Memphis, darling

It is for days like today that I gave Myself a blog.  Days when My thoughts are running like a shallow stream, lots of glinting and hard to catch.  The new boys I have found lately should be named Ethelred... unready at best.  Perhaps ill-advised too, each in his own way.

About a year ago, I reconnected online with an old boyfriend I dated 20 years ago, back when I was certainly already kinky but keeping it confined to My choice of reading material.  He was and remains a good man.  From half a continent's safe distance and the certainty we will never meet, it has grown most unexpectedly into a wonderful, mutually supportive friendship. This GoodMan is married with kids and career deep in the heartland, and though he was initially very curious to hear about My kink life, he doesn't much ask anymore. I gather he would like to experiment, but it is the usual story of conventional spouse, small community, and an otherwise-good life that makes the risk of exploring his edges too great to take. GoodMan sent me a simple photo today, just a guy in a safety vest and hardhat, in a dirt yard, standing next to some heavy machinery. It was about the machinery, not him. But seeing his hands, I was reminded of the sex we used to have. Chatting by text later, I got confused about where he was in his travels, and I made a comment about being in Nashville.  In a blink, the GoodMan texted back:

"Memphis, darling"

It was a velvet harpoon. I was wet, elated, sad and tearful all at once.

I know he didn't mean it the way it hit me. He meant it jestingly with an exaggerated hey-I'm-in-the-South Southern accent. He meant the first syllable drawn out, and an apostrophe at the end -- daaaahlin -- no letter g at all.  He was merely being lighthearted to gently cushion correcting My mistake. But despite knowing that in My head, and knowing My reaction must be partly hormones cycling as they will, far away in My heart I couldn't argue with the harpoon embedded in My sternum.

For the first time, I felt genuine doubt. Could I have made a grievous mistake?

Eight years ago, I had a boyfriend whom I could see as a husband. We were so wonderful reading in bed together each night, it felt very Right.  He loved collecting old silver and it gave him real joy to polish spoons, it made him feel close to his departed mom which I found very sweet. One night during an erotic frolic, I made my first run at the topics I always waited a while to raise with a man, and I suggested spanking him.  It was a non-starter. While he laughed his un-spanked ass off, I had an epiphany. Certain things had been increasingly Nice To Have with a boyfriend, enjoyed but not problematic when absent.  This thing of spanking had just gone from Nice To Have to a Must Have. You must be this tall to ride this ride.  When the relationship had collapsed inward like the gossamer souffle it turned out to be, I was certain it no longer made sense to look in the dating population for someone compatibly kinky.  It was time to look among the kinky population for someone to date. This led me to come out as kinky, supporting community organizations, public play, femdom, and certainly awareness that an essential part of what I get out of Topping and Domme-ing, is feeling adored and important in a way I never found in vanilla space.

But in time I have come to feel like a very specific kind of Coke machine. These femdom relationships don't deepen; in most cases the boy just vaporizes without explanation. In over 80% of the cases, the subs who approach Me are not even a candidate for relationship because they are firmly married and usually their kink life is a secret.  In almost all cases, the boys are acting a part they have written for themselves, and despite My insistence on being real, I can tell they are not seeing Me. The adoration is for an archetype, not for Me as a person. They are attentive until they get their fix of pain or humiliation or blissful absence of control for a few hours, and the moment they go out the front door, I am forgotten until whatever compels them has time to revive and reach the limits of their pressure gauges, then they are all attentiveness again, and the cycle repeats.

What subby male in this world is going to spontaneously say to Me, "Memphis, darling" the way I wanted to hear it?

Suddenly I fear this whole undertaking was just a very poor substitute for the affection and tenderness I really wanted and wasn't finding... am still not finding.  I don't think any amount of reconsidering will change the fact I am happily sadistic. I cannot imagine trying to return to the vanilla dating pool.  I do not relish falling for another vanilla who cannot understand this about Me and does not want to engage with it.  After all, the more I like you, the more I enjoy hurting you in certain ways. But I have trouble seeing where this sort of tenderness has space to manifest in the dynamics I am finding. I cannot picture ever being able to successfully train a submissive or slave to provide a "Memphis, darling" moment that works. Is this a necessary trade-off? I know just one boy who touches me that way, and he is unavailable too. What's more, the part of Me that wants to hear "Memphis, darling" feels an ocean apart from the equally important piece of Me that likes to wrap a pediatric sphygnomometer around a man's cockshaft and inflate it repeatedly while he begs.  What then is the answer?

The only thing I'm coming up with is Gatsby.

And so we beat on, boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past.