Lull

There’s a quiet that’s descended over my life now. A period of reflection. For once, everything seems to be going okay. Junk just had her birthday and she chose to celebrate with a lifetime friend, me, and the Rook. It was explained that the Rook and I are dating and her parents seemed okay with that. They were already privy to my polyamorous lifestyle but this was the first time they actually saw me with any of my others. The brief introduction as we were unloading furniture into their garage doesn’t really count.

For a week or two, things were rough with Junk. There was a clash of fetishes going on but I think it’s mostly been situated. I may never be able to go as far as she’d like with one or two of her interests, but I’ve given way on some of the smaller kinks that she would really like to indulge and so far I’m doing okay. I talk to Rook when I feel I need to, keeping the private parts of it private, despite our intimate nature between the three of us, and that’s seemed to help clear the air on my part. It helps me sort through why I feel the way I do without dragging Junk into it. I would never want to make her feel bad for what gets her off or turns her on or makes her feel complete. I’m happy I can share with her the things I can.

A slight hiccup developed in the last of my relationships. The switch was flipped again. He’d gone from happy and proud to be submissive to feeling ashamed once again. People know his secret. They’ve seen him naked, locked up, restrained, hooded, tied. They know he submits to me. They knew it long before they saw it. He finds it shameful. He finds it humiliating. He finds some pleasure in that. I started to ask if I could push it further and he told me that he didn’t want me to ask. He just wanted me to do it. That was all the permission that I needed, truly. No one has to tell me twice to just go ahead and take what I want.

I told him I hated asking in the first place. It goes against my nature. I have to negotiate everything with the Rook (which is good — I need the practice) but when it comes to him, I just want to thieve it away like before. Steal it from him. Let him wallow in the emptiness that it creates and then wrap him up in that humiliation, envelop him in the love that his sacrifices create. I told him it was hard for me to ask anyhow, since I already felt like he was mine.

If I felt that way, why I haven’t I assumed control yet? he asks me.

Someday, when his conscious mind and his subconscious mind come together, he’ll know the answer to that question. Until then, I have scenes to plot.

String

There’s a whole ball of string that came unraveled over the past couple of weeks. As it was happening, I wanted an outlet. I needed to talk about it. Luckily, I had several close friends who decided to weigh in on the situation. Most of them were not impressed. Most were not happy about the decisions that were made. In the end, the choice was mine and mine alone and I did what my heart told me to do and that was the best I could do and is the best that I can do and at this moment I feel as though I’ve made the right choice and am following that particular path and hope to continue to walk that path for some time.

The issue at hand stemmed from a lie. That’s been discussed to death though, at least between the two people that matter. We talked about why it happened, how it made us feel, how we can prevent it from happening in the future, what we expect to get out of the apology, what forgiveness is and is not, what expectations lie ahead of us now that we’ve moved on, and it’s pretty much a done deal. No, it wasn’t a good thing to do. No, it should never be repeated. Yes, he needs to trust me more. Yes, he needs to give me a chance to give my own individual response. No, it wouldn’t have been fair for him to just walk away. Yes, I would have forgiven him regardless. No, forgiveness doesn’t equal the continuation of a relationship. Yes, I can stand to see him again.

For days and a week after the incident I had more and more questions. Once the initial shock was over, I had more specific questions. The why and the how and the psychology behind it. What else had happened? I was ready to know. But the point was that it was done and over. After the apology was issued, then there were more problems. I didn’t handle it ‘correctly’. There was an outburst over the public nature of his apology. It didn’t seem ‘sincere’. Although to me it was sincere, because he’d been apologizing for days. He knew what he’d done. He knew what risks he’d taken. He knew he wanted to do whatever he could to set things right with me again. Not for the sake of being with me, but for the sake of just not hurting me again.

So we continued with our original plans. A lunch. A date. Time spent together. The more time we spend together, the easier it gets. The jabs are fewer and further between. We both understand that to forgive is not the same as to forget. Trust has to be rebuilt. We spend the time together to know each other, so we don’t make the same assumptions over and over again.

Somewhere in there, something shifted. Something changed. The work he’d been doing internally started to show. It didn’t shine so bright that one weekend, but the next it was better and after that was best. I’d invited him to a party. He’d been to one with me before. We were supposed to play but he backed out at the last moment. Mostly, he just attended. He could play with me in the hotel room but not where other people could see us. He was ashamed to submit to me.

Hours into this party, as the demo was taking place, he told me he wasn’t sure he could go through with it. As soon as he said it, I shut down. I closed him out. The affectionate touches that we’d been sharing all night, all week, they were done. I was working on building the walls again. There was only so much I could take. I couldn’t handle being around someone that was ashamed to be with me, to be seen with me, someone that couldn’t handle others knowing that he was choosing to surrender to me. I walked away. I spoke with others. Eventually the demo ended and it was time to play, only my play partner wasn’t game. Or so I thought.

We took a moment to exchange words; I needed to know what he was going to do with himself while I continued with the other scenes I had hoped to have that evening. He said he didn’t want to go back on his word and he’d given his word that he was going to play with me tonight. I asked him if he was certain he wanted to do that and started to explain the scene so that he knew what to expect. We pulled out his toys, walked to the room, and his scene began.

I got him laced and strapped into his hood. The four locks went on. The Rook tied him up and we turned him around to face the wall. The violet wand was plugged in and the chastity device was where everyone could see it. There were onlookers in the hallway, surely scoping out this different kind of scene. This is how we played. There was no impact play. There was rope, which is often prevalent in our parties, but it wasn’t the primary focus of the event. But then the energy of the scene behind us got to him and he wasn’t going to be able to drop like he normally did. We cut the scene short, got him out. He apologized once, twice, for not being able to do exactly what I wanted him to do, but it didn’t matter. I was proud anyhow.

