Cheating, feelings, and sleep deprivation.

Recently I suggested that I shouldn’t post much when sleep deprived. In the past 50 or so hours I’ve gotten about 9 hours of sleep.

Noah isn’t in a much better state. Getting so very sleep deprived let Noah finally get to the point where he could blow up at me about stuff he probably should have blown up at me about months ago.

Feelings are ok. You are allowed to be mad at me. I cheated. And then, not only did I cheat I was a callous fucking asshole who has said over and over, “I’m not sorry.”

You are allowed to be angry about that. You don’t have to soothe me. You don’t have to tell me it’s ok. You are allowed to just be angry.

I think that Noah has put himself into a position over the years where he doesn’t feel he is allowed to be mad at me and that’s not good. I am an asshole. I hurt him. He has every right in the world to get angry with me and express that anger.

But I shouldn’t write much more about it now. Sleep deprivation guidelines and all.

So I’m still alive. I’m going to have a few crying days because yeah that happens sometimes. It’s ok. We need to fight about this. I was awful. Him glossing it over because he doesn’t want me to get upset is not going to work.

Relationships are complicated and take work. I’m ok with that. I’m in this. I want to stay in this. I want to do this work.

Your faves are problematic; I am problematic.

I have totally joked about inflicting violence. I can never ever do it again.

Yeah. That’s how that works. Ok. Can I talk in my blog about wanting to commit violence? Gosh that’s going to be complicated–isn’t it?

Before I think about that I need to think about what I’m going to say tonight. Not babble. More like an outline. What is related to what.

There are a lot of different kinds of catharsis. For me in this 2 hour block I want to talk about:

  • emotional
  • physical
  • spiritual

The thing about traumatized people is there are layers of things they need to process. For me:

  • How to get rid of the physical strain of carrying around those experiences in your body.
  • How to not feel guilty/ashamed/deserving of what happened to you.
  • How to deal with the anger/frustration/sadness/disappointment that no one helped you.
  • How to come to peace with your place in the universe as a recipient of Seriously Bad Shit.
  • How to gain the skills necessary to stop putting yourself into positions where you’ll be retraumatized.
  • How to gain the necessary emotional maturity to become a real grown up person.
  • Figuring out what you want to be instead of what not-to-be.

This show is about sex. I’m not going to get into all the stuff I’ve done though I’ll drop in that it involves 31 years and counting of therapy. I do the work to get my life in order. But bodies are complex places. What am I going to do with my sex life as a highly traumatized person? Pretty much whatever the fuck I want. This is my body. I get to own it now.

I like extreme bdsm. I’m there so someone can get fucked up. Me or them. I’m good either way.

What kinds of bdsm am I interested in:

  • sadomasochism. I like pain. Giving and receiving with intensity. I have gone through different phases throughout my life in the leather community. I have certainly done more gentle scenes when I wanted to earn a specific persons approval or be nice to them for a reason. But gentle scenes have never had much draw for me. Why in the world would I want to tie you up and tickle you? I could turn you pretty colors and make you cry. Or you can do it to me. That’s kind of at the top of my preference list.
  • D/s &/or M/s. I am highly motivated by playing with power differentials during life. I have used power differentiated relationships to spur myself through a lot of personal growth. I might have been too depressed and anxious to graduate from college. My Owner said that’s not happening do your homework and go to class. Things are…interesting on that front now. I am not really interested in sex if there isn’t a hint of a push/pull vibe. Who I want to play with depends on my mood. I have a lot of moods. So I play with a lot of people.
  • bondage. Once upon a time I used to teach classes on bondage and suspension. I’ve done so at multiple conferences. I was assisting in those classes at large national conventions starting when I was 19. I am embarrassingly out of practice but I think it’ll come back. I just need to practice.
  • domestic discipline. I list this separately from D/s because it is such a weird specific fetish for me. I’m seriously into being expected to keep the house neat. It’s a thing. It gives me a sense the my work during the day isn’t stupid and wasted. I’m not just doing things that don’t need to be done. I’m doing the specific work I’m supposed to do because it has been spelled out.

Roles:

  • bottom- this is what I’ve done with the majority of my play partners.  I’m bossy and specific about how to play with me. This is important because if the point of the scene is for us both to be pleased… I have to tell you how to please me and I’m super fucking picky.
  • submissive-this is where I’ve done most of my best scenes. I really enjoy playing with people who want to take things from me I don’t necessarily want to give. Which is super complicated and leads to getting into all kinds of retraumatizing situations let me tell you.
  • slave/property- this was only a two year stint of my life but it was incredibly formative. It lead to a hunger for that kind of feeling again that I’ve been terrified of ever since. How in the world could I ever trust someone like that again? I was The One. Until I wasn’t. Then I was back to being one more Slut of the Day. This is super complicated in my marriage because we have talked about wanting to move in that direction and Holy Trigger Batman.
  • service top- I would say that 98% of my topping has fallen into this category. I like helping people through cathartic experiences. Let’s go, motherfucker. But I’m like a pushy dominant service top? I play with people who want to be pushed hard and I do that because I want to be what they want to experience. It’s a virtuous cycle.
  • dominant- I uhh I’m still starting this journey. There’s one person. I can’t explain what all this means to me yet. I’m still feeling it. But it’s fabulous. I have some incredibly intense impulses to hurt people and take their blood and be ridiculously demanding sexually and… yeah. It’s going well. I’ve known him for over 15 years and we are just getting to the point where I feel comfortable… really pushing for what I want. I’ve done extreme play with him for a long time because he asked me to. I guess some things are a slow boil. I wasn’t ready for him before.

The usefulness of well delineated boundaries:

  • relationships suit what you can really give and not be about invisible expectations
  • roles define expectations
  • I’m going to say expectations again so you know that this is a big deal for me. As a traumatized person, if my expectations don’t line up with reality I experience a lot of cognitive distortion followed by an inability to control my emotions and sometimes behavior. I need to understand what is going on and what is expected of me.
  • I like that the bdsm community is the place in the whole world where people are most required to state their boundaries out loud. And you can’t assume it is ever ok to touch someone. I like that.

Different bdsm relationships and intensities. How ongoing is a relationship to count as serious?

