Basix Dildo

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Things Change

Things can change a lot in a few months.

Maybe it's just because I'm 23 and that's an age where life moves quickly and there's a lot of growth. Maybe I just personally invite that because I'm not satisfied with stagnancy or even really stillness. There will always be more to work on.

Anyway, because I haven't been writing here for all the reasons I mentioned in that last post, this blog no longer really reflects what's going on in my life. That's fine in its own way, since I've been actively deciding not to post, but it's also strange because I still link to it from social networking sites and dating sites and it's still a way I represent myself to the world at large. It's just not accurate anymore.

For instance, in one of the last posts I wrote about my love life, I was dating six people and feeling overwhelmed. The time constraints inhibited me from developing intimacy with any one of them. I was dissatisfied with this.

Now, I'm seeing primarily one man, the sixth one with whom I started going out in October. I called him Roy G. Biv in this entry and that seems as good a blog nickname for him as any. He's awesome and fun and attentive and right along with me on polyamory and I feel very close to and comfortable with him. It's a bit far from that last entry.

I'm still figuring out whether I can change my writing here to adapt to the ways my life and work have changed. There is something appealing about a more narrative structure, to try and tell the stories of what I'm up to. It's some fun, interesting, sexy stuff and might be worth sharing. I just need to check in with my lovers and with myself and figure out more how I feel about that. But there might just be a way.

In Public

I haven't been writing here. Unlike my usual dry spells, it's not because I've been especially depressed or lacking in words. I've been doing pretty well and thinking and working a lot. It's not for lack of material or desire, I just haven't felt comfortable putting everything online.

I've been pretty personal in this blog, yes, but the things I've been working on lately have felt too private to share here. In the past, a lot of my work was academic and therefore the thoughts I shared were on world problems, feminism, sex work, psychology, relationship theories, etc. I might've had a personal stake in those things, but they were ultimately universal issues. These days it's not really like that.

I've been spending a lot of time delving into deep parts of myself. I'm doing some hard work on finding and loving and healing pieces of me that aren't well-lit or comfortable. Working through family dynamics and habits, figuring out how to form trusting relationships (and why that's hard for me), finding and examining strong fears and insecurities. It's vulnerable stuff, and much harder to write about.

Another reason to hold back is that a bunch of people I know in real life are now reading this blog. I can't just say stuff into the ether; it comes back to me in the flesh. It's easier to be anonymously vulnerable to an audience of strangers than it is to bare my soul to a person who will look me in the eye and ask me about it tomorrow. It also feels passive aggressive to write about things I wouldn't say to someone's face but which I know they'll read. I much prefer direct, conscientious communication.

The thing is, I really want to write. I suppose it doesn't have to be here, but this is the best forum I've got and I want to keep it alive. Writing is good to me, it's therapeutic, it stimulates my mind and emotions. I love to write. I love to be creative. I need that outlet.

I'm not sure exactly what to do about this. Maybe I could take the blog in a different direction. Maybe I just need to write more for myself, audience be damned. Maybe I should screw my courage to the sticking point and do a little soul baring. I've always believed in and talked about the subversive and transformational power of being genuine and sharing vulnerability, but it's different to act on it when I feel genuinely vulnerable. It's scarier.

We'll see. Either there will be a change in the wind here and a lot more writing, or there won't. We'll just see.

D/s

I've been feeling dissatisfied lately with my play as a bottom. I thought for a while that it was because I keep having these short scenes at play parties that only tease me, getting me into a nice head space only to be over as soon as I arrive there. I still think that's part of it, but I've realized it's not the whole story.

When I was in San Francisco, I visited with the lover I met and spent lots of time with at Dark Odyssey Summer Camp. We spent most of the day just hanging out, and we fooled around for maybe twenty minutes. This was just as brief as the scenes that have been frustrating me so much, but for some reason I found it more satisfying.

The difference, I realized, is that rather than just straight up beatings without frills, the dynamic I have with this lover is much more D/s. The physical things we do together aren't even all that "kinky." It's mostly just sex stuff, with a little hitting here and there or he'll put his hand over my mouth or move me by the hair sometimes. What makes the difference, though, is that he'll talk the whole time and tell me what to do in a calm and expectant way, call me baby girl and get me to call him Sir, and tell me I'm a good girl when I do what he says.

I crave this. Playing with him, however briefly, made me realize that the power exchange is what's really been missing in my recent life. The dynamic I have with this particular guy is nice, but it doesn't have to be exactly that. I'd just like to be submissive in some capacity, rather than just bottoming for pain.

I want that feeling of giving over control. Beatings are good, but the real reason I like them is that they help bring my mind to a submissive place. I'd rather the pain be in a context of D/s than D/s kinda sorta be a part of things because there are beatings happening.

This desire is a little harder to realize than just wanting to be hit with things. So long as I know somebody has the skills and isn't a total creep, there aren't a lot of prerequisites to beat me. I feel pretty casual about it. D/s, on the other hand, requires that I trust someone enough to hand them not just physical but also emotional control. There's a more delicate balance of what excites me and what could trigger me. It requires more specific compatibility, since I like certain kinds of submission and not others. It's more complicated.

I'm going to see what I can do about this by both talking to the people I've been spending more time with, and trying to schedule some time with the play partners who I know can take me there. I'm quite happy with just about everything else going on in my relationships, so if I can get this one desire met then my life will be overall awesome sauce. It just takes some doing.