After a little time out of the hood, we walked around the party. There were medical restraints, something we were both interested in. I got him in a straight jacket, a leather muzzle, and ankle restraints. We weren’t sure about the muzzle until it was tight enough that he couldn’t talk. He wasn’t sure about being able to see, but when he realized the potential to be mobile, follow me around like that, he seemed to like it more. We had a clash of desires for a moment. I wanted to see what the Rook was up to and was going to leave him behind but he said he wanted to see too. So I told him he could come with me and he protested, not like that! So I removed all of his restraints. Later, he told me he wished I’d made him. I told him we were too new into this for me to assume that kind of control. I wished I could have, wished I didn’t feel I had to ask permission, but I’d rather go it slow and do it right than to fuck it all up again.

I took him home and put him in his hood. We spent time naked together, cuddling, fucking. We woke up to one another. We spent more time together naked. More time fucking. Some time talking while we cuddled. The morning drew on into the afternoon and we needed lunch. We spent a lot of time talking about the connection between us, how we were always drawn back to one another. He talked about how he felt that he was owned, even when he wasn’t with me. How the only thing he could think to call me, the only thing that felt right, was ‘Master’. I spoke of how I hated turning him loose, but how I knew he had to learn for himself that this was where he belonged. I hated that I couldn’t protect his heart for him but that it had to be broken in order for it to heal, in order for it to be given away. And then I showed him how easily I could hold his heart in my hands and he agreed in silence that I did, in fact, possess his heart.

Each night that we spend together we spend touching. We spend talking. We make plans for days ahead of where we live now. We make plans for the near future and I don’t question if we’ll make it that far. We don’t talk about what we are to one another, other than important. Right now it doesn’t matter if he’s my sub, my bottom, or my slave. Right now it doesn’t matter if we want  just a bit of this lifestyle to spice things up or if we’d like to go all the way. He’s afraid he could go to extremes and I’m hopeful that he can, but wouldn’t let us go too far. I’d keep things realistic. Sometimes it seems so ordinary, to just be wrapped up in him, to just want to touch another person, to show them exactly who I am. Each day we spend together, I feel what was once a single golden thread keeping us connected strengthening, encircling another, until eventually it will be a cable that cannot be cut. It’s frightening and exhilarating.

The damage between us has been repaired. We’re working on building a solid foundation. Eventually, sometime in the future, I hope he can rebuild with our friends again as well. I hope that he can get on level ground with the Rook, with Junk. I hope that we can all be together, care about one another. I suspect it will take some time though. Not everyone can forgive as easily as another. Not everyone has the capacity to put such things behind them as quickly as I can. Not everyone can see the magic that’s working inside of him right now and that’s fine. I don’t expect that everyone can see the sparkle in his eye or the way that he carries himself differently. They can’t feel the change in his touch. They don’t understand the look in his eye. They could never know the significance between grey and green and sapphire and crystalline blue in his eyes. Those are things I know, things that I study, things that I see. As long as I see them, believe in him, I like to think he can continue to grow.

That is the gift that I share readily with those closest to me in my life. With devin, with Junk, with the Rook — I want to see them grow and develop and take on challenges and succeed. I want to see them love and be loved. I want to see them struggle and triumph. I want to see them recognize their strengths and weaknesses and find partners that complement them. I want to build a life and a future and hope with each of them. I want to harbor happiness within us all. I want for every person to know the peace, the joy, that I’ve felt over the past while, all because I’ve found the right people for me.

Directions

My path has always been clear to me, ever since I was technically too young to be in this lifestyle. I went through periods of time where I doubted I could do it. I went through a period of a few years where I rebelled against it — I believed I could lead a perfectly vanilla life and be fine with it — and I’ve gone through periods of time where I wished that this wasn’t my path, because it was too difficult. But I never felt I was headed in the wrong direction. I never felt like this wasn’t a part of me. I never felt as though I could give up and be happy.

This last year was very eye-opening for me. I had hoped to learn a few lessons and I learned more than I could have ever imagined. There were small, obvious lessons and then there were bigger lessons that I could even begin to learn until I got out of that year and looked back on it with a fresh pair of eyes and with the knowledge that I had gained. In the beginning part of this year, I had to learn some new things about me, re-inspect a few limits I felt I had, and I had to do this in order to better know a complete and whole me. I haven’t deviated from my path, though I thought for a moment I might, but I have widened the path a little more, so that a small variety of people might be able to walk with me, instead of just one.

Last year I desperately wanted to find just one person that I could start building everything with. I wanted to pour my heart, my soul, and my energy into making that person mine. I wanted to train them, teach them, mold them, love them, care for them, and lead us down our life path together. I succeeded in finding him, but he wasn’t ready. I tried to tug him along, I tried to trick him along, and I tried to coerce him along. But he’s stubborn, which comes as no surprise. So eventually, I had to leave him. That was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do. Either he would catch up or he wouldn’t. Either he was supposed to go the distance with me or he wasn’t. I couldn’t control that though. All I could do was to leave markers as to where I was going and where I’d be and he’d either follow in his own good time and find his way to me or he wouldn’t.

In the meanwhile, I still had one with me. Lately the question regarding us had been ‘What is your relationship?’. That’s a very difficult question to answer. It began as a pretty vanilla dating situation. Girlfriends. That was a term I’d never heard before. It’d been years and years and years since I’d been someone’s ‘girlfriend’ and I wasn’t entirely certain how I felt about it. But a few short weeks later, she had a collar around her neck, a new name, and she was following protocol and ritual. So even if she still called me her ‘girlfriend’, because that was what she was most familiar with, a vanilla relationship we did not have. So the next logical step was to assume that we were M/s, which isn’t entirely accurate but also isn’t inaccurate. I control what goes in her mouth, she reports what she eats. She asks permission to use the restroom or to leave me sight when we’re together. We have no formal address that she uses with me, but she has one ‘honorific’ that she prefers to use when addressing me that no one else uses in quite the same way. She kneels when she serves me a drink. She does what I say. So how is this not a M/s relationship?

I don’t think that she’s going to be mine forever. I think that she will be with me for a good amount of time. I even think she’ll be serving me for a while. But I also believe that someone will come in, want to own her, want to be her everything to her, and when that happens she will probably be ready for it, and in that case I will have to let her go. I think that we will probably be friends from here until forever, but I don’t think our forever is going to be the way that it is now with one another. I’m not grooming her to be my slave, so to speak. I am grooming her to understand what she may have to deal with if she is someone’s slave. I am working on a few general improvements that would benefit her and anyone else she dates. I am mentoring her, in a way. I allow her to date outside of our relationship which, to me, is the biggest indicator that she is not mine. I rarely share what is solely mine.

