Category Archives: M/s

Respect

Noah wants me to write about why we need a rule in our M/s contract requiring that I speak to him respectfully. The first and most obvious reason is because I have a tendency to be rude as fuck. I’m selfish. I’m self absorbed. I have explosive emotional reactions to a lot of things and it is a constant struggle not to take that out on the people around me.

A recent conversation with my kid about exploding at “safe people” comes to mind.

The thing is, Noah believes that if he requires respectful speech it will mean that I am respectful in my mind. We’ve spent a lot of time talking over many years about how our marriage can survive a lot of dips and valleys in intensity but it won’t survive contempt.

If I don’t show contempt in my voice will that effectively keep it from my mind/heart? I’m honestly not sure I believe that. Which makes this rule somewhat complicated from where I’m sitting. I’m not saying it is a bad rule, but I’m not sure it is going to do what Noah has stated as his goal for the rule.

I stole Mollena’s rule about how the slave should take care of her own mental/physical well being before anything else. I think I’m still going to be shitty at advocating for myself in a lot of situations. Like the “take one for the team” sex thing. That didn’t take care of my mental or physical well being. I encouraged/allowed a situation that damaged me. For years. I think in part because I’m so used to being damaged that… it’s normal. It is what I expect from life. Isn’t that what I was put on this earth for? I’m a worthless whore who exists so people have someone to abuse so they don’t hurt nice people who deserve to be treated well.

I’m following the rule about only masturbating/orgasming with permission. It’s complicated. I get up to 2 not-asked-for-in-advance-but-I-have-to-notify-him chances to get off when he’s not available to ask. (Like about half an hour ago when he was asleep. Hey Noah, I beat off.) This is mixed for me. I’m at a weird place with my sexuality. I feel helpless and hopeless and like I will never be a person who gets to decide when I feel good in my body. Which is obnoxious because I do have some agency and I have had periods in the past where I went and did what I wanted.

I am supposed to be respectful in both my tone and my facial expression. I kind of feel like this is just telling me that I need to work on my lying. I am required to manifest a level of respect I may or may not feel. Oh.

It isn’t that I have no respect for Noah. It is that it fluctuates. There are times and places and topics where… I don’t have a lot of respect. I believe for reasons. But shut up.

I used to make people in Master/slave circles really angry when I referred to M/s as a game. It’s totally a fucking game. I don’t care how “real” people think they are.

And I’m supposed to bathe Noah once a week. I like the grooming stuff. That’s fun.

My experiences as a teacher taught me that if you demand a show of respect you haven’t earned… you lose ground in the long game. Which feels complicated in context of my marriage and current attempt at M/s.

Noah has earned respect in a great many areas. Noah has earned kindness and consideration across the board. He’s a ridiculously considerate partner.

But I worry about having more reason to double down on lying.

Lessons I’ve learned

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This is a very edited version of something I wrote for a particular person. I took the shell of that message and expanded it here for my own record keeping.

This year has been kind of a horrible and traumatizing adventure.

The line between what makes a “friend” and what makes a lover/partner are often difficult and hard to see. I freely say I love you to my friends and they say it back. There is hand holding and snuggling even when I go through long periods of monogamy because my friends are the reason I stayed alive through a multitude of traumatic experiences.

With that in the background Noah and I met and started our marriage with an open relationship. We agreed to be monogamous through the breeding period (for lots of complicated reasons) with the idea that we would probably date later. About five years ago (when did Occupy happen?) I asked for us to open a bit and try things out. We proceeded to hurt each other a lot with the choices we were making around dating and we decided to close the relationship.

I have a variety of extreme mental illness problems. Treating myself like I matter is not easy for me. I would much rather sustain physical damage than inconvenience someone. As part of the agreement for being monogamous we agreed that I needed to provide sex for Noah at least ten times a month. The quota was hard to fill. It meant I had sex that was significantly painful on a regular basis. I was not honest about how this was impacting me. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

I mean, that’s true and not true. I’ve written all over my blog about having problems with it. But I also said I wanted to do it. I’m very conflicted on this issue.

Anyway. I came back from the road trip and discovered that six months of having my body be mine was absolutely transformative. I hit the wall. I’m done taking one for the team.

I had been bottling up a lot of desires for a long time. (I’m extremely sadistic. Noah is not masochistic.) He is kinda sorta willing to let me hit him if I really want… but he doesn’t enjoy it and I feel like a really gross person. Instead I have a long-term friend/play partner who likes to be kicked in the nuts, who wants me to slice him open with scalpels and drink his blood.

I started negotiation for the right to play with my friend. Then I went to visit a friend out of state and I cheated. When I say I cheated I mean I spanked two friends at a party. I did not have Noah’s consent to play outside the marriage. I didn’t have sex. I didn’t even kiss anyone. But I cheated anyway. It hurt Noah a lot.

Then I announced high handedly that I was done following rules and I was going to go date. I did. A lot. For about three months. Most of the people I dated are people I have known for many years. They are all deeply ingrained in my life. Some of them I have known for literally my entire adult life. Some of them were brand new and had boundaries Noah didn’t like.

By the end of this Noah had spent a lot of time screaming at me in the middle of the night, sobbing hysterically on the floor while wanting to die, and slamming walls to shut me up when I was arguing nastily with him. I can be pretty fucking nasty.

I made a deal with the devil. I made a deal I couldn’t keep and there were consequences for me and I didn’t communicate about them. I just completely exploded.

Noah asked me to stop going on solo dates. Noah asked that we not do solo sex unless we were at a party together and we just happen to also want to play with friends while there.

My friends know in ridiculous detail how these fights went because I usually wrote all the details down the next day. Which is why all my friends and play partners stopped calling for a few months. They were all, “Krissy stop fucking around and go fix your marriage.”

It has been a solid wall of support for I’m the asshole of the year. I’m not proud.

Hey friends, thank you for caring about me enough to tell me that I have to fix my marriage. That is loving me in a real and true way that isn’t selfish. I really appreciate it.

On the day Noah asked me to marry him he asked me to be his slave. I told him not yet. I said we weren’t ready for those kinds of roles yet. But I wanted to be someday. All this year we have been intensely focused on “It’s time to shit or get off the pot.” We’ve had written agreements in place for a while now that it isn’t ok to do ownership or possessiveness with other people at all.

That’s something that all of my partners know about. Casual sex: excellent. Intensely loving friendship: sure thing. But there are hard lines. Noah is getting a lot more honest about what he wants from me too. Last night we had a really excellent experience with a dear friend who helped us do an intense amount of processing.

Noah doesn’t want us to date alone. At all. I think having it be very clear that Noah wants nearly-monogamy is useful. I think that I have been kind of moving along on the assumption that I married a poly guy and I threw a fit a few years back and closed the relationship on him. There were things exploding. It wasn’t good.

We learn lessons in stages.

It probably isn’t going to be happening soon but someday we will have sex with our friends again. But we’ll find ways to do it together. I don’t get to have a boyfriend ever again. He doesn’t want to have a girlfriend ever again.

Which is an interesting way of phrasing it.

I need to go put some serious effort into learning how to get my intimacy needs met without sex. That sounds kind of obnoxious, I’ll be frank.

But I’ve learned harder subjects.

I hurt Noah a lot this year. I need to learn from this experience and not do it again. We are still working on the forgiving bit.

I’m utterly exhausted but I feel glowy and at peace. We didn’t sleep much. The kids went to their Bonus Family so we could have the space to talk without having to think about their needs. We also fasted for 24 hours. Shocking that it didn’t make us cranky.

Instead I feel like we were able to be very clear about some things that we have been talking around for a long time.

That’s all I’ve got for now.

Good grief I am insecure.

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You know… it would be super awesome if in some decade of marriage Noah and I got to the point of being able to say, “We need an epic 9 hour processing day because I HAVE FEELINGS” without the awful screaming. That’d be great. But this is like fight number 3? 4? 5? since we got married. So as bad as it is that we scream the way we do sometimes (and we are both assholes) it is rare and we apologize profusely and get through years of processing afterwards. So it’s not great. But it is unfortunately kinda effective?

We’ve been talking all day. It’s 5pm. We have not been apart for a solid 10 minutes today.

Yeah this whole “I don’t want to follow rules” thing is at an end. We gots rulez. Rulez and rulez and rulez.

I have this horrifying habit of not knowing where my boundaries are until I see them in the rear view mirror. This is a distinctly different problem now than it was earlier in my life because these days we are experimenting with people I have deep love and affection for. That means fucking up is way higher stakes.

There is absolutely no one involved in our lives right now who it would be ok for me to hurt with my flailing. No one.

Fuck.

That’s complicated. Because my boundaries and limits are squiggy and weird.

Like… I don’t want either of us to have a date in the house again. It’s not that I’m mad at the person who came over. I’m not. But I kinda wanted to cancel my date yesterday and stay home and mope because that was just where I was and I didn’t feel like I could because Noah had a date and… that’s not great on a lot of levels. I went to a date when I really wasn’t in the mood and I wasn’t nearly nice enough to my date and at the end I had a meltdown.

Seriously dude. Don’t ask if you need ear plugs to have sex with me. That’ll make me cry the whole way home.

I mean, I’m not overwhelmingly mad at you either. But I’m not going to be able to shake that off and go back to fun time. I can’t.

I’m really sorry that I’m so sensitive. I know I’m a baby.

But I’m 34 fucking years old and I think the chance of me getting over that hot button this decade is at zero.

Also: let’s say this plainly… I’m a selfish piece of shit. I’m dating people because without having sex with more than one person… I don’t really get off. And that *sucks*. That sucks for me and it makes me really resentful of Noah long term because he has no such trouble. I don’t know why I’m wired this way but I am. I have put a good solid college effort into trying to be compatible with monogamy and you know what… it doesn’t work. I just stop orgasming. It’s awful. This is a fact Noah and I have talked about a lot. It’s a problem.My therapist has been tracking this. It’s a problem.

But Noah isn’t having the same problem. So why in the fuck does he need to go off and date?

That’s what my selfish piece of shit self says at least.

So Noah is going to have one date a month. At a party. Because when Noah goes to our friends’ houses to have sex that means I then have feelings about going back to their house and that is not fair at all to our friends.

It isn’t that I need to be the only one touching Noah’s dick. That’s not it.

I’m weird about houses and personal space. I don’t mind him fucking people at parties. Not whether I’m there and not when I’m not. I don’t know why this works this way for me but after a couple of months of trying things this time and years of experience in the past….

I feel comfortable saying I have 0 issue with group sex with both of us (even in our house). I have a small problem with party sex I’m not involved in as far as I don’t want to sit and watch. I have a huge problem, apparently, with sex at peoples houses. Which makes me a fucking hypocrite because I don’t mind that I do it.

I was frankly shocked that Daddy fucked me. He hasn’t in over a decade. I didn’t expect that at all. I didn’t say no and I’m not upset but I didn’t go to his house expecting that even a little. We’ve had a tease relationship for over a decade. So I didn’t really stop and think about how I feel about having sex with him in a house where my children go. If I had thought about it hard in advance…

I feel very uncomfortable about the fact that Noah had sex in a house where I take my kids. I’m not mad at him or the person he had sex with. I just…

Now I’m going to think about that. And…

I rarely know what my boundaries are until I see them in the rear view mirror.

I know it doesn’t matter that they had sex and my kids go to that house once a year. It’s not a big deal.

Only it makes my stomach hurt a lot.

I have been emotionally unstable my entire god damn life. I have to take that into consideration when I decide what boundaries are appropriate for my life. It isn’t likely to just evaporate now. I need boundaries that allow me to go through life without feeling like I’m going to puke. (Especially because I just god damn started a medication that has a side effect of nausea and I need to be able to notice that.)

I don’t think anyone did anything wrong. I had not asked for any limits in any of these areas to begin with and not a single person broke a rule or was rude or bad or anything like that.

I just have these feelings. I’m not saying this is rational.