  • Owner/boyfriend/dominant/Daddy: the overall relationship lasted four years. The central two years were a 24/7 Owner/property relationship.
  • Many people were periodic/ongoing before my marriage. I could not begin to name them all in this space because I don’t have permission. I wouldn’t want to it would be kind of boring to listen to anyway. They were friends. Were they significant? What does that mean? They changed me. I carry pieces of their souls inside of me forever. They gave me pieces of themselves in exchange for pieces of me. I am made up of these experiences.
  • The one time scenes are sometimes more important than ongoing play relationships.
  • I like cross pollinating sex and/or play with my friendships. So the dividing lines between who is a friend or a play partner and what that means is… muddy.
  • The Puppy was my most spectacular failure to date as a D/s relationship and I’m thrilled about that. It was a 9 month thing after I left my Owner and… yeah. The worst bit about it was that he was kind of a selfish bully. There wasn’t serious abuse so I’m thrilled.
  • I’ve gotten through D/s relatively undamaged. It has been some of the healthiest emotional relationships of my life
  • My husband and I do very carefully negotiated power exchange. Mostly our D/s exchanges work best when we do role play so we have an elaborate arsenal of characters and personas. After 12 years of sex and almost 10 years of marriage it just takes a few words to let us communicate a really elaborate backstory and that feels magical. But we are still scared of exchanging that power in our real lives. I have a really strong need to not live that in front of my kids. I was not raised in a sexually appropriate environment. I need my kids to grow up without ever seeing me behave in a submissive fashion. In my household I’m a bad ass motherfucker and… we are not fucking with that dynamic. So it’s complicated.
  • Uhm… I’m getting out to play with other friends lately too. I’m finding that mostly I’m drawn to play with people where we have 10+ years of history. You have to have been my friend in order for me to want to put energy towards you right now. My life is super full. This is super hard to negotiate.

Dads/Daddys

  • Dude up in the PNW I’ve known since the beginning. Saw him many times a week for years. Started very sarcastically as “Yes Dad” at munches. Maintained contact through moving. Francesca. Play is intermittent and varying in intensity. Has included sex but doesn’t currently and probably never will again. If he ever asks me to demo bottom again I’m saying yes since my rules permit it again. That’s a-ok by me. He’s the best person with a single tail I’ve ever played with. But sex freaked me out. I just… no. We can’t. It is too real of a Dad relationship for me. It makes me feel really gross and bad. It isn’t the age difference. I fuck other really old people and it’s fine.
  • First Daddy/Owner. This was… really cathartic and healing. When we stopped doing M/s we transitioned pretty exclusively to Daddy/daughter play as he parented me towards being able to handle moving out on my own away from him. He didn’t want to marry me and have kids with me. I wanted and needed that out of life so we talked for just shy of a year about the fact that our relationship was ending. It was horribly painful and beautiful and kind. I will be grateful for giving me the safety and security and love he gave me for my entire life.
  • Daddy James: We had an intense three month relationship that involved a lot of trailing sex because I don’t like stopping having sex with my top 10. God he’s good in bed. He was a very particular sort of Daddy for me. He is good at doing the physical care taking of a full time father. He was the first adult man to ever really get up and make me breakfast and act like I should be cared for. Maybe in my whole life? It’s been women or no one. He gave me a lot of permission to like sex. Maybe a little too much permission. He really liked the hunting part of my personality and that became a problem. I don’t do well with being liked because I like to promiscuously pick up sex. I like that to be just… something I kinda do that’s ok. An amusing quirk of mine rather than something that I should be doing as performance art in front of them at all times whether I’m feeling interested or not. My libido is a roller coaster. I don’t do very well with people expecting me to be super consistent in my desires. He introduced me to drugs and Burning Man people and a lot of… really intense situations. My early group sex mostly involved him egging it on if not participating. That was complicated. I wanted it… and yet… being pushed towards it was weird. If I had seriously told him to knock it off he would have. But I kinda suck at that. I don’t say no to things. I leave if I don’t like the deal.
  • Daddy J has flipped the table on me recently and it went from being a long-term really mellow supportive friendship with a side of occasional caning to being a really intense thing with him fucking me and… oh! Awesome. Ok. So I don’t know what’s going on there but I’m enjoying the ride. He’s been in my life since I was with my Owner… so it’s another slow burn in intensity.
  • My husband is a fascinating case study on his own. I am someday going to write whole books dissecting this man because I’m utterly obsessed with him. But for this moment I’ll say that for the first many years of knowing him he was utterly adamant that he would not do Daddy/daughter play and that was a thing. It was sometimes hard for me because it’s a core kink. Much to my chagrin after I wrote a memoir about my incestuous childhood he completely changed his mind. I have mixed feelings about that. But the sex is so hot I choose not to decide to be upset.
  • Casual sex daddys. It happens. Sometimes dudes want it and I’m mellow. Ok daddy. But you sure as shit don’t get a capital letter.
  • Any list like this has to include my biological father. Since we had sex. For the record, we did not have penis in vagina or anus sex. We had penis in mouth sex and fingers in vagina and anus sex. But given that I was pre-puberty when this happened… you know what… it motherfucking counts as sex. Given that it was accompanied by years of being told that my holes were what I was good for and being specifically fingered in public and trained to not react or make sound… it fucking counts as sex and as highly traumatic sex. My sexual organs were violated against my consent. It has had serious repercussions on my whole life. I’ve had flashbacks, nightmares, physical scarring problems, behavioral problems, emotional problems, and general physical problems all my life because of my childhood. What problems came from what exactly? Well… I’ve been working on mapping that for decades and I’m not sure and I’m not sure I’ll ever really fully understand.

What does the daddy stuff mean to me at this point? Well it is really directly tied to my clit. I was indoctrinated to be interested in my father sexually from early childhood. I prosecuted my biological father and he killed himself after confessing to everything so… I feel weird about the prominence of incestuous play in my life. But you know what… I am who I am. It makes me get off. Orgasming causes my brain to be flooded with positive chemicals and at this point fuck you if you don’t like how I get them. I’ve spent enough years doing really bad things to try and deal with my depression and anxiety and ptsd. If calling someone daddy during sex is better than cutting myself, Hey there daddy. I’m pragmatic about my promiscuity and perversion.

cathartic scenes:

  • crucification (spiritual catharsis)
  • girl-friends & catharsis
  • pectoral lifting
  • skull stomping
  • breath play and that journey
  • Daddy/daughter stuff
  • Daddy’s drug dealer

Differences between public and private play.