As the years and months pass, I continue to read. I continue to talk to people. I continue to refine what it is that I desire. I went to Behind Closed Doors last year and I felt like I was home. I felt like I was around like-minded people who could understand what I was hoping for out of a relationship. I go to TNG parties and I feel like I can learn and I can teach. I feel like the technical aspects of the play I want to do are there for me and I’m grateful for that, but TNG is not going to provide the kind of relationship that I desire. So I sent out emails to those who are living the lifestyle I want. I go to different groups, their discussions and their socials, in hopes of discovering something there. I remember back to what I used to do when I was aching for my own to train and I remember that I would mentor.

Strangely enough, more often than not, it was submissives that I was mentoring and not other Doms. Ego gets in the way a lot. I remember two specifically: Buddy and pup. Buddy was dating a pro-Domme who just didn’t want the lifestyle in her private life because she dealt with male submissives all day long. I had to explain to Buddy that if he wanted to submit to his Mistress, he actually had to let go. He had to put her first. She had to become his world. If he made her feel like that, like she was his focus, she would return the favor. So while he was expecting lessons in anal training, in how to hold off on orgasm, I taught him slightly different. I taught him how it felt to come home after a long day of people demanding things of you. I taught him how it felt to never be appreciated. Our final lesson was a writing assignment. I asked him to write all of the things that he appreciated about his girlfriend, the woman he wanted to be his Mistress, and how he planned to make life easier for her. A week later, our time together was up. She was touched by his thoughtfulness and he had delivered well enough on his promise to make the relationship more about her than him that she took him as her submissive, rather than just her vanilla boyfriend.

I don’t know if it actually stuck. I don’t know if he ever reverted to putting himself first or if he truly understood what we were trying to do. I don’t know if someone can go from being selfish like that to living for someone else. I like to think they can. I like to think that if someone loves hard enough, they can see through another’s eyes, and they can adjust their behavior accordingly. I like to think they’re still happy together, or that the relationship for however long it lasted was more happy than sad.

Pup was submissive to me, learning how to be a better Dominant by tackling some of the essentials, like learning how to better communicate. In order to better communicate, he had to learn how to better put his feelings into words and before he could do that, he had to know that having emotions was okay, which I thought was a silly thing to have to learn but quickly found out to what detriment that thinking could be. This endeavor did not have a good outcome, but that had nothing to do with our training. In our training, he was learning how to feel, how to communicate those feelings, and he was learning that it was okay for him to feel those emotions. He could be angry or happy or sad without ridicule and I think he appreciated that. He could be sad or jealous or hurt and we could talk about it, which seemed foreign to him. And once we were able to get through the idea that he could not only feel that way but that he could express those ideas and that we could move on from them in a healthy way, he was able to communicate much better. Once he was able to communicate, the world opened up to him.

I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing or if he’s happy. I hope he is. I hope everything worked out for him. I’m not sure if his relationship ever took a turn toward D/s like he was aiming for when he agreed to submit to me in able to mentor under me and learn from me, but I like to hope that no matter what path he chose, they chose, they were happier together because of it.

So it should have come as no surprise to me when I let go of the boy that I had deemed as mine and took on the Rook. I wasn’t exactly expecting it. I hadn’t even known him for that long. When we met, I had no idea what the relationship was going to flesh out as, but it turned out to be exactly what I needed and it helped to fill the void that I was getting over at the time.

In this situation, we started at nearly the same place as my pup. Rook was further ahead in that this was something he was already putting work into, so I was pleased with that. There are still some times where emotions and communication might be difficult, but for the most part he can tell someone when he’s feeling okay with them and when they’re encroaching in his personal space and he needs them to back off. I found buttons and pushed them to see how he would react and now I know which buttons to stay away from. He makes it clear. He draws boundaries and limits well. More than that though, he’s able to relieve boundaries and limits with people on an individual basis over time, when trust is developed, the sorts of things that are essential to having an intimate relationship with someone.

Once those things were demonstrated to my satisfaction, everything else could take place. The fun could begin! Recently I showed him how to flog. We had two demo bottoms: one that I’m intimately familiar with because we scene together often and one that I only knew of from a friend level, that I’d never played with, but that was willing to bottom for the Rook. Before I would let him use my floggers on her, I wanted to make sure that he knew what they felt like, so I took him to the hallway and did a few demo swings. I showed him my favorite one and how it could be a thuddy feel (and what a thuddy feel even meant) and how it could also feel stingy (depending on how fast and how little of the falls hit the skin). I taught him where to hit, how not to wrap, and then I swapped out for my deadlier flogger. I told him not to look at it, so he wouldn’t scare himself. Just focus on the sensation and how it differed from the first. Then I handed both floggers to him and we set up our scene.

Have you ever flogged to Flogging Molly? He was curious about it and I like to treat my people right, so I pulled out that CD and that was our scene music.

I had a good time with my bottom, we usually do. We had an audience in a loft watching what we were doing. I was giving instructions to Rook as he was standing on the other side of the bed. He was a nervous wreck. Eventually he was able to stop worrying about killing her and just worry about whether or not he was hitting her to her satisfaction. He did everything I wanted him to: asked for feedback, used the number system to gain information, checked in with her often, and ensured that she knew that the color system was how she could stop things. I tried to teach him about the crescendo of a scene, but that will have to come in another lesson. All in all, it was a great first flogging. I laughed often because it seemed so similar to my own first flogging scene, except I didn’t have anyone to mentor me, my bottom didn’t have any idea what he was doing, and I was so afraid of wrapping that I stuffed pillows around him to ensure it wouldn’t happen. I can look back now and determine that that scene was awful but the feelings I got from it were amazing.

