The Stone Shelter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good LORD, what the hell was that?  I have absolutely no excuse for that last blog post.  Or, at least for not putting ***TMI WARNING*** in the header.  Sheesh.

 

Well, if you read all of that and are still coming back... congratulations, you ARE a masochist.  Literarily speaking, at least.  But, hopefully today's (and future ones) won't be as fraught if they aren't actually helpful for a change.

 

Writing that... well, it took me a long time.  Over twenty-four hours, to tell the truth.  Some of that is I have all the blazing speed at the keyboard of a herd of snails.  Ten words per minute is a good day.  Some of it was that I would have to stop and give my hands and arms a break and try to get the feeling back in them.

 

And some of it was that I would get interrupted with side discussions from time to time.  Which, don't get me wrong, was awesome!   Always, always, always glad to hear from someone that thinks I'm worth spending the time to chat with.  Unfortunately not enough went on to completely distract me and stop me from inflicting that ream of...er... stuff on the world, or at least readers of my blog, yesterday.

 

But, there was something odd that kept coming back around that I thought maybe I might could do a little something with.  Actually, the idea, the concept had been circling the drain of my mind for a long, long time.  But, it was just weird how often it came up during the twenty-four hours I was typing on that... that... thing that posted yesterday.  ***shudder***

 

Well, maybe it's time to flush.

 

So, a while back, I remember reading in someone's blog, "real men make your panties wet, not your eyes."  (Sorry.  I would credit you, if you're seeing this, but I can't remember where, and can't find it again.)

 

At the time I read it, I smiled.  I thought it was funny, but also a goal worth shooting for.  However, I also know enough to know that just being open enough to care about someone is going to open us up to pain.  In my own case, I know that Love never meant to hurt me.  But, she did.  Several times.  Dying was only the most recent.  When she was sick, it hurt me.  When she was hurting, it hurt me.  When she was just having a bad day.  When she was cut, I bled.

 

And I think that is how it should be.  If you really love somebody.

 

But!

 

But, yeah.  I think the sentiment expressed by the humorous quote was spot on.

 

Or, as I put it to someone during a conversation... People and our interactions with them are food for our mind and our soul.  If the banquet only ever makes you spiritually sick, then you need to back away from that particular dish.  Maybe they aren't rotten or poisonous.  Maybe they are just a sugary confection that doesn't nourish you.

 

I don't know.  That's probably pretty simplistic.  Or maybe even... eh... somewhat demanding of me.  I mean, to the best of my knowledge, no one was put on this ball of rock with the specific intent that they will entertain and instruct me.  Of course, no one was put on this ball of rock with the specific intent that they will entertain and instruct you either.

 

No.  I readily acknowledge that there are other purposes, other reasons for anyone to move about their day and do the things that they do.  And, quite often, interactions are incidental and irrelevant until and unless one or the other specifically searches out that interaction with the other.

 

To continue the food analogy, our mind, our heart or our spirit is hungry for the nourishment that only interacting with another person can provide.

 

And... well, just like food for our plate, sometimes we pick someone to interact with because we think they'll "taste good."  Other times, we're starving and stand in the pantry shoveling anything available in our mouth.

 

And, still other times we KNOW that it isn't good for us, but we just don't know what else to eat.

 

And then there's the meals that we eat and two hours later, we're hungry again.

 

I don't know.  I truly don't.  But, it just seems to me that if talking with someone, interacting with them, makes you feel worse afterwards, no matter how much you might have enjoyed it while you were at the table... then, that's not a healthy diet for you to subject yourself to.

 

I totally get the excitement in sitting down to feed your mind, heart, and soul with interacting with someone.  But, afterwards, I think you should feel better.  Calmer.  More centered, not less.  Stronger.  Fit.  More capable.  Able to do.  Replete.

 

If you don't feel those things... if instead you feel consistently empty and sick in your soul... then perhaps it's time to stop ordering off that menu?

 

Meh.  Why do I feel like this blog has turned into an asparagus dish smothered in too much cheese?  (With maybe a little too much salt.)

 

Ah, well.  Here's to hoping you can find something nourishing to your head, heart, and soul.

 

Or perhaps just "something that will make your panties wet instead of your eyes."

 

 

And, wow.  Is it just me or did that get awkward at the end there?

One of the most common questions I see from D-types who are just coming into their own understanding of who they are is how the fuck they get a submissive.

On one memorable occasion (on another site), a new D-type opened his question by stating that he had found a desire to use someone for his own pleasure without any thought of hers. And was immediately dogpiled by self-described submissives.

I lurked and watched as he back-peddled and hemmed and hawed and tried to excuse and explain away his first post.

Which begged the question about if he was really a dominating type in the first place if he bowed so quickly to the pressures from self-proclaimed submissive people pleasers who were very quick to point out that he was a piece of human excrement for thinking that way.

The thing is... neither the original poster, nor the submissives who took offense, were completely wrong other than their insistence that their way was the only right one.

For a Dominant to come out and state they are a D-type, or a submissive to come out and state they are an s-type, is really rather like classifying the family of an organism in biology without giving the genus or species and expecting that it will tell everything we need to know.

Put another way, would you order soup in a restaurant and then be upset when they brought you Wisconsin Cheddar rather than the Minestrone? Both are soups. Who is to blame for the miscommunication?

Yet, people will say "I am a Dominant" or "I am a submissive" or some other variation and then become upset when someone else does not act in accordance with what they mean when they give that designation. After all, eight years after E.L. James told the world all about this stuff, how can anyone not know exactly what those terms mean?

At the risk of seeming like an attention whore, let's talk about me for a bit in the hopes that it might clear up what I am talking about. I realize that I am definitely on the capitalized side of the slash mark when the title is about submission. But, I will get there. Er... eventually.

Back before I received my relampago that I am something of a domineering type in my personal and sexual life, I somehow landed in a career as a detention officer. It wasn't intended. I was finishing out my B.S. in a counseling field and was looking for something (anything!) in my field to start building a resume beyond education since driving forklifts, stocking groceries, riding cotton spray rigs, gathering carts in a parking lot, and all the other jobs I'd had at that point wasn't going to cut it. I managed to do a little work with foster homes, after-school programs, victims of child abuse groups, and such. But, the majority of it was either volunteer work or paid only a pittance. Until the mother of a friend told me they were looking for help at her job at a county detention unit.

My first night on the job, I was called to help quell a riot that involved inmates breaking up furniture and going after each other and the staff with it. I wasn't called back for a week until I finally called the supervisor and asked what the problem was. He told me that he didn't think I would be interested anymore since that had happened on my first night. I laughed and pointed out that I'd never thought any of them were there for singing too loud in church, that I had assumed before I walked into the place that it would be part of the job to deal with such things when they happened. I filled a shift that night and neither he nor I looked back for a long time.

Over the next decade, I filled many slots. Security officer. Control officer. Caseworker. Counselor. Team leader. Staff trainer. But, what I did most often was exert my will and influence over six foot and taller, two hundred plus, muscle-bound no-neck beefcakes with attitude issues when it came to authority of any type being imposed on them. I told them when to get up. When to sleep. When to eat. When they could use the bathroom... I was the controlling influence over every aspect of their lives.

Now, here's the thing. There were co-workers that I was subjected to who enjoyed that control for its own sake. Because they got off on having that control. On exerting that control. And, all too often, would step in to impose that control when it wasn't necessary, just to provoke a reaction.

That wasn't me. I exerted control when it was necessary, and only as much as was necessary, in order to reach an outcome beyond just having control. First, to make sure my staff was safe. Second, to make sure the other... um, they don't call them "inmates" or "convicts" anymore... "clients"(?) were safe. Third, to make sure the person themselves came through unharmed. Fourth, to move on up the pyramid to other, more important things.

"What fucking pyramid?!"