It’s really weird. I genuinely don’t mind Noah having sex at parties. It doesn’t make my stomach hurt. I kinda walk by the scene once or twice to wave and establish that everyone involved still likes everyone else and it’s cool.

God Noah playing with someone on my couch makes me cry and cry and cry and cry. That’s where I cuddle my kids.

(I’M NOT MAD AT YOU dear friend who is reading this.)

But I would be freaking out more if it had been in the bed. Yeah. Not in the house.

I had a hard time moving into this house. Noah bought this house for hunting. A whole parade of women came through here and that has been pretty hard for me. It took years before I stopped crying about just being the latest slut in the house. This is a thing.

I need it to not be in the house. I’m weird. It’s not that anyone is doing anything wrong. It’s not that I don’t want him to play with the people he’s playing with. Shit, he couldn’t pick nicer or safer or more awesome people. I really like the people he’s playing with.

I’m sorry I am such a baby.

I don’t think anyone did a thing wrong. I don’t think anyone should be in trouble or… I just had feelings I didn’t know I was going to have. Big feelings. The kind of feelings that make it hard for me to be stable and calm and normal. The kind of feelings where I cry a lot for a long time.

It’s not your fault and I’m not blaming anyone. This happens to me. This is my life. This is about me and my brain. But I need to manage it. And Noah has to live with me. He wants me to live for a long time. He has to make choices that reflect where I start melting down if he wants to keep me. Whether that is fair or not fair. What is fair?

I’m sorry I’m unstable and insecure. But that is kinda as advertised at this point.

Also: Noah and I are going to try to go to parties more often together and when we go together he is totally free to play with friends. He’s just only going to make sure he goes to one alone. This means we will only have one of us out of the house one night a week. It was really sucking having us collectively gone two or three nights in a week on dates. That just feels yucky right now. That’s too big of a change from what things have been. Hell, I haven’t been back from the road trip long enough to want that much space from Noah. Even if the dates are nice.

A lot of the kinds of trust Noah wants from me… with hypnosis and M/s in the future… that requires a level of trust that is very hard for me. I am literally not set up to be good at trusting like that. That kind of trust is broken for me.

But he wants it. Which means that the pair of us have to work on figuring out how to build it. And that means limits that may not seem “fair” because we have very different needs and very different reasons we are doing all this.

There is no fair. Just like there is no deserve.

There is what you can bear.

I feel really sad and scared. I don’t like that I need to ask Noah for these limits. But I need to if I am going to be able to build the kind of trust he wants me to build. I will not be stable with him having dates like this. I never have been. It is unlikely to start now.

These are the safest and most awesome women possible. It isn’t that I am insecure about the people.

I’m just… a selfish baby.

We are both taking a lot of comfort from the fact that even though we had a huge fight and said pretty awful things… neither of us at any point even a little bit felt like “I don’t want to be married.” The worst it got was “I need a few hours in a room away from you.”

That feels good.

We are insecure bastards. I’m glad he is finally admitting some of his points of insecurity. Much like Beyoncé, the Queen, I need him to show me that I can hurt him. So that I can stay.

Fuck that album is going to be huge in my life. Lemonade is everything. If you haven’t watched it, stop what you are doing and go watch. YOU ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING BETTER WITH YOUR LIFE. JUST DO IT.

ok?

If you’re all “But I don’t know how” come to my house and you can watch it. I bought it. I’ll watch it hundreds of times. It’s ok if you are with me for one of them.

We spent a long time talking about Noah’s place in the hierarchy of my self destructive habits. It’s good that we are honest about that.

One of our new rules is that only Noah can cut me. We had quite a day. We managed to get through our proposed desired come-in-all-holes date… which is frankly shocking given how I woke up. I didn’t think I’d be interested in sex. Then he spent all those hours talking to me and trying to figure out what we both want.

Ok yeah I’ll suck your dick. And then you can fuck my ass. Then we can take a shower. Then you can hurt me really really really a lot and then fuck my pussy. And then later we christened the first of May in the back yard.

Yup. That’s a good day.

I don’t have any fresh bruises but I have lots of old lovely bruises still fading. (God damn Cupid.) (That was meant to be in a positive sort of way not in a damn you sort of way. More like hot damn. Ahem.) Then I have lots of cuts. I have marks from the clothespins. The caning wasn’t hard enough to leave a mark. That’s ok. I got no warm up. On purpose. Because any little girl who will speak that rudely to her Daddy should get a caning with no warm up.

Meaning I asked for it.

Because man atonement is a thing. Which totally doesn’t excuse my abusive behavior.

It’s not ok to scream at people like that. So we made some specific agreements about how I am going to handle my behavior in the future when I am that upset. We don’t like the agreements we made, but we talked it out. It’s not ok to scream like that. I am less ok with it than he is. Which kinda bothers me. He isn’t mad at me for screaming at him. I think it would be easier if he were mad.

Fuck.

Why is life so complicated?

Uhm. A lot else happened. Holy shit this was an eventful day. We talked about so many insecurities and paranoias and fears and wants and hopes and needs and coping methods and possessiveness and sharing and…

My hands is done. I wrote this during meals. That’s the only time I did much other than pay attention to Noah today. It’s been an epic 14 hours of talking. Sex didn’t start happening till 12:30 or so. I’m ready to go pass out now. I took the Gabapentin like half an hour ago. I feel like I’m walking into a wall of haze…..

Catharsis

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I need to start getting my thoughts in order to talk about catharsis. I’m sure that what I actually say will vary from what I’m writing about. Such is life.

Because I’m me, let’s start with a definition:

ca·thar·sis

kəˈTHärsəs/

noun

1.

the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.

synonyms: emotional release, relief, release, venting; More
2.

MEDICINErare

purgation.

Strong or repressed emotion. I have buckets of that. When I think of catharsis I think of a flood of things all at once. I think about beating my friends until they cry because it is hard to cry on your own. I think of being beaten until I genuinely sob. Not many people have ever done it. I think of being crucified. I think of atonement. I think of freedom from the burden of carrying these emotions forever.

I have two female friends in particular I think about when I think about cathartic scenes. One is my Sarah and another is one I don’t have permission to name. With Sarah a lot of what I work towards is helping her feel ok making noise and taking up space. I do that very deliberately because I have known her for a long time and she has good reasons to make some fucking noise. It’s ok for her to cry about the stuff that is happening and has happened. But that’s a hard thing when you are punished throughout your childhood for having negative feelings.

My other friend had a hard time safewording or really saying no to anything, ever. What is a safeword some of you sweet people ask. A safeword is a word that can end the scene. For most people red stops a scene and yellow means “please check in”. Traditionally speaking safewords can be any significant word or phrase that wouldn’t occur naturally in a scene. In really heavy sm scenes… sometimes a safeword is the difference between a scene and abuse.

So I asked my friend if she wanted to learn how to say no. I hit her for a long time. A really long time. It felt like hours. I was vicious and terrible. The whole time I told her, “I want you to decide when this stops. You have to tell me to stop. You have to defend yourself. You have to know you are worth that.” And on and so forth because fuck I talked for a long time.

Eventually she did crumble and sob and beg me to stop.

I hear she’s done much better with boundaries ever since. I’m glad.

Sometimes you can’t really understand the size and shape of your boundaries until you go all the way to the other side of them so you can get a good look at where they should have been.

I think of a lot of my rape experiences like that. “I should have done ____.”

I didn’t know.

Positive stuff. A few truly stand-out scenes as a bottom. The first crucification was the most intense. When you don’t know what to expect, it is more intense.

Without getting into details about why I told my then boyfriend/top/later Owner that I had a lot of sins I needed to atone for. He joked and said he could crucify me. I said that sounded great.

We built a padded backboard together. Full of hardware and gizmos to make the gearhead happy. I was grateful for all that time in the wood shop learning skills. Yes, I can help you construct equipment. I am a useful tool to have around.

There was obviously a crossbar for my arms. He tied me to the backboard using polyester rope. That was his preference at the time.

I’ve been suspended in a lot of positions. I’ve been suspended by enough people that I think I have a good idea of what the different positions are like. They are all intense in different ways.

The crucification was early in my scene career. I didn’t have much experience then. I was shocked by the breathlessness. That was what made the scene so intense. It hurt, yes, but it was the constriction of my lungs and diaphragm that caused me to see stars and hallucinate and feel like I was talking to dead family members.

I remember feeling a sad benevolence. These people absolutely could not love me while they were alive. The love they feel now is hollow and empty and useless but present. What does it mean? It means they don’t hate me.

It’s ok that I was born. It is ok that I chose my life over theirs. It is ok that I forced retribution on my father for hurting me.

It is just how life goes.

I talked to my boyfriend a little bit about what I felt and experienced. Not long after that he told me he didn’t want to know more about my past. Heh.

I really desperately needed the experiences he gave me. I think he kind of sensed that and couldn’t do it if he knew just how badly I was abused. Especially considering how recent it was when I met him.

I met my future Owner less than a year after my father killed himself.

Now, as a 34 year old that kind of blows my mind. Wow. Less than two years after my father sat in a garage with the motor running and a note saying everything was all my fault… I became a 24/7 slave. Now it was half my life ago.

I didn’t have a normal college experience. I had weird ritualized sm and no alcohol or drugs and I was shoved through doing homework and learning responsibility and household management experience.

He was a parental figure as much or more than a boyfriend. He taught me about loans and interest. He taught me about different levels of protocol and etiquette and appropriate behavior for different settings. It took a while before I was civilized enough to go to work stuff with him.

We spent a lot of god damn time on behavior training. I needed it. I needed to have someone pay attention to me and help me learn those skills just about like ABA therapy.

Do you know what I find funny? Most every boyfriend I’ve ever had is thrilled I married Noah. Because he pays the kind of attention to me none of them ever wanted to pay. They are happy I found that.

I like my life.

Another stand out scene: that scene with the couple in Portland the weekend before Noah asked me to marry him. I love going to Portland. I do so much fucked up shit there.

In that scene it was the first time they had ever co-topped together. It was intense the way they would stop addressing me to focus on one another and talk about what they wanted to do as if I were just kind of a toy then they hurt me fantastically. This is the stand-out most painful scene of my life. He picked me up by my pectoral muscles and shook me like a dog.

That pain made me almost completely lose my mind. It felt like my body was about to be shredded apart. Given that I have previously had the bottom quadrant of my face ripped off by a pit bull, that was an intense experience.

And when I came down to the ground again completely flipping out his partner slapped my face.

I think I collapsed to the floor.

I honestly don’t remember at all what happened after that.

It was a casual pick up scene with folks I barely knew from the rare parties I attended in Seattle.

Why was it cathartic instead of traumatic? Consent. Bitches. There are scenes that once you are in them… there is no way out but through. There are life experiences you must endure that are traumatic even though you want them.

Childbirth comes to mind.

Why did I trust this man to do this to me? He had extensive training by my government on how to torture people. If anyone was going to be able to do it and walk me right to the edge of the line of what I was going to be able to walk away from… it was him.

He did a fabulous job. Good man.

And his partner? God damn. I love a mean woman.

Why was this so positive? Partially because for the whole rest of my life I have an established 11 experience when it comes to pain. Unmedicated childbirth is not the most painful experience of my life. Having my face torn off wasn’t more painful.

Holy fucking shit.

Being in that much pain lets you appreciate all the days you sit at a 6. It’s not so fucking bad.

Would I be so into Noah if I hadn’t had such a shitty life? Probably not. But I am who I am and it is working out pretty well.

Catharsis.

I need to talk about how Noah creates safe space for me. That’s a big deal. That’s kind of the foundation for a lot of the good that has happened.

Noah was ok with me coming out to the garage every morning for months and months and sobbing hysterically. He didn’t react like I was a weirdo and I should stop making him uncomfortable. He said, “Ok. This is where you are right now. What do you want or need from me?”