  • There are different kinds of safety. When you are in public you have the safety of an audience. That means there are witnesses. In my opinion witnesses can be both a great thing or a terrible thing. It depends on whose friends they are. I feel safe playing heavily in places where there are people present who will head off anyone who objects and say, “That’s how Krissy plays.” Luckily my friends are good at helping enforce my reality bubble.
  • I won’t play that heavily in a crowd of complete strangers unless the person I am playing with is extremely well known and their reputation carries the scene. Somebody has to already be known as kinda scary or I’m careful what I do in public.
  • I’ve had a lot of scenes interrupted in dungeons to be told that I shouldn’t be so loud. There is this one epic story of a DM interrupting my scene to tell me to be quiet because I was interrupting the people who were socializing in the dungeon at a party at Castlebar (to show off that I’m an old pervert) and this story has been told in DM training up and down this coast. Don’t do that you dip shit DMs.
  • Private play allows for a kind of nuance you can’t have in public. You are less likely to lose things because you can’t hear over the music or the other people playing. It is possible to concentrate more. Some kinds of play are safer. Fluid exchange is questionable in public.
  • I like public suspensions because there are people around to help with a problem. That said, I’ve been hanged and you just don’t do that kind of thing in public. People will get really upset. So you have to consider the feelings of your audience.
  • I like having sex with complete strangers provided they can negotiate STD test stuff with me to my satisfaction. Public is just flat safer for that.

What do the different kinds of catharsis mean to me? Why are they different? I’ll be honest and say that whereas I can rationalize most play I do after the fact when I’m doing it or when I’m negotiating for it I don’t know exactly why I want it. I may react like an animal in a trap if you ask me why I want something. Blind panic. Or I might confidently say, “Oh I want x because blah blah blah blah (go on for 5 days)” it really depends on how much writing I’ve done on that specific piece of myself. Spiritual catharsis has come in stages. I haven’t mentioned the scenes I’ve done that were less brutal but more emotionally impactful because mostly they’ve happened in private during sex with people I really don’t have permission to talk about.

The problem with being a big slut is that you have to kind of track the boundaries of a lot of different people. The folks who did not want to be written about have mostly filtered themselves out of my life at this point. I miss them but I understand. Trusting me to keep my mouth shut is… questionable? I mean… I can. I keep a lot of secrets. But I talk around them in tortured ways and that probably is hard to hear for the folks I’m talking about. I don’t have permission to talk about most of my queer relationships. The het men I fuck seem to really not care what I say about them. This is a fascinating dynamic for me.

I play with people and have sex with people because I want them to give me permission to be certain aspects of myself I otherwise don’t know how to be while sitting alone in a room. There are parts of a personality that only exist as it relates to other people. I don’t actually ask for permission. It is a symbolic thing. I’m allowed to be this thing if you want me to be it in front of you/with you. I’m supposed to not do this in front of you/not be this in front of you if it bothers you.

Physical catharsis is a real thing. There are layers of letting go of pain and trauma in your body.

Non-bdsm stuff I might want to bring up.

  • grief rituals

All of this written where the kids can’t see the screen but they can blab to me while doing chores. Sometimes my brain hurts.

Fuck. I need to stop typing. I can’t write for the lawyer today. Owwwwwwwwwwww.

That’s so sweet

A friend who watched me play on Saturday wrote to remind me that intense play can have a serious emotional drop afterwards and he is worried about me.

Awwwwwwwww!

I thought he was an evil sociopath! Gosh he’s come a long way. I feel so loved.

I dropped after the first scene with Cupid because I misunderstood the tone of an email (completely something I do). I wonder if it’s kinda smart to wait two or three days to process more because then I don’t have that initial OH MY GOD WHAT IS YOUR TONE reaction. Hm. Useful?

Over time I’m a lot more comfortable that Cupid is there doing what he wants to do. I was really anxious the first time that he was humoring me to be nice because in the scene… there’s at least some play that is motivated that way. Lots of folks can’t get the play they truly want unless they do it with a friend. I kinda suspected he wan’t as motivated by selfish reasons?

Ok at this point I think he’s doing it because he likes doing that sort of thing. No one would hit me till I was freaking out like that unless they wanted to.

Ok I can cope with that.

This is part of the fuzzy complication with Noah. Noah has never had a partner with whom such play was possible. So I’ve never seen him do it. So I don’t believe he wants it for himself and I can’t bear the thought that I am dragging people into brutality like that.

If you do not have such brutality already in your soul it is an evil gesture to try and implant it.

I worry a lot about what I want to talk people into doing.

The feedback I got from watchers was “You looked profoundly unhappy.” Happiness is such a funny emotion. Was I happy when I was screaming, “Fuck fuck fuck” while he was punching my thigh on top of already existing bruises and cramps?

Happy … isn’t the word?

I wanted to be there. I’m still glad I was there. When I heal… I will ask for more. But I need to heal first.

Why is this so good for me? You would have to live in my body to understand. I deal with such intense variation in emotion on a nearly daily basis that this kind of play is… kinda like going from running with the kids to running by myself.

Oh yeah. I swing back and forth from an intensity of 3-7 over and over and over again and now I get to hit 10. AWESOME.

It is walking with a toddler then going for a run as a grown up.

I spend so much time with incredibly intense emotions all within a limited range that when I get to have super intense catharsis outside my normal range it is like there is less pressure inside me.

I have that intense screaming and freaking out inside me. It wants to come out. If I don’t ever let it out in play it creeps into my life and creates problems.

I don’t really want to scream like that because I’m hit. I want to scream like that because of emotional problems and the hitting gives me an acceptable smoke screen. The hitting justifies what I’d like to do anyway and if I did it without being hit I’d be called crazy. So yeah, please hit me that hard again.

It means I’m not crazy.

In the past, before kids, when I played like that I did drop more. But after play like that I would be alone. I would be alone to think about how that kind of contact was most of what anyone wanted with me. I didn’t feel like I was worth very much.

Now when the play is done and my snuggles with my top are over I go back to Noah and Noah takes care of me like I am a precious, fragile piece of art. I come home to children who want to say, “OH MY GOD YOU WERE AWAY FOR FOUR WHOLE HOURS OF MY AWAKE TIME I NEED TO POUNCE YOU AND COVER YOU IN SNUGGLES.”