Well, back in '43 a guy by the name of Abraham Maslow published a work that discussed a hierarchy of needs which he described as a pyramid. A pyramid because unless the level below is sturdy, nothing can be done for the higher levels. And the higher levels will be sacrificed to meet the lower level needs.

The foundation level is made up of the basic physiological needs of any living creature. Breathing. Food. Water. Sex. Sleep. Homeostasis. Excretion. Until and unless these needs are met, we can not progress higher.

The second level is that of safety. Security of body, employment, resources, mortality, family, health, property... those things which make us feel safe and secure. Which make us trust that things are okay. That we will be okay.

The third echelon is where we find love and a sense of belonging. This is where our need for friendship, family, sexual intimacy... those aspects that give us a sense of acceptance come into play.

The fourth platform is where we find esteem. Both self-esteem and the respect of others. This is where a sense of confidence, of achievement lies.

The pinnacle of the pyramid is self-actualization. Morality. Creativity. Spontaneity. Problem-solving. Lack of prejudice. Acceptance. This is where growth is, whether emotional, psychological, or spiritual. And we can only get there if the four supporting floors are stable. Ergo, my job was first and foremost to make absolutely certain that the other four levels were as stable as I could make them... something of a supporting scaffold, in effect.

This is, I think, also where recidivism comes into play as a support scaffolding is only useful until it is removed unless repair work is done on the structure it is supporting to strengthen it. But, I seem to be breaking off onto a tangent again. So, let's move along, shall we?

As I say, my primary purpose in exerting the control I had over these maladjusted individuals that were a threat to society as a whole or specific individuals within that larger society through a mistaken belief that they could threaten the lower levels of someone else's pyramid was in order to provide a scaffolding while their own pyramid was repaired, reinforced, and actualized in a more socially approved manner. Not because I felt a thrill at doing so.

Or, perhaps I should say not only because I received a thrill from doing so. Not, in this case, beyond satisfaction at a job well done.

My personal life, and specifically my sexual awakening, on the other hand...

It could be argued, I suppose, that my professional life influenced my personal one. After all, would I have been moved to take control of not only my own life but those of the people I interacted with if I wasn't exposed to doing so through my career choice?

Mmm. I'm going to go with "not necessarily." After all, the cliche of the domineering personality in their professional life that craves submission in the bedroom is a cliche because it does happen with some frequency.

No. I hold and maintain that it is much more that my professional life merely opened the doorway of a theretofore unrealized aspect of my personality. That I am dominant. That I need that control, not only over myself but over others to an extent, to wreak some semblance of order from supposed chaos.

I have spoken elsewhere about Love, my wife of two and a half decades. Also, my slave, my pet, my little, my submissive, my love, my best friend... What I perhaps haven't made clear is that there were others. Before, during, and after her.

Here is where it becomes tricky.

As I exerted control over those whom I was involved with, whether on a friendship basis or as something more, I would check each level of their pyramid for structural integrity. After all, there would be abso-fucking-lutely no point in my trying to address the third level of their pyramid by offering them love and acceptance if the first two levels weren't sturdy.

This did not always work out well.

Actually, more often than not, it didn't.

You see, a submissive is not necessarily a submissive and might not even be a submissive. I'm sorry. Was that confusing? Yes, it is. What I mean, is that not every submissive has the same needs, just as not every Dominant has the same needs. Actually, it's very rare to find two s-types that are exactly the same right down the line. Or two D-types that are the precise same.

The thing is, my first foray into the world of D/s actually predated my entering into a career in detention work. Although, I didn't recognize it until much, much later.

And the sad fact is that it was just about the absolute worst imaginable first attempt at a relationship involving the D/s dynamic.

I had been involved with this girl/woman-child (we were barely eighteen) for several months. She was my first sexual experience beyond kissing and heavy petting. And she had broken up with me eight times during those months and then come back to me.

In effect, what she did was to threaten the security level of my pyramid. I didn't know whether our relationship was anything I could count on or not. And something in me... eh... fractured.

Prior to her, I'd been involved with a girl that I still think of as my first fiance (although, we were really platonic on-again/off-again "couple" [more off than on] that only kissed one time and that right at the tail-end) from the time I was thirteen until I was eighteen as she played ping-pong ball between myself and another guy before dumping both of us to go to a third she eventually married. I had done the whole "right here waiting for you" bit for the first and it hadn't worked out well for me. And I saw shit going in the same southerly direction with the second.

And, I "stepped up."

Or, from another perspective, I "showed my ass."

From that point when she came to me wanting to get back together after our eighth break-up, I was very much "my way or the fucking highway." And I told her, in so many words, that the next time she pulled away, she'd better be sure she fucking meant it, since there wouldn't be a tenth.

For a year, we had sex when I wanted to, for as long as I wanted to, sure. But, we also went to the movies I wanted to. The restaurants I wanted to. She read the books I told her to. Changed her major in college to what I told her to. I vetted her class schedule before she ever saw a faculty advisor. She ate what I told her when I told her. Talked to the people I allowed her to, and no one I didn't. Wore the clothes I told her to wear. There was no aspect of her life that I didn't step in and wrest control of. And, yes. Under threat that if she did not give it to me, then we were done.

I did not have, at that time, more than an inkling of the dynamics of BDSM as I, of course, wasn't one of "those leather wearing freaks that got off on beating each other up." So, I didn't have the first idea that what I'd done was basically reinvent the wheel, or at least the 24/7 Master/slave Total Power Exchange.

And, in the worst possible ways.

Primarily because I was operating from the second level of my own pyramid. I was not seeking control of her for her edification, nor for my gratification, but to reaffirm for me that I could count on that relationship. And, meanwhile, threatening her second level of her pyramid since she knew, because I'd told her, that she would do things my way or get the fuck out.

Raw honesty compels me to admit that I did have a positive influence over her life, but that was purely incidental. Perhaps even accidental. Nothing that I can take any credit for since it merely came about as the demands I made for my own security (while threatening hers) just happened to come from who and what I was in other ways, which is (mostly) a socially acceptable, and even moderately successful, member of the society I was raised to. Ergo, I enforced changes on she who had been a fringe dweller that made her more socially... ah... "redeemable."

Fortunately, for both of our sakes, after a year of what amounted to indentured servitude and being my sexual experimentation laboratory, she wrested back control of her soul enough to break off our engagement and look around at what else life had to offer. (We were only fresh minted twenty after all.)

Actually, in a way, I owe her for my switching majors to the one I graduated with and my future career path. If I ever see her again, I should thank her. I knew I had fucked up somehow, but not exactly how. So, I left the engineering key on campus for the "softer" sciences of human behavior and interactions.

And, somehow got entangled with a pair of lesbians (a couple) that probably the less said, the better. I will say that sex wasn't an option (as far as I was ever made aware), but I became embroiled in their lives on a purely platonic level. And... well... let's just say that it gave a chance for the Daddy aspects of my personality to develop (albeit in non-sexual ways) as I watched over those two and their friends for the next little while.

Ah... the night we closed down The Planet when I took five members of the college football team to school with some minor assistance from Leah when they got a little too frisky with Donna... Those were the days.

***cough***

Sorry. Where was I?

But, yeah. Sex wasn't on the table. And I knew it. I accepted it. But, there was something about Donna and Leah... At the time, I would tell anyone that asked that we were friends. Period. But, from my more studied perspective all this time later, what I really was was a platonic Daddy that made their littles feel safe to play and watched over.

In addition to acting as an escort out into the town for nights of fun, dance clubs, restaurants, movies, all that sort of thing, being the only guy in a room full of lesbian couples watching a movie at home (yes, in their pajamas), I also somehow ended up taking care of them when they were sick. Both from drinking too damn much and from viral infections.

