The Ten-Thousand-Mile Only

I have been stuck on the Memphis, darling question I posed to Myself in September:  how can there be room in My D/s-M/s dynamic for the kind of tenderness I know I want?   Doesn’t taking that much control for Myself mean giving up on tenderness?  I acknowledged in September there was only one boy with whom I thought it was possible and so, how fitting that he unknowingly provided Me some answers at WinterFire.

I’ve known j for two years, see him only at events twice a year when his wonderful and generous partner shares him with Me, and from the first meeting, his presence has caused My vision of what I want in a partner and a submissive to snap into focus.  It also has given Me confidence that what I long for does concretely exist in the world, is not merely a figment of My hothouse imagination.  I’ve taken to using his image when I am frustrated with a boy and questioning whether he is a viable partner.  I picture how j would handle the situation and then compare the two responses to help Me spot and articulate what is bothering Me.  This patented WWJD technique has allowed Me to identify a critical parameter of service that I have always wanted, but never thought to actually specify:  good cheer.

We were cuddling in bed after Saturday’s lunch, during which he had graciously shared a few sips of Jamison’s to help Me cope with polar-vortex-induced asthma. As we lay relaxing back at the hotel, in the early stages of afternoon flirty-nappy foreplay, My tummy began to make ominous noises and knot painfully.  I nudged his hand faintly and he intuited My meaning, laying the warmth of his lovely strong paw lightly on My belly to provide comfort, a completely still, steady touch. A presence, really. He spoke, before I did, to observe that lunch had not agreed with Me. As I relaxed into the warmth of his hand, and marveled at how unexpected and wonderful it felt to have My discomfort acknowledged and cared for in this way, I noticed he briefly removed his hand, wiggled his fingers, and returned it to the same place on My belly.  The second time it happened, I assumed his hand was cramping or needed a stretch. After the fifth time, My curiosity could not be contained and I reached out from the depths of the sphere of comfort he had wrapped Me in, to inquire what he was doing to Me.

As a Dominant, I expect to know what is being done to My body, and to have My body touched only with express consent.  It's pretty damned important to Me, actually, so there was something a little strange - even unnerving - for Me, in the awareness that I did not know what his hand was up to as it touched Me.

I cannot recall the words of the answer because they were surprised right out of Me. This man-boy-dog I adore let Me know that he was actively pulling the pain out of Me with his hand and dispersing it away from Me by wiggling his fingers to release it. I hadn’t even copped to feeling sick - I was struggling as I always do with admitting such infirmities - and he was already trying to heal Me?  It blew Me away.  There have been moments in My life when I have felt My boundaries expand in a special-effects kind of way, a visual Doppler effect from where they were to somewhere new on a distant horizon.  Like the first time I hit a boy in the dungeon as hard as I ever wanted to hit anyone, and he told Me that on a scale of 0-10, I was only at a 3. This was one of those moments... j opened up a horizon’s worth of space in My dominance.  A new spaciousness in which I can relax more as a Dominant, be softer and more trusting and even vulnerable.  It’s a place I’ve wanted to go, and not known how to reach.

After only a few more minutes, I actually did become briefly and acutely ill, and j said he was sorry he wasn’t able to fix it for Me.  I suspect he may have chalked it up to a silly woo-woo thing tried and failed; part of what made it all so surprising is he's been consistently clear that he's not a woo-woo person in the first place. But I actually considered he had rendered a great service.  At minimum, he completely removed any woe-is-me emotional angst around the illness experience, and I am woo-woo enough to believe that he did lessen the pain and helped it resolve more quickly.  Looking back today, I am struck by how odd it was to have been so ill in the middle of a four day event, and then completely forget that it happened, with no adverse affect on the rest of the experience, as if it never happened at all. I attribute that ease to his presence and his…. service.  He didn’t fail to take away My illness, he succeeded in giving Me the best case scenario of being ill at the event.  j’s partner had set up a system whereby he could be rewarded for good service with a token, and I gave him a token specifically for this spontaneous service of nurturing. I suspect he was surprised. Once again, his presence has allowed Me to understand something I want but have not previously been able to name.  His actions also spoke to My Memphis, darling question… the answer is that it’s not about the dynamic, it’s about the person.  A good partner, a loving partner, will be tender in the way I need, the D/s dynamic doesn’t take that away. I don’t need to change the dynamic; I need to choose the right person to share it.