The process of training him in how to be support has been long and layered, but there is improved trust with every year. That makes everything easier. He does what he says.

Goodness I trust him. The ability to trust someone is… huge.

My cathartic experiences with other people have been primarily one-off releases of emotion in my body. I’m not usually supported before or after. I had a great deal of structural support but just about zero emotional support from my Owner. He had very specific verbal boundaries around this and I really think he behaved ethically.

But I want something different from my forever and it’s ok because I have it.

A lot of my cathartic experiences with Noah have been more gentle and about building connection and intimacy and attachment and trust and care taking and…. It’s different.

And then there are the drug experiences. We’ve had some fucktastically good drug experiences together.

But uhm, that’s not what the show is about.

People are weird.

Not fair

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I spend a lot of time worrying that what I want isn’t fair. Not to Noah, not to the people I am propositioning, not to my kids, maybe even not to me.

What is “fair”?

Noah is having some feelings about how much time I’m spending thinking about the folks I’m chasing. That is logical and reasonable. I haven’t spent much time with anyone yet. It’s mostly in my head and some IMing and letters and emails. It’s almost entirely emotional energy at this point. But he notices.

I feel like it isn’t fair that I forcefully reject the label of polyamorous because I just can’t take on being responsible for someone’s needs that way. This article reminds me that I don’t have much to offer.

The thing is… I actually do talk to my prey quite a bit. I think there is a big difference between one-offs I pick up at parties (where I usually will not even write down my email address or phone number or name: if you can remember my name to google me you can find me) and the people I…

am attached to.

Because this is love. I don’t want to call it polyamory because I have issues of my own. But this is love.

Why do I love my submissive? Because he is smart, funny, he’s a great father. I have barely met one of his children one time many many years ago in a waving from the car sort of thing (I think but I might be remembering wrong) so I’m judging from his self-descriptions.

But I know how much time he spends. I know what activities he engages in. I know how he encourages his kids to try and fail and get up again. I respect him.

Even though I disagree with some of the decisions that his personal beliefs lead him to make… I actually have respect for the fact that he has his faith and he is going to god damn act it out. It matters to him and I really respect that. I respect it when people take their faith (whatever that is) seriously.

My faith is it takes all kinds. And if we are going to all make it that will take money and help.

I love the way he has taken care of his slave. He has one of the longest term M/s relationships I know. They are so loving and considerate and caring. Being around them always makes me feel just a little bit happier that such people are in the world. I respect that they model how to talk to one another and be loving while having boundaries.

I even really respect the fact that even with ownership between them they get to do what they each need to do for their lives.

Because we are all different. We are all complicated. We all have such different needs. They show me one way of working out those different needs. They don’t switch together because that’s a complicated thing in a dynamic. But other people are different.

I can understand to some degree. I can’t switch with Noah. Sometimes that is hard. Sometimes I think it simplifies things and improves my life. I appreciate that Noah doesn’t have a strong need for me to turn on dominance with him when I’m totally not in the mood. That was hard with my Owner. He’s a very switchy person. He wanted to have ultimate control of what kind of stimulation he was getting when, but sometimes he wanted to be dominated on demand and that was serious work for me.

I have a deep, burning inner sadist but this dominance thing is different. No matter what my submissive is saying. He doesn’t know. Picture me sticking my tongue out but this is a smiley free zone.

Today I took youngest child to the penultimate ballet class of the series and I used the hour to exercise. I ran for 40 minutes then I did a bunch of crunches/push ups/planks/leg lifts/etc until I needed to get the kidlet.

I have an increasingly weird opinion of my body. Why can’t I get stronger and stay fat this isn’t fair. I do drop weight pretty fast when I start heavily exercising. I feel this awful feeling of “See. If you only cared about your looks you could be thin” and I want to scream back WATCH ME BUY 15 GALLONS OF ICE CREAM AND EAT IT ALL THIS WEEK MOTHERFUCKER I’LL SHOW YOU ‘CARES ABOUT LOOKS!”

Ahem. But I’m not sure that is actually good for my health. So I don’t know what I’m doing.

I want to be better able to ride Noah (or anyone else). So I want to get better at running. Because right now I want to do that. I’ve been having a lot of fun on top lately with Noah even though that is historically not much my thing.

Really lots has been changing about my sexual interests over the last few years. On one hand Noah is so ideal because he is up for trying anything with the merest suggestion. On the other hand I’ve kind of exhausted the things he really wants to try.

Even though people are constantly surprised that I’m not the top in the relationship… no… I like being a sexual follower. I like doing what you want to do err, but let’s be clear that is if you are in the mood to do what I like doing. Cause I’m a selfish shithead. I like being told what to do and how to do it. Even if what you like isn’t perfectly my favorite I really like that you want to tell me to do it.

So I’m in an interesting place with my submissive. He thinks I’ve been so dominant with him and I think I’ve been an incredibly perceptive service top. I say the things to you I wish someone was saying to me.

Sigh

I’m actually looking forward to Noah watching me top in a few weeks. He’s never seen me top Sarah. He’s never seen me seriously beat on anyone. I feel like… after ten years he gets to meet a whole new me.

This is terrifying and exciting at the same time.

I hope it doesn’t change how he sees me too much.

I need to review some anatomy lessons. Especially the bone structure of the face.

God I’m mean.

No marks anyone can see when you go to work. I’ll be good.

I may draw these lines with a bright red marker to remind me. And cross out the no-no areas on the body with bright red. Because I’m still learning new boundaries and it’s important I don’t fuck this up.

The amount of trust that is being placed in me, quite frankly, scares the shit out of me. Why would anyone put their physical safety in my hands like this? Why would anyone give me permission to do this much damage to their body?

Shit, why am I just about begging the Professor on my knees to be just as rough or worse with me?

Because I’m a masochist.

Because I’m a sadist.

Because I have wonderful, complimentary friends who can help take me to heights of ecstasy completely impossible in vanilla sex. I know. I’ve tried and tried and tried.

I want someone completely and totally pedantic to crawl inside my head and whisper pretty much whatever he wants because I have faith that he sees me better than I see myself and I think he will say things I should hear.

I hope my submissive trusts me for fairly similar reasons.

I know Sarah trusts me for that reason. Lots of history proving that I will tell you what you really need to get programmed into your inside voice as I cause your body to absolutely flood with chemicals so that these lessons can be beaten as deeply into your unconscious existence as possible.

You are good. You are worthy. You are strong. You are beautiful. You are so very necessary. You are wonderful. I see you. I am so happy you are here. Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for loving me. I love you. I love you. I love you.

The script varies and has different components but that’s kind of the basis of what I like to beat into people.

I don’t hit people because I want them to feel small or bad or wicked. I hit people because it is fucking hot and you are so fucking nice for letting me do this. Extra bonus points if it gets you off. I’m completely satisfied with you just enjoying it.

For me, and for some other perverts I know, bdsm is sex of the mind and the body but not necessarily of the genitals. It can involve the genitals but it doesn’t have to. It’s about the chemical experience of strong sensations in your body. It’s about the power dynamic of doing that to someone or letting someone do that to you. Submitting your body to someone else’s desires is hotter than the sun.

I mean, I think. But I’m highly sexually submissive. I just don’t do that without serious negotiation. I think those kinds of roles are things that must be highly explicitly stated. I think the expectations must be verbally agreed on or (preferably) written down so that can be reviewed as necessary.

Power exchange means permission to have expectations about how you will be treated. Without some serious verbal negotiation (or written for an ongoing relationship) it is inappropriate to get into a situation where you have serious expectations of how you will be treated.

Folks just don’t actually generally sign on for that. Not when it comes to pain play and power imbalanced relationships. Not anymore. Once upon a time such things were normal and expected but things have changed.

Now it’s abuse. If someone tries to control you or hurt you without extensively asking your permission they are an abuser and you need help.

Things change.

We have to adapt. Even if our wiring doesn’t want to. Even if we would be much more successful predators if we were more up front about our hunting.

Side note. There are many women in this world I’d like to meet and talk to. How does it feel to live in your world and have this many partners? I’m kinda a freak in my world.

I’m not sure they want to talk to me. Maybe I’ll find out some day.

You never know what might happen. Life is long.

It is weird how with every passing year I feel like I have more and more I want to do before I die. I feel so much more urgency to be busy and active and accomplish things. Shit. I might live to be as old as 80. That’s a lot of fucking time to fill. I’d better make lists. Or I’m going to be old and be pissed I wasted so much time.

Sometimes I’m quite angry with myself for how I spent my childhood. Then I try to find compassion. If I had been out trying to exercise by myself as I moved around as a child the horror stories I experienced would have been much more frequent.

It’s ok that I hid. I had good reasons. I need to stop hating myself for everything I had to do to get through hell.

It’s over. I can change now. I can do something different.

I feel guilty, Noah. I feel like I’m letting you down. I also feel like I’ve been dragging and dragging and dragging for a long time. I think you are filling my bucket with everything you have going spare.

I need a deluge from somewhere. So I have a nice safe deity lined up who will fuck me senseless and maybe eventually get around to hurting me; a nice safe Professor who will beat the shit out of me and (we’ll see); Sarah who wants me to gleefully beat on her while telling stupid jokes; and a nice submissive who wants me to make him bleed and bleed.

That’s a deluge if ever I’ve produced one. That’s a lot of energetic stuff going on.

I’ve never managed a line up that felt this intense this… instantly… before. April is going to be god damn intense.

Oh yeah, and I’ll be playing with Noah and our normal sex life will continue. Cause that’s not going to change.

I have a very hard time feeling like this is ok. But whether it is ok or not I am going to do it. Because Noah is the only person who could stop me (other than my proposed partners losing interest) and he’s… ok with it.

Maybe that’s over stating. He’s nervous right now.

I get it. I’m being a selfish bitch.

I feel like I am about to god damn explode out of this little box that my life is allowed to be. This is not all of who I am. I am big. I am so many things. I am so many people. I want so many experiences at so many intensity levels. I want all of it. I want all of you.

I’m a little surprised I managed to damn this for four years. That’s my longest stretch of monogamy in my life.

Watch the riverbanks flood. Just wait. Soon there will be so much green.

Speaking of which: I’m very happy with how the tile mosaics are coming along. As long as these people I already dislike manage to install this well… I will live in a gorgeous house. I’m a lot more talented than I thought, which is kind of funny.

I can make beautiful things. No, not perfect. No I don’t make pictures that look like photographs. But I help people feel feelings.

That’s all I’m trying to do.

Different people encourage me to look at myself in different ways. Yes, they may call me filthy names, but they also concretely say, “Let’s look at x, y, and z and talk about it objectively.”

Because the filthy names are at uhm, my request. It’s ok. It gets me off.

So the whore thing is so complicated. On one hand I want to stop having this negative thing in my head where I keep coming back to this awful place of feeling bad about who I am. On the other hand if someone is hurting me and fucking me and whispers that I’m a whore and I should come…

I will. Over. And over. And over.

I kinda don’t want to give that up just cause it isn’t pc? It is super hot.

But I want it to stop being part of my negative tape when I am having a bad day. I want to stop randomly feeling bad about myself and calling myself a whore because of it. That’s dumb.

I want to change that.

But eliminating the word whore from my life entirely isn’t it.

That would be easier. Avoiding this powder keg would be easier. But then I wouldn’t get to orgasm like that and I’m not that pc.

Balance?

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I’ve got to tell you… adding a surprise trip to Hawaii when we are going to do the bathroom remodel and go on a big trip next year and and and…

It feels like a manic cycle. It feels dangerous and stupid. But I’m looking at Mint and jumping up and down and yelling “But I have saved up my god damn fun money!!!!!!!!! I have not been having fun! Clearly! There are MANY hundreds of dollars sitting there waiting in that part of the budget!!! Why is it god damn mental illness to want to go have fun with my fucking friends without being MOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY?”