Nothing says "love" like cleaning up the puke from two confirmed lesbians suffering from the flu or food poisoning or whatever when you're a guy and they aren't ever going to fuck a guy, taking them to doctors, getting their medications from the pharmacy, cooking for them etcetera etcetera until they are better... Right?

I've said before, and I'll say again, I had absolutely no clue about DD/lg at the time. But, if I were to go down some DD checklist, with the exception of sexual play (other than quite a bit of teasing from both sides), we could have ticked the box next to everything else. Up to and including calling me "Dad" (albeit with rolled eyes and usually when I was trying to get them to behave, i.e. stop drinking BEFORE the puking started).

That particular... er... "relationship" interfered with me getting embroiled in any other relationship for the duration. And ended when I took up working the detention unit as I was no longer available across the weekends.

Or available for very much else. I was working Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, carrying twenty-one class hours on Tuesday and Thursday to finish my degree up, and spent Wednesday in the library researching and writing papers.

I did have... ah... moments with girls I met in the library, in classes, or co-workers. However, I didn't have time for anything more... invested.

Ironically, Wendy found me in the library and made some attempt to get back together for try number ten. Even commenting that she now knew I was the best lover she could ever hope for. (She'd told me when we broke up that last time that she felt used.) But, I'd warned her. And, when I make a promise, for good or ill, I keep it. I turned my back and walked away as my only answer. No words. None needed.

Then, I graduated and looked for, and managed to land, a job with the state facility. However, before I left and moved off to the middle of fucking nowhere, I had some wild oats that had been building for a couple or three years.

I have absolutely no excuse, and offer none, for what I did. I knew full well I was only going to be in town for three more days before I shook the dust of the place and headed off to another city. I took the shotgun approach and found someone willing.

I don't remember her name, or what she looked like, and I'm more than a little embarrassed to admit it was because I just didn't fucking care. As far as I was concerned, she was three holes and a pair of tits. And I used her that way.

By this time, I knew a bit more about BDSM. Or so I thought. Actually, what I knew was the mechanics of kink and fetish. I had no real understanding of the relationship dynamic. But, I didn't give a fuck. Or, rather, the only thing I did give was a fuck.

For seventy-two hours, we barely slept and didn't eat as I explored every possible kink and fetish that I'd played with Wendy (2nd fiance) and all that I'd learned about taking every course on sexuality available on campus and my own studies of every possible text and periodical that addressed the few that those classes only grazed. And, yes. I learned shit that you don't find on Pornhub.

Well, as far as I know. Then again, I haven't really looked hard for some of it that I can take or leave...

I fancied myself a Dominant... and I was. But, the specific type I was during that weekend was a Top.

Perhaps I flatter myself to think that I would have honored if at any point she (or her roommate that I pulled in for the third day) had said "no more" or in any other way indicated they wished me to stop. Perhaps they were too frightened of me once I began down that dark, dark road to resist.

Shibari. Blade work. Electroplay. Heat. Cold. Toys. Impact play...

List whatever fetish or kink you might think of, and we probably did it during those seventy-two hours. Or, rather, I did it to her (and then them). So long as it was something that one male could do to one (and then two) female(s).

The thing is... my approach was something like a laboratory experiment. And I gave her/them as little thought as a scientist might give a laboratory rat. I was... studying. Experimenting. Learning.

Which is not to say that she (and then they) didn't orgasm. They did. Actually, that was when I learned that too many orgasms too close together can lead to temporary blindness when I pushed whatever-her-name through twenty-three in fifteen minutes. And that it fades, that the eyesight comes back unimpaired, with a little recovery time.

I didn't keep count, but my best guess is that I must have dumped somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty loads of cum in her/them or on her/them over the course of seventy-two hours.

And when the seventy-two hours was up, I left them, and the city, without a thought beyond the knowledge I'd picked up.

Primarily, I now knew, first hand, how everything and anything might work. And I knew what my needs and limits were.

The girls I used for guinea pigs? I didn't give them another thought.

Not for a long while.

Not until years later when I found out they'd managed to track down my mother and showed up on her doorstep after midnight one night about a month or two later looking for me. Mom never mentioned it. Sis told me after Mom died, a couple of decades later. She didn't know anything more than that Mom threatened to call the cops and the girls were crying when they left.

By that time, when I found that out, I'd matured enough (largely thanks to my marriage to a wonderful woman) that I probably would have gone looking for them to find out what was wrong and to make reparations if I could. If only I knew their names or even what they looked like.

At the time, though, I was a college graduate and working on my career. It was time for me to look around and find some gal to start on the next step, building the white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a dog...

Love? Bah. That was just some shit to sell greeting cards, books, movies, and music. What mattered was that I find some gal that was compatible. In the bedroom and out.

Of course, the little fucking hick town I moved to, the pickings were slim. All the girls of fuckable age (much less marriageable) were either already married or had gotten the fuck out of Dodge and headed off to a city in search of some guy they hadn't known since birth.

Providence turned up in the form of a gal I had known several years earlier but lost touch with when I hit college.

I didn't love her. But, she adored me. Adored me enough that she came looking for me and found me out in the hayseed and sticks years after the last time she'd seen me.

Although, she was in for a bit of a surprise since the... ah... innocent (and perhaps respectful?) golden boy she had known had traded in his halo for horns and a pitchfork.

She was a virgin. The only thing she had done was to give a blowjob and handjob and let her tits be felt up.

We passed that mark flying within an hour of her turning up on my doorstep. And gave me the chance to test my theory that it is, in fact, possible for a virgin with intact hymen to have a first time that there is very little to no pain and can actually cum. From my experiences with her, the middle of her eighth climax worked just fine.

I don't insist on it since she was the only virgin in that particular case study. But, it worked in her case.

***shrug***

Then, I got down to the serious business of breaking her in.

I had found that the only two hard needs that I had were pretty basic vanilla stuff. Oral (both giving and receiving) and her climax. Other than that, I didn't really give a shit and could take or leave ninety percent of the rest of the kinks and fetishes based on what got her off when and as I wanted her to.

And I tested every fucking limit she had.

Outside of the bedroom, we had what could best be termed a "stormy" relationship. We had similar goals, yes. But, we had mildly differing views of how those goals would be accomplished. Mildly differing views that would spark her lashing out angrily.

I had started out as a Top (despite still not recognizing that's what I was doing), breaking her in sexually. Getting to know what her buttons were as I taught her mine. (While she had given blowjobs, the guy she had given them to had low standards. And she hadn't even known she could orgasm at all. Much less was multi-orgasmic.)

Now, I dropped into a milder version of what I'd done to Wendy. I took control of every aspect of her life, every bit as fully as I did the convicts... uh, "clients"... I worked with. But, I used tricks I'd picked up from my career and wasn't ham-fisted enough to come right out and verbalize "my way or the highway."

Generally, I just listened to her rant off until she ran out of steam, repeated myself, and dropped the matter. Fully expecting that she would do as she was told.

Or she wouldn't and she would get the fuck out of the way and let me find somebody who would.

She came around to doing it my way every time.

Didn't stop her from kicking and screaming about it, however.

I had also been very blunt that I was not built to be monogamous. I knew myself well enough to know that just wasn't in the cards for me. So, it was her choice. I could either fuck around when someone else popped up and not bother her with it. Or I could fuck around and tell her when it happened.

That was a bitter pill to swallow. But, she seemed to. Only seemed to, though, as we found out when it happened.

I was still operating from the first two levels of my own pyramid, although I occasionally tried to reach up into the third echelon.

That was the point where I met the woman I would come to call Love.

And at first, once again, I was Top to her bottom as I broke her in sexually, learned all of her buttons and taught her how to meet my two needs. Once again, apparently all the cocks she had sucked had low standards. And, while she knew she could orgasm, she had decided it just wasn't possible with someone, but only when she was alone. Usually with a hand held shower wand or personal massager. Neither did she know that she was multi-orgasmic until I'd broken her in.