My life is different.

I feel so much gratitude for where I am.

Drop is a very different experience when you are loved compared to when you don’t feel very loved.

Which isn’t exactly fair. I was always loved. I’ve had Jenny longer than I’ve been in the scene. I was always loved. But not in the ways I needed to be loved. That waited till Noah and the kids. That seems ok?

I feel like I have a place where I am important. I am needed. I need to deal with my shit because there is work to be done.

I like my life so very much.

I’m not going to spend my whole life in dungeons. I’m going to show up when I need to get something from the experience. I’m there as a supplement to what I already have. It is different feeling from when I lived the bdsm experience.

I’m getting emails on that kink site from folks I haven’t seen in forever because they want to talk about the good old days. “Wasn’t it awesome when there was one play space in the bay area and it was missing a wall and everyone who was a pervert got together like four times a year?”

Well… it did have some charm but I’m glad things aren’t like that now.

It was nice feeling like I knew everyone like me within 100 miles. That was cool. It’s not like that now. Bdsm is… uhhh… more popular and shiny now. It isn’t dirty gross weird people. I miss that. I’m a dirty gross weird person! I used to fit in more! This is harder. I’m not going to fit in as well with all the newly minted acceptable fetish crowd. They are inspired by things that are commonly kinky. Usually they think extreme kinks are “weird” just like vanillas.

Hey I thought it was awesome watching the guy put the jar of bees on his dick. I like watching scenes where people pound large nails through cocks. I like intense shit.

I miss the kinds of events where people will show up with a kiddie wading pool, jello boxes, and a rubber chicken. I’m not even fucking kidding. That was one of the meanest scenes ever.

The folks I knew from back in the day are complaining about how commercial everything is now. I have mixed feelings about that. Part of the reason things feel more commercial is because so many kinky people are trying to make a living off of being kinky. Once upon a time the scene only supported a very small number of craftspeople and pornographers and they mostly lived in squalor because we didn’t take care of our own that well. Now a lot more people want to be living better off of the scene and that takes money.

I have mixed feelings. We have forced the marginal people out entirely. I don’t know how most of those people are doing these days.

I feel really embarrassed that I haven’t tracked all of them to make sure they are ok. I haven’t. I wouldn’t know how to look them up now. They were my community and I let them down because I was small, selfish, and only looking to my own life.

I know who my friends are who are craftspeople and pornographers and I know how they are doing. But there were more people who did that. Not that many 16 years ago. I could have tracked those folks. Not everyone who has appeared in 16 years. But I could have been loyal to the old days.

I wasn’t.

It is kind of funny how many people in their 50’s want to discuss the “good old days” with me. I grin and think, “I am now at the age where you consider your “golden age” to have been. I refuse to think that the golden era of my life is fucking over. I’m 34 fucking years old. My good times are not god damn over.

I listen to Nikki Minaj a lot.

The last year has involved feeling more alive, feeling more potential, feeling like my life is going somewhere than I think the rest of my life combined.

My golden era isn’t over. It is just picking up speed.

I have felt for a while that I’ve already gotten to participate in more than one Golden Era. To such an extent that on my egotistical as fuck days I wonder if I bring it with me.

Theatre in college was amazing. I’m still friends with most of those folks. No one else has had a period that good since then. I have.

The bdsm community in 2000-2004 was a pretty magic time for a lot of people I’ve met. It wasn’t just me. That was a really well connected, awesome time. I know a lot of friends who think of that general time period as being intense and special for… not sure why. It just was.

Teaching was amazing for me. Teaching was wonderful because unlike for other people teaching represented the first time in my life when I got to have permission to be the one who set reality and invited people into my space to learn. That was magic. I had never had a home. I had never had a place. But I had a classroom and a whole bucket of intense shit I think you need to know to be ok. Let’s get to business.

The first year of my oldest child’s life was the happiest, most blissful year I’ve known. I sat on the couch or on a chair and nursed. I didn’t clean much, cook much, or go anywhere.

I just sat encased in love.

I am almost 10 years into the only permanent home and real family I’ve ever had.

What is my Golden Era? When is it?

I have been so blessed in my friends.

Putting myself out there has been a mixed blessing in life. It is why I have a laundry list of traumas that horrify people. It is also why I’ve had so many Golden Eras. I try to bond. I try to connect. I want to be attached. I have so much love. Can I share it with you?

Some dude pinged me on okcupid and said he treats dating (or attempting to date?) as a creative writing exercise.

I totally know what you mean.

I’m bouncing off so many people because I want to figure out what to say, how to say, what I want, and how to deal with what other people want and I do an awful lot of the figuring in writing. I don’t have room for more serious relationships though. God I’m drowning.

Another random dude wrote to complain that it isn’t fair that I don’t have lots of time available to pay attention to him because I sound really interesting and he’s not willing to have connections with people unless they devote a lot of time to him. Sometimes I want to say, “Can you hear yourself?” It isn’t fair that my life is too full for the kind of connection you want to have. Uhm.

Wha?

For the record my profile is set to only looking for friends and it states that I’m not polyamorous, just slutty. And I still have random people telling me that it isn’t fair that I’m not giving them what they want.

Humans.

Noah asked me why I’m not reading more books lately. I can’t. My brain is full. I’m thinking of too many things.

Today I need to: clean the house, spend time with a neighbor, homeschool the kids (whatever that means), put together a timeline of issues with the remodel for my lawyer, and write a loose outline for the radio show tonight.

I don’t have room in my brain to synthesize reading a story. It’s too hard. I can’t even reread Tamora Pierce right now because it is too hard.

I understand more about why the GATE evaluator told my mom if I was any less brilliant I wouldn’t learn at all given the chaotic environment I grew up in.

To change topics again, one of my favorite things in the world is happening right now. Eldest Child has a double chin. That means she’s about to shoot up. It’ll happen in the next week. I will get to watch her transform. I love that double chin. It is a hint that I need to start staring super intensely or I will miss some cool transformation. I am very sad that Youngest Child does not have such a tell. The growth happens more secretively and I’m constantly like, “OH MY GOD WHEN DID YOU CHANGE?!”

It’s like a pop up alert on my phone. Or my period app. I love that double chin. I love that her experience of life has been that double chins are awesome and wonderful and to be greeted with joy.