But all in all, it left me wondering where I was going and what direction I was heading in. For the time being, I was standing still. I was letting the stream run around me. The Rook wasn’t mine, so to speak — I am training him for someone else. Junk was being trained just fine, but she had a girl on the side that I had to make time and room for. Then, in the midst of my staring up at the clouds wondering if I should get out of the water, the one I feltwas mine suddenly caught up to where there rest of us were.

Chaos. There was a whirlwind of emotion and thought. There were words of all kinds exchanged. Good, bad, happy, sad, angry, longing. I guess he’d followed the path I laid out for him. Or maybe it is his own path and it just led him to the same stream that I was standing in, I don’t know. I imposed nothing on him. No protocol, no ritual. We never defined what we were doing. There was some play, some teasing, some flirting. Already there have been days where I was certain he was going to be through with it again. Insurmountable differences. We were moving forward for a bit, but now we’ve both stopped. At first I thought I was going to struggle with it. But when he clarified that he just needed time to breathe, time to think, so he wasn’t so reactionary the way he’s always been, I let go.

When he came back wanting to be owned, that meant it was up to me to decide whether or not I wanted him. As we talked more about it, there were two things he didn’t think he could let go of. Therefore, he couldn’t request to be owned. There was still work he had to do on himself. In the past, this was where we would break contact. This is where he would run off and just do whatever it was he felt I was denying him. We talked about it, he admitted that was in fact what he did, and he told me he wasn’t going to cut communication. In fact, he didn’t even break protocol. So instead of flipping out on him, instead of feeling like I was doing something so utterly wrong again, I took a breath and just stepped back into the stream.

Patience, is what she whispered to me all weekend long. She even made some comment about how it would take him longer because he was older, more set in his ways. I didn’t understand then (do I ever?). I thought she meant it about something else. I had to have patience and understanding with him while he worked through the layers and years and teachings and lessons and decided if it was worth throwing all of those away to continue down this path or not. It’s not easy. I know, because I’m working on my own issues. But we agreed that we weren’t going to do the ‘all or nothing’ situation any longer and so far we’re abiding by that, much to my surprise. He can’t be owned right now, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t still be friends, or play partners. It doesn’t mean that we can’t still work toward it. It doesn’t mean that everything about us is wrong. It just means we can’t take that step right now. And that’s okay.

The three of us sat in a meeting yesterday, my girl, the Rook, and myself. We sat and we listened attentively while our gracious host spoke of what to do when scenes went wrong. We sat and listened while others discussed the importance of playing within a relationship to get the edge that they wanted. They discussed ritual and protocol. They discussed the younger generations and whether or not they were being safe. They talked about the Old Guard ways (for lack of a better term) and how they were falling out of favor. I nodded or shook my head, mostly to myself. I would whisper in the Rook’s ear that we either agreed with what was being said or didn’t agree with what was being said. He could ask about it later if he wanted, but I wanted to mark it right then and there. Finally, I got called out. I got called out by someone that was watching me, that saw what I was doing, and who understood.

I declared that the younger generation was safe. I could speak to it because I am a DM for the TNG group. I am at the board meetings. I am the parties. I know the procedures. I know what we can and cannot do. I know how far we can go. In fact, I believed we were playing safer than they were. The younger generation is not lost, I explained, because they’re speaking to lifestyle and TNG isn’t about lifestyle, we’re about kink. But, they can rest assured, because there are youth out there that want to have the relationships that they’re talking about. We aren’t just wild hooligans like they seem to think we are, or like the TNG group used to be, but we are mature players who keep safety at the forefront of our minds.

They were quiet after that, and stopped referencing the younger players as the unsafe ones.

Then the Rook got a chance to talk. He told someone about how admitting you don’t know something isn’t weakness and I wanted to hug him for that. Admitting you don’t know everything isn’t weak. Lack of ego doesn’t equate to weakness. He told of our flogging, of how I made him feel the flogger before I’d let him use it. He talked about how I’m mentoring him and how he wasn’t going it alone. Especially because he could! He’s a good looking guy who knows rope and wants play. He could (and does) have girls throwing themselves at him. Instead of just running in and doing whatever, he’s taking the time to learn, he’s exploring, he’s doing right by him so he can do right by others.

When he was done speaking, we both got kudos. Kudos for him wanting to learn and for being a stand-up guy (which you deserve — good job Rook) and I got kudos for doing things the way I do and for properly teaching someone. ‘Properly’ is just an interpretation, but this is how I see the lifestyle. I love it. I respect it. Blake once told me I live and breathe the lifestyle, even if I don’t mean to, and that was what he liked so much about me. For others, it’s been a problem in the past. It’s not anything I can or cannot do. It’s just a part of who I am. It was wonderful being able to go into this meeting of complete strangers, of people I didn’t really know (but had heard of), and to be able to walk out feeling like I could belong there if I wanted to. I got thanked for coming out! I was told they were happy I had been there. I’m pretty certain we’ll be back, as a matter of fact, because I am certain this is the next step in my education.

But most of all, no matter how much I would like to have my one, the person that I am going to build my life with, a relationship that will be so full of love that we can let others in and help take care of them while they’re on their journey too, I don’t need it like I thought I did. I don’t need that other to do what I want to be doing, as was pointed out to me last night as I sat around with my friends, with my menagerie. I can do this all on my own and that was what I needed to learn.

*As a side note, when it was introduced to me as the idea of having a ‘menagerie’ I wasn’t entirely certain it was fitting. There’s one other in our TNG group who has a nice little entourage, which sounded nicer when it was first put into place. Tibbers seemed to have a better grasp on what ‘menagerie’ meant than me and once I finally looked up the actual definition of the word, I have to agree that it’s much more fitting for me. While I didn’t much care for the idea that anyone I play with or care about is for exhibit only (people-collectors make me feel weird and I never want to be like them) they are often put on exhibit by me because I’m accentuating their best qualities: the way one can bottom for a particularly intense scene; the service another provides in even the most chaotic times; and the ability to reach right to the soul of a person, to love them wholly and completely for who they are, and to provide wisdom and guidance without overstepping any boundaries. The last part of the definition was most fitting though: an unusual and varied group of people. My Misfits. I adore them all so.