Once I had her trained, I moved once again into that mode where she could do things my way outside of the bedroom as well as in or move along. And, once again, she responded. Although, this one responded well. Without all the fucking kicking and screaming.

It was understood that we were just a thing that would never go anywhere. I was engaged to be married to another woman. She was married to another man. And, expecting any sort of monogamy in that situation would have just been ludicrous.

STILL, I was operating from only the first two levels of my pyramid.

Which was fine as she was only working from the first two levels of hers.

Then something that had probably become inevitable happened. Her husband caught us together.

Ironically, if he'd held off just one more day, things would have played out very differently as I had made the decision to end things after six months of hours spent fucking almost every single day, including a three day weekend in a hotel in Dallas on a laughing bet which one of us could wear out the other (after which we both limped out of the hotel room smiling but with me the clear, uncontested winner). We'd fucked "around the world" one last time, putting her through all her best, trained paces, and were having a good-bye cuddle afterward and had fallen asleep when he caught us.

I'd been there for nineteen months at that point. Engaged to my fiance for sixteen of them. Fucking my little slice on the side for six.

I did what seemed, still seems, the smart thing.

I quit my job and left town, moving back "home" where my fiance was going to college.

Within twenty-four hours of arriving back at home, I was rehired at the county facility.

Three months later, I broke off my engagement with my fiance. I just couldn't see how it would work.

Six months after I left her to try to figure things out with her husband and children, the woman I'd had the understanding with that we were never any more than a thing that wouldn't go anywhere followed me.

***sigh***

I guess it went somewhere after all. Specifically, four hours away from the town it started in to the city I called home.

And something weird happened. I didn't tell her it wasn't my problem, to figure it out. Instead, those instincts that had sprouted with Donna and Leah started to slowly open their blooms. I took her in to live with me.

But, I made it very clear three things were a hard requirement, or she could go back and see if her husband would take her back. First, she would go to college and get a degree and get a career. I didn't care what, but she would go. Second, monogamy still wasn't a thing for me. Period. There would be some other playmates at some point. Third, as long as she was living on my dime, she could only fuck other people that I approved of. I wasn't going to hold her to only me. In fact, taking her from behind while she had a cock in her mouth had... a certain something. But, only if I approved the person wielding that cock for her.

Her only concession was that her needs were not to be ignored and set aside. Which, of course, I wasn't about to and said as much.

I hesitate to say that I was yet reaching up out of my lower two pyramid levels. But, something was happening.

No picket fence, since we went the apartment route. No kids, but we did get a dog. And then, somehow, three.

And, although I had not the lexicon at the time to describe what was happening, we fell further into DD/lg than I had with Donna and Leah. Perhaps because sex WAS on the table. And the kitchen floor. And the sofa. And the shower. And driving down the road. And... Well, you get the picture.

I don't know that we would have gotten married since we were both just fine with how things were except two things happened. First, my parents started the "we didn't raise you to live in sin" which I probably could have ignored their incessant nagging (after all, I had very little submission in my make-up even to them unless it damn well pleased me) if it hadn't been for the second. Secondly, I needed to get her on my medical insurance so she could see a doctor for some issues before she finished her degree and got her career off the ground.

So, we pushed through a divorce that got her nothing from her first marriage other than o-u-t. And sixty days later signed a marriage license for us.

Marriage... did something. Something at the same time simple and profound. I moved into the third echelon of my pyramid and somehow, rather quickly, into the fourth level.

Not that it was all sugary confection. Among other things, before the ink was even good and dry on our marriage license, she decided she wasn't so okay with rules two and three anymore. Monogamy was going to be a thing.

Bait and switch, bitch! Bait and switch!

***sigh***

But, I tried. I did try. And succeeded for several years. But, I'll get to what... or rather who... knocked me off that wagon in a minute.

I've said, and will reiterate here, that while I had studied BDSM along with virtually every other sexual interaction, I didn't truly understand the underlying relationship dynamic. Oh, I understood the mechanics of the kinks and fetishes and could execute them if I was in such a mind to give her what she craved. But, I didn't really fully understand the...mmm... the feelings and emotions, the underlying drive once it moved off the clean pages of text and into practice.

But, looking back, Love and I bounced back and forth over the line from Daddy to Master with my graduating to the fifth level of my own pyramid and spending my focus on helping her to reach the fourth and fifth level of her own. I was still controlling her, even crossing into 24/7 TPE, but rather than what I had done with Wendy and Esther, it was not for my own reassurances, but to push her into her own self-aggrandizement, to guide her where she was trying to get to. Not to change who she was to someone she wasn't, but to lift her up into the best version of herself she could manage.

However, we hit something of a snag in my attempts to resist temptation from anyone other than her. And on the surface, it should have been easy since, with very rare medically driven exceptions, she was ready, willing, and able to submit to my drive at any point in time, in any place.

But, she bragged about me to someone.

I had not clue one that Love might have bragged about my sexual prowess. Which in retrospect was rather stupid of me, since I know all too well that women are worse than men when it comes to kissing and telling. Either how fucking bad their lover is. Or how fucking good.

And apparently, this little eighteen-year-old two states away from her home attending college on a scholarship obtained as runner up in a beauty contest had been bitching about how bad her lovers thus far had been. And Love had told her about how she hadn't known how good sex could be until she had fallen into my evil clutches.

Not that I knew any of that until after the fact.

***sigh***

I had had enough of the detention units and taken my retirement from the county and state to tide us over while I wrote "The Next Great American Novel" which I knew I could since I was already a published poet.

So, when little beauty queenie called Love for some help on a paper one day, she handed me the fucking phone!

And laughed her ass off as I glared at her for the better part of TWO FUCKING HOURS!

Then, it turned out that little beauty queenie couldn't go home for Thanksgiving. Since we had just been going to have a quiet day, just the two of us, I relented and allowed Love to invite little beauty queenie with us. We ate lunch together and then played dominoes and cards until well after the sun set.

Somehow, and I don't really know just quite how, we became en loco parentis to that child. I couldn't throw out the wash water without hitting her in the face. Not being an idiot (she was bloody gorgeous after all), I kept my distance as much as I could and let Love mother hen her. But, I kept getting fucking drafted to Daddy.

Or maybe I was a fucking idiot since I really didn't understand the hint when she brought me chocolate strawberries on Valentine's. Or when she borrowed our oven to bake brownies during Spring Break and just would not quit until she fed me one...

But, hell. I was thirty and had given up on being a professional writer and taken a job as a hotel night auditor. I didn't have looks. I didn't have fame. I didn't have money. And it was a pretty widely held sentiment that I was an ass-HOLE!

(I had no fucking clue Love had told all about how I fucked!)

The semester ended. Her lease was up. But, little beauty queenie had three days left on her two-week notice at her job.

Now, Love knew better than to let little beauty queenie come bouncing up the hall at me immediately on my waking as I stumbled for the bathroom. But, for whatever reason, she didn't stop her.

And I ended up with an armful of giggling beauty queenie telling me that Mama Bear said it was alright if she stayed with us for three days if it was alright with me.

I mumbled that it was alright with me if it was alright with her and disengaged the girl holding me from taking a wake-up piss despite my being naked.

Only to be berated once I was in the shower by Love who told me that she had expected me to say "No!"

Applying logic to the problem, I decided it should still be okay since I was working the overnights and wouldn't be there while they slept for two of the three nights, and little beauty queenie was staying in town to finish out her two-week notice so she would be gone while Love was gone. "And besides, what the hell would a nineteen-year-old (she'd celebrated a birthday with us) beauty queen want with a thirty-year-old man who didn't have looks, money, fame, or charm going for him?"

If only Love would have come clean with me then and there that she'd been telling tales of our tail.

I went on to work, and the gals slept, just like I imagined they would.

And they both left at the same time for work after I'd gotten home from my job, just like I had thought they would.

