The Stone Shelter

A long, long time ago in a galaxy... well, actually not too terribly far from where I am sitting now.

Mom and Dad both worked. And they had to leave me somewhere while they worked before I was old enough to attend school. It happens that the older couple they left me with kept chickens in their backyard.

And just about the meanest damn rooster you ever did see.

Well, at least that I'd seen by that point. Which, I will grant, since I was only three at the time wasn't all that many. However, I have never been chased, pecked, wing batted, and spurred like that evil creature did to me since.

Or as afraid of a damn bird.

Now, Moy (her name was Mary, but I couldn't pronounce that for some odd reason) was one hell of a cook. And she made everything from scratch. A meal from Moy's hands might be started sometime just after breakfast to be on the table at lunchtime. And it was all so very good.

But, my absolute favorite was her chicken and dumplings. While the chicken (fresh from the backyard) was boiling, she would roll out what basically amounted to a pie crust and then slice it into strips to make the dumplings...

Ok, now my mouth is watering for chicken and dumplings...

But, just how she made the dish is largely irrelevant. What is relevant is that I developed a liking for that dish that almost bordered on a food fetish.

However, never did I relish that particular dish so much as a few months into my staying with them, that rooster got a better than usual piece of me. And ended up in the pot.

Revenge, it seems, is a dish not best served cold, but boiled. And with dumplings.

Time went on, as it has a tendency to do. And that rooster became a distant memory. And then, not even a memory.

Until one day, I was reading a book in a series by Terry Goodkind and ran across a demonic (okay, technically a "chimed") "chicken-who-was-no-chicken."

The memory made me smile. And I happened to mention in passing to Love that I had a hankering for some chicken and dumplings.

Which she gladly and lovingly made. (Although her dumplings were Bisquick drop biscuits, I still enjoyed it very much.)

Yesterday, I was knocked off-line for most of the afternoon and evening. And, I decided to spend it sitting in the front room, at the dining table, with the window open to listen to the thunderstorm beating the shit out of the immediate vicinity. (Softball sized hail at one point.)

Fortunately, I had someone to keep me company and keep a ***cough*** weather-eye on the situation...

Deciding I was hungry... maybe something subliminal about sitting at the dining table... I whipped up a quick meal using some frozen beef and bean burritos smothered in a creamy spinach sauce. (I was in the mood for something other than my usual queso, salsa, or salsa verde.)

But, for some odd reason, I was really craving some chicken and dumplings. Or, perhaps not oddly as that is one of my go-to comfort foods even all these decades later and I'd recently been through... well, never mind. The important thing was that chicken and dumplings was on my mind.

And I thought about that rooster from damn near a half-century ago. Yes.

But!

But, I also remembered a recent conversation with a very sweet lady during which I was deep in my cups and also in a depressed spiral. And I lamented that I wasn't sure if it was this LDR folderol or if I just am not really a D-type.

I am. I know I am, when my head is clear. I know that I am a DD with Master tendencies. I know that I spent the most of my life being Daddy, Master, Owner, Top, pretty much PYL (PickYerLabel) for one particularly amazing woman (amongst **cough** others) I was also fortunate enough to be her best friend, lover, and husband.

But, that night, an afternoon spent in a furious rage over an explosive cesspool that should have been long left behind but had popped an aftershock had lanced some other repressed feelings that rather quickly spiraled out of my control (aided and abetted, I'm sure, by three liters of Sangria) and went places that I hadn't had a clue I would go.

The thing is, this gal is so countrified that I don't know anything for certain sure, but I'd be willing to bet my boots that she sneaks peanuts in her Coke while wearing straight-legged levis and flannel shirts listening to The Opry.

And, I know... I really do know... what she meant as she tried to soothe me and informed me that I am most definitely "a rooster in a henhouse."

At least I thought I did at the time.

But, sitting there at the table, listening to the hail and thunder, for some reason, I remembered that long forgotten rooster.

And started wondering if I really did understand what she meant...

After all, she's country enough, I bet she makes a mean chicken and dumplings too...

And I remember all too well how at least one rooster that acted an ass ended up...

Hub: Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in. ~ Tim McCanlies, Secondhand Lions

What would be achieved must first be believed.

Today's dreams are tomorrow's future.

I dare you to believe.  Not in me.  Not in anyone else.  But, in yourself.

And never forget it's not who or even what you know, but how hard you are willing to grow.

A thunderstorm rolled through and, as is my wont, I shut down and unplugged.  I stretched out to rest and listen to the sound of the marble sized hail being blown against the windows by the sixty mile per hour wind gusts and faded off to sleep.