I sure don’t want to be nice to me. But this trip is going to be fun. Even though I don’t like being nice to me D and A do. (Being nice to them is easy.) They are both very bossy-plan-having women. If I want to be passive and let someone take care of me I picked a rather good duo. Not that I’m planning a codependent weekend. But if I said, “I’m getting to the point of being hungry where I can’t think and I’ll get angry if I have to make decisions. Can you arrange for us to magically arrive in an eating establishment. I’ll find something on any menu” they would drag me off. They wouldn’t turn and ask me fifty fucking questions or expect me to make a long series of nuanced decisions. They wouldn’t need me to be the boss.

I was a 24/7 slave for years. I am deeply ok with not being the boss in a way that makes my current life very difficult at times. And Noah and I do not have an M/s dynamic. We have agreed that regardless of what we will do in the future, while we have young children we will have an egalitarian relationship. That is what we want to model and teach.

I’m not saying people who make different choices are bad. I’m saying this is what we decided. Ok?

I am the boss around here. We have an egalitarian relationship except for the part where I’m a bossy pain in the ass and Noah follows my orders. Ahem. I love my husband.

My friends want very badly to be respectful of me. I make it clear that I have a huge long list of picky ways I need to be in control and they tactfully make room for that. Which leaves me feeling like the boss a lot of the time. I miss being a slave sometimes.

I don’t think that A or D are going to be my short-term owners or anything but it is going to be really awesome to follow other people who have a plan. I like being a follower. I really do sometimes. I rarely let myself get into it. Normally I resist for reasons I don’t even understand. When I can really do it I love it.

Three bossy, controlling women. It’ll be awesome (and I have zero sarcasm in my voice there–I’m vibrating with excitement). Yeah, the plans are flowing now (they are SMSing me while I type). I pinned them down and booked everything. They are off like rockets. Oh this is so wonderful to watch.

I’m scared I’m going to fuck everything up. Luckily, when I do stupid shit A has this death glare that is followed with, “You need to stop” and then … all of a sudden I haven’t fucked everything up because there is a brick wall in front of my face and we are back on neutral territory.

I admire people with strong boundaries so much.

Noah has been commenting that this down cycle has been longer than almost any I’ve had during our marriage. I’m partially doing this trip because I need something to change the way my hormones are working. Long term stuff is not feeling satisfying. Small petty stuff doesn’t help. I saved up the money.

Is it really ok to be selfish?

This is one of those times when I feel like I have a split life. I have this self-perception that I have nothing and no one and I’m worthless and I should die. Then I notice that I’m incredibly well off financially, I have amazing friends and I have a husband who says go have fun.

I’m not very good at living in the now when the now isn’t very exciting. When the now is a fuck-ton of work… I get worn down. My bucket is empty. There’s a hole in the bottom. It’s a metal bucket and they spent a lot of time dragging it back and forth across concrete and now… not so water tight. That’s just how it works sometimes. They didn’t mean to do it. They were just trying to reach the dipper and couldn’t quite get there and the bucket slid. It was an accident.

But here I am.

I’m ridiculously excited that I get to run away with two wonderfully fun women. They will even do part of the long run with me on Saturday. My life is pretty ridiculously blessed.

Not a nice person.

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Periodically I see references to the idea that every is a good person from their own point of view. Everyone views themselves as the misunderstood protagonist of their own story. Not me. I think of myself as more like an anti-hero. I am not morally superior. If anything I am inferior.

A long time ago it started to seem to me that being a hero was something that just wasn’t available to people like me. I am certainly a protagonist in my story though I am probably mainly an antagonist in other peoples stories.

As Agatha likes to say, “I can work with that.”

I don’t see a lot of point in working hard to be nice.

If I felt physically threatened I probably wouldn’t call the police I probably would beat the shit out of the person threatening me. I’m not so much with the “lawful good” personality trope.

Ok, the first thing I would do is verbally clear up the fact that this person knows it is a really stupid idea to threaten me. That clears up like 99% of issues without violence.

But it is backed up with the real and serious threat of violence. That means I’m not a nice person. I can work with that.

I’m not going around beating people up for casual insults or for doing things I don’t like. I am too apathetic for such shenanigans. I will only hurt someone if I believe I must do so for self defense. I have experienced an unusually broad range of conflict from mild verbal to physical fights.

Calli turns four in August. Then we all get to enroll in martial arts. Whee! It will be good for us. Maybe they can teach me more control over my abysmal temper.

The goal isn’t now or ever to be a nice person. I want more control over how and when I am not-nice but that doesn’t mean I want to be a nice person.

What makes someone a “good” person or a “bad” person. Are all soldiers automatically bad because they have the potential to kill? Some of them even have. The ones who do kill people tend to come home totally fucked up.

I’ve never killed anyone. Does that make me a good person? But if someone hurt my babies and I thought the police were going to do nothing… Well I don’t feel real bound by the 10 Commandments anyway.

I’d take that person to the desert. My babies are off limits. The penalty for fucking with them is your life.

Does the fact that I will defend my children make me a good person? If I don’t defend my children am I a good person or a bad person? I would be a non-aggressive person. A passive person.

Mostly I just make sure they aren’t alone with people. Not even for a few minutes. And they know ALL the technical names for their body parts and explicitly that anything covered with panties is *private* and people who touch you there mean you harm when you are a kid.

My kids will not be victims.

And I’m very ok with that meaning that I can’t be a nice person. Ok. No problem. I lost that potential long, long ago anyway. I will be fierce instead.

If I were still trying to be a nice person I think I would be paralyzed with fear. I have too much bad in me that might leak out if I say the wrong thing. I might have to stop talking altogether if I wanted to be “nice”.

The little slice of the world I inhabit isn’t very nice. I think it is funny that so many of these writers know only people who think they are nice. Really? I know a lot of people who would laugh at the idea that they are “nice people”.

My shrink says that people who have had easy lives don’t feel comfortable standing near me and that is a lot of why I know so many people with ridiculous trauma histories. She tries to get me to understand that my view of the world is perhaps a bit skewed.

I know a lot of former childhood prostitutes, male and female. I know a lot of people who have been arrested for violence. I know a lot of rapists. I know a lot of people who beat the shit out of people for fun or money. Not like, mafia beat people up or anything.

I didn’t manage to end up friends with the nice fluffy spank-o-philes who just like a nice spanking. I know the people who want to be cut up with razor blades and long whips and turned completely black and blue from all the terrible bruising.

I broke a bone in a scene and didn’t stop the scene for health care. I stayed tied up for hours. We stayed at the party for a while after the scene before we bothered going to the hospital.

Pain is part of my life in a way it isn’t for most people.

I’ve had two hard pregnancies followed by two hellish labors (One unmedicated for 40 hours the other unmedicated for nine days) and neither was anywhere near as painful as when a large man picked me up by my pectoral muscles and shook me like a dog with a toy.

I thought that feeling was so overwhelming I would completely and totally combust from pain. That is still my personal 11. Nothing has been as painful as that.

And I have pictures from a long and storied relationship before that showing how I worked up to it.

Then the week after the hardest scene ever Noah asked me to marry him. Then things changed.

Let me tell you, there is no way to tell the story of me and Noah without it sounding like a rescue mission. All of these pieces fit together and layer.

My Owner was pretty happy with Noah as a partner for me. He gave me Daddy’s permission to date that nice boy. Even Puppy (a not-nice person I dated in between the times I dated Noah) gave me his blessing when I married Noah.

Pretty much all of my ex’s came to my wedding reception. They were all jolly and happy and very glad to see me with someone who wanted to jump through the hoops they were not fucking interested in jumping through.

I feel lucky. Despite the fact that I am not very nice people still love me. As much as I talk about being a raging asshole… that doesn’t actually come out much any more. It did when I was much younger. It did when I was a kid, a teenager. I had it mostly under control by my twenties and I’m doing really well in my thirties.

I think mean thoughts but I mostly keep them to myself. To people I say the nice things I think. I’ve learned better how to filter them at full speed. Like all skills it has taken a lot of practice.

But I’m still not nice. Because if I need to say mean things in order to create the effect I want to create I will fucking well do that and probably not feel bad for more than a few seconds.

I have no problem with being nasty to racists but I’m working on doing it with slightly lower volume because I dislike having my throat hurt from screaming. See, still not nice.

My children are the best mirrors in the world. Children learn to treat you by watching how you treat the world around you. They don’t do what you say they do what you do. I don’t really want my kids to have to deal with the punishments that come with being a screamer. And clearly we are all screamers. So I have to figure out how to change myself.

I can’t get through this by telling them what they must do without changing me first. That really blows.

A friend commented with dismay when his childling heard the definition of rules-lawyering and was happy. “No! Don’t do that!” I encourage my kids to do it. Without yelling. Without pestering.

The pestering rule is kinda my favorite thing. Persistence is awesome! Pestering is annoying. Asking for something more than three times is pestering and then you don’t get to have whatever it is that day.

Bam.

When my kids ask for something a second time all I have to say is, “That is your second request.”

And they zip up their lips faster than you can say, “Bob’s y’er uncle.”

I get the impression they react pretty much how I react when someone says their version of “You are getting close to a boundary.”

React with glee! They are defining themselves for you! This is a good thing!

When people used to ask me to leave the morning after a pick up I took that as a sign of healthy boundaries and I left happy to know that I hadn’t over stayed my welcome.

I like my house. I like that I am not going to be kicked out. I can make it as weird as I want to. It’s ok. I have permission. I don’t need no fucking permission. Something. Anything. I can do it to my house.

Kind of crazy.

I look at the houses around me and think, “Man we have different aesthetics.” My neighborhood is full of people doing shit to their houses. Some are gentrifying. Some are just doing general maintenance and repairs to the facades they created decades ago. They like the look of it.

My house right now is just one of the shittier ones (from the outside) in the neighborhood. Not quite derelict, but man do we need to do some repainting. Shabby. Not improved upon since the 1950’s.

Meh. I don’t want to spend the money so I ignore it.

We all channel our frustrations in different ways. I have lots of control issues and I’m not a very nice person. Only I can be very nice and very polite and great to talk to.

Isn’t that why sociopaths are so dangerous (not that I’m a sociopath–too much empathy)? They are so charming. I don’t have to be nasty just because I’m not a nice person.

So many layers.

Noah says I’m consistent. I think I have so many special cases that it is weird that he can find consistency.

I think it is much healthier that I now side track onto thinking about home improvement projects rather than sex or being hurt. I know that I will have to make my own status in this life. I inherit nothing positive. People think of me only as a sum of what they can see.

I can get away with whatever I try hard enough to get away with. If I want to have a community I have to go out and fucking meet the people around me and introduce myself and consistently say “Hi” and smile for years.

Having a distinctive yard is helping. “Oh! You did that!” Yup.

Small pond. A very small pond. I want to be a big fish in a very small pond. That’s all I have the spoons for. I know all those other lakes and rivers and oceans exist but they are kinda scary for me. I like my very small pond.

Here everyone walks to the table completely neutral to one another. We have no preconceived associations other than the most gross (meaning large–not necessarily yucky) and general racial and sexual assumptions.

It was just dumb luck. We happened to move to the same neighborhood during the same span of time. Let’s talk.

I have lived here longer than anywhere else in my whole life. I want to know my neighbors the way other people got to get to know their elementary school peers. I want it.

My kids need community. Communities happen when people create them. Just keep doing things.

I’m not a nice person. But I can be quite charming and fun when I put my mind to it. When I try.

This is why I try to limit my time with people to the amount of control I have to give.

I am an angry girl. But I’m not angry with you. And I try hard to differentiate my behavior better than that. You are not a representative sample of your group to be punished for the whole. No one is. No scapegoats here.

We are not a collective. We are a bunch of individuals. That is why change is so hard. It can’t be mass taught or enforced. It has to be lead.

People aren’t willing to dramatically change their opinion in public. That would mean losing face.

Grow the fuck up.

Working is fun.