My first hint that something might be amiss was when I woke up that afternoon to find the covers completely off me, and my pulsating erection oddly wet for some strange reason. I didn't think anything about it until after I'd pulled on some sweats (since we had company), gone to the bathroom, and went into the front room to find Love and little beauty queenie chatting.

And both of them were acting strangely.

Love kept giving me strange looks and little beauty queenie wouldn't look at me and kept blushing for some reason. And they kept it up all through their supper/ my breakfast.

In retrospect, I strongly suspect it might have been someone's saliva (at least) coating my erection when I woke up. But, I didn't have a clue beyond the two women in the place were acting weird as fuck.

And I had neither the time nor the opportunity to get to the bottom of it since I had to hustle from breakfast to shower to getting dressed and out the door to work.

Even the next morning, when I was home and Love had to leave for work while little beauty queenie was still in the shower, I was utterly clueless. I just started my work-out routine wearing an old pair of cotton sweats after Love kissed me, looked deep into my eyes, whispered "I love you so much," and with one last look up the hallway headed out the door.

Right up until a pair of long, shapely legs stepped in front of me as I was cranking out push-ups and I looked up to see little beauty queenie in nothing but a towel.

"Mama Bear told me about you," she said.

"Beg pardon?"

"She told me about what you do. About how you are. You know. In bed."

"Oh?" I asked faintly, rolling around to sit with my arms around my knees and look at her, still wet from a shower and wearing nothing but a towel.

She dropped the towel.

"Teach me?"

Perhaps a stronger man than I could have resisted that enticement, but I was the one there.

I drove her to her first orgasm in three minutes right there using nothing but the fingers of my right hand, with my left in her hair, with me still wearing those grey cotton sweats. And spent the next several hours showing her what I knew.

Despite my protests that she had yet more to experience, that I had more to show her, she pleaded exhaustion, dressed,... and went for a run.

Women make absolutely no sense sometimes. If she had the energy to run... ah, well.

Love showed up within minutes of little beauty queenie leaving. And was in a randy mood since we hadn't had a chance to let loose for a couple of days. Not, as one might think, because we had company. But, because she'd had an ovarian cyst rupture and had been hurting.

We made up for lost time since I didn't have to work that night and wasn't worried about getting a nap in.

After cuddling her into an exhausted slumber, I rose from our bed to find the door cracked open, which I thought odd since I would have sworn I heard it click shut before she took my cock, still coated in little beauty queenies juices in her mouth.

As I padded to the refrigerator for a drink (without bothering with sweats since everybody there had seen it all), little beauty queenie got up off the couch and joined me at the bar in the kitchen.

"How could you do that?"

I frowned at her and thought it was more than just a tad ridiculous of a question.

"She is my wife," I said, thinking she was jealous.

"No," she clarified. "I mean, how were you able to do that? You fucked me for what? Seven hours? Came three or four times? And have been fucking her for another six! All the other guys I've been with, it's been one and done!"

Ah.

I spent the next hour explaining to little beauty queenie that when I was but a tadpole, I'd developed an irrational phobia that I wouldn't be able to satisfy that ephemeral woman I would one day marry. And that I would lose her because I couldn't satisfy her.

And I'd looked into everything I could to learn how. And had turned my early teen intellect to developing a workout that would help me be better at it. Everything from tying maraschino cherry stems into triple knots with my tongue, to "chewing" my food by pressing it against my teeth with my tongue, to picking up guitar to make my fingers more dextrous, to edging while masturbating for hours and, when I did cum, making myself keep going until I had cum seven times, or I was raw and oozing blood, whichever came first. Everything was approached with a secondary thought to how it might eventually help me out when it came to sexual intimacy.

And, at the time when my body was going through changes due to puberty, which I suspected was relevant since it would probably have affected neurological and chemical balances at a time when they were trying to settle.

She claimed to be too sore for more, but I did take her mouth there squatting down against the kitchen bar and then ignored her mouth's protests in favor of her body's reaction to take her through three more orgasms of her own before I relented and tucked her back on the couch.

I was all for her joining Love and me in bed instead, but she refused. Laughing and claiming that there was no fucking way she was going to do anything else but sleep. And she had a feeling that sleep still wasn't on my mind.

She was right.

As I proved when Love woke up as I slipped back into bed after setting a bottle of water on the nightstand for her.

I woke, briefly, when Love kissed me good-bye in the morning, and tried to pull her back into bed. But, she laughingly told me she had to go to work and gave my cock a kiss of its own as she left, so I nestled back into sleep.

Only to wake later with my cock in little beauty queenies mouth. She also laughed when I tried to drag her into bed and told me not only was she leaving for the airport, her ride waiting outside, but that she was far, far too sore to do anything anyway!

I don't know whether to classify that quick little thing she had as an orgasm or not.

"I don't know if I should thank you or not, Daddy," she said after kissing my lips. "Whoever I find has a lot to live up to. But, I do know I will never, ever forget you."

And with one final squeeze and kiss for my lips, and another for my cock, she was gone from our lives.

***sigh***

Kids. They don't call. Don't write.

Meh. She probably forgot all about me. That was... er... fuck... eighteen years ago? Nineteen? Where the hell does the time go?!

Now, many would probably argue that I was once again working from the base two levels of my pyramid. But, I wasn't. Although I hadn't recognized it, I had been acting as a platonic DD for little beauty queenie. At least until she dropped that towel. Then Top joined Daddy for a lovely romp and melded into something I have since come to identify as Professor.

Frankly, even as abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous as she was, it was the "Teach me?" that triggered me. And, the reason I went through most of what I knew for her when I didn't need it for myself. In a way, I suppose I was the antitheses of what I'd been with the girl I can't remember her name.

I behaved myself for a while after that. Partially, I'd left behind that job at the hotel and taken up a teaching position. And, despite the fact that it was at a technical school where the few eighteen-year-olds we had enroll dropped the average age to thirty-something, I do have some ethical standards. For example, not abusing a position of power to take advantage of a student.

Now, a couple of my co-workers on the other hand...

But, no. I behaved myself for several years after little beauty queenie headed back for... well, damn. Was it Kentucky or Tennessee? Any road, I behaved myself for several years after she headed for home.

Then, Facebook happened.

Well, for me. I have no idea how long it had been around before I let myself get talked into it by some of my students and coworkers. (My boss, I'd told if he wasn't going to let me do it during work hours, but wanted me to do it at home on my off hours, it wasn't gonna happen. I rather suspect he may have been the moving force behind at least some of the students and co-workers appealing to me.)

Set THAT thought out of your mind right now! It was NOT one of my students. Nor was it one of my co-workers. Although, there were one or two co-workers that I probably would have...

No. There was a little gal my sister's age that I had taken to her first high school banquet and a short time later on her first real date. But, we'd lost touch for damn near two decades before she found me on Facebook.

And, as it turned out, she was a coach and science teacher at a high school not just too far from where I was teaching. And we made plans to get together for lunch.

"Lunch" turned out to be her picking me up and driving a few blocks away into a residential neighborhood where she parked, reached for my belt, and asked if she could have "a taste."

Over the next... mmm... several months anyway, we fucked anywhere, anytime we could. In her office at school. In her classroom. In my classroom. In my office. On a bus she had to park after an away game one night. On my motorcycle. In her Mustang. In the middle of the practice softball diamond...

And then she pulled the shit described in "Am I your safe space?"

And, as described there, it took me a while to break her to harness, platonically, before I would relent and resume her training sexually.

Also, as described there, my symptoms for my Parkinson's that I'd been largely ignoring and "pushing through" spiraled out of control and we lost touch once more. I didn't see her, or speak to her, again before she died. Succumbing, so I understand, to anorexia nervousa and a weakened heart consumed by her starving body. One of three people variously close to me that I've lost that way, and the reason I categorically refuse to support a woman in a diet that strikes me as unhealthy.