I awoke just a bit ago, stiff and sore and a little achy (which isn't unusual for either stormy weather or long sleeps when they do happen).  And could still hear some of the music that haunted my dreams under the forty and fifty mile per hour winds (no hail though).

“Long before this life of mine, long before this time
What was there, who cared to make it begin?
Is it forever or will it all end?
Searching my past for the things that I’ve seen
Is it my life or just something I dreamed?”

"No matter where you go, there you are." ~ Yogi Berra

Quite a while back (on another website), a question was asked about people's favorite "toy." Me being the smart ass I am, I started to respond, "her body." Only, her body wasn't my toy, it was my playground.

Any road, someone brought up their collar. Well, I hadn't really thought of a collar as a "toy." However, being mostly fifty shades of white belt to all this BDSMery at the time, I didn't exactly approach it with the respect and even reverence that I later learned to appreciate.

Any road, here's the tale I told in reply to someone mentioning a collar...

*****

There was a time when I was younger (hard to believe, I know) and I, perhaps wasn't quite careful enough in considering and modulating my reactions.

Now, Love was... I almost hate to say it since it would really hurt her feelings, but she was actually pretty prim in her public persona. Like literally the leader of a church youth group and such.

That was, needless to say, before she fell into the gravitational pull of my dark sphere of influence.

One of her favorite positions was doggy style. Which was a tad problematic as she'd had her left knee blown out by a shotgun blast and "rebuilt" (for some definitions of the term) with steel plates in place of the joint that did not bend. So, the only way we could manage was on the couch with her right knee up, her left on the floor, and her elbows on the arm. Which pretty much left me playing tightrope walker on the edge of the couch as I tried to find the leverage to give her what she needed.

Now, as I say, she was actually pretty prim and proper and the natural use of coarse language was more than a bit of a problem for her, even more so than communicating what she wanted which was problematic enough in the beginning.

So, there we were, and no horse-shit. She was in position, and I was doing my balancing act and trying like hell not to fall off while giving her the hard stroke she craved. And, 'lo and behold, out of nowhere, she busts out with, "That's right! Mount me like the bitch I am!"

After a frozen moment of "what the fuck did she just-" I lost it, both my composure and my balance, and fell off the couch cackling. Felt like absolute shit about it since I knew she was just trying to talk dirty for my enjoyment. And when I finally did regain control, I had to take her in my lap and cuddle her for a long time while I explained just how many ways what she had done had struck me as funny. Not least that if ever there was a woman who was less of "a bitch," I have yet to meet her. (*cough* Um, that's not a slight to any of you here, it just... Well, putting up with me alone should have garnered the woman sainthood.)

Any road, we worked it out and it even became something of a joke between us. Even years later, she could make me smile by referring to herself as my bitch. And I so am not even going to explain the blanket with the pair of wolves on it to anybody.

(*She did get much better at cursing under my expert tutelage and years later could walk into a bar and have sailors bailing out the windows, blushing and covering their ears. But, that's beside the point.)

Sadly, I have a vile sense of humor and always have to carry the joke just that one step too far. So, one... mmm... can't remember if it was Valentine's or Anniversary or what. (This was a couple of decades ago.)  Any road, one of those, I went down to Pets Mart and made a couple of acquisitions. And got a really strange look from the fetus running the checkout.

Fuck her. The engraving machine said I could engrave what I wanted with a price listed per character.

Fortunately, I found the woman whose sense of humor (also vile) most closely matched my own and when she opened the necklace box gleaned from a well-known jeweler to find that collar sitting in there, she cracked up as well.

I didn't actually expect her to wear it.

You see, her brother when they were children had a habit of choking her until she either passed out or almost. This when he wasn't setting her Barbie car on fire as he pushed it down the driveway. So, she had definite issues with having anything around her neck. Even her blouses had to be roomy through the collar.

(We won't discuss the moment when she took my hand and placed it there and informed me in no uncertain terms that her life was mine to do with as I wished. She'd been reading bodice rippers again, so I don't really count that time.)

I would imagine you can imagine my surprise when she actually put it on. Of course, the effect was a tad ruined when she barked and then started whimpering and brushing her face on my shoulder. And then licked the corner of my mouth. With the entire length of her tongue.

The thing is... Well, in my younger years, I'd actually had a problem learning to moderate my strength. Yes, actually, I'd ripped the doorknob off a door when I got distracted and didn't get it twisted enough before yanking on it. Twice. And I'd actually caused some pain, not the good kind, for a couple of lovers when I was still first coming into my practical experience.

(Not what you're thinking! I'm not that well endowed.)