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I don’t know what I was thinking. How did I think I would get through over-night without Noah and the kids yesterday? Ha. I came home for bed-time. I called and told Noah to let the kids stay up a bit late and wait for me. When I got home I felt better.

I crawled into the lower bunk between Shanna and Calli. I cuddled both of them. Shanna rapid-fire told me all about her day. I wanted to know. I wanted to know about every second I missed. I was sorry that I missed them. I was sorry she got hurt yesterday and I wasn’t there to kiss it. She survived, of course. Kids get hurt. It’s ok. It sounds like she figured out most of the “class” parts of ballet. No more telling the teacher no one else was present. Ha.

I spent the day working in a coffee shop. That’s tiring work. I worked from the minute I arrived until I left. I took one ten minute break. I was in the shop for seven hours. Then I left to find food because I was starting to feel mean. I can understand why people in the community tell me that they don’t come in because they don’t like the food selection. We don’t have filling food. We have snack food. Hm. And I don’t want to take food from the shop because we need to make money and I’m too stubborn to pay for my food there after working that hard all day. Complicated. Luckily my share of the tip money (which I didn’t expect to get–that was kind) covered dinner. Woo.

At the shop I am working with Noah’s former partner. The one he was dating when he and I originally met. It was quite smooth. She has a very cheerful professional “face”. If she has a problem with me it was totally absent from her training me for the job. I wouldn’t say I felt comfortable but there is no way that I can say that any discomfort I felt was her fault. I was really impressed with watching her as an employee. That woman works like a demon. She takes pride in where she works. (Not this whole Gay Pride weekend stuff.) If something needs to be done she up and does it. She doesn’t wait for anyone else. She certainly doesn’t wait to be told what to do. I’m quite glad the coffee shop has her. I doubt we would have made it this far this year without people who just up and do things like she does.

It was kind of funny. When I got there an employee I don’t know was the only one working. I introduced myself as one of the owners and asked what work needed to be done. She gave me tasks and it worked out. She kind of fished around for how I got involved. I told her I met R many years ago at Shibaricon and then I ran TNG4 with him. D and I knew one another in junior college–we met when I was sixteen. She expressed surprise. Oh! Then you do know these people. Because she has never seen me around it is hard to understand that I existed all that time. Ha.

I like talismans. I like fetishes (in the traditional sense not in the modern “kinky” version). “An inanimate object worshiped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit” Like that. Noah and I do not have a formal all-the-time d/s or m/s relationship. We play with power exchange occasionally but it isn’t a formal all the time part of our life. This means that I have strong feelings about collars.

In the bdsm world that I grew up in there are signals. Signs that help people understand how to relate to one another. Different collars are used in different ways. The thing is, this varies by person. I have seen patterns emerge but there are always people who break the pattern. Nevertheless I observe trends. I have given away most of the collars I shared with Tom. He wished that I gave them back so he could reuse them. I said hell would freeze over first. You are a rich guy. Fucking replace it if you care so much. No you may not use my god damn collars on your long-line of women. Just no. Anonymous people with little-to-no-connection can have them with pleasure. Enjoy them. I still have some collars we shared. I don’t think I will ever have them around my neck again.

When I am going out to a bdsm event and I do not want to be hit on I have to think about signaling. I have a Big Shiny Wedding Ring quite on purpose but in the poly world it doesn’t matter much. In the bdsm world many people are at least open to playing with many people even if they won’t have sex with them. If you represent yourself as property then you aren’t approached as much. People have to feel really fucking confident that it’s ok before they ask to play. And they don’t do things that are pushing my boundaries because they want to respect my partner. It’s hilarious. People don’t seem to care if they offend me but if I look like property they want to not offend my owner. Fuck all y’all.

So I wore a shiny padlock on my sternum. It’s a very simple, old fashioned sort of collar. Dog choke chains make a statement. It’s been a long time since I have gone out in public making this sort of statement. I notice that I have a different kind of wariness now. I assume I am invisible now. I feel like I have learned better camouflage as prey. I no longer feel hunted a large percentage of the time. The space I take up in the world has changed.

I have spent a lot of my life moving from place to place. I always meet people easily. Looking friendly and approachable was part of how I had friends at all. People see me from across the room and come over to say, “You look like a good person to talk to.” I can generally talk to just about anyone. I am quick with words. Part of this was because I was in the habit of scoping every room I was in for people to have sex with. It makes you look friendly. Seriously. You smile a lot. I don’t do it any more. I can feel my facial expression. I always look harried an frustrated. Ha. Harried and frustrated looks like it might bite your head off, not give you a pleasant chat.

I spend my life in a very small and secluded sphere. I live in my role of “mom” for the vast majority of my time. Even given how much time I spend on that role I give it a disproportionate amount of energy compared to any and every other thing I have done. I am no longer hunting. It’s quite simple, really. I am not looking for lovers but I’m also not looking for friends. I have a full roster right now and I don’t even feel the need to particularly seek out new acquaintances. People will wander into and out of places I am standing. I don’t feel the need to chase them any more. I don’t need to fill up idle hours of my life. I’d give anything to have more idle hours. Oy.

I have no interest in modeling m/s or d/s while my kids are little. I want them to see a partnership. I want them to think that women are bad ass, not obedient. I want my kids to see an actual long term partnership. Staying together is important to me. People get distracted and unhappy with one another and they turn to other relationships to keep things interesting. I want my kids to think that their parents find one another interesting. I want to spend a lot of time with Noah. I like him. Being near him and talking to him makes me feel far better than I have felt at any point in my life. There is no other person on this planet who is as willing to put a mountain of time and energy into me. I am special to him. If he took that energy and gave it to someone else I would know. It would be an active withdrawal. There is a limited amount of time and energy in this life. I have something really special. I want to nurture it, not ignore it.

I have learned a lot about being gentle from being with Noah. He is the only big-tough-guy I have ever dealt with who will actively tell me I am hurting him. He’s both extremely picky and not picky at all–meaning that he chooses when to talk about when he is feeling. He can endure things stoically like the next big-tough-guy. He just doesn’t do that with me. He thinks I shouldn’t hurt him. He doesn’t want to be hurt by me. So he tells me when and how I hurt him so that I can lean to do better. Mostly we don’t hurt each other any more. It’s rare to have a slip. I don’t even lick his nose.

I feel really glad that I get to model the relationship I have with Noah. Some day we will do more with other power structures because we want to. I really like that it will happen after many years of earning careful trust. In the modern USA “slavery” is kind of an ephemeral concept. It’s not real. It’s not binding. It’s a choice to have a conscious power structure with someone else. It’s just a consciously and specifically chosen relationship style. There are a lot of Father Is In Charge mentality left in this country, I’m not sure why people are surprised that people want to formalize this. The language is charged, yes.

Right now I am using all of the caring-for-other-people energy I have for my children. They will not always need it and some day it will be unhealthy for me to pour this much energy into them all the time. I will still have this energy. I had this before I had kids. Noah spends a lot of time massaging me. He went to massage school as part of his learn-to-pick-up-chicks training. He really did go to school for how to be a better partner for me. I win. He also did hypnotherapy training. I’m totally going to be able to make him sound like a freakishly good fit when I write about him. I’m thinking about dialogue. I think I am hilarious. This will be a very different book to write.

I’m thinking very hard about what slavery meant to me. What did I do with Tom? How did that relationship fill my needs? I was under contract for two years. He ended that part of our relationship in a couples therapy session wherein the counselor told me that our problems were all my fault because I was asking too much of him by saying that he should follow the relationship rules of the contract we both signed. Needless to say, I felt quite good about myself at that point, right? That was when I started hounding him about kids. I was nearing the end of college. I had told him that I had no interest in getting married before I graduated from college. There was the strong implication that I wanted to get married after. He prevaricated for a while and pushed me to consider grad school.

I decided I had two paths for teaching. If I was going to do the get married and have kids thing I should teach K-12 something. If I am going to “be a grown up” forever and build my life around the bdsm scene I should teach college so that I can be out. I decided to start the masters program first. Either way I didn’t feel qualified to teach much yet. I felt like there was some magical level of smart I would feel at some point and then I would be qualified to teach. I would know enough about a topic that I felt comfortable saying, “Yes! I know this!” It’s ironic that I failed the final test after years of getting good grades and being told I was good at this–writing, that is. Oh well.

I asked Tom if we could open our relationship in December of 2003. I didn’t technically have sex with anyone till January. I think I knew from the first person that I was hunting. I started the masters program first but I started the teaching credential the next term. I moved out of living with Tom in October about six weeks after I broke up with him. I started the credential and broke up with him at the same time. He would never answer the marriage and kids thing. So I disengaged. I threw that energy out into the world. I went hunting. I started dating Noah in February.

It’s going to be really fun to write about Noah. Knowing how this story goes it means that I am having an interesting time figuring out how to approach tone. This is going to be so different to write. How do I represent my time as a slave? What did I tell Tom? What kind of relationship was that?

I want to wear a lock on my sternum while I am working at Wicked Grounds because I want to announce that I am protected. I am wanted. Someone has already found me. When I was part of those communities I was always hunting. Always willing to say yes. It changed how I talked to people. In the past I have had issues with men taking liberties. I want to discourage it. Signaling is complicated.

I have been raped at a public sex party. I’m aware that it happens. A coffee shop isn’t a sex party. But I have had people casually touch my breasts. I have had people grab my ass. These actions aren’t “rape” but I’m kind of a ticking time bomb. One of these times I am going to break something on someones body as a result of them grabbing me. And it will probably escalate from there and be “all my fault”, right? I’m scared. I don’t like that I am scared. It is very hard for me to be in places I think of as hunting territory when I am not hunting. I feel physically sick. I feel scared. I am going to bring any fetish of protection I have.

Slavery is a way of acknowledging that someone is that interested in me. Different people do slavery differently. I’ll write more about that later. It’s time to start getting ready. Today will be a long day. I need to bring a water bottle and specifically drain it every so often. I think I was dehydrated yesterday. I know I was hungry. I ran five miles yesterday morning before working on my feet for seven hours making food and washing dishes. I ate a bowl of oatmeal, a thin slice of quiche… and that wall before dinner. By which time I was starving and had a raging headache. I think I should take better care of my body today. Today is supposed to be a “cross training” day. I hope this counts. I hope it will be fun. I had fun yesterday. It was fucking awesome to get to talk to people with a counter between us so they couldn’t touch me. I have serious issues. Whatever. It worked. I felt safe. I felt like I was doing something and I had a place and a purpose. I was using some of my caring-for-other-people energy on that community. Twelve years is a long time. I’m not gone. I’m on sabbatical. I’m training for my next relationship. It will be very different to use more of that energy on Noah. I feel specifically spooked.

And I should go take a shower.

Irrational feelings.

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This is ridiculous. I am so angry with Tom I can barely see straight. I feel like I am getting angry with him for all the not-getting-angry I did during our four year relationship. He’s a fucking bully and I let him walk all over me for four years. I remember chanting in my head, “It’s not worth an argument.” That was how I got through most days.

===============================

I love Saturdays. Saturdays are the best days. Today he is going to stay home. I miss him. I’ve missed him all week. This new company takes a lot out of him. Twelve hour workdays are short.

It’s only eight. He won’t be up for hours. I should probably go downstairs and find something to do to amuse myself until ten or eleven when he will start waking up. I’m kind of sick of doing homework, but what the hell. This week I’m working on Taming of the Shrew. It seems apropos. I’m working on a D/s interpretation of the story. How do I convince the teacher that Kate really likes being stomped on. It gives her structure and safety. I understand that. Tom gives me that. He tells me what the rules are. He gives me a frame so I can be safe and know what to do.

“Hey! You’re up! I’m working on an interesting paper right now, do you want to hear about it?”
“Not really. What am I having for breakfast?”
“Oh. Uhm, would you like eggs and toast?”
“Yeah. And a Coke.” He flipped the tv on. Oh look. Blazing Saddles. Again.

I walked into the kitchen and started cooking. He was laughing before the opening scene was finished.