Again, arguably, I could have just been working from the bottom two rungs of my personal pyramid to Top her. However, if that had been the case, I wouldn't have treated her little break and not trusting me the way I did. No. Here, that may have the initial drive to explore our sexual compatibility. But, when she lost her job, her third teaching job over the years, I stepped in and was a moving force in getting her back into school so she could do something else that she actually wanted to do. And also to set the wheels in motion to divorce an abusive husband. Not to mention making inroads on turning her diet around to something healthy.

I know that she did divorce the abusive ass she was married to and remarried to a guy I knew and know was much better for her, to her. I know that she did finish her new round of schooling and was working in a new profession she loved.

I have no idea if my enforced abandonment of her happened at a critical juncture and she fell back on a lifetime of starving herself or if what I did was too little far too late.

I never will. Not in this lifetime.

I spoke to her mother at my father's funeral. And left a white rose with a single drop of my blood on her headstone when my father's graveside was done and most of the crowd had left.

One would think that having been diagnosed with PD with CPS and ET complications, being classified disabled, and becoming not only virtually housebound, but so near to bedridden...er, couch-ridden... that it would have been impossible for me to misbehave again.

And one might have been right except for two small little details.

First, I was put on a regimen of carbidopa/levodopa and rope-a-dope-a (yes, I know it's ropinirole, but my way is funnier). Also, Lyrica for nerve pain and I don't even remember what all, but they had me swallowing so damn many pills every six hours I didn't have room for food but could hear pills clacking in my stomach if I shifted too fast.

The second was a friend who still came by to check on me for a couple of years, and who, although I didn't know it, had an issue of some sort with Love. I'm not completely sure just what happened to make he and his wife decide she was a soul-sucking demon after being friends of ours for over a decade, but something happened.

And he started smuggling me out of the house for "boy's time" and then, often, would pick up his wife so that we could do something together without Love. Which probably would have been fine except for they had this friend...

I can't defend the fact that I continued to fall for him picking me up by himself and then either taking me to meet his wife or Courtney or both beyond the fact that the combination of my disease and the pills were turning my brain to tapioca in my skull. I was, however, insistent that she was my wife, and I would not be leaving her. Or, rather, that I would be going back home to her. Either when he took me, or when we stopped somewhere I could find a fucking phone to call a cab.

Courtney...

***sigh***

We chatted mostly online through the week. And,... well... I'd gone to trying to write again. Primarily to give me something to do beyond taking root on the couch as I waited to die. However, I was writing something that might charitably be referred to as erotica (although it was more often cheesy porn).

And, some part of me just couldn't resist teasing her by dropping a sexually charged line in the midst of an otherwise innocuous conversation.

Once more, I came to be involved, and perhaps even overinvolved, in her life as she would tell me about anything and everything going on. And I would gently guide and steer her towards making positive changes.

That was during the week when we were talking via the infernal-net. Every Friday, and more than a few Saturdays, when that buddy of mine would kidnap me and take me to spend time with her face to face, we were very careful not to so much as touch. And we kept the sexual innuendo to a minimum.

However, both of us were quivering with a need to touch and be touched. A quivering that we both ignored was affecting the other as much as we could.

Until one night, we couldn't anymore.

When she stepped close to me in the kitchen, looked up into my eyes, and slipped both of her hands down the waistband of my sweats, my control shattered. I pressed her to her knees right there in her kitchen floor, took my cock out, and with my hand threaded through her hair, took her mouth...

Without so much as shutting the kitchen door between where my friend and his wife were sitting, watching through the open door from where we had been sitting, talking.

I... don't actually remember just how we progressed to the point where my friend and his wife were outside, and I had her pressed against the inside of the front door, with her shirt peeled over her head and twisted to bind her arms behind her back, her sweats around her knees as I fucked her pussy with my cock and her mouth with the fingers not twisted in her hair...

My once just points shy of eidetic memory has developed issues thanks to the PD. And, on my really bad days, I had trouble remembering Love's legal name. So, yeah... there are some... gaps that night (and others).

I do, however, remember her being on her back in the middle of her living room floor with me rising above her, fully ensconced in her, and her begging me, with hands on my cheeks, for me to stay. To stay with her. To not go home to my wife.

And, I remember pulling out of her, rising to my feet, pulling my sweats up, and pausing to stare down at her in the shredded remains of her clothing. I remember feeling sad as I told her that was not going to happen. That, as I'd told her all along, I would never abandon my wife. That I would always go home to her. That I had thought I'd made that perfectly clear over the months we had known each other.

She was crying as I walked out the door to join my friend and his wife and have them take me home. I ached for her pain. But, I was also angry with her for turning what I had thought we were sharing into a competition that she had to win. And it made me wonder if that was all it had ever been to her. Some proof that she was desirable, that someone would choose her over anyone else. And how, if I had chosen to stay with her, she could ever believe or trust me when she had seen me break one vow to someone else by leaving them for her.

I had thought that we had been operating from higher up the pyramid. Both of us. But, I'm forced to admit that both of us were back down in the first two levels. I don't know if she had ever moved beyond that. I thought I had. I was proved wrong as I had to admit that most of it was to prove to myself that, despite my infirmities, despite being prematurely aged, I still "had it."

We never spoke again after that night, despite my reaching out to her several times before giving up. And I don't blame her.

Those friends turned away and stopped coming to see us. I didn't see them again until they invited themselves to Love's wake after her death. And haven't seen them since. I don't blame them for Courtney. But, I couldn't stomach their hypocrisy in attending Love's wake half a decade after turning their backs on her and then me.

Love and I were, quite literally, alone with each other for a long time. We rarely saw a human face other than each other. Perhaps once per week. Maybe.

Towards the end, she became physiologically incapable of sexual intimacy.

But, I've shared, and perhaps overshared, that and the ones who came after (but have limited to LDR) since. So, there is probably no point, nor purpose, to revisiting those hurts that are penned across some of my other attempts at blogging.

These listed here, and those four, are only the... mmm... primaries, however. Those that I engaged deeply in a dynamic with and, other than Donna and Leah, the sexual aspects of fetish and kink. There have been others. Some that I engaged platonically in dynamic much as I did with Donna and Leah, but for a shorter time. Some that I engaged sexually, but without a clear dynamic, such as the young woman I drove through two hours of pleasure and several orgasms orally and with the use of my hands, without ever removing my jeans, only to find out later that it was the night before her wedding and I was her private bachelorette party.

I don't know. The point, as much as I ever have one, is that I've been heading down this graveled road for a while now. More than a little of it on my face. I knew about BDSM... somewhat... but didn't really understand, much less label, all the shit that had just sprung organically from who I was and who they were as anything specific. Had no real need to.

But, I think the Hierarchy of Needs is significant when it comes to Dominance and Submission. Or Bondage and Discipline. Or Sadism and Masochism. I think that a Dom is not necessarily a Dom is maybe not a Dom, but it depends on from where in their own pyramid they are operating from. And similarly a submissive is not necessarily a submissive or maybe even a submissive. And even the same Dom or submissive can slide up and down the echelons of the pyramid to use BDSM dynamicked relationships to meet various needs at different times.

Typically, I will at least touch on the basic physiological requirements of a submissive that I am embroiled with. On any level. Even basic friendship, or acquaintanceship. "Have you eaten? No. REAL food?" "Have you brushed your tiny toofers and are all ready for beddie-bye?" Some Dominants have absolutely no interest in getting down to that level. Some submissives don't need or particularly want that level, are actually insulted by it, while others either need it or are at least touched by the care shown by checking.

