So... Sadly, I am unsure just how many, or even who, may know something of me.
I have represented myself as a Dom. Because I was for a good long time. Even as a milk-breath pup, there wasn't just a whole lot of submit to me. But, eventually, I began to move to extend my own agency within myself to holding power over those I was involved with.
Granted, at the time I didn't have the lexicon to set into words just what I was doing, the labels. It just grew organically from who I was in my blood and bone and what I called out of those I interacted with.
I got a B.S. in a counseling field.
I worked in human service fields with the primary in detention work, but also a lot of work in such varied fields as mental health and mental retardation in group home settings, substance abuse rehabilitation, and victims of child abuse support groups. Hell, I even put in a lot of hours with the community services for the deaf.
And through it all, the running undercurrent was that I was the one in charge. I was the man with the plan, or was supposed to be. And I was also the one hung out to dry if the plan was disrupted by an inmate, client, resident... or one of the coworkers who were typically only different in the cut and style of their uniform.
It was the epitome of the stereotype of Dominant Mastery. And I grew into that role in my personal as well as my professional life.
But, the politics of the situation wore on me. And I wasn't getting any younger. It was time to look forward and plan for what next.
I got my M.Ed. That is a Master's Degree in Education.
I left human services behind and embarked on a second career molding minds. Those that weren't too moldy by the time I got ahold of them.
And still, I was the man with the plan. The one running the show. Or was supposed to be. And, yeah. The one hung out to dry if someone... students, coworkers, some jackass off the street, or whomever blew the plan.
Unfortunately, in my checkered past, I perhaps hadn't been as careful as I might should have been. And developed what they eventually diagnosed as either Parkinson's Disease or, perhaps, this new C.E.T. that is the new fad.
Physical abilities were the first to go. But, the mental decline followed.
Perhaps ironically, Robin Williams committed suicide while I was dealing with my own... new normal. And I would be lying if I said it didn't cross my mind to follow his example...
However, instead, I chose to walk the path peopled by such luminaries as; Ozzy Osborne, Alan Alda, Neil Diamond, Linda Ronstadt, Brian Grant, Muhammad Ali, Janet Reno, Bob Hoskins, Freddie Roach, Michael Richard Clifford, Ben Petrick, Maurice White, Billy Connelly, and (of course) Michael J. Fox.
It really suited me much better anyway since most everyone that knows anything about me (save for a very extremely rarified few in a position to know) have often confused me for a fighter rather than a lover.
After the death of my wife, I came out in the open about the lifestyle preference we'd lived for two and a half decades. Spent some time on a couple of websites.
I wasn't really looking for anything with anyone else, but just whiling away the time. However, others found me.... And decided they wanted to try belonging to me.
All save one were complete and utter fiascos.
It would be easy for me to sit here and say that it was because the ones that found me were obviously not submissive, not only seeking me out with all the temerity of a hunting hound, but badgering and haranguing me into giving them a chance, without fail over my objections. And not really understanding that it was my own waning abilities that I doubted.
What I had not credited, not until now, was that I had declined so far that I needed them rather more than they needed me. I needed them to give me a purpose, a reason to get up off the mat just one more time.
And that is not the behavior, not the mindset, not the heart of a Dominant. Not as I grew into the role and understood it for over three decades. Not as I enacted it in my professional, public, and personal life.
Yet, still, I tried. Because something in me had to try to be what I was, all that I knew.
And then, eight or so months ago, something happened. At first, we thought it was CoViD. It had all the earmarks. But, testing showed negative.
As best we have been able to figure out, I caught simple hayfever which flared into bronchitis. This, they think, triggered my takotsubo cardiomyopathy and the resulting pulmonary edema flared bronchitis into pneumonia.
I did what I was supposed to do, what I was told to do, and bunkered in to shelter in place.
However...
However, they believe that prolonged oxygen deprivation knocked me off the plateau for my Parkinson's I'd been clinging to by my fingernails.
