Dark bits.

Discarded. 

Forgotten. 

Banished to an old hat box in the back of a closet.

Memories of gorgeous lashes fade

like the echo of the perfect strike.        gasp

My voyeur

lured here by the promise of exhibition.

a pretty turn of phrase, touches.

You smile.

Words fall like gentle snow,

some disappear into the darkness.

Others land like whispers,

kissing the hidden parts you ache to expose.

Melting from the heat in your flesh.

Some stay.  

Others carry your masks away.

Let them.

Feel them like a lovers breath.

Let my sentences taste, 

           gently force you to your knees,

                                          insinuate.

bind you with burnt promise.

Chain you to my page. 

Surrender to my paper chains.

Splayed and exposed, bound to me

with wet iron. 

Let my words enter you 

mark you

change you.

claim you.

and never quite release you.

Her breath travels across the endless expanse 

of the space between us.

Soft and regular. 

Warm. 

it plays against my face, this small hours caress.

ebbs and flows, an invisible tide.

          (inhale)

 want 

                     (exhale)

need

          (inhale)

I want

                    (exhale)

I need

          (inhale)

I want to scream.

exhale

Small submissive poem.

Words restrained with three tight lines.

Yearning for release.

There is a small church in the south of Italy, with a stained-glass window depicting the sister of John The Baptist. She dips her hand into the glass-blue waters of a vast river.  When the morning light is just right, the ancient window transforms into something so beautiful, it hurts one's eyes to look at it.

I have no idea if this is true.  I have never been to Italy — north or south. I cannot recall anyone ever mentioning a church there.  I don't even know if John the Baptist had a sister. But it is both a comforting and exotic thought and I want it to be true. It feels right to me. For as long as I can remember, I've carried this image with me. It flavors my small life in numerous strange and interesting ways, as I imagine it is already starting to do you.

 The walls of my office are institutional green — the previous owner's choice.  I suspect this color of paint was the cheapest available, although sometimes I think perhaps some other nefarious motive was involved.  On the largest and otherwise barren of these walls, I keep an enormous paper map of the world.  There are no countries, towns or principalities named on the faded blocks of tans and yellows. Even the great swaths of blue are anonymous. There aren't even borders to show where one country ends and another begins.  But a child can find southern Italy, even without the borders and my eye is often drawn there.

My intent, so many lifetimes ago, was to travel the world. I would ride elephants in Thailand, explore underwater caverns in Belize, or perhaps the city of bones under the streets of Paris.  Upon the return from every adventure I would place small colored pins on the map to show where I had been. Each year would be assigned a color.  Red for 1985, blue for 1986, and so on, until my blank map was filled with a brilliant tapestry of pins.  Can you imagine such a thing?

Outside my small window, somewhere in the industrial wilds of an abandoned suburb of Pittsburgh, the world is an iron-gray mishmash of thick, low hanging clouds, dead pavement and steady, invisible rain that can be felt even on this side of the glass. It is always November here and it always rains.  I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. We all live in solitude here, among old, unwashed coffee cups, IKEA relics, and small piles of lottery tickets.  I never look at my lottery tickets, not even to see if I've won. Someday, when my desk draw is overflowing with their false promise, I imagine I'll relent and look at one or two. If that ever happens, I promise you that each one will have a November drawing date.  You believe me.  Part of you does, at any rate.

The church has a priest, but no sermons. The village itself is beautiful, wedged between two small hills that are not quite perfect for growing grapes. People are happy there and they love their father, but few hunger for ritual in their spiritual lives. They simply come to the small church when it suits them, or perhaps it calls them. When they need to pray or light a candle, or just sit for few minutes while the morning sun ignites the colored tableau of John's radiant sister. The church is never full, but it is always filled with people who want to be there.

Most who do come when the sun is up and the dust motes are on clothed in splendor, are older.  Even the most gentle passage of time takes a toll, and the old appreciate the value in reminiscing with their ghosts. The worn wooden benches of the small place is as neutral territory, acceptable to both living and dead.  

When the night is warm — and it is almost always warm, I'm sure of it — sometimes young lovers meet. The small church is never locked. There is something both forgotten and intoxicating there that acts as a lodestone, attracting small declarations of love.  The young are drawn to the dark, empty church on such nights, able to turn away no more than a Prometha moth following the moon.

It is a lie to believe that all moments are fleeting. Some last forever, and a great many of those are found inside the small church.  They fill every space from floor to rafter, yet there is always room for more. Perhaps the church is not so small after all.   