My weight goes up and down like a yo yo and it’s not cause I’m trying. When I have a double chin Eldest Child points it out with glee and I grin and say, “Yup. These days I’m living well.”

My kids have managed to grow up in a world where fat is greeted with “Mmmmmmm fat.” Do you know what fat bodies mean? Glorious snuggles. Fat bodies mean love.

I’m up to almost 8 years of this. Between 40% & 60% of 6-12 year olds are worried about their weight.

When I gain weight do you know what I do? I stand in front of the mirror naked with my children in the room and I say, “Damn I look good.”

Even when I think I’m lying I say it with conviction and a big smile because I owe them this performance.

I… have a lot of trouble accepting my body when it is lighter. I strongly dislike the fact that I am usually more appealing to sexual partners when I’m smaller. It offends me to the core of my being.

Fuck you for wanting me to be less.

Years ago one of their cartoons had an anorexic horse. It was an interesting thing to explain because my kids were totally baffledWhy in the hell was the horse refusing to eat?!

I told the kids that it is very complicated and the explanation I’m going to give would be grossly insulting to some people who suffer from this disease because it is complicated and I’m just not capable of giving them the full answer. I said that creatures have lots of reasons they will stop eating. Sometimes because they get confused about how they look and they think they must look a certain way and they must force their body to do that even if they die. Sometimes people punish themselves because they don’t feel worthy. Sometimes people confuse what makes them valuable and they think they need to worry about their appearance so much they make themselves unable to do the things that would actually make them valuable.

If a creature feels they can’t eat enough to sustain their life it is because some part of them is sick and needs help. It doesn’t mean they are bad. It means they are suffering and need help.

I feel very grateful that I have been able to shield my children from television and magazines and movies for the most part. It’s not that we don’t watch anything. It is that we watch fairly curated stuff. We live in a bubble. A bubble where bodies are wonderful and they need to be embraced for however they happen to appear. A bubble where there are positives and negatives to every way of being and there is no such thing as a “better way” only the way that works for you.

A bubble where it takes all kinds.

No wonder my kids spend so much time saying that even if they move out someday they think they will always want to come back and spend a lot of time in Wonderland.

I’m actually living what I believe in. Because I believe in magic. I believe if you want something hard enough and you work hard enough and you study hard enough… you can change things. Not everything. Not everything for everyone. But you can change things. Ripples matter.

Good grief. Prince just died. Think about what one person can do.

Ack. My first appointment is at 8am. My last appointment ends at midnight. I woke up at 4:30am after 8 hours of sleep.

No time to tag. ttfn

*That’s* the trigger.

I figured it out. After very very little sleep.

I don’t believe this person is serious about breaking Noah’s legs. I think he wants to say it so that he can seem intimidating but he wouldn’t do it.

Saying that kind of thing to/about my family scares me to absolute pieces.

And I get to be scared like that, not because he would genuinely do something like that and he is giving a warning… but because he wants to posture.

That’s a problem.

That’s treating my emotions like a ball to be whacked around. He didn’t say it to me, about me, or in front of me. So why am I such a self centered piece of shit?

Because Noah is my whole fucking world and I do not know what I would do if someone were hurting him.

I don’t think I’d get as upset if someone threatened to break my legs. You don’t fuck with my Noah.

I think I would feel… differently upset if I thought there was actual threat present. I don’t. I’m not trying to imply that this person is dangerous or a serious problem. I truly don’t believe him to be.

But there are jokes I’m not ok with.

Noah and I spent a while yesterday talking about indebtedness. What we owe each other. Whether we are truly earning from each other the kind of care we will need as decrepit old people. We are both highly transactional people. Are we building up enough of a debt? What does that even mean?

Noah is afraid he isn’t doing enough to earn my eternal gratitude so I stay no matter what. I think he underestimates what feeding me means.

But he’s scared. Like a human being. He’s scared I’ll leave if things get hard. That’s a reasonable fear. I’m a selfish motherfucker.

But let’s wait and see, mmm? I’ve stayed 10 years so far.

I moved into this house just before I turned 25. It will take a very long time before I have built up enough feeling of stored safety to feel like I can run away from what I have here. If ever. I don’t know.

Ok… compartmentalize this shit.

You know what? I’m still pissed he said that. It’s not cool. I have a real problem with that.

But I had a really really really really really good night.

When you have to tell someone to stop making you orgasm because you just can’t bear how much your legs are cramping from muscle spasms?

That’s an incredible night.

No you don’t need a lot of toys. You need your hands. Your delicious, evil hands. Punch me. Punch me over and over and over and over all over.

Even when I really don’t like it there. Even when I’m going to pay for that for a while.

Why?

Why is this so explosively hot?

I don’t know. It just is. I’m trying to think about the scene and get back to my buzz so I can go give Noah a proper thank-you fucking. I was really fucking angry when we got home and I didn’t want to be touched.

But I’m… chilling out.

Even though my trophies are lovely I have never and will never get bruises that seriously impress me. The most impressive fucking bruises ever were from a water skiing oops when I was 18 and I’d never heard of bdsm. I was there with Pam. She doesn’t even remember my impressive bruises. I’m so sad. My inner thighs. My entire inner thighs were black for weeks. I screamed so loud they heard me on shore. We were on Clear Lake. It’s not a small lake and we were way the hell out.

So yeah. Comparisons are funny.

Perspective is funny.

Life is funny.

The fact that being punched in my ass can make me get off is funny.

And wonderful.

Why the fuck shouldn’t I do it?

I really can’t come up with a good reason. I’m fucking thrilled we already have more dates on the calendar.

One of them is a private date. I might be able to talk him into fucking me again. After several beatings in a row in public where he won’t…

I’m going to be so annoying.

He might just have to fuck me first, then beat me. Because god damn. Ok, I don’t think he would agree to me just being a snot and ordering him about. But it is funny to think about.

I’ve lived with Noah a long time. Sex is ready and available any time the kids are occupied and I’m interested. Any. Time.

God I love you Noah.

I have almost finished talking myself into coming in and fucking you.

I’m… not sorry exactly that I got so mad. I really have a problem with bully posturing. But I’m annoyed that it has interrupted my sleep cycle and our sex life this much. I’m trying to deal with it fast.

Remember when this used to take a week or more?

I’ve come a long way.