I will check on their security settings. Do they feel safe? What is going on that might make them feel not secure? Troubles at work? Illness for them or someone close to them? Some Dominants are not interested in even dropping to this level. Some submissives are perfectly fine seeing to their own safety and security and don't need, or want, some D-type reminding them of what they see as basics they can take care of themselves. While others need the structure and care of knowing someone is there to provide a scaffolding for this level of their pyramid.

The third level... belonging if not love... is where, I think, most are most comfortable. The sexual intimacy aspect in particular. Although, I think a lot of times problems occur when one is operating from here and the other is back down in level one at "I need sex!"

I haven't always, I will grant. Hell, I outright admitted that in my early days I couldn't move into the fourth echelon where esteem is found. Neither for myself nor for submissives I found myself interacting with. These days... even if they are friends or acquaintances, I like to see at least some small boost to their esteem from interacting with me. (Perhaps as some repayment for the boost to my esteem they lend me?) But, I have heard a lament from more than one miserable little subbie that their Person had told them "your esteem, your emotions are not my problem." Similarly, I have heard some strong women that are not in the least submissive outside of the bedroom baldly state that they can see to their own, while others need the scaffolding to help them see esteem, in their own eyes or in someone else's.

The top level is rough. I admit that. I am smart enough to admit I wrestle with what the fuck I do for myself in my own pyramid sometimes, much less in some little subs pyramid. I don't know, but I think working in that fifth level for a submissive is the mark of a Master, although a Daddy might play there sometimes too.

Either way, though, I think that sometimes people think of BDSM when I would say "kink or fetish." And other times, other people will see the dynamick in their everyday platonic relationships as some aspect of their personality outs. Usually in a subconscious resonance to a person acting from the other side of the slash.  But, I don't know that it would hurt anything to look at our own personal pyramid check what we are in and of ourselves and then go looking for something more than just a submissive or a Dom.  On the other hand, I don't know how anyone can know whether a Dominant's particular brand of Dominance or a submissive's particular brand of submissiveness might resonate without talking about it more than "I'm a Dom and you're a sub, let's fuck."

 

Although some, on both sides of the slash, need just exactly that very thing.  ***shrug***

 

And, hell. Now that I'm looking back across this, I'm not sure I see just what point or purpose might be served. By any of it. I mean, even the points where I didn't break off telling some personal anecdote (and fuck there were a shit ton of those), was any of that mess actually new to anyone?

Or am I once more reinventing the wheel and babbling about shit that everyone else already thought of?

I mean, duh. It's not rocket science to know that just because this person presents as a D-type and this person presents as an s-type, they may or may not be compatible since even those that have surface similarities with other D or s-types are never exactly the same. And the only way to find out is to ride the fucking roller coaster all the way to the end.

I need to just shut the hell up already and go listen to some music or something...

But, either way, MAKE yours a good day.

 

(And, if you are in the market for a sadistic fucking muse, take mine.  Please.)

 

 

 

 

 

A couple... or maybe a few days ago.  I can't recall exactly when for some reason.  And that bothers me.

 

Any road, one of my former...ah... playmates contacted me and for whatever reason wanted to talk about love.  For those that happen to be masochistic enough to follow my long-winded attempts to blog, it was not, as it happens, the one I called Little One for a long time.  However,...well, yes.  Little One was on my mind as I gave her an answer.

 

Right about here, I should probably caution that what I said might be considered scathing and even hurtful to some of more delicate sensibilities.  I will admit that my inner-Daddy had gone away and my inner-Master was in full play.  I was not in the mood to sugar coat anything, least of all the already sugary confection that some mistakenly believe love to be.

 

If you know you are of a more delicate constitution, at least in this moment, I would encourage you to look away.  I don't apologize for what I said.  Nor do I hold any of it as an untruth.  But, stripping away the pretty trappings of a fond fantasy can hurt.

 

At various points in our communications the subject of love had come up as she wrestled for an understanding of it.

 

And, she had some very pretty analogies that she used.

 

The first was of a mosaic.  A jigsaw puzzle.  And when we find the one, she would have had it, when we hold them up to measure the gap in our lives, the piece lines up and they snap into place easily.  Where we often make our mistake is that we don't pay attention to the corner that doesn't quite line up and we press and try to make it fit.  Damaging both the person we are looking at as our potential missing piece and the gap within us as we force it.  Or attempt to.

 

It was a very pretty analogy.  And right so far as it went.  But, I knew even at the time that it was a child's view of love, despite her being a grown woman with nearly grown children of her own.

 

Because, at the time, I was acting from my inner-Daddy rather than my inner-Master, I was not so cold, and even cruel, in my correction.  But, merely asked gentle leading questions over the course of days and even weeks to get her to understand that she wasn't seeing it all.

 

The next analogy that she came up with was that of a sunset.  As she would have had it, she could appreciate the beauty of a sunset.  But, to try to possess it, to try to hold it from anyone else sharing in it, would be wrong.

 

Again, a beautiful analogy and lovely sentiment.  Again, correct in it's very narrow way.  But, there was still so much that she was not taking into account.  And, once again, acting from my inner-Daddy rather than my inner-Master, I gently and skillfully questioned her in order to lead her to understand that there was more.

 

That was the last we discussed it before events shattered what we had, playing a role amongst other events, adding to their accumulation, to virtually shatter me as well.  But, I discussed that ad nauseam in "Good Grief" and see no point or purpose for anyone in revisiting what was shared, and perhaps over-shared, there.

 

When she returned and we had a reprisal of those earlier conversations, I am afraid I probably shocked her as she had not seen the Master hiding behind the mask of Daddy for the duration of our play.

 

No.  That isn't fair.  Daddy was not... IS not... a mask for me.  It is... another facet of my personality.  An aspect that is called out of me when interacting with a little who resonates with that part of me.  Through  her actions, and the actions of others, Daddy had withdrawn to pout, much as an abused little might.

 

All that was left was Master.  Or Professor.  Or Maestro.  Or Mentor.  And I had not the time, resources, nor inclination to be gentle with her and persuade her over the course of weeks and months in continuing to seek an answer which I already knew.

 

 

The cold hard fact is that when we believe we love another, more often than not what we actually mean is that we love the way they make us feel about ourselves.

 

How many times have I heard a girl or woman lament that she was unnattractive when I knew damn well that I had made it plain that I thought she was?  What she means, of course, is that the people that she wants to find her attractive don't.  The fact that I found her attractive was meaningless as my opinion did not matter.

 

How very many times have I heard some miserable little submissive lament that they are not a priority to anyone when I have gone out of my way to make them mine?  What she meant, of course, was the person that was her priority did not make her his.  The fact that she was mine held no sway as I was not hers.

 

How many times have I heard a woman (not to name any names) say that she felt unloveable when I was right there, shoulder to shoulder with her, showing through my actions that I did love and support her in every way?  What she meant, of course, was that the Person that she loved did not love her in return.

 

All of these things I said to her along with other proofs that I offered up.

 

She attempted to argue.

 

Only to have me cite words that she had shared with me herself and point out what she had truly meant.

 

Could I have been kinder about it?  Certainly.  If Daddy had been home.  But, she had given up any right to call on my inner-Daddy when she picked up another Daddy from the DD/lg thread on another website and her little began cuddling up to him, another Master from another thread that she was opening negotiations with, another Top to play with, and a submissive of her own to attempt to train.  All without consulting me first, but delivering the news to me fait accompli for each scenario.

 

Could I have been crueler about it?  I believe so.  I did not once mention the fact that she is not a submissive but an attention whore who uses D-types to meet her own needs and casts them aside to move on to the next when she determines that the mosaic isn't as pretty as she thought it would be.  Who hid her whorishness behind a pretty adage about letting the sunset move on to be appreciated by others.

 

Hell, I even threw her the bone that if my Dominance no longer struck the resonant frequency of her submission, then she was right to move one.  Only, it wasn't a bone.  It was truth.  Every bit as true as that what she means when says she loves someone is that she loves how they make her feel about herself.