Forgiveness

This blog post could also be named: How Aki doesn’t follow her own rules. Additionally, it could also be entitled: Junk — this is a What Not To Do for your first dates. Onward.

The conversations over the past couple of months have looked like this: If they break up, you’re not really going to take him back again, are you? What he did to you was terrible and unforgivable. You deserve better people in your life, people who aren’t ashamed of who they are and who aren’t ashamed of who you are. You should never be someone’s secret.

I have great friends, I do. They want to look out for me, they want the best for me, they think I deserve the most amazing people and I’m grateful people have such high opinions of me, but in this one particular case, there was no advice in the world that was going to help me out.

I knew the downsides to being with him and I knew the downsides to ever going back to him. I saw the train wreck and if I had been rational, I would have said ‘Damn, that’s a train wreck’ and would have avoided it like the plague. Unfortunately, in matters of the heart, sometimes the same words get twisted up so it sounds more like, ‘Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn, that’s a train wreck!’ and I interpret it as ‘I like trains and I like fire and things are shiny and I wonder what’s going on and I should go inspect it’ and there I go.

Hindsight is 20/20. The first time we split, I knew we were going to split. He needed to explore. Hell, the second time we split I knew we were going to split because there was unresolved business in two different places: with her and with me. That would account for all the bouncing. Submissive. Dominant. Top. Bottom. Both. It’s the both that can trip a person up. Does one outweigh the other? Where do you find happiness when you’re always sitting on the fence?

There were things that definitely would have to change. I wasn’t going to deal with him wondering what he was when everyone else in the world knew what he was. I wasn’t going to deal with being someone’s secret. I can’t hide who I am. I wasn’t going to deal with his threat to leave anytime something got hard. There was a lot I wasn’t willing to put up with any longer. My patience and generosity had been used up and spat out and I was done.

When we got in contact again, it wasn’t a plea for me to own him. It was finding out how I was doing. It was sending out feelers to see if I would be receptive to him at all. It was cautious and restrained. We talked for a while about nothing, then we talked for a while about him, then we talked for a while about me. Then we talked for a good long while about ‘us’ and ‘them’. Once ‘them’ got resolved and he was done and felt he had moved on, he had to clean up the mess he left of ‘us’ and the mess he left of ‘me’ and the mess he left of himself.

He wanted to know why, if I owned him, did I release him. He couldn’t be in a loveless relationship and he was in love with her, not me, and she loved him back now, so that felt like grounds for release to me. Also, the path we were headed down was bad. Real bad. I could either release him, let him roam and do what he needed to do, tie up loose ends, or I could stop all power exchange, stop all play, stop everything we’d built, and tear it all down with him, but for no apparent reason. It was well within my right to do, but it didn’t change the fact that the yappy terrier in the front yard would remain barking at us as we built this house anew. I hate yappy dogs. He needed to go and take care of that once and for all.

Now he has. It doesn’t mean she’s been eliminated from his life, it just means that she’s been eliminated from the possibility of him building his life with her, and that’s good enough. I don’t mind if she’s fenced up in the yard across the street; I just didn’t want her in my yard.

I asked why she was so important that he felt we ought to drop communication with one another entirely and he didn’t have a good answer. He didn’t have a good answer because I already knew the answer. Even if we didn’t share love, we shared intense emotions for one another. We had a rich (not always good, but rich) history with one another. Then there was the energy exchange that we had with one another. I had pull on him. I had an advantage over him. I was warned by a close friend that if I wanted him bad enough, I could probably rearrange the cosmos to have him. I didn’t want to influence him. He didn’t feel he was giving his all to that relationship if we were still in contact. He was going to have to choose one or the other at some point, and if you don’t choose the person you’re in a relationship with, you’re doing it wrong. In order to tie up loose ends, he was going to have to put all of his attention and focus and energy and emotion into the person he was supposed to be with. I understood. It just didn’t make it hurt less. He was mine, after all, in my head.

Then there was the piercing. Everyone knew he hated piercings. Everyone knew that he had a hard limit of needles and blood and most men just don’t want steel in their dicks. When he agreed to be pierced, we all thought he was serious and ready for commitment. It’s not likely he would allow that just to break up with me in another two weeks, right? That was my symbol of ownership. We had no collars, no rings, no permanent chastity device. That was the symbolism of the relationship we had with one another. So when we broke up two weeks later, I asked him to remove the ring that I chose for him once he was healed. Until then, it felt like it was still mine. He felt like he was still mine. So he did just that. When he healed, he changed the piercing, and my last connection to him was cut. Then he didn’t put it back in. Then he healed up. Then, he wasn’t owned any longer. He wasn’t pierced any longer. All he had to show for what we were and what we did was a scar. Just like life. He didn’t have me in his life anymore, just the scar of what we’d done.

At first I was hurt that he came back when it was over. I should have been good enough to be a friend regardless. Then I was hurt that he was going to remain her friend while he was seeking a relationship with me. She wasn’t a good enough friend to be around regardless! Then I realized that I didn’t really care. My issues were with trust and respect and something completely different.

Our dinner conversation went like this: there were things I misunderstood about their relationship, there were things he misunderstood about our relationship, and there were things we misunderstood about one another.

He told me: he has accepted who he is (and has actually done things about it independent of me), he is working through the issues that he didn’t want to face before, and he was sorry for hurting him.

I told him: I know.

After dinner, we went back to my place. I’d told him that everyone had advised that we not do anything for six months. I was taking their suggestion. Six months. Six months of what? Of punishing him? It was so close to the six years of punishment he’d had in another relationship. He was sorry, issues were resolved, he’d learned a lot about himself in the interim, who was I to keep punishing him? That didn’t mean I was going to trust him 100%. He knows this. It doesn’t mean that he gets back everything we had before right away. He knows this. That doesn’t mean that I think he made wrong choices along the way. He knows this.

The night before, after a day of tearing him apart, dissecting every mistake he’d made in all his past relationships, after talking about how we weren’t going to do anything sexual until July, I asked him how he felt about chastity. I asked him how he felt about chastity with me. I asked him how he felt about wearing his chastity device for me again. (This is the part where I don’t follow my own rules, in case anyone was wondering.)