Compartmentalize.

I have completely and totally no idea what to think about this. I mean… I don’t know what part of my life this anger will alter. I don’t know what boundaries will change.

But I know I have no desire in any way shape or form to penalize the partner of this person for these words.

She didn’t fucking say it.

So yeah. Complicated. Big feelings.

*beat head on wall*

You know what… one of my play partners crossed a boundary recently. I said “Don’t slap my face” and the first thing he did was slap my face. I burst into tears and freaked out. He realized that he fucked up and apologized.

I don’t think he should be threatened with bodily harm because he fucked up.

Sigh.

What do I want here? I want to stop thinking about this because there is completely and totally literally nothing I can do about it.

And that kinda sucks.

I feel sad and kinda helpless.

I suspect that if I’m in a room with this person I will need to turn on my heel and walk away. Or just very consciously not go to rooms where I think he might be. Which… is really sad.

Threatening to break someone’s legs… even in jest is a fucking boundary for me.

I get to have that. It’s not being an over sensitive baby. That’s a god damn reasonable boundary. Noah gets to figure out his own boundaries.

I won’t be around someone who will do that. They aren’t safe. I don’t care how safe they have been to or with other people. Nope.

It doesn’t matter if he would ever do it. He said it.

That’s too much for me.

That hurts me. That makes me feel like shit. That makes me feel scared as fuck. That makes me feel like I might need to fucking attack someone to get them the fuck off my husband.

I don’t like this feeling one little bit.

It’s ok that this freaks me out.

It’s ok that I have this as a limit. I don’t have to be ok with “jokes” that are violent. I don’t have to be ok with casual threats.

Even if they aren’t to me.

I know this has been the all-slutty-all-the-time channel lately but…

Noah is my life.

Threatening Noah’s body is threatening my life.

I don’t have to accept that. I don’t have to excuse or justify that boundary. That’s allowed to make me angry.

But mostly I’m so so so so sad.

I want to feel relaxed and tight and sore and hot from what I did tonight. No, he can’t fist me when my legs are cramping so badly I’m screaming non-stop through every orgasm.

Let’s try that again without the leg punching first.

I left that party with my entire body feeling on fire. I planned to fuck Noah silly and pass out.

But Noah and I needed to talk about the party. Because yeah. We do.

AHHHHHHHH. We got home almost two hours ago. I’m still consciously working on not gritting my teeth. My dentist is very adamant that I’m not allowed to crack more teeth as anger management. We have stern conversations every six months.

He doesn’t really want me to have to pay for a new implant. Breaking that would suck. I mean, the teeth I’ve broken have been bad enough… oh god. I need to be careful with the implant.

How do people live in bodies without destroying themselves? My fingers are saying that I’m a big selfish cunt right now. This whole organism that wants to type. Fuck you brain. Go the fuck to sleep. Calm the fuck down. Your fingers are not able to do this forever you know.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I’ll get over it. I will. It’s 4:12. How long will it take. Shit.

I’M NOT OVER IT YET. But it’s kinda like that TMBG song where the guy is waiting for his date and staring at a clock and it never moves. It is still 4:12. No wonder I’m not over it yet.

Would it be weird if I went to the missed connections section of the party and said I’d be interested in dictating to that dude who types 150 words/minute in exchange for play. I could totally do that.

Ha.

Uhm, I’m not explaining that.

And I’m not serious. I really don’t have time. But it was a funny few seconds of thinking.

Ahem. I’m trying to cheer myself up. And be interested in sex. Because REASONS.

I’ll feel better afterwards. Now it is 4:15. I still ain’t over it.

But I’m taking breaks to stretch my shoulders. I was dumb to try and stick it out with my hands over my head.

Note to self: don’t be macho before play has started. Fuck that shit.

Ow my shoulders.

I’m not entirely sure how I felt about the rib punching. It was… hot.. super fucking painful… and deeply… God I don’t know the word for this. Everything I’m thinking of is wrong. It’s not about “primal” (I kinda cringe when I hear that word) it’s not about submission exactly because we don’t have a dynamic exactly…

I don’t know.

I don’t know what that feeling is. It scares me and I’m ok with that. Noah and I talk a whole bunch about the scenes I do and he talks about the ways in which he reads my faces and says “When x happened you seemed unhappy. Why?”

God I love the way that man looks at me.

Cupid wasn’t giving me a light sensual beating for “strong sensation”. He was… deliberately hurting me. In ways that weren’t fun and I was cringing away from and crying.

That makes my cunt throb.

That’s what I don’t know how to do with Noah. I don’t know how to let him hurt me quite like that. I always stop him. We always retreat from those really dark places.

Well, not always. Heh. But Noah doesn’t beat me till I’m cringing and crying unless we are deep in role play and it is ok to treat that character like that.

Cupid thinks it is ok to treat me like that.

It’s… different…

Which… it is ok for him to do. Because we negotiated extensively in advance like grown ups. We talked about limits and interests and desires and now we are figuring out how those things really mesh.

God damn I think it’s awesome.

And kissing him gets better every time I see him. I’m not… used to that? I don’t know. Usually people kiss about how they kiss and I like it how much I like it pretty much from day one. I liked it on day one and I like it more now. It being the kissing, of course. But I dropped a modifier.

It isn’t that I think I’m falling more in love with him. That’s not it. I… I don’t know?

I feel like I don’t know much of anything any more.

It’s 4:30. I can go to bed now.

So we got home right around 2:20. Noah probably told me this around 1:45ish? Closer to 2 maybe cause I think we were at the 92 when he said it.

That’s… pretty good for me. I’ll take it.

I feel lucky. I feel like my life is just about magical.

Incandescently angry.

Ok, I left the party buzzing. I felt great. I felt higher than a kite. I had a fantastic scene with Cupid.

Then on the drive home Noah told me about a conversation he had with the partner of someone he wants to play with. I wasn’t standing there and I’m paraphrasing what Noah told me but the phrase “break your legs” came up with the idea that “you better not hurt my woman”.

I am so angry I feel like the top of my head is going to come off. That’s not ok. That is toxic masculinity bullshit and I feel absolutely consumed with contempt for the person who said this.

I am… so angry I really shouldn’t say any more. Because I could write about 8,000 words about how fucking pissed I am and that might cause problems with his partner. Which would make this problem all my fault, right?