 

What I did not tell her was that I was letting the sunset move on into yesterday.  There was no point as it would have only confused her and taken her back to her mistaken belief that is all love is.

 

 

***shrug***

 

I never said I was giving her the whole of the answer she sought although I never blatantly stated that I was only giving her another aspect to consider.  It is not longer my place, my purpose, my function to train her as while I am a Master, I am not her Master.  While I am a Daddy, I am not her Daddy.  While I am a Professor, Instructor, Maestro, Teacher, Mentor... I am not hers.  It is the duty of the Ones she has sought to continue her training, her molding and shaping.

 

In short, she is no longer my responsibility.

 

But,...

 

But, I've been poking around here and there, as is my habit.  And I have seen people talking about moving on after being left behind.  Or being the one to do the leaving.

 

And I don't know.  I admit that I am tired.  I admit that I am still licking wounds.  I admit that I am still processing my own lessons.  I admit that it will be awhile before I am once again ready to step into the role, into the job, into the duty of being someone's Master/Daddy/Sir/Mentor/Dominant/PickYerLabel again, if ever.

 

By the same token, I can't just stop being what I am completely either.  So, I vomit up onto the screen some of these random thoughts in some attempt to maybe help someone, school someone to a better understanding of themselves and/or the world around them.

 

I once thought I had all the answers.  Then I discovered I didn't even know the right questions as yet.  Every day is a journey, not a destination.  Each and every day we should dedicate ourselves to learning something new, even if it is a different perspective of something we thought we knew.

 

For me, when I run out of other things to catch my fragmented and tangential attention, I know that I can always look to love, intimacy, attraction, connection, interaction, and sexual behavior.  Because however much I think I know, there is always some other facet, some other aspect to examine more closely.  Something new to learn that turns all my earlier understandings once more upon their end and shakes them.

 

Today is a journey.  Not a destination.  And what little I have shared of a different aspect of love is not the whole of it.  If it is not something new to you, or is not an aspect that you wish to consider too carefully, then all I can say is that I wish you nothing but that the sun be out of your eyes and the wind at your back for a brighter journey of your own today to a new understanding.

 

Had a big old long-winded ramble started... but, fuck it.  Maybe some other time I'll wander off into tying Abraham Maslow's work into being a DD to her lg.  Tonight/this morning as I sit here lost in my own mind thanks to a string of confusing as fuck messages followed by another silence seems like a good time to just listen to some music...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We all have them.  If we've really lived rather than being popped in a protective bubble from birth that is.

 

I've never really seen the problem or issue with scars.  Why some people seem so embarrassed about theirs.  But, then perhaps I am slightly different because of what I've seen and done.

 

Almost right from the very beginning, I was exposed to people that were considered "damaged" in some way.  Less than physically perfect specimens.

 

When Mom returned to work, I was left with an elderly couple.  He had had his left leg blown off.  He did not let it stop him, though.  He was a carpenter by trade, and many was the time I watched him climb a ladder on his one leg with a bucket of shingles in one hand to do roofing work.  That was before I even started to school.

 

When I did start to school, my exposure continued.  It was in the early days of "mainstreaming" when they were experimenting with shifting students from the Special Ed classes if they only had a physical handicap with no mental handicap.  One was an albino and legally blind.  One had been born without any arms or legs, but just nubs where his arms would have been and a vestigial "foot" from his right hip.

 

Our teacher, needless to say, did not put up with a whole lot of excuses from the rest of us.  Not when one was completing his homework despite having to put his nose on the paper to see it and the other was completing it with a pencil in his mouth.

 

In later years, both were in the band, marching and concert.  Patrick rolling along in his motorized wheel chair, playing a specially modified trumpet with elongated valve tops extending to the right for first and third and to the left for second, so that he could manipulate them with his nubs.  Jerry a flutist (or flautist elsewhere) that, of course, had to press his nose against the music stand to sight read a new piece, but could play the birds from the trees.

 

There was also a girl who had pulled a pot of boiling water over onto herself while I was still watching that carpenter climb a ladder with one leg and a bucket of shingles in one hand.  Her left forearm was a mass of scar tissue.  And, I'm ashamed to admit that at first, that bothered me.  A great deal.  I was born with an esophageal flap dysfunction and a strong as hell gag reflex.  (Not to mention a high empathetic index.)  I could not look at that poor girl's arm without doing a T-Rex mating call impression.  Whether fortunately or unfortunately, she was sensitive about her arm and wore long sleeved shirts most often.  Although, it does make me sad to think that, when we were six, I may have contributed to her self-consciousness.  I got over it.  So did she, playing on the basketball team in a sleeveless shirt for everyone to see her scars raised high in the air as she "swished" another three-pointer.

 

I could cite others... but, I don't see much point as they were mostly just further exposure to the same experiences.

 

But, it was some time before I came to understand that just as we accumulate physical scars on our body, so too do we accumulate psychological and emotional scars.  Some worse that others granted, depending on the experiences that accumulated them.  But, we all have them.  We all come from somewhere.

 

I met Love.  Or, she met me.

 

Love had her left knee blown out by a shotgun blast before she graduated from high school.  This was during a time when there was a pendulum swing away from amputation as veterans were returning from Viet Nam with missing limbs.  So, they "saved" the leg.  For some definitions of the term.  Even doing some of the early experimental vein grafts, I understand.  And a lot... a whole lot... of skin grafts.  Her entire left leg, which did not bend due to the metal rods they had used to replace the destroyed bone and joint, was a mass of scar tissue from her mid-thigh down.

 

The physical scars caused some widening of the psychological scars that she had carried almost from birth.  The man she settled for to avoid being alone added to the scars on her psyche and on her heart for just slightly less than twenty years.

 

The thing is... I never saw her as damaged.  Scarred?  Sure.  Inside and out.  But, I did not see her as needing to be fixed.  I wanted her, all of her, just the way she was.  It took a long time for her to understand that I didn't love her despite her scars, both visible and invisible, but because of all of her, including her scars.

 

After twenty-five years during which I'm sure we each put our own scars on the other, she placed her final mark on my soul, the final scar she would give me, by dying.

 

I met some other people.  People who added to my accumulation of scars, just as I added to theirs.  Even as we each helped each other to heal from some past wounds.  That, to me, is what it's all about.  Picking up our own scars along this gravelled road.  Accepting others for the road map of their past graven in their skin, in their heart, in their soul.  It's what makes us all perfectly imperfect human.

 

We all come from somewhere.  We are all shattered vases mended with gold.  That is what our scars are.  The ones on the skin we're in and the ones on the mind and heart inside.  The gold that makes us even more valuable to the eyes that can see it.

 

I don't see what would be wrong with displaying our scars, to display the kintsugi art that we each are.  Not to those we trust to see us as such.  But, how can we really trust they will see us as the unique work of art our scars make us unless we are willing to show them and see?

 

And we will pick up scars.  If that is, we are actually living rather than hiding in a protective shell, afraid to embrace the pleasure for fear of some ephemeral imagined pain before it even comes.  The only question is whether we wear our scars as a mark of a live well lived and don't let them stop us from exploring further, as far down this gravelled road as we dare to go.

 

Not, of course, while the wound still yet bleeds.  But, when the scab has fallen away, leaving another perfect scar to mark the experience?  Hell, yeah.  Be a shooting star under your scars.

 

“We do not get to choose how we start out in life. We do not get to choose the day we are born or the family we are born into, what we are named at birth, what country we are born in, and we do not get to choose our ancestry. All these things are predetermined by a higher power. By the time you are old enough to start making decisions for yourself, a lot of things in your life are already in place. It’s important, therefore, that you focus on the future, the only thing that you can change.” 
― Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

 

 

We can not change yesterday, no matter how much we might lament.  The only thing left to us is to shape now and thus reshape the future to reflect our dreams of today.