“Man. These guys really know how to act!” He laughed uproariously, again.

“Here is your breakfast.”
“Thanks.”
“So I’m trying to figure out how to explain that Kate, from Taming of the Shrew, really likes the D/s in her relationship. I found a neat article in Skin 2–that latex fetishist magazine–that has a paper written by a professor from Oxford and ”
“Can’t you see I’m watching a movie?”

I lapse back into silence. I miss him so much and he is sitting right in front of me. All I want to do is share with him what I have been thinking about all week. I’m trying to find the words to talk to him about our relationship. I want to understand why I feel happier in this relationship than I felt with my family. But right now I just feel sad.

“I’m going to go upstairs.”
“That’s fine. I’m going to watch my movie.”

I go to our bedroom and open my upper drawer. The piece of cloth is shoved into the corner. Then I pick up the cloth and unroll it. I take a deep breath before grasping the scalpel firmly. I go in the bathroom and shut the door. I put the scalpel inside the bath tub.

It is so hard doing what he wants. I am a bad slave. I am impertinent and needy. I look in the mirror at myself. I stare as hard as I can.

“Shut up, Kristine. Shut up, Kristine. Shut up, Kristine. No one gives a shit what you fucking think. Shut up, Kristine.”

I turn around and climb into the bath tub. I shut the shower door completely. I run the bath water until the tub is completely full. I lean back against the wall and close my eyes. I can feel tears running down my face. It takes me a couple of moments to find the courage.

I make my cuts very carefully. From downstairs I hear the television say, “Mornin’, ma’am. And isn’t it a lovely mornin'” Tom drowned out the television as he roared, “Up yours, nigger!” and laughed. I fucking hate that movie. I’m allowing it to break my concentration so I shook my head quickly and started humming and then singing to myself so that I wouldn’t be distracted by the noise. I like a song I learned with the Seventh Day Adventist youth group.

“Father I adore you. Lay my life before you. How I love you.
Jesus I adore you. Lay my life before you. How I love you.
Spirit I adore you. Lay my life before you. How I love you.”

It is meant to be sung in rounds in a group. I use it to help me focus on the sensation of the cutting. My other senses don’t have to be as engaged. I want to be very careful. I can’t cut too deeply because that would scar and get attention. I need the wounds to heal quickly. I take my clothes off in front of other people at least once a month. I don’t want to draw attention to this so I am very cautious. I just barely break the skin. I cut barely until I get blood. Thin little cuts like these heal quickly and without a mark for me. I start on my upper right thigh. I like to start horizontally. I make cuts around three inches long. I make them slowly and carefully. I breathe deeply the whole time. I keep singing. In the background Tom is still laughing, or laughing again. I don’t know or care which.

When I am done there are usually three or four patches on my legs. They are usually three inches by five or seven inches depending on how hard the week was for me emotionally. I usually judge when to stop by how bloody the water is. I like to take breaks in the middle of cutting to play in the blood. I like the swirls in the water. The more blood I take out the less likely I am to do something stupid. What I mean by “something stupid” is try to flash my marks at someone. I know it is not ok to acknowledge I do this. I will get in trouble again. If I just have a couple of small marks high up on my thighs I might wear a short skirt or get out of the shower and walk around naked for a few minutes. When I make more and more marks I know how to adapt my behavior and I don’t take the risk of being caught. Tom doesn’t mind me wearing tights and long dresses all the time so it is easy to hide. We almost never have sex so it really doesn’t matter what happens to my body in between.

Eventually I stop cutting and lean back and cry. I don’t even know why I am crying. But I hurt so much. The cutting isn’t what hurts, but it gives me an excuse to cry. I’ll take it.

After even longer I stop crying and pull the drain plug. I watch my blood go down the drain. I get up and rinse off quickly. I dry off and get dressed in thick tights and an ankle length dress. I walk down stairs and sit down at the floor near Tom’s feet with my school books. Even though he doesn’t want to talk to me I miss him so much that I can’t bear to be away from him.

It’s not until he says, “Can’t you ever shut up?” that I realize that I’m still singing the song under my breath.

“Father I adore you. Lay my life before you. How I love you. Jesus I adore you. Lay my life before you. How I love you. Spirit I adore you. Lay my life before you. How I love you.”

Shorter and shorter.

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I’ve been pulling at my hair for an hour in that way that means I will cut it again today. I have Hair on repeat. Really if you think about it, Lady Gaga singing about hair is somewhat ironic. She wears wigs. As she says over and over, “I am my hair” she is saying that she is something that is external. She has so much control over who she is that she decides differently on a daily basis. Does that mean that people who have abrupt changes in their appearance are changing who they are?

This is all too angsty; I know. I love semi-colons. Damn you, commas. Jenny likes to remind me that the “rules of writing” were just randomly invented by some twat one day. Ok, that’s not exactly what she says. But it is what I hear. It makes me smile every single time. Because if some twat just made it up one day I don’t need to feel bound to it. I can do whatever I want. It’s a fun kind of rebellion–normally invisible.

Along with my hair getting shorter I notice how my field of vision is shortening. I’m not responding to emails or text messages unless I have seen the person recently. Recently as in seeing them within the last month. People I haven’t seen in many months… I don’t know. I just never seem to remember when I am at the computer. Or it is something like right now where I am actively avoiding. I don’t know why I am actively avoiding. I do. I don’t want to say why I am actively avoiding.

I’m not at ease in my skin right now. I feel not-ok in a way that I can’t ignore. I feel like a thousand monkeys are jumping on my chest. It hurts just behind my breastbone. Right now I don’t feel like I can look people in the eye. I feel dirty. Small. Less than. It’s not anyone else’s fault. At this point in time I don’t think there are very many people who know me even casually who think that of me. Not really. Sure, there are people who dislike me.

Outside of my family I don’t actually believe that people wish me ill. And they all feel very guilty for wishing me ill.

I am trying to see my shaman on Thursday. Since our babysitter quit I’m not 100% sure that is going to happen. And I may have to reschedule with him because of a meeting in the city anyway. It feels kind of like the universe doesn’t want me to see him. I want to see him.

I’ve got my bangs too high that I don’t stand a chance. I think I need to ask my shaman to shave my head. There. That is the compulsive. Why don’t I ask Noah? Why do I want to keep this away from him? Why is my shaman more appropriate?

Well didn’t I just fucking load that question. What does ownership mean? I don’t know. I really don’t. I am very much like a wild animal. I run off and do things by myself sometimes. I can’t accept having everything in my life have to come from Noah. Right now there is so very little in my life that isn’t for him. That plays a part in why I was dating too, I think.

Noah doesn’t have the same wounds in identity because of his appearance. I don’t see the deep fractures in his soul from feeling bad about how he looks. My shaman has spent a fair bit of time being upset with his physical body. Even my use of male pronouns is part of that fight. I feel like it is a failure in me that I cannot default to gender neutral pronouns. They all feel wrong, false, not grammatical. Not allowed.

Does that mean that people who are not easily labeled by one of those correct pronouns do not exist? It certainly feels that way. I suppose that since the dominant name and label is generally male it is close enough. That is awkward to say and write about. I feel like I am jumping on the crazy train, but who am I kidding? I was already here.

I want to see my shaman. I want to talk to him about my shifting sense of self. I want to talk to him about feeling so very bad about existing. I don’t have a church. I don’t have a congregation. But I do have a shaman. I’m not sure how these things happen. How does a life get built, anyway?

The part of me that is fighting with my compulsion admits that I want to use sex to get close to my shaman. I want to feel connected with him. Given our history I know it wouldn’t work in the way I wanted it to, anyway. We have an odd time connecting that way because we go at very different speeds. We are not a match or it never would have fallen off. But I feel like I should do it anyway. I love him so much. I feel like I have to earn the honor of his regard. I have to prove to him that I do want him. I do love him. There is nothing else I have to give that has any value or worth at all. Absolutely never is the pleasure of my company a possible exchange. I know there is no pleasure in my company. I am too mean. Too sharp. Too vicious and unpleasant.

I take comfort in getting to explain to him that I am not allowed to have sex with anyone else anymore. It’s not my fault. I’m sorry I am changing the deal. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I will never meet that need again. Please, please don’t reject me now. He won’t. But I feel absolutely terrified anyway. Hell, he doesn’t remember the last time we had sex. I was not pleased when I figured that out. Butthead. Apparently he doesn’t value me based on the things I think he does. He doesn’t even remember the parts that I think are the most important thing I have to give.

What the fuck is it that he is getting then? I need to ask. I need to go to him and talk to him about starting to dye my hair when I first started pulling away from my mom. The colors have gotten increasingly bolder and more odd and aggressive as I have felt angrier and angrier with my mother. The bleach is kind of a bitch though. I had a temper tantrum while trying to comb my hair one day because I couldn’t get the knot out. I cut it out. I did a bad job. It was fun for several days to try to even it out and giggle because with the curls and the weird dye job (I think five colors in splotches) it really doesn’t matter much if it is “even”.

But I’m tired of going out in public and hearing the comments. I smile at the children who ask. I frown at the boys who snicker “clown”. It’s like fucking junior high all over again. I’m done. I’m not hunting. I’m done. I feel like that part of me is gone. I miss my hair. I miss being able to turn my head and get a curtain to hide behind. It was part of how I dealt with my vast discomfort in public. I lost my veil. I feel exposed in a way that feels deeply uncomfortable. I have nothing to hide behind except my eyelids. They do not feel like adequate cover.

I feel like me shaving my head will happen like all the cutting. In the bathroom by myself. I know my shaman doesn’t keep up with my blog. He frankly tells me he doesn’t have the time to read my ever-increasing flood. That’s ok. It means I can talk about him all I want.

I feel like part of what is going on with the less-than is I feel so very weird about my place in the social hierarchy lately. I don’t feel like I am behaving. I fit nowhere. It was a true thing I said when I told my therapist that the only way I will ever fit into a group is if I leave Noah and am a poor single mother. They just don’t make groups for me any more.

What does that mean? I guess that means this is the American Dream then. Solitude. More of it. I don’t understand why. I’m not sure where I got broke and I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t fit. I feel wrong. I feel like everything in me is wrong. I still feel bewildered by my lack of anger. I don’t have that energy right now. Anger is normally a big spur to me getting off my fucking ass and getting shit done. It’s one of the things I use to fuel my productivity and I don’t care if that’s healthy or not. Everyone dies, right? I could very carefully never ever use my body harshly. I don’t think I would be very proud of my life.

What am I proud of? I kind of want to go ask my shaman to bait it out of me. He drives me insane. He says irritatingly true things. One right after another. It’s hard to not hate him sometimes. I would ask him to take the last of this shame from me when he shaved my head. But I don’t think I am going to ask. Because this is one of those things I have to do alone. He can’t take shame from me. Not really.

Shame is something that I own all by myself. I have to learn to wear it or I have to take it off. I don’t know how to take it off right now. I feel stuck. I feel too little and small. I haven’t done anything to really be proud of. I have done things that other people do and I expect far more support for it. I am small and selfish and petty. I am weak. Really? Am I? Maybe. Yes? Of course?

I recently saw this picture, one of the canonical “starving children in Africa” pictures. I feel terrible describing it that way. But these pictures are used as bludgeoning tools. You can’t ignore the fact that seriously, right this minute a small child is starving to death in another part of the world. While you wear big fur boots and lots of makeup and talk about how pathetic they are. It’s kind of an American trope, this guilt.

If I ever feel bad for myself I am supposed to remind myself that I am at least not a starving child in Africa and go on about my life. Well doesn’t that just support the status quo. I don’t much like the status quo.

The thing about guilt and shame is they aren’t useful. They are paralyzing. They rarely spur people to much action beyond denial.

When the children hiss hostile words at me I hear my mother telling me that all the people in the world think I look stupid. Everyone thinks I am ridiculous. Why? What have I done? Why is it ridiculous to play with your appearance? Why is it expected to be a set thing that doesn’t modify as time goes by? Why can’t I change? Why am I to be mocked?