I am so fucking pissed.

To be clear, the scene with Cupid was top notch. We are getting better at playing with each other every time we do. This is working for me. This was the third time we’ve played. It’s getting better and better.

But I’m still pissed. I’m so pissed off that my buzz got wrecked. God fucking damnit.

It’s not ok to threaten people like that. Are we children?

Catharsis

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

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

ca·thar·sis
kəˈTHärsəs/
noun
  1. 1.
    the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.
    synonyms: emotional release, relief, release, venting; More

  2. 2.
    MEDICINErare
    purgation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I didn’t know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is just how life goes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like my life.

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

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

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

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

I think I collapsed to the floor.

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

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

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

Childbirth comes to mind.

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

He did a fabulous job. Good man.

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

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

Holy fucking shit.

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

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

Catharsis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People are weird.

Masochism

Maybe I can’t sleep. I woke Noah up for sex (like a nice girl) and that wasn’t enough to make me sleep again.

Masochism has been a very central pillar of my life. The degree to which I submit my will to someone else’s will is much more variable but if you include emotional masochism… I’m always a masochist.

I’m going to sound a little snotty. I don’t mean it that way. I’m trying to figure something out.

Last night it was fascinating being in a triangle between Noah, Deity, and Cupid. I say this because Noah is somewhere between Cupid and Deity in interactions at this point. Realistically I shouldn’t judge Deity’s sadism because I get the impression I’ve just seen the first hints of teeth and I haven’t seen the real thing yet.

But I went from sitting in front of two mean boys who wanted to hurt me to being hit by a sadist.

In the past few months since I’ve shown up at the bar I’ve gotten to relearn I fucking hate pinching. I am having a hard time not slamming my skull into peoples noses as they pinch the shit out of me. It makes me angry. I want to fight back. I’m trying really hard to go along with it because clearly other people are enjoying it.

But it makes me feel hateful and angry.

Sometimes some grabs with a full hand aren’t as irritating… but the small grabs… fuck I feel mean.

It feels like I’m dealing with mean boys again.

This is a weird thing. Because I sure do like mean men. But I feel differently about mean boys.

This is hilarious because I am the youngest of all of these people. So what. It’s an energy thing not a statement about age.

I don’t know why the pinching makes me so mad. I try not to get angry. I try really hard to be pliant. I feel fucking angry.

My brothers pinched me a lot. My father pinched me a lot. You are displeasing. Shut up. No one wants to acknowledge you. Take this reminder that you are not worth actually acknowledging and shut up.

In order to take it I have to go to a fairly dissociated place with regards to feeling it in my body; I have to choose to shut down my fight response and accept.

Noah was asking me questions on the way home. He could read my facial expression during the pinching and backed off. He switched to punching. Yeah, that’s how you can butter my biscuit.

I feel like there is this line between masochism and submission and I’m stumbling on it right now. What is the difference between pain you submit to because it is pleasurable to your partner and pain you submit to because you like it?

I like being punched. I can be punched for hours and I’ll just make appreciative noises. The bruises can be massive. I’ll purr like a cat in between shrieks and bellows and orgasms. I like punching.

Pinching… it takes me right out of headspace. It makes me feel like I need to prepare for a fight. It is intensely triggering to my fight reflex. Which makes submitting to it an interesting challenge.

What bothers me is it never feels like people are challenging me on this incredibly sensitive boundary because they want to have power over me and they want to cause me to work through it. I usually feel like people are pinching me absentmindedly. Like a fiddle toy.

I hate that.

Am I submitting or bottoming? Am I doing this for you or for me?

I don’t know.

It’s like hair pulling. It’s one of those things that people just do because they have this schema around rough sex that it is a mandatory part of things. But if you yank on my hair absentmindedly I will not be able to focus my eyes tomorrow from pain.

My body is in a fair bit of pain under normal operating conditions. I showed up at the bar tonight feeling like I was at a 6. Then I got pinched. Then beaten.

This god damn tile work is killing me. My neck hurts. My back hurts. My arms hurts. And now my ass hurts too. Glorious.

The ass is the only part that’s fun.

How will I be hiding my bruises? Well… I need to develop some habits around dressing in private. Ahem.

I feel like the bruises are coming in harder and faster this time than they did the first time I played with Cupid. Well done.

Noah asked me how I managed to process the hits because they came quick and hard and he’s used to me getting overloaded and shutting everything down.

Instead Cupid hit me hard and quickly and when I collapsed to the floor to squat because it was too much he put his arm around my chest, leaned me back against him, and kept hitting.

My cunt is still throbbing because that was so hot.

I was overloaded but I didn’t feel panicked and I’m not sure why it happened that way. I panicked more and made him back off more at our first date at his house.

I suspect that a hair of it was that I was completely surrounded by people and if it really got out of hand I had help available. It was safer to let it go farther.

I don’t think that was a conscious decision but I think it factors in somewhere.

Where is the line between masochism and submission for me? I felt like part of the reason I could go deeper was because Cupid was managing energy well. He was being aware and barely callous in just the right ways. I’m pretty sure he could tell I was making some noise but not exactly what came from me or what came from the other folks making noise. So he thoughtfully leaned in and let me know that he couldn’t hear very well and he’d be looking for other signals that I couldn’t handle it.

That let him push right through most of my masochist-not-submissive early warning signs. All the “I’m not sure I like this” noise he could just ignore. That’s what I mean by callous. But he did it by being very responsive to physical signals and just… interpreting them how he felt like. He kept going because he read enough yes in my body.

I am so incredibly not upset. I will be spending time in my bunk today thinking about this again. Probably a few times.

It isn’t that I want to distract you with kissing and get you to not beat me. It is that when you intersperse kissing with hurting me I want to give you so much more. Because you are hurting me. Because you are connecting with me.

I was listening to an old episode of the radio show that I’m going on. A woman was expressing her strong preference for not kissing early on.

That was funny to hear just now. I want kissing. I want kissing and kissing and kissing and kissing. Don’t fucking hurt me if you aren’t going to kiss me too. If you aren’t going to kiss it better I don’t fucking like you very much.

But I do sometimes play with people who don’t kiss at all. But that’s because they don’t kiss anyone and they know how to connect anyway. We also don’t go as deep or as hard with the play.

WHY IS THIS SO CONFUSING?!