So he locked the device on and went to sleep. Then during the day, I made a joke about extending chastity. Just because I could. He agreed that I could, I was the one with the key. I quipped about his poor negotiation skills, the very fault that sent him in a tailspin the first time we tried this, and he replied that he didn’t need to negotiate with me because he wanted to be owned by me. Moreso, the point he was trying to make, was that he trusted me. I told him I didn’t want to go down this route this evening. I didn’t want him flipping his shit over poor negotiations and me trapping him and his life being ruined, but as it turns out, he wasn’t anywhere near that.

I tried to not stare. I tried to not touch him. I tried to be angry with him. I tried to be hurt. I sat on a bench and held his hand. We touched during dinner. Eventually I kissed him. We did energy exchange. I asked him about that ring he used to wear, the one where when he was drowsy and coming back from a deep sub space he had mistaken for a wedding ring of sorts, believing honestly that we were in a committed relationship akin to marriage. That is what Ownership is supposed to be, so I never corrected him. The sorrow that washed over him, the sadness that enveloped him as he confessed to me that it was gone, it took me by surprise. He admitted he was stupid for taking it out and that he wished he hadn’t. Now all he had was a scar to remind him of the life he had, the life he so desperately wanted.

Then when he was back to his normal self, when we were sitting on the couch together, I threw all the rules I’d made out the window. (This, in case anyone was wondering, is what Junk shouldn’t do on a first date.) I unfastened his pants, I pulled him out, clad in that plastic chastity device, and I teased him. I ran my fingers over it where he could watch and know the sensations it should produce but didn’t, because there was a barrier between my touch and his cock. I talked about how I wondered if I could slip the whole thing inside of me and if he’d be able to feel how warm I was. I climbed up in his lap and pressed my hands to his chest. I kissed him hard and deep and suddenly I was in a whole different world. Clear, crisp air. Freedom. There was no pain, only love. We were together in our little world again and I could feel the device pressed against my clit. He made no move. He wasn’t going to push anything. He wanted me to be comfortable, to do what was right for me, but I really doubted he was going to complain about what was taking place.

I used him. I used him in a way that I hadn’t done in a long, long time. I put my mouth to his, I whispered the secret place I like to be shown affection, and he figured out just the right way to do it. I encouraged him to be active, participatory, aggressive and he went for it immediately. Then, as I reached climax, I gave him the very breath that was filled with my pleasure and my hope and my relief and my love and I put it right back into him where it’ll stay for at least another few days, because he won’t be due for his own orgasm until Sunday…if he’s lucky.

Search Terms

This has to be one of my favorite things about WordPress: search terms. A lot of people that turn up at my journal are using some very fun search terms. Some of the time I feel bad because I doubt I have posts that match what they’re looking for. Sometimes, I just haven’t put that kind of material into a journal post before. I thought maybe I would do a quick post about the things that people are looking for and whether or not they can be found here in my blog.

feminized while tied up – No, I wish. I did have a fantastic fantasy about doing something like this with dil. For each of my pets, I’ve chosen a color that I think goes with them rather well. For him, it was purple. For the last while that we were together, I was rubbing out orgasm after orgasm while thinking about him appearing as a female, bound in purple rope, and gagged. I threw him over the arm of my couch, strapped one on, and went to town on his ass. Unfortunately this fantasy never came to fruition. Someday I plan to enact this with someone though.

fetlife gender queer  - I am on Fetlife, under this name. I am not listed as Gender Queer because I don’t know that I identify strongly enough with that to make that kind of proclamation on a site where there are genuinely gender queer folk that I look up to and respect. Gender Queer is definitely a term I use in describing myself in my blog though, because of the confusion that I’ve had expressing both my feminine and masculine sides.

mummification orgasm – Why would I give them an orgasm? Mummification is great fun though. I have done a few in the recent past. Try clicking the words ‘saran wrap’ or ‘mummification’ in my tag cloud to the immediate right.

“my husband” “i own his cock” chastity – My husband is the one person that I never played with! I did own a cock once upon a time — it belonged to Devin. I did chastity for a while with him as well, and have done chastity with every pet I’ve had, although Devin was the only one I got to put in an actual device. Check back soon for a few tales about Sergie and some long distance chastity, complete with a device!

despite the intense stimulation he knew he would not be permitted to cum – He sure hoped though.

lingerie store humiliation – I did take Joey to a sex shop on our first date (yes, I am that kind of woman). We bought some stockings but I let him come to my house to try them on. On a subsequent visit, I had him take a few skirts into the changing room and try them on. Was he humiliated? Pretty sure he was! These are things that I find pretty ordinary though, so I didn’t think much of it until I saw how red in the face he was when I had to ask a store clerk to open the door for him.

“second+life”+feminization – This one’s fun because I did play in Second Life for quite some time. It’s actually where I met my first pet Lin and my pup Kayn. Lin was feminized to some degree and now, in retrospect, I’m pretty sure we engaged in some little play as well. To me it didn’t seem much like feminization at the time because he was simply so feminine. I think of feminization more like when I take a very masculine person and have them go through the motions of being a woman. That kind of thing with Lin was simply natural. There probably aren’t a lot of stories about that in this blog, but feminization was a very big part of the kinds of relationships I sought and that’s only recently changed.

keeping my boy under chastity – Chastity may very well be my biggest fetish right now. A lot of my fantasies revolve around it. I plan out quite a few scenes that have chastity playing an integral part in it. I got to play around with it for a while and now I’m hooked like crack. I do hope that it can someday be a part of my relationships again but for right now, I’m told I should just let things run their course and see where they take me. (Besides, there’s always Sergie who’s dumb sweet enough to play with me, even long distance!)

Akalashi - This is probably the term that brings the most people to my blog. I like to think that if you know my name, you have some idea of who I am and you’re just trying to stalk me. That’s cool. I like stalkers. But if you’re curious about who I am, want more information, or just want to drop me a line, you can find me on Fetlife or you can just use my email address, listed in my About Me page. Or just leave a comment, let me know that you’re stalking me. That’s awesome too.