On Sunday, I dropped in on Dr. Ruthie’s trauma class, which was fantastic. I really only went because I was trying to schedule something with Dr. Ruthie and I thought catching them after class would help with scheduling. So I slipped in the back halfway through and resolved to remain unobtrusively until it ended.  The class turned out to be sort of a guided group meditation, in which they asked us to reflect upon a traumatic event, identify the body part affected, think about what color the trauma is, what texture it is… consider what lie the trauma told Me about My pleasure and write the lie the trauma told Me down on a full-sized piece of pristine white paper. Then ask Myself:  When did I first hear this lie? Did the person who told the lie have Mbest interests at heart? Who else has been told this lie?  What I would want them to know about the lie? What would I like them to tell Me that I need to know about the lie? And eventually: cross out the lie the trauma told Me on the piece of paper.  Cross it out and replace it with another message. As I reflected on these questions in a meditative state, tears streamed down My face, and I unexpectedly grappled with something I lost at a specific point in time, something I had the sense I knew was lost  and wanted to reclaim but couldn’t begin to name. And here’s the new message I came up with:

Pleasure is innocent, safe, and easy.

It occurs to Me that My Dominance is partly a response to the lie of trauma.  Don't get me wrong. I’m sure I will remain a Sadist and a Dominant; I know that’s core to Me.  But how I go about it, that is inflected by personal experiences. What I’m feeling today is that the Memphis, Darling question… the fingers wiggling unbidden to disperse My pain… and re-discovered truth under the lie… all have a great deal to do with each other.  Some people talk about abundance, and some years back I found that a useful construct… no need to work so hard at getting what I need, because there’s no scarcity, all I need to do is be present and be open to what is all around Me.  I feel today, though, that abundance was just the start.

It feels now more like the special kind of breathing I do in singing lessons… exhale using every muscle of My thorax, abdomen, back, and pelvic floor.  Insisting on pressing out every molecule of the breath, and then relaxing all those muscles so profoundly that when the air rushes in - as it must thanks to the laws of physics - it is effortless.  It is not mere abundance.  It is an Inevitability.

I don’t have to try so hard for pleasure.  It certainly needn’t be work. I don’t have to hold the control if I don’t really want it right now. I certainly don’t have to modify how I do Dominance in an effort to make spontaneous things happen. (Control of spontaneous things? Did I think that was even a choice?)  I can leave more space for Memphis, Darling.  And even if I don’t, there will be huge-small acts of profound kindness because kindness is an inevitability. Communication - that topic of countless books and hours of classes and loads of considered effort - can be the lightest, most whispy indicator of what I need and still sufficient for tenderness and nurturing and pleasure to flow inevitably to Me.

I pointed to Gatsby in the last post, boats borne back ceaselessly into the past.  In this moment, I am borne way back to My religiously-infused upbringing:  Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you.  

I never bought that as a kid. 

I remember, in fact, the child equivalent of being cynical about it from an early age, even resentful, because there were big things asked for, prayed for, in childhood that never came.  Monday: Dear Lord, please make it rain so that our crops don’t die and our animals won't starve. Tuesday: Dear Lord, please make it rain… Wednesday: Dear Lord, please make it rain…

Maybe part of what I have brought Myself to through Dominance is a felt sense, a faith, that asking does lead to receiving.  And the magical part is that in Dominance, the asking can be as simple as the nudge of a hand, or snap of fingers, a look, or sometimes, with the right person, the asking is so minute that it feels like I didn’t ask at all. It becomes fulfillment of a wish I barely heard Myself making.  

The poet Mary Oliver writes:

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to crawl on your knees for a hundred miles, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

               

The poet David Whyte says that word “only” is the pivotal word in Mary Oliver's whole (longer) poem.  He calls it the ten-thousand-mile only, because listening to the wisdom of the body is hard for us all. I have worked on it a lot, for quite a while now. I feel like in the middle of all the kinky fun, I somehow did that at WinterFire. I had a breakthrough in just letting the soft animal of My body love what it loves.  

I have a funny feeling something has opened that will allow new things to happen. I love the sense of anticipation for what might come next.  Stay tuned.

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.

Yes, Yes, YES!!

After attending the Butchmann's Experience this summer, I went on a reading bender unlike anything I've done since my first six months in the scene. I began with the two books that are suggested reading for MTTA, which I hope to attend in November, finances permitting.  Early on in My erotic life, I started with, what else? Erotica, specifically English literature. The Pearl. The Oyster. Diary of a Flea. These were a good start and after reading every book I could find repeatedly, I even flirted with going for a Master's degree in English literature, focusing on 19th century erotica.  I even had an idea for a research thesis, something to do with how social outcasts such as deaf-mutes, dwarfs and other freaks are consistently well endowed. But I suspected job opportunities would be scarce and at 21, I certainly had no idea how to explain this idea to the parents.