It's easiest to say that I have "memory issues."
But, what is actually happening is that while I do have some short-term memory issues, my long-term memory is still eidetic. Eidetic memory is often, mistakenly, referred to as "photographic." It's more than that, however. At least, it is and has been for me.
When triggered, I don't just see what I've seen. Nor do I hear again what I've heard. It is not recall so much as reliving the moment. The world in it's current form drops away along with the intervening time and I am in that moment I am recalling, living it in it's entirety.
A useful trick when I was in control of just which file was pulled up at will.
The problem is, I'm now a passenger on this ride. I do not any longer control just which file is being accessed when.
So, yeah... I have... have been having... "memory issues."
It is also easiest to just say, "and hallucinations."
But, that isn't wholly accurate either.
No, what happens is that some random trigger drives my still eidetic memory. And I am stuck in a moment from my past, reliving my life at that point.
For a couple of months, I was stuck in some sort of mental time loop.
My late wife's son called me to check on me because they hadn't heard from me in a couple of months. I think I freaked him out just a little bit when I told him his mother, three years gone, was not home from work yet.
I played it off that he had woken me up, which he had. But, the truth was that she was here with me, waking and sleeping. I was bringing her plates of food. Holding conversations with her. Yes, having kinky as fuck sex with her...
Why am I telling you this?
Because there is a fatal flaw, a fly in the ointment.
I don't remember you. We hadn't yet met in the world my mind devolves to.
And there is more...
If I gave you my Skype... I haven't been able to access Skype in... almost a year I guess. Partially technical problems accessing it since my old tower computer started having trouble with it and Imagur and I don't remember what all now about the same time, when they started tweaking the coding for mobile users. 'Cause everyone except me seems to be doing this on a phone now.
But, partly too, I can't remember my username and password.
Nor the gmail and hangouts address that I may have given some.
In other words, if you sent me a message that way and I haven't responded, I never saw it. I didn't even remember I had it for a long while. And then, once it was recalled to me by the boy child (since that was how he'd been trying to reach me before he called), couldn't remember the address. And once he gave it to me, couldn't remember the password.
And, I'm truly, truly sorry if anyone has felt ghosted by me. Or harmed that I can not remember you even now when I am having a "good day" and remember The Cage even exists, much less my username and password. It was never my intent to just disappear up my own existence.
But,... well, I suppose any who really knew me at all would know I just don't do that. Not of my own volition.
This brings me to my final point.
It is time, and probably past time, that I bid the denizens of The Cage adieu.
Primarily, yeah... As I say, I really don't have any business in the lifestyle anymore. A Dominant that is not in control of themselves has absolutely no business attempting to assert control over anyone else.
And then there is my apparent inability to maintain connections anymore, unable to recall the people whom I am supposed to have a connection with.
Last, but definitely not least, Suddenlink by Altice has become outrageous in their CoViD mongering. The ninety-seven dollars monthly which I signed up for was a stretch. Two hundred and fifty dollars monthly is just not doable for me. Not even if my landlord hadn't suddenly increased my rent by 30% additional in an effort to drive me out. And, as I told one of their agents, they are a luxury that makes my life comfortable not a requirement, and one I can do without if it is inimical to my survival needs such as food and shelter.
So, why the Hell am I telling you all this? After all, I was basically all but gone already.
Basically, I don't know if there is anyone that might be wondering about me. Like I've said throughout, I can't remember you. But, today is one of my rarer "good days" when my mind is somewhat functional... And it seems like there maybe one or two that I was in reasonable contact with before my health robbed me of my sapience that might have wondered whatever happened to me.
So, if this is you, if you are seeing this, now you know. And I can only offer my sincerest, most heartfelt apologies that it was left so long before I did.
Either way, fare the well, denizens of The Cage.
And may the wind be at your back and the sun out of your eyes for a brighter tomorrow than yesterday.
