thursday and he was quick to retort that hopefully he could make it through a Friday without proclaiming the sky was falling.
He did!
There was something that shifted for us. Whether it was the loss of the power dynamic or finally settling how on earth we ended up as far as we did in as little time as we did, I’m not sure. I’m not ready to question. But when he asked me if I was busy on Sunday and I replied no and he asked if he could come over, I knew things were going well. When he got here and we laid out the toys and started an actual negotiation, I knew things were going well. When he was willing to try my floggers again, I knew things were going well. We didn’t actually make it that far, but we had a few hours worth of play and I think we both walked away from that pretty happy. After that, it was off to chase storms. The storms won, of course, but we ended up in a pretty and quiet place with only two other souls around us. I’ll never forget what his face looks like bathed in moonlight and the other couple will probably never forget how hard I laughed when I told him to just go behind the sign because I didn’t want to leave just because he had to use the bathroom. Honestly, what kind of boy are you if you don’t make good use of the fact that you can pee standing up?
Since then, he’s joined me at a social, made good on the photos he took for Puppy Aven on Puppy Play Day, and we’re making plans to attend a play party together. Hopefully somewhere between now and then we’ll have another evening just for ourselves. Meanwhile, during the days, we talk as much as we can, about as many things as we can. I’m learning about surfer music and hiding the fact that I consumed Oreos as breakfast. I’m being more direct and open about the things I think about and want. Every day there’s a smile because of him somewhere in the day. I don’t know where we’re going, I don’t know how long it will take us to get there, but I can say that I honestly enjoy the journey with him, lame jokes and all, and so I will remain cautiously optimistic.
*the time at which old men turn into pumpkins and fall asleep