Do you see it yet? Has it flavored your day?  Perhaps not.  Perhaps the small, enormous church is simply a product of a lazy mind that has little enough places to wander these days.  If so, I apologize.  My intent was never to promise and not deliver. I beg you for the smallest indulgence, just enough to humor me. A polite smile will suffice. If not belief, sympathy then. For it is not easy living in this eternal November.  This much, you must believe.  I insist you believe.  If any doubt lingers, you only have to glance at my faded, borderless map, covered only in a tiny field of dust, unmarred by even a single pinprick.

What other explanation can there be?

Our secret color.

Dusk dark over a pending storm.

if the world sees, a whirlwind fed by sugary outrage

will try to rip you away from me.

It sees a belt. wild eyes. madness.

Where you see a safe harbor.

Nothing is bland in our nettled nest.

Our Love is tender.  

Our Love is tenderized

with rough hands, whistling tails, 

thick leather.

Spiced with tears, 

marbled with release.

ambience all muted lighting and low bass

felt in flesh.

They are out there, and can never share our feast.

The world does not partake in the presentation 

anticipation or nibbled gorging of our meal.

It sees only unwashed dishes and clutter. 

it can't see our special color.

• I wore this belt last Saturday for the first time. My pants fell down several times. (I only fell down once.) I thought I must have lost weight. Then I remembered that I didn't buy the belt for wearing!

I read something once in a blog somewhere on a chatroom that doesn't or does exist. The blog or the post, I don't remember exactly what it was or if it is even real, pointed out that sometimes you might say something funny but what you said was actuallly hurtful to someone. That what may seem like a joke to one person, may feel like an attack to another.

This is a common theme comedians and frat boys run into all the time. The thought process in both groups of people is basically the same: "I have something funny to say. I KNOW that some or a lot of people are not going to find it funny and some are going to be hurt by it. I'm going to say it anyway."

For me, I've made the personal choice not to engage in humor if it means someone might take it the wrong way. I sacrifice my ego for the greater good. Like Jesus, I guess.  Here's an example of why self-restraint in humor is so important:  As I was writing this I imagined a poster of a Tabby Cat sitting at the foot of the cross, looking up at crucified Jesus, with a banner that read "HANG IN THERE!" across the top.  

Funny, right? I know! But I also know that someone who locks their child in a closet and makes them pray for a full day when they catch them masturbating, might be offended by the comment. 

So I refrain.

But not everyone is as P.C. as Mister A.  I get that. 

I've heard disgusting jokes that other people, besides me, thought were funny.  And even though I laughed at most of them (all of them), I was genuinely offended by a few.

But...

I was offended for a few seconds. Then I forgot about it. Not just because meth has ruined my short term memory, but aslo because a hurtful joke shouldn't really hurt that much.  If something hurts me so bad that I feel personally violaated, I realize I just have to deal with it. It's my responsibility, not the jokesters.  Sometimes dealing with it might mean trying to hurt the person with nastier words. Sometimes it might mean I shrug it off.  And sometimes it might mean that I leave cabfare on the nightstand. Call me!

I guess what I'm saying is, it's my responsibility and choice to decide if I give such power to a person making a rude joke.  Do I hold on to my hurt and grudge the way a Scottsman holds on to three pennies? Or do I simply pay less attention to it than a lesbian pays attention to fashion? 

I can't stop you from making a joke.  I can only choose how I react to it. 

And before you get all bent out of shape about any of the comments I made here, you should know that one of my best friends is black. 

But that other stuff is pretty boring. 

I know there will be a gaggle of littles, a pack of alphas, a swath of switches, and a butt load of snubbed subs who will object to this.

"It's not all about Sex, Mr. A. It's about security and cuddles and crayons and glitter and LOVE!" the littles will whine.

To which Mr. A. says, "Listen up, Kitty [you're all named Kittysomething for some reason]. You may look cute as a button in your unicorn PJs for your Daddy or Mommy, but at the end of the day, if we don't nut, it's off to boarding school for you."

"A real Dom would know better," the Alphas will lecture. "Submission is a gift that we take very seriously. It is something a Dom earns, not something to be taken for granted."

To which I say, "Relax, Dom Diddy Daddy. Loosen that tie and unclench the sphincter for a minute. Trust is nice, but if you find yourself watching Bravo on the big screen in the dungeon these days, you can bet that your going to be on the wrong end of the sub unattraction equation.

Anyway, I'm running out of steam this morning.  Can somone finish this blog for me? 

I watched a leaf fall past my balcony and thought,

'This moment is unique to me.  No one else in the entire world will have experienced this moment.  It is mine.'

It's five to nine now. I look out my balcony and think,

'Moments may be unique to  me, but in five more minutes I won't remember what the fuck I was thinking and never remember that I enjoyed something that no one else ever saw.

So there's that.