Eventually I got a job in the bookstore and was assigned to manage the social sciences section, including the sexuality and erotica section. Maybe they intuited I was comfortable with the topic?  I could never get the chain to understand that shelving Erotica right next to Death and Dying was a bad idea.  It might seem like Death and La Petite Mort are closely related, but really, not.  Soon I was completely up to speed on every mainstream erotica and sex self-help book,  I could even spot customers who had come to the store to buy the glossy lipstick red book, put out by a religious publishing house, called something like How To Make Love To A Woman And Make Her Beg For More. I was also reading My way at slow cash register shifts through related literature like men's studies, though our selection there was pretty thin.  It was at this time I discovered the Beauty books, which made a huge impression and by the time I met My first subby male, I was full of ideas and clued in to My desire to penetrate beautiful male bottoms.  Once I reached the big city, I sought out gay bookstores for the male nude photography of  Robert Maplethorpe and later Tom Bianchi.

Slowly, I tapped into femdom books. One of My first was a velo-spiral bound, seemingly self-published The Sexually Dominant Woman: A Workbook for Nervous Beginners. Soon I had read my way into a comprehensive collection. But I kept coming back to the Beauty books.

When I came out into the public scene, I read a number of books on M/s, heavy on protocol contract-writing, for some reason, which was wildly premature. I came away from them with glazed eyes and unable to picture ever wanting, much less using, either significant protocol or a slave contract. I was still getting to know Myself as a top and possibly a Domme, I really had no business dabbling in M/s, but I was with someone who wanted to be collared, so we gave it the old college try. I heard references to "the Old Guard" and "high protocol" but I had picked up the idea there wasn't much in the gay leather literature for Me as a straight, female, not-leather Domme. And from there, I went into books about specific skills, techniques, and types of play. Too bad!  This summer, as I grow into recognizing myself as Master, I finally started reading some of the more classic gay leather literature and damn-Sam, I've been reinventing the wheel this whole time!  What an eye-opener to see problems for which I have lacked language all along -- recent problems that I am actively wrestling with -- described for the first time, accurately, and to find myself reading and saying aloud, "Yes, Yes, YES!!!"

My Inner Child Is a Gay Leather Daddy

For several years now, I have been making the arch observation that My inner child is a gay leather daddy.  It usually elicits either a laugh or a moderately confused smile. But as time goes on, it's less of a funny quip and feels closer to the truth.  I increasingly find that I would rather hang out with gay male Masters than any other profile of person, and find it curious that this should be so. I like men, I really do, and I wonder sometimes whether that is true for most Dommes. Certainly, many Dommes, including Me, have at some point used the defined Dominant role to provide a form of safety which allows us to get close to men after prior experiences left us feeling distinctly unsafe.  Thankfully, I feel I have outgrown using the Domme role as a crutch.  I also have realized that gay leather Masters (at least the ones I meet in MAsT, MsC, and Butchmann's circles) not only share my love of men, they are themselves thoughtful about sexuality, spirituality, and relationships in a deeper way one does not often find among het males. The sight of a well bonded gay male couple is joyous to Me in a very particular way, it feels like I can really see them, because they are clearly seeing each other.

I watched quite a bit of Dan Savage youtube video within the last few weeks and was struck by his story that he began the Savage Love column as a way form of payback to straight people, especially straight men, whom he didn't particularly like at the time.  But over the course of a few years Dan (raised Catholic and one of the most consistently ethical people I see in media) came to feel real compassion for straight men, because he realized the culture forbids them to be like women and forbids them to be like gay men; that doesn't leave a very wide range of expression for them to inhabit.  Certainly, I believe that for a straight man to acknowledge a desire to submit to Feminine Authority is one of the most cultur-klastic things he can do.

MsC Takeaway

Just back from the 2014 Master slave Conference.  If I had to point to only one thing I took away from the experience, that thing would be a point made by Patrick Mulcahey:  If Master-slave is not the easiest form of relationship you can envision with this person, seriously consider whether you should continue.

There are no direct quotes around that because I didn't catch it verbatim in My notes. But I think the point is excellent. This only works if we are not playing at a role.  There has to be an integrity. If M/s is natural, organic to your dynamic, then do it by all means. But if not, don't try to force the square peg.

He made a related point:  we want to be known deeply, completely, and to know another person at a similarly deep level. We want to be in a relationship where we can be fully ourselves.  For people who have been told throughout their lives that they are in some sense too much -- too smart, too bossy, too whatever -- this is profoundly important. I know what it is like to invisibly pare away the too-much parts of myself that a partner objected to, only to find well into the relationship that I no longer knew who I was.  I like Master-slave for many reasons, not least of all because the whole construct seems set up to prevent Me from repeating such nonsense again, in fact, demands that I be fully present, fully everything.