As an aside, November is National Novel Writing Month. I’m hoping to participate this year (and succeed!) and so some posts may be slow throughout the month. If anyone reading is also participating, feel free to leave a comment and we can cheer each other on. Go NaNo!

Protocol, Definitions, and Circles

Protocol is a word that’s been going around lately. I’ve used it for years, it was at the Behind Closed Doors conference, and I’ve had two different discussions with two friends about it in two days. Protocol, to me, is something that I have had and feel I do need to have in each of my relationships. Beyond that though, defining it was getting difficult. What is protocol? According to the workshop, it is something that you do to help reinforce the dynamic of the relationship. This is what I think best suits the way that I use the word protocol. For Devin, he defines it as a task that puts your attention on your Top/Domme/Dom/Master/Whatever. For Blake, it was pure fantasy. That or the sorts of protocols that I’ve had in my life were pure fantasy to him. I wasn’t ever entirely clear on that, just that he didn’t much care for them at all.

For some people, protocol really pushes some buttons. They push my buttons a lot. Sergie seems to like them a lot as well; I know this because we talk about the kinds of protocols we both like. Devin mentioned that he didn’t like them. As soon as they become expectations, he doesn’t want to do them anymore — at least, that’s how I took it. It reminds me very much of how I don’t mind doing something for someone but the instant they tell me I have to do something, I adamantly refuse. How I’ve not been fired from my job I’ll never know. People either figure out how to talk to me or the years with me are very rough.

This was the problem that I ran into though: expectations. I wanted to have it defined, but asking for definitions is kind of a grey area for Devin and I right now. We were going through a period of time where we were defining everything and redefining it and everything was a mess. I think it was a matter of trying to figure out where we fit into the life of the other. We were often talking about the same thing, but using different words. Or we were using the same words but they were meaning something different for us. Getting personal definitions wasn’t a problem, it was the way the words were being used and the context in which the knowledge was being applied that likely left a bad taste in our mouths. I’m reminded of a scene from WALL-E where the Captain is sitting in front of the computer, learning about what Earth had been like, and he just keeps saying “Define ____”. That was us. That is still us to a certain degree. So today, when I got stuck on ‘expectations’, I didn’t bother to have it defined. I decided it was better to just think on it and let the thoughts come rolling out.

Months ago we had a discussion on what we each felt ‘romance’ was. To him, romance seems to have to be spontaneous. This led me to think about something that most people consider to be romantic: Anniversaries! People enjoy celebrating anniversaries. (Random fact: jhusdhui and I never had an anniversary.) They know that they’re coming. It happens once a year. Because that happens, does it inherently make anniversaries incapable of being romantic? The point that he was making was that no one should expect anything to happen on an anniversary, I think. At least that’s what I took away from it. Once someone starts expecting things, then it kind of ruins it. I think that you can expect to do something special on an anniversary and not knowing what it’s going to be can still make it romantic.

This is what led me into thinking about expectations. What can someone rightfully expect and not expect? The first thing that sprung to mind here was a devoted couple telling one another that they love each other. So of course, I asked him how often he used to tell his partner in his last relationship that he loved her. I was thinking that he wouldn’t say it very often at all. However, I was completely wrong. Next, I had to know if she told him several times a day as well, and he affirmed that she did. Finally, I asked him if she had missed telling him that she loved him for a day or two, would he have an emotional response to it? He said that he would ask her what was up. To me, that indicated that he expected to hear that she loved him at least once a day. He disagreed. He concluded that he liked hearing it, but he didn’t expect it. If there had been no emotional response to not hearing it, I would agree with him. However, I still stand that it had turned into an expectation of sorts.

Now I thought back to protocol. Protocol in and of itself doesn’t seem to bother him. We had a protocol early on in the relationship where he would text me as soon as he got up every morning (ranging from about 5:30am to 5:36am) greeting me and giving me an update about whatever, either his morning, or how he slept, or the chastity device when he was in it. He tells me that I had suggested he do that and he saw no reason not to and so did. It wasn’t until much later on that I pointed out that it could be viewed as a protocol. Another thing that I’ve pointed out to him is that I prefer to have him on my left and I have seen him make efforts to always be on my left. I don’t expect him to be, but if he’s not, it’s likely one of us will make adjustments so that it will happen. Another discussion we often have is how in the past I’ve made it a protocol that my subs open doors for me and how he’s just always done it naturally. If it was suddenly expected of him, he probably wouldn’t enjoy doing it any longer. So it doesn’t seem to be that protocol is the issue, just the expectation of something happening that kills things for him. After discussing all of these things with him, I thanked him for answering my questions. He asked me if he didn’t usually answer my questions and I told him he did, so much that I had started expecting that every question I asked would be answered. So it was time to step back from that, remind myself he doesn’t have to answer any question I throw at him at all, and that thanks was in order for taking the time and not minding that I ask such personal questions of him.

Finally, I was left to wonder: what is it that we can expect from other people, from relationships? Two relationships ago I would have said a myriad of things that I don’t know are true anymore, or at least in this situation. I would have said that I expect that even if things get tough, we stick them out, work them out reasonably, but to what extent? What if one person feels they have done that and the other is unwilling to compromise? That expectation might not be met on the one side but it certainly was on the other. Is it fair to expect anything of anyone? Is it fair to not expect anything of someone? In our situation, in our particular case, would he feel worse that I expected he would show up anytime we make plans together or that I don’t expect him to ever show up again, to keep from getting my hopes up and getting hurt?

