Magic Saunas and Sofas

Mid-May:  Something interesting is happening lately.  I am realizing how isolated I am. I always sort of knew it in an abstract way, but as I grow and connect more, I realize the magnitude of disconnection is tremendously larger than I had seriously contemplated.  When I lived with E, we were out socially a lot but being out didn’t mean I felt connected. Now living alone in My house, I go out less but in the last year or so, I connect more.

In between, I just sort of float in space, like a space walker who slipped away from the shuttle, there’s just enough connection to everything else that I don’t float away entirely and disappear but it’s not much. Absent a serious partner, I go days, weeks, if work is hot and I’m sick, it can sometimes easily be a month in between moments of real connection with another human. If you raise the bar to significant, emotional, meaningful, personal, IRL connection with a person, it can be multiple months. There surely were points in My life where it has been years. The answer depends just on how meaningful you define the threshold has to be. But I’m realizing that many perhaps most people inhabit that connection zone daily, and apparently I don’t usually.

I noticed recently that I felt lonely. And then I realized that’s a new sensation. I have long been - and said aloud that I am - entirely comfortable being alone WITHOUT feeling lonely. Yet as I connect more and get a frame of reference I realize that maybe I simply blocked that channel of awareness a long time ago.  This is part of why relationships have been such a challenge: they generally have provided the vastly disproportionate amount of that connection and when each relationship ends, I’ve reverted to the floating state.  It’s been a high stakes game. The deeper I feel the connection, the more it deviates from My baseline, the more devastating the end. 

A few years ago now I decided I needed to “play the field” instead of dating one person at a time intensively. That lead to realizing I could have multiple simultaneous connections which made each better because it took off a good bit of the pressure to make any specific one WORK. And that has led to accepting the possibility of an open relationship and having poly partners. 

I had a wonderful day this weekend with My Big, his partners and a group of their friends, brunch at their house and then a trip to the Korean sauna complex. And now I’m thinking, no, I’ve had this backwards. I should NOT be living alone in My own house. It’s not just that the dirt crawl space is bad for My asthma and unhealthy; this whole approach may be unhealthy. Maybe I more than perhaps most absolutely NEED to be in a group housing environment, maybe I NEED poly partners, in this atomized urban society with my atomized emotional environment, maybe I need to fucking SURROUND Myself with opportunities to be with My people. Just as I breathe a lot better at the sauna for the obvious reason of the humidity, I also breathe (emotionally) a fuck ton better when I am with My kink tribe, surrounded by their humanity. Maybe I withdrew on purpose without understanding what it meant, maybe it was a necessary developmental stage and I’m simply ready now, maybe it just worked out that way when I could afford to finally not have the burden of roommates I couldn’t afford to be picky about. Either way I’m realizing how much My current approach may not serve Me well right now and how it reinforces My core tendencies, closing off a lot of learning opportunities.  

It's hard to notice and think about your own internal operating system.

Which is a nice intellectualized way of saying: I think I’m scared.  This connection to Big feels so good. Plugging into his house and their circle feels so good, the people are kind, it all feels so healthy, and it feels so easy, I certainly have not succeeded in creating such a circle.  E was good at that and I benefited but we’ve been apart long enough I can no longer ride those coat tails. So it feels good, so good to be with Princess’ Big and in his circle, but wow, it is starting to feel scary good to like it and want it and begin to crave it. Thirst for it. Like someone in a desert approaching what seems a lush oasis of water and praying it’s not a mirage.

I noticed yesterday that I find it uncomfortable to be in groups because it’s so unclear what’s happening, the “herding cats” problem.  It’s like an uncomfortably chaotic family, on some level I find Myself waiting for the pater familias to come in and start knocking heads, clear everything up, stop the interpersonal tension, but it doesn’t happen. The annoyance of the cat-herding is real but I noticed it clears up when I’m clear about what I want, and express it. “What are we gonna do?  I dunno what do you want to do?”  When I said at the spa: “I really want a scrub and they can take Me at 6pm, is that ok?” Then that became an organizing principle. It lead to (honestly not Me saying, but Big taking ownership of Princess wishes and being Princess advocate in a place I have trouble advocating for myself and saying): ok, she needs to be in the pool 30 min before and it will take 30 min to do, so who would rather eat in an hour and who would rather wait til 7?  