But you know what? I’m a fucking grown up. My triggers are mine to manage. I am not going to get all the children in the world to stop making fun of me. They are little assholes. They can’t help it. So are their parents.

I have a lot of interesting feelings emerging as my hair gets shorter and shorter. My mother liked my hair short. She wanted me to look like a boy. She commented openly on it. I’m really intrigued by how harsh my face appears with short hair. I’m not sure how I feel about that as a lifestyle choice going forward. I am going to have an interesting time as it grows out. I want my veil back. It’s interesting knowing that if I want long hair going forward in my life I have to stop doing anything to it. I’m stuck with baking soda and vinegar for the rest of my life. I will have gorgeous hair again.

It’s weird learning what self-care means. It’s weird thinking about learning to take care of my body. It’s weird learning what it means to be gentle with myself. It’s happening in unexpected ways. I don’t feel bad about the cutting. I hope I don’t do it again because the marks aren’t fading fast and I don’t want my daughters to learn it as an appropriate coping mechanism. It means I need to figure out what to do. I don’t know right now. So far the answer seems to be, “Don’t hate yourself.” I’m not sure what that actually means as something to teach my kids. How do I do that? For the love of shiny green apples, how can someone like me teach anything other than hating yourself?

I’m going to a homeschooling meet-up tomorrow with the kids. We will be doing Sharpie tie-dye. I won’t shave my head before then. They deserve to know what they are getting into with our family. We are weird. Get used to it.

aftermath

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I told Noah that I would be fairly ashamed to tell people how we are moving forward. According to my personal religion that means I am committing a sin. It’s mixed. Mostly I would say we are getting along very well. I’m not starting fights or insulting him or picking on him. Noah is his usual polite and adoring self. It’s like nothing happened except we have massively increased how much sex we are having and how degrading our sex is.

We have spent a lot of time talking about how compulsive I am about sex. About how that works in my head. We have spent a lot of time talking about how impulsive Noah is about sex. So far we seem to be at the point where we are both acknowledging that we qualify as “sex addicts” by any reasonable definition but maybe if we stick with each other we won’t cause too big of problems?

Apparently the task of the week is to see how much sex we have to have before Noah can’t handle any more. So far we have managed three times a day every day. Then I fall asleep. I feel mixed about this. He knows I feel mixed about this. Hell, I’m writing about feeling mixed about this–everyone will know. It’s hard talking about the actual needs that casual sex meets for me. I can meet some pretty fucked up needs without telling anyone what I am doing. I never have to tell my partners what my internal dialogue is. I don’t have a very high opinion of myself and my voracious need for sex.

I don’t have a very high opinion of the fact that my preference is for most of the sex I have to be quasi-consensual. Noah is well aware that a large percentage, possibly “most”, of our sex involves me not being in the mood at all. It doesn’t really matter if I am interested in sex. I am interested in being a good whore. That means I will do what I am supposed to do. I feel manifestly uncomfortable admitting that. A large percentage of the sex I have I only have because I feel like I am required to do so. That is what someone like me is good for. That is what I am supposed to do. And I’m really good at it. And I fucking live for the post-sex adulation. People I fuck tend to be willing to tell me at great length how good I am at sex. I try very hard to make sure I work far harder at sex than most women. I really really want the approval I get after sex.

I feel like something is broken in me. That I chase this so hard. Noah and I have been talking a lot lately. I don’t think I am going to sleep with other people any more. Regardless of what Noah ends up doing for the rest of his life, I need to stop buying affection with sex. I need to stop begging my friends to like me by proving that I am better at sex than anyone they’ve ever slept with. It’s not really a strategy that is working for me.

I like to pick other sex addicts and go have multiple hours of sex with them. Most of the time they are so shocked by finding a woman who is also as motivated by sex that they are willing to tell me pretty much anything I want. It’s broken. I have a partner at home who is willing to do the Jekyll/Hyde thing with me. He will degrade me and talk about me being a whore during sex. He will tell me that if I am so motivated by cock I am required to show up at 5am every day and wake him up with my mouth. And he’s pretty nice to me the rest of the time.

I feel worried by the duality of our relationship. Most of the time in most ways he really is an amazing partner. He is a good, stable provider. He is kind. He is great with our children. I have been able to push him towards mutually agreed upon improvements in behavior over the years. He’s very willing to accommodate me in just about every part of life. He bends over backwards for me in nearly every way. He will even call me names and hurt me tremendously during sex if I tell him I want him to.

There is this mythos in my head that slaves and masochists should experience no internal conflict over what they do. I have massive internal conflict. I am still upset that Noah lied to me. And my response is to tell him more and more complex stories that I am terribly ashamed of. Things that hurt me very much. And I ask him to use them against me. I want him to agree that I am just a dirty whore. There isn’t much else that someone like me is good for. But I want him to gift wrap it in a package where I don’t have to be at risk going forward.

For me to keep having the kind of casual sex that I like is for me to risk my life. It really won’t be much longer before I go back for hunting for rough, dangerous sex. Sure I’m being all loud and snotty this round of hunting because I want vanilla sex right now. That would fade. I would go back to wanting people to do dangerous things to me. I’ve already had a broken bone in the pursuit of good sex, what else will happen?

It is a lot safer to stick with Noah. He will be able to hurt me as much or more than anyone else. He doesn’t flinch from doing so. Noah has not yet inflicted as much pain on me as a small handful of other people, but he has every intention of doing so. I get the impression that some day he will be the one I have done my most intense play with. That kind of terrifies me. Because he has a high bar to reach. I have already done things that were a really bad idea. I’m sure I will do more.

If I do this instead of cutting or sleeping around or drugs or whatever other self-harming behavior I can dream up… is that better? I don’t know. I don’t know how this life thing is supposed to work. I hear I am just supposed to magically decide that I shouldn’t be harmed any more, not by anyone. Not by me, and not by random guys, and not by my husband. But I need this. I am so used to feeling shit on. I require it so much.

Noah has been nice and patient for a long time. We haven’t done intense or painful or degrading sex in a long time. He’s been more respectful than that. So I got bored and went out and slept with other people. And the thing is, it’s not enough that he does these things to me. I need people to know that these things are part of my life. I need for people to know that I am this person. I can’t have this done in secret. I can’t keep secrets.

It would be a sin if I did these things and kept them private and secret. I believe that. That is something that I have to hold on to in life. Something is only a sin if I am ashamed to talk about it. If I am talking about this now, does that mean I am released from the power of it being a sin? I don’t know. I worry about needing what I need. It’s mixed.

I can point in a straight line from events in my early childhood to what I do now. Come March, other people will be able to do so as well. Noah already can. And he stomps all over me with that knowledge. Only in ways I find hot, of course. Is that the difference? Is that the line between what we do and some amorphous “abuse”? If I tell Noah to stop doing something on a given day he does. Except by prior arrangement. Except that I know that I just don’t bother to say no when I’m not in the mood. I figure out how to let it happen. I figure out how to permit him the access he wants whether I want it or not. I don’t generally bother to communicate whether I am in the mood or not. If he tells me to do something, I do it.

It’s interesting when people talk to me about how self-assured I am. How self-possessed. How willing to stand up for myself. Ha. Only sometimes. Only in some ways. If a sexual partner is telling me to do things I frankly don’t want to do I have limited ability to communicate my wants. It depends on how I am doing emotionally and it depends on how much I am invested in the partner. I have casual sex because I can have boundaries with strangers. I have repeat sex with long-term friends because I have beaten them down in non-sexual settings and they don’t push real hard out of fear of a backlash that will never come. I don’t have boundaries with my long-term partners. I barely communicate anything about my limits beyond telling them what buttons will get them the biggest reaction today. “Today is ____ anniversary so why don’t you hurt me by doing _________.”

It’s not a sin if I talk about it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a sin. I have decided this for my own personal pantheon of beliefs.

These needs all predate Noah. They are not because of him. Most of them are not really about him at all. These are things that were broken in me as a child. But he frankly enjoys many of the ways I am broken. He feels no shame whatsoever in enjoying what I became as the direct result of years of sexual assault. Well, maybe he feels a little shame. But not much. Not enough to prevent him from trying to behave in ways that will keep me from getting bored in the future. Not enough to lessen his enjoyment of what this deep feeling of shame causes me to do during sex. His favorite part lately seems to be that I’m really ok with him fucking my throat until he causes me to vomit. I have a fairly reactive gag reflex. I consider vomiting to be just part of serious blow jobs. I don’t think that is normal. It never feels like it is really a good time to say, “Could you back off on the deep throating?” I don’t get to set terms like that. I get to accept.

In about ten minutes I have to get up and close the computer. I will walk across the house and I will do what I was told to do. Do I want to? Enh. Not really. My throat and cunt are sore. I could use about a week off from sex to recover at this point. But I draw comfort from the fact that I have confessed so I go forth without sin. I will smile. I will encourage him. I will beg him for more, in fact. It doesn’t really matter that I’m sore. That’s beside the point. I don’t think I should go have sex with other people any more. I don’t think that is a good decision for me. He says he is going to be monogamous as well. No, let me be clear. He will be as monogamous as I am.

I fell compelled by my shame. I told him he would be allowed to sleep with whomever he wanted, forever. I promised him that. At no point did I tell him I would like it or feel happy about it. I feel like I did a bait and switch. I feel like I owe him for all the sex he will never get to have because he was stupid enough to marry someone as insecure and selfish and possessive as me. I feel guilty that I seem to have tricked him into monogamy. In turn I fell compelled to say, “Ok fine, I guess I can’t be monogamous either–go have fun.”

I sincerely believe I should stop having sex with other people. I should not act on feeling compelled to earn love and affection with sex outside my marriage. It’s bad enough that I do it with Noah. I don’t actually think I should go out and find a harem of men who will cheerfully call me a whore during sex. I don’t need that. I do enough of that all by myself.

I feel so broken. I seem to have absolutely internalized that anyone who fucks this many people is kind of disgusting. And all I want to do is increase the number so I can increase just how many people will think I am disgusting.

But Noah doesn’t care. He doesn’t care at all what I’ve done or what I might do in the future. He wants me. He takes great pride in me. He loves me and adores me. He bends over backwards from me in pretty much every part of life. Except when he’s being impulsive. Oops. His friend told him, “The problem with your situation is it’s hard to know when you are cheating.” Maybe if the rules are clearer then it will be easier to figure out what to do?

I feel like I have taken something away from him. He was poly when I met him. How dare I take that away. I seem to be the epitome of what Dan Savage and Mistress Matisse warn about. That evil double crosser who promises poly and can’t hack it. I’m sorry I am so broken. I really am. I wish that I could encourage Noah to do anything he wants with anyone he wants. Hell, I do encourage him. But it hurts me when he does it. I’m sorry that is true. I really am.

Road to Noah

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A friend recently told me that he thinks one of my books will be the Road to Noah. It makes me smile. Yes. I would love to write that book. It’s going to involve a lot of pop culture references. It will be silly and fun and sweet. Kind of like our relationship.

The song du jour is Teenage Dream. And it’s pretty darn true. Noah grew up in a small hick town in Texas. When we dress up to go to a fun party he wants me to find a blend between the white trash whore and looking expensive. It’s… interesting. Noah really appreciates the part of me that feels like a whore. He specifically finds my experience and my unusually strong desire for sex appealing. He actually wanted that unicorn. I have met other guys who were partnered with women like me. It’s not completely unusual, but it’s rare.

Once you hit a certain number of sexual partners, somewhere around 25, you just phase out of being a romantic possibility for a large segment of the population. People will feel free to tell you casually, “Even though you are very attractive I couldn’t possibly sleep with someone who has had sex with as many people as you have.” Uhh. I wasn’t soliciting you for sex. But thank you for reminding me that I should assume I am required to be interested in sex with every single man I ever talk to. I’m going to go home and stop talking now.