Well, Love had managed to convince me that I could be a little rougher with her, that she wasn't made of crystal. However, I'd also been known to break cinder blocks and bricks... So, I was still careful. More careful than she liked, although I didn't completely understand that since, as I say, articulating her wants and needs didn't come easily to her.

Over time, that collar became something of a symbol. When she put it on her neck, and she only ever put it around her own neck, it was a message to me that she wanted to be taken and used, her boundaries pushed with the one hard limit that if I came anywhere near her with a shotgun, she was the fuck outta there.

The night I pushed her over the edge and brought her through twenty-three climaxes in fifteen minutes and caused her to squirt hard enough she soaked the bed from her waist to her knees the first time, she was wearing it for me.

We hadn't tended it or taken care of it for a couple of years before she passed. There just didn't seem much point since she couldn't wear it anymore, along with everything implied. The leather is cracked and aged. Then again, so am I. I don't know why we kept it, really. Or why I still have it and have even now dug it out and am fiddling with as I scan over this to see if I really want to post this or not.

I don't know. I mean, I know that wasn't what you were looking for with this thread. But, I guess maybe it's telling that the 8' braided leather bullwhip is gone, the leather flogger with fifteen strips of leather, the Velcro restraint system, all of her toy chest with the various sized vibrators, dildoes, butt plugs, nipple clamps, anal beads, and whatever the fuck else it was that we accumulated over the years for me to use on her whenever she put on this fucking thing. (Me scampering ahead of her son to get rid of it before he could see it. [Which was probably a good thing considering the amazing shade of purple he turned at the one piece of lingerie I missed.])

And yet, I still have her collar wrapped around my fingers.  Haven't been able to part with it...

*****

Oh, and by the way. Anal beads should not be used like a lawnmower pull start cord. You will definitely not get her motor running that way. I'm just sayin'. That was a hard lesson to learn way back then. (Harder on some than others!)

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
— George Bernard Shaw

Life is weird.  Or maybe it's just my life that is weird.

Once again, I have been hit from several different directions by different questions, different facets that all boil down to the same thing.

Never assume that anyone can look at your ass and read your mind.

If you aren't communicating, then all the information another person has to go on is their own fears and assumptions.  Sometimes aided and abetted by other sources than you.

Be truthful and forthright when you do communicate or else once the other people figure out you aren't, then they will disregard (or at least doubt) everything you say thereafter.

Listening is just as important as talking (or reading is just as important as typing) when it comes to communication.

If they repeat the same thing two more times in the same conversation, they are looking for some confirmation that you understand and aren't finding it.  If you've given them the confirmation that you understand and they are still repeating it, then consider that you may actually not be understanding what they are trying (perhaps ineffectually) to impart.

By the same token, understand that questions asked for clarification are a sign that they are trying to understand you and work with you!  A sign that they respect and value you!

Not communicating, holding something in that you want/need to say, is not only a sign of lack of trust, it is disrespectful to the other person.  An indication that you don't think they can handle it.  But, odds are that they can handle what you are not telling them better than finding out that you didn't respect them enough to tell them.

Awhile back (on a different site), I was something of an unintentional behind the scenes instigator about a forum thread discussing the differences between honesty and transparency.  And a lot of really good discussion came out of it.  (I categorically refused to participate for reasons that I prefer not to be transparent about, but enjoyed following it.)  In a nutshell, though, what it boiled down to is that honesty and truthfulness when something is shared should always be observed, but not every person you meet is entitled to know how many squares of toilet paper you use to wipe with.

What was missed, in my opinion, is that there is a problem in the obverse.  To wit, if you are giving someone that transparency and then become opaque and vague in the same or similar matters, then what is communicated is that you are not what you once were.  I considered that just a given until someone once dear to me wondered what had happened to us.  The answer was simple, of course.  The communication we had once shared had dwindled to nothing until I got the idea that I was no longer relevant and wandered off.  What was communicated to me was that they no longer cared about me any more than a mushroom.  (Kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.)

What was actually happening, from their viewpoint, was that, at first, they didn't want to worry me.  Then, there was so much water under the bridge that they didn't want to discuss all of it.  A point of critical mass was reached where they didn't know how to discuss it all.  And the eventual result was that this person that I knew everything about became someone I used to know that I no longer had any idea what was going on with them, even who they were, in just a few short (but eventful) months.

All of which could have been avoided if they'd just said what was happening, given me the respect of believing that I could handle it, while it was still a small thing, before it grew to the insurmountable obstacle.

Don't hesitate!  Communicate!

It's always gonna be easier to keep communication going, no matter how hard it seems in the moment, than it will be to restart the flow once it's been dammed (or damned).