The Whole Happy New Year Thing

So, I like holidays. I love winter holidays. I think it is more crucial than can probably be expressed for us all to feel some sense of camaraderie and celebration when it gets cold and the sun is gone. As someone who feels the affects of the season (literally, as in Seasonal Affective Disorder), I very, very much appreciate the winter holidays.

I don't really like that the new year starts in January, though.

Obviously I'm just one human and my opinion on these things isn't going to stop people from calling this the new year. But I can't be the only one who thinks that they had a better idea in the days of yore in some random parts of the globe when they celebrated a new year in April instead of January. You know, when the snow has melted and the sun has come back and animals are being born and plants are starting to spring out of the earth and grow new buds and everyone is cheerful to be outside again? Seems a lot more like a renewal to me.

I don't feel very renewed this week. There's nothing about the procession of days through the winter that makes me want to examine my life and make resolutions about things I'd like to change. It feels to me more like something to get through, a season for storing stuff to deal with once the sun comes out and I've got more energy.

This year, I had a really significant birthday. I even wrote about it here. As holidays go, none are more personal than birthdays, and mine this year was an opportunity to do just what I don't feel like right now: take a look at my life and spur some action towards the things I really wanted and needed.

All of which boils down to: I don't have New Year's resolutions. Maybe you'll see some from me in April, but most likely I'll be making them for myself, on a day that makes sense to me and has very little to do with huge snow storms, heavy clothing, and darkness at 5:00pm.

A Call to Men

This pretty much speaks for itself. One observation: the audience is almost entirely women because this talk was at the TEDWomen conference. I think this is a vitally, vitally important message, but I do wonder how it's going to get to actual men when gender is so consistently considered only a women's issue.

I don't have a solution for this. I don't know how to get men to pay attention to this stuff because their privilege does allow them to ignore it. It just seems so important to involve them, not just to end violence against women but to free men, as he says, from their own versions of the Man Box.

Tony Porter's website, A Call to Men is very much worth checking out.

Better

My mother calls me to tell me about the three-inch-wide, deep-to-the-bone gash she got falling down the stairs yesterday and the five staples now holding her arm together.

As the conversations ends she says on the phone “Well, your father…” and then trails off.

She pauses, then says “Well, he’s home, so I have to stop talking now” in the tone of voice that means she needs to go do something so she should get off the phone but what she really means is that she wants to say something about him that’s negative, that might hurt his feelings, that might let him know we all talk about it and it’s actually a problem, that it actually has consequences for the rest of us. She couldn’t do that, though, because he could hear her and he’d be upset. Which is a code word, because everyone gets upset and what he does is more than that.

“Has he been grumpy?” I ask, which is another code word. It’s also a yes or no question. That way she can give me information without tipping him off, clue me in so I know what’s happening, so I’m warned when I come home this week after months away, so I can call my little sister and hear if she’s okay. So I’ll know whether or not to tiptoe when I enter the house.

“Well, he’s got this surgery coming up on Monday, and that’s a nervous thing. And he’s been worrying about that, and then I had to go and have something,” by which she means the gash and the staples, “and it’s a lot of pressure. We have the Christmas tree, and that’s done—thankfully that got done beforehand.”

By all of which she means, “Yes.”

I hear this and I remember being young, maybe seven years old and my sister was four, and we were sitting in the living room of the house in Massachusetts and my parents were putting up a very big Christmas tree. We couldn’t go out of the room because we shouldn’t be unsupervised and more because we didn’t want to miss anything, we wanted to know what was going on, we didn’t want to overhear it from upstairs.

My mother said we could stay there as long as we were quiet as church mice. Every time I had to help Daddy with a Project, I remembered that phrase, and I knew that I should be a church mouse and that Sis was better at it, which was why he always chose her to hand him the screwdriver or hold the flashlight.

And we were very young and we were sitting in little chairs I think, although we could have been on the floor, but we were wedged right next to each other on the right side of the wide doorframe, and I remember being afraid, and I remember Daddy yelling at us if we made any noise at all or if we asked any questions.

He was using a wire to attach the tree to the wall near the ceiling because it was a crooked tree and it wouldn’t stand up otherwise, and this was difficult and it was a Project, and if we interrupted he wouldn’t be able to concentrate and we weren’t going to help only make things worse, so we had to be quiet.

I remember being quiet, that day. And I remember the fear of what would happen if I made a noise and the equal fear of what would happen if I left and couldn’t keep track of what was going on in that room. And I didn’t like the quiet because I wanted to help, to make the Project over, to make it all okay, to contribute what I had to offer, to make it better. But I was quiet, I did it, I stayed quiet.

“So he’s just been worried about this surgery, but he’s being better now. He is doing better now.”

“Okay,” I say, because better is better. I’m thinking about how this all feeds into it, how we don’t name what it is. How instead we say why it is. How we talk about it only in terms of the causes, of him being stressed or angry or anxious, never in terms of what he’s doing, never in details or actions, never in terms of what it all means to us. We never talk about the fear or the sadness or the anger, not directly. We only all know it’s there because we share it. It’s always implied.

“He scared the dog the other day, scared her all the way down into my office,” she says. The office that is four floors down from the dog bowl in their San Francisco hillside town house. “Supposedly he was just trying to give her dinner.”