Suddenly all the pieces fell into place for the rest of the event.  Suddenly it wasn’t chaos.  This doesn’t sound mind blowing but... it’s a core thing I’m working on, that in childhood I couldn’t figure out in the situation how to make Myself heard and get My needs met. The connection to the Big and his circle is giving Me a safe and sane context to see how these things work, see them in a new way that helps Me do it again differently, navigating now from a knowing that bubbles up from inside Me and feels authentic, instead of as a cognitive puzzle I puzzle in My head up above but cannot often be sure I’m solving correctly, because I cannot connect the puzzle down to an inner answer about what’s Right for Me, much less what is right and fair to anyone else.  It’s just too complicated a puzzle to solve alone, I cannot know all the variables, My responsibility is just to offer My piece.

I’ve had other experiences recently, one with a wonderful fellow female Dominant, who is married to her delightful partner. We had a cuddle pile under blankets on the sofa one weekend, watching a little TV, napping together on each other on a chilly day. I’ve not really DONE that before. That in combination with some recent reading seems to have sensitized Me. I see now, I can recognize the sensations, the feeling of mammalian nest, soft lively energies in a pile being together, enjoying the gentle contact, getting primal food and touch needs met together. Sexuality not a flicker in the energy, just nest.

After the Korean spa trip, late evening, Big, his primary partner and I were the last ones around, sitting on the three seater sofa watching TV.  We began and could have remained 3 facing forward. I swear that’s how My family always watched TV, facing forward, well behaved, each alone on their square island of cushion. We ended with me on one end mostly facing the other end, Unkey reclined between My legs, resting his back on My torso, Me taking the initiative to pet his hair, give him a little pillow, and slide a hand under his shirt a little, his arm reaching up for My other hand; My left leg wrapped around onto his left, his left arm helping support it; his legs across the lap of his primary partner, and my foot nudging her too. We stayed that way a long wonderful while, it felt like an electric vehicle must feel at the recharge docking station.  I marvel at how I have lived at all with so little of this.  How different the world looks from that position on the sofa rather than facing forward.

And I notice too how I got from one to the other. It was My back injury, My weakness.  I cannot turn My neck enough so I needed to shift My body to look at him comfortably. Honoring that in Myself required Me to turn toward them, and we kept adjusting our individual selves until we found a balance that worked for everyone.  I needed to turn so I did; he supported me and realigned to me in a way that intersected us together with her. It was so nice.  I usually resist My pain, I don’t want to be the one to ruin the balance for others. I don’t want to be a Bother. But last night it felt like a bigger and more organic process than just me; I’m not able to ruin it. What I can do is resist the process unfolding to make it not work for Me.  It’s a different choice.

It happened earlier in the day too, now that I think of it, in a different way. Unkey emerged from a particularly hot sauna and Princess beelined for him. His face lit up, she offered him her icey slushy mango freeze, he was soaked thru from the heat. He drank it with pleasure. Then he said: I have an Idea !  And even though he knows Princess can NOT take much heat, he pulled her back into the same 175 degree sauna, just for a minute, and she LET him (which was brave of both Princess and MasterMe). It was made of red clay and had a perfect dome ceiling inside, maybe a 20’ diameter room made of clay stone. 

We sat together in the special spot he had discovered and he sang a note, then Princess listened to the sound in her head and heard another note and she sang that one. So they sat in the super hot rock dome room alone together and sang, and then our friends came in and we sang more and the friends each picked a note and the mix kept shifting as each person ran outta breath and it was like buddhist monks chanting or something and it was beautiful.  And then a stranger came in and we kept doing it, and they didn’t join but afterward they said they really liked it. And it was magical.  Unkey and Princess made magic together. Not just for them. Not just with friends. Also with a stranger.  That’s EXTRA magical.  Unkey has good ideas.

Same thing, each person adding their piece, everyone organically shifting and adjusting and the whole thing together beautiful, the shared space bringing itself into tune through each of the people.

And then as SOON as we stopped singing Princess realized the floor was TOO HOT for our BUTT, and everybody was TOO HOT, and we got OUTTA there.  But it still was magical.