Back to Noah. In contrast. Noah thinks I am hotter than the sun. He loves hearing all the whispered stories from my illicit sex. He wants to hear all about flashing my genital piercings in the back alley in Ireland. He likes that I wear my sexuality on my sleeve. He likes the part of me that chases taboo sex. That’s complicated. Life is really complicated.

Something that I’ve been thinking about a lot for the last few days is how dangerous it is. Potentially. I think I’m more than qualified to say that people shouldn’t expect to avoid sexual assault. How does one narrow the odds? Is it possible? Only sometimes. What happens when a limit is crossed? What limits do I have? How will I communicate them? How will I keep myself safe? This is going to be flying by the seat of my pants.

Part of how I am trying to ensure that I can do this is by thinking about my right to dictate how this fits into my life. I do get to place boundaries on my hunting. I don’t have to bend to the fact that other people want a relationship. I can’t learn a new person right now. My heart is full. I’m having these sensations in other parts of my anatomy. I realize I’m not supposed to talk about that.

But talking about that is part of the road to Noah. I want to talk about these things and he told me that it doesn’t matter that I’m not supposed to talk about them. I can do it any way. I get to decide that my inner moral compass is more important than anyone else’s discomfort. That’s a tricky line to walk. Because I do and I don’t. But I can define the line and have it be in a different place than other people. If I am within my legal rights, fair fucking game. Why not? Because it makes other people uncomfortable.

I didn’t drag your ass here to read my words. I’m defensive with no one and every one. I’m sitting here arguing with ghosts. I haven’t gotten a negative comment. I have been flamed once on the internet in many years of posting intense personal information, and that was a prank. All of these shoulds I am yelling against are just phantoms in my head. They are what I was told. I need to stop this bitching in my head. This litany of shame.

I’m really not doing anything wrong. And neither is Noah. And he’s going to go on a date soon. And I need to smile and kiss him good bye and be nice when he comes home. I get to have boundaries, sure. I don’t get to be nasty. That’s not a right.

Ok. I’ll accept this step as inevitable. Shit. And I’ll be nice… well unless I’m being pissy about something else. Then all bets are off and I’ll apologize and grovel. I’m really sorry that will happen. I’m trying to work on it. It is better.

I’m trying to be worthy of you, too.

Feelings. part 2

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I’m having a lot of feelings today. Anger. Frustration. Sadness. Irritation. Elation. Joy. Contentment. Excitement. Fascination. Ambitious. Cockiness.

It all just depends what part of the story you tell, doesn’t it? Isn’t all of life that way? Today is my biological mother’s birthday. I love you mom. I hope that today brings you some joy. I hope there are people out there who can find joy in your continued life.

Do you know what moving on means? It means you go do something else. I’m not going to take joy in my mother’s continued existence today. I am going to go talk to my psychiatrist instead. I’m going to talk to her about how the cessation of smoking is going. Cold turkey didn’t happen and shouldn’t, in my opinion. I’m too volatile right now. Changing any habit is easier when done in steps. I’m trying to figure out what the best steps are.

The Ativan is a mixed blessing. It completely wipes me out. It makes me non-functional. And it just makes me tired and sad instead of angry and sad. So who knows. Not sure it is the best choice ever. The best choice ever is to move the fuck on with my life and stop using any drug. I’m not there yet. Honestly the reason I haven’t stopped smoking is because it is a mild mood enhancer I can have any time. I need an instant jump of ‘more cheerful’ a few times a day if I don’t want to freak out around the kids. And it makes me feel more distractible from my thoughts. I don’t get into thought loops around old emotional patterns.

Pot allows me to feel more engaged in the moment because I’m constantly getting distracted and needing to refocus. It’s counter-intuitive, but it does help. But it also gives me a lot of time to just sit in the garage by myself. I dislike smoking. Most of the time I’m out here I am not smoking. I’m trying to get to the point where the alone time is as effective as the smoking. It tends to mean I have to be mentally working on something. I also think that the pot allows me to not feel guilty about taking the alone time. I won’t let the kids be near the smoking so that gives me an effective barrier and reason for needing to be alone. It’s harder to defend the barrier of my space if I just want it because I want it.

I think that is a lot of the problem, right there. Hunh. I’m using drugs in order to be allowed private space. Well, I suppose that was the only separation I had from my mother and sister’s lives. They kept that completely away from me and otherwise I was totally enmeshed and treated like an adult partner. Is this really what it means to be an adult? That you have to be stoned to bear your life? That kind of sucks.

But that’s not the whole story. I don’t have to be stoned to enjoy my life. But I do have to be fully engaged in what I am doing. Most of my life is treading water. I’m sorry, but I have the housewife thing down. It’s boring. It’s monotonous and it gives me time to run my gears and think intense thoughts but it leaves me with no time or energy to act on any of the things I’m thinking and I get frustrated and angry. It’s not working. I can outsource that shit. Because I am a privileged asshole.

I do have to be stoned to be a hippy housewife. It’s fucking boring. I am losing my mind. But I still want to homeschool. And I still want to be the primary person hanging out with my kids. Tricksy. This will be interesting to navigate.

I’m having a lot of intense thoughts about how my choices are telling me a lot about my childhood. Most of the women in my family were trapped with children and they had nowhere to go and nothing to do and no money and no help. If I had to spend the next ten years stuck with my kids with nothing to do and nothing to think about I would be full of rage and victimization too. I would need to be stoned to deal with that. I’m to the point where I can say that honestly. That’s a lot of what I’ve been working through for the past few years. What do my choices about parenting ideals mean in the context of my life?

It’s an interesting journey. From here on out I need to stop apologizing for the fact that moving on means having too many things to think about to dwell on the past. I need to accept that for myself. I can’t do this live-in-the-moment thing the way other people do. I can’t just sit here and do what I have always done. I have to go write my story. The pattern I’m starting with is broken.

I’m worried about my broken compass. I’m worried about ignoring my kids in favor of other things. I think my main focus needs to remain my kids for a long time. Watching them is allowing me to forgive myself for the things I can’t change. The things I had no control over. I used to think I was so powerful. I wasn’t.

It’s amazing to spend most of my time with my kids because I’m watching them navigate life and I’m talking to them actively about the fact that their agency is increasing day by day. I talk to them about the fact that right now, they really don’t get to have much control and the reason is because they can’t see the larger pattern. I’m always making my decisions for them with an eye on the larger pattern. I try very hard to make every word out of my mouth something that I will think was the right thing to say in retrospect. It’s a lot of pressure. I don’t talk much on days when I’m being bitchy in my head.

So I have to have better things to think about.

There is a part of the story where Noah asked me to marry him that I don’t talk about much. He also asked me to be his slave. I told him I would marry him, but I wouldn’t be his slave yet. I am taking the long-term-view of training your own top. I want someone who has had the kind of experiences I am creating in our life. I want something very specific. Owning a slave is complicated. I want to ensure that he is up for the process. He’s not yet.

But he’s getting closer. It’s interesting to me how having that as a thread in the tapestry changes a lot of the story. My personal goals. What I will put up with on the side.

It’s interesting trying to figure out what being a main character means in my life. I want to homeschool my kids and watch them grow up. I want to grow. I have things I need to do. I have so much nervous energy that I need to go do something with it or I will explode my life. Just for spite. I will and I know it. And Noah knows it too. So he’s handing me good shoes and telling me to sprint. It’s weird thinking about the evolution of a person. Trying to change the direction of it consciously. In order to direct who I will become I have to think very carefully about who I was made to be. I have to think about how to change the patterns in my life. I have to figure out what my default reactions are before I can usefully change them.

I have this broken compass. I think. I call it. Why do I call it a broken compass? Because it was pointing me in the wrong directions. Is it really broken though? I got out. I have gone far. I followed nothing but my own internal drive to get the fuck away. Looking at where I am in my life compared to where I came from… is it really broken?

Other people tell me that I don’t have to be how I am. I could choose to be different. Well, yes. What’s your point? Usually that they don’t think they would make the same choices as me. That’s fine. What’s your point?

You take the opportunities you see. You follow the life path that appears before you. Or you sit at home waiting. This kind of thing is largely determined by who you know. That’s just how life works. If I’m going to move on from the spot I am in that will involve contact with communities I can’t join with kids. That’s my life path. I want to have the grown-up-only life. I’m trying to figure out how that will work.

I am not going to serve someone until that someone has things for me to manage that are worthy of my time and attention. I am not a house slave. Sorry. It’s not my forté. I have other skills. I know I do. I need to hone them. I need to figure out what I really have to offer. I need to find out what it is like when I am taking up as much space as I need to take up. I don’t even know.

This is going to be hard because I need to go make mistakes. Fast. In a hurry. In a lot of different parts of my life and I need to figure out how to be accountable for them. It’s not all that fun.

So many different threads through the tapestry. So many feelings. How do I tell the story in a way that is respectful to everyone involved? I haven’t touched on a lot of why I’m having feelings. I can’t. I don’t know how to tell the truth about those things yet and I don’t want to lie. That’s kind of weird to admit.

I smoked very little this morning because I need to drive up to the city. Instead I’ve babbled too much about nothing at all. So many feelings. I should probably go take a shower now. It’s time to move on.

In which I reveal the extent of my ego.

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I wrote just over 5,000 words on the book in two hours. During that time I also did major reorganizing on the whole book. And ate breakfast. And wrote a few posts in a few places. Last night Noah and I had a very intense conversation about what being a slave was like. I’m getting closer to being able to write about it. It won’t happen until after this book is done. I’m getting so close. 45,000 words. It’s not done. It’s far from perfect. It needs a lot of editing. I want to hit at least 60,000. 8 more days. 15,000 more words.

I want to be the kind of person who gets things done. I want to be the kind of person who really can sit down and write a book in a month. I want to be the kind of person who completes a marathon. I didn’t say run. Pay attention to that word. I may be the last person over the finish line. I’m ok with that. I will do it. As one step on that journey on Thursday I’m walking a 10k with a friend. I get to start seriously running in December. So far I’ve been half-ass running but mostly just working on being able to walk farther and farther. I’m trying to build up to running slowly. My knees are not used to this shit. I don’t want to push it.

I don’t want to be famous because my father held a gun to my head and raped me. I want that to be a small footnote in my life. Right now that takes up too much space in my brain. I need to find other things I want to do and talk about. Sex is always going to be a prime topic. But I need other tracks. I need other roles. Why not running?

And if I’m going to run I’m not running to get out of the house. I’m doing it to accomplish something. I need to have a goal. Something big enough and hard enough that people will be impressed. Or I won’t bother. Because that’s just how I work. I have to be fighting to do something uncomfortable.

That was part of why I had to leave the bdsm community the way I did. I always have this compulsion to be the biggest bad ass. Even if only this one small secret way I don’t tell anyone about. I want to be the edge of the bell curve in intensity. That’s frankly dangerous in some communities. So after I broke up with Tom I knew I had to get the fuck out of that community. I wouldn’t survive more intense than what I did with Tom. I would have wanted someone who was a cocky asshole who had something to prove. If you’ve been hanged by the neck once you don’t need to do it again. I feel fairly certain that some day someone will fuck me with a gun. I don’t know who or when. That’s why I’m not in the bdsm community. I don’t need to find that person any year soon. I don’t need that temptation any year soon.

It’s hard knowing that I just don’t have the same attitude towards the sanctity of my life that other people have. I want to know what else I can survive. What else will get me off?

And I want to serve. It will happen again some day. I will find a way. I will figure out what I mean when I say I am a slave. And I will find a way to make it real in my life. I want to be part of building something. I want to subsume myself. I want to make a King.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: M/s

Respect

Lessons I’ve learned

Balance?

Not a nice person.

Working is fun.

Irrational feelings.

Shorter and shorter.

aftermath

Road to Noah

Feelings. part 2

In which I reveal the extent of my ego.