Circles. They’re a good shape, I’ve learned. Everything works in circles. Even my thoughts work in circles. I keep running around the same track. In this case, it’s relationships. I’ve written about what I want and need in relationships. Protocol is always on the list. I think about how I need something that affirms the kind of relationship that I want to have. I think about the kinks I want fulfilled. I think about the intimacy I want to create with someone. But then I start peeling back the layers. I start inspecting the sorts of things I want to do. I start looking at why I want to do them. I start separating. Is it the kink that I need or the person? I have plenty of boys that are willing to follow any command I give them. I have plenty of boys that will let me tear their flesh to ribbons. I have plenty of boys that will kneel and turn their lives over to me. So why not just pick one of them? Why not just take the easy route and take what will make me happy? Because in the end, I don’t think it will make me happy. I need the person. Finding the person that I have any kind of deeper connection with is so hard for me. There are so many different things that have to happen, that have to be present. Chemistry. Attraction. Intelligence. The way they look at life. So many things that are so hard to put into words. I want to feel something when I touch them and I want them to feel it in me as well. And if I don’t have that, nothing else seems to matter.

I know that he’s standing in the doorway, looking around. I know he’s trying to figure out where he’s supposed to go, whether he’s even in the right building. But until you get past the lobby and start walking, you’ll never know if the room behind that last door is what you’ve always been looking for. From the lobby, nothing looks certain. From the lobby, everything can be disorienting. From the lobby, where you came from looks rather safe and comforting and you know how you handled all of that. This was my problem from the very beginning. I may only be projecting. What I’ve learned in my years of confusion, in living my life, and was reinforced through the book I’m currently reading is this: there isn’t just one way to get there. There are millions of different ways to get where you’re going. Some are easier, more efficient than others. Some are messy and have dead ends. The point isn’t how you get there, just that you start going. Where you’re going and where I’m going might not end up being the same place. That’s okay. As long as we’re both moving and not being bogged down by indecisiveness or pure fear, that’s all that matters.

I’d like to think that some day I’ll come back to this and clean up the thoughts, write in what’s happened. I don’t know that I will. It might just be that my mind’s mess needed to be out so I could think about the next important step I’ll be taking. I think I’m okay with that.

Catching Up

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

Relationship: Kink

How I left out the most obvious requirement for any relationship I enter into, I will never know. I think, perhaps, because I figured that where I seek out my relationships essentially ensures that I will find someone kinky. However, I’ve come to realize that this is not always true. In one case, it was just that they were exploring another side of them. In another, it might just be that they’re scared out of their minds. I’m not sure. Even my newest snuggle buddy is vanilla though. How did this even happen?

 

You attract what you are. They always say opposites attract but I’m feeling less and less that that’s accurate. If it were, I’d have hoards of submissive men throwing themselves at me and I’d be able to pick from them with ease. Now, it may be true that there are enough submissive men offering me their services, but they’re not offering me what I want, which obviously excludes them from my search which makes them completely nonviable which essentially makes it so I don’t even see them. The only logical explanation is that I am vanilla. Yeah, I said it with a straight face, but not for long. I’ve tried claiming to be just that around a couple of people and it just doesn’t fly. Sure, I can do vanilla things. I like to go to the movies. I like to go bowling with Joey. I went on a road trip that didn’t include a chastity device, butt plug, or rope harness under someone’s clothes. All vanilla things. But I, myself, cannot be vanilla. I’ve tried. No really. I tried to be vanilla just like I tried to be submissive and just like I tried to be monogamous.

 

So I’ve been spending more and more time trying to define for me what is kinky. Because when I say I’m vanilla I’m not entirely joking. There is a lot of me that I think is vanilla. The trouble that comes into play there is that what I enjoy the most is relationship dynamics and I guess because I’m a girl that likes to be in control, that makes me kinky by default. If I was a guy that was just a little controlling of his girlfriend, that would be normal. Perhaps even be a way of expressing his care and concern over her. Unfortunately (for so many reasons) I wasn’t born male. The rest of the thought gets eradicated by the fact that I’m not just a little controlling, I am a lot controlling. Within a relationship that’s built on that kind of thing anyhow, not just of anyone random. In fact, I recently met someone that didn’t even know I was dominant, whatever that means, for better or worse. I guess I can’t command an entire room to look at me when I walk in it and I can’t get all the subs to quiver at my feet, but that’s okay, because I’m really only interested in one of them quivering at my feet (okay, or two).

 

In some recent correspondence with someone else though, I asked him if he was interested in D/s, without the kink. So obviously ‘kink’ to me has something to do with toys or props, which is something I generally dislike. But then I spent a night thinking long and hard about how I would feel if I couldn’t flog someone who submitted to me. I had someone in particular in mind, otherwise I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, and since he knows me well enough to understand what I can’t articulate, he said it for me: it’s an act of intimacy for me. Could I go without flogging someone? Sure. Would I always feel as though there was something in our relationship that I could never explore with them? Absolutely. Would it ruin the relationship? I don’t know. It would depend on what role they played for me. Ideally though, I would have someone that would do everything for me. I wonder sometimes if I’m actually poly or if I just can’t find someone who can meet all of my expectations. That’s another post though.

 

So by that definition, of kinky being something having to do with props, I am kinky, whether I want to be or not. I love my floggers, my canes, my crops, my paddles, my clothespins, my toys. I love cuffs and collars and leashes and hoods and cock rings and chastity devices. I love crosses and cages and chains and especially barbed wire. They are not the focal point of what I’m looking for though. I guess that’s the difference for me. So many profiles that I read say ‘I want to do these things specifically’ and for me, I want the mental submission first. If I can have that, you can have everything, because I want everything. Without the submission though, I don’t want to humor anyone with anything else. I’m already doing that, exploring in that fashion, and I know I won’t do it again. I know I won’t do it with anyone else, except to learn a specific skill that I can take home to do with my own personal pet.

 

But more than anything else in the world, I need someone who is in this for life. I need someone who wants to submit and then to play. I want play to be our foreplay, our sex, our intimacy. I don’t want someone that can do one without the other. I put a lot of time and energy and creativity and thought into creating the games that I play with my pets, so that we can have fun, enjoyable, memorable times in our relationships, but as much as I love games, I’ve found the words ‘This is just a game to me‘ absolutely crush my heart. D/s is not a game to me. Ownership is not a game to me. What I need to feel loved and cared for is not a game for me. If it’s a game for them, then they’re not for me, plain and simple. Sometimes it kills me; I’ll fall in love with everything a person is and then find that what they are not is what kills it all.