(I’m totally ok with that person not wanting kissing during first time sex. Whatever floats your boat. It was interesting to feel how I feel about that.)

If you want access to my body it starts with my mouth and my mind. Otherwise go fuck yourself.

I don’t think it is that pinching is a hard limit. I think it is that pinching is a serious kind of play for me. It’s a really big mind fuck and I don’t think people understand that in general. Pinching requires some serious fucking submission from me and playing with that idly is… complicated. Like, I need to talk to Daddy about this. He’s a pinchy motherfucker. (Which I’m not mad about.)

But I need to talk to him about this. Words. I need to find words. I want you to understand that when it comes to my body pinching it is a much more serious activity than hitting me with a mallet.

I like the mallet more.

The mallet doesn’t make me feel like I want to take my finger nails and rake them across your face.

I feel mean when I’m pinched. I don’t feel sexy. I don’t feel wanted. I feel angry. Trying to tamp that down and not explode all the fuck over people is an act of conscious, serious will.

We all come from very particular life experiences. I’ve dealt with a lot of mean boys.

I’m trying to figure out what I feel and why. I don’t figure this stuff out very well unless I’m bouncing off of people. I don’t think about why pinching is such a thing because I’ve just managed to mostly scare Noah out of doing it.

Then I go hunting like a fool.

Fucking pinchy bastards are everywhere.

How do I feel about pinching? I feel like I hate you. Just for a few seconds. Just as long as you are pinching me. I get over it. But I have to decide to. That kind of thing takes a toll. How many times I have to decide to stop hating you in a night adds up.

It is a very different kind of submission than accepting that when I resist someone beating me they will just slam me back down on the table so they can keep hitting me. God that was hot. Ok, I’ll relax and just accept that this is happening now.

Ok.

I’m sitting on a very comfy lawn chair. My ass hurts.

Thank you. I’m grinning.

Why are some kinds of pain enjoyable even when I don’t enjoy it. I promise you that I didn’t enjoy most of what Cupid did to me last night. It fucking hurt. But I really liked that he wanted to do that to me. I liked that he wanted to take that enjoyment from me even when it was really hard for me.

Why doesn’t pinching work that way?

It can. With the right set up and frame and acknowledgement that this is a huge trigger you are pushing on.

That’s not how it usually happens though.

Why don’t you pinchy motherfuckers push on a trigger point or something. Much less effort on your part, more pain on my part, less feeling like I want to rip your fucking face off.

Everybody wins.

Somehow I think that an incredibly small fraction of the pinchy motherfuckers will listen to me. That’s both why I date them and why I hate them.

Fuck.

IT WOULD BE OK IF YOU ACTED LIKE THIS WAS A BIG THING. IT WOULDN’T MAKE YOU LESS DOMLY OR SOME SHIT.

It isn’t that I have a problem with mean people hurting me in this way if it is done right. It is that it is hard to do right and most people won’t bother.

That’s a thing.

Being picky sucks.

And then when we got home Noah put his cock in me and it hurt like I was being fucked with a knife. I stopped the sex. No. Just… no. Actually, I’ve been fucked with a knife and it didn’t hurt that bad. The person wasn’t trying to puncture my uterus.

I have no idea what was going on. I woke him up for sex this morning and it wasn’t orgasmic for me, but it didn’t hurt. I think I was so afraid of it hurting that I wasn’t really going to relax that time. But I wanted sex anyway.

I wanted sex specifically so I could talk to Noah about how much I like him and want him and need him. He is being ridiculously supportive as I’m being kind of a pain in the ass. It makes him happy when I demonstrate my gratitude with frantic, clutching sex where I talk the whole time about why he is important to me.

Noah is kinda my world. I need him to feel that or I’m doing something wrong. His primary way to feel loved is to have sex. Not just have sex, I need you sex.

But who doesn’t want that?

I’m just glad he is amused that I enjoy kissing other people so much. I’m glad he is interested in watching other people hit me because he learns more about me as a creature to be studied. I’m so fucking glad that Noah spends this much time wanting to look at me.

He’s been doing a lot more writing for me lately. I like that. I like that so much. He’s been writing scene reports so he can learn from them. He’s been writing about his insecurities and that’s letting us talk about what we want in the future from an unequal power dynamic. The day he proposed to me he told me he wanted me to be his wife and his slave. I said I could do that but it would take a very long time to get to the slave part.

It… was mixed last time and I don’t want to have to walk away from our relationship because that part crashes and burns.

So Noah appreciates chances to watch me interact with other people because he sees how I react to things without his own internal filtering going on. We can talk about why I leaned in to some things and why I grimaced at other times.

Noah wants to look at me. Noah wants me to do whatever the fuck I want just so he can watch.

I love you Noah. Even if you are a mean boy sometimes.

Thank you thank you thank you everyone. Thank you for giving me these opportunities to learn more about myself. I am grateful.

My arms. My arms. Oh my arms. Must stop.

Catharsis, healing, wanting

On Monday I’m going to go be on a radio program. Radio Valencia. Sex Cels is the program. 10pm-12pm. I was asked to talk about catharsis and healing.

Last night I went to the wet munch with Noah for his first trip. Deity went for his first time. I played with Cupid. Other folks were around and I waved and kissed a few more people.

My butt hurts.

I’m thinking about what it means to process pain. What does it mean to take something for someone? What do I like? What am I doing for me?

When Cupid was beating me we had some banter around kissing. He said he felt kind of uncomfortable because if he kisses me he wants to fuck me and we are in a crowded bar and my husband was there.

That was funny.

I grabbed his head and kissed him. Whoops too hard and we slammed teeth and I hurt him. Snort. Well, no one is perfect. I did better on the other kisses. (I hope.)

I appreciate how willing everyone in my life is to share. No one is even slightly obnoxious about me reaching out a free hand to yet another person. I also appreciate how many silly jokes were dropped into my comments. That made me smile.

Yay.

My fancy tights from New York got ripped up. Good thing they are just clothes and they don’t matter. I was having fun grinding my ass on Cupid’s crotch. Friendly fire casualty. It happens.

I don’t have the hand spoons to type about my masochism right now. Which is a shame. I want to figure this out, but ow.

I handle different kinds of pain from different kinds of people with different degrees of acceptance or resistance. Why can Cupid hit me like that and I get upset with Noah? I don’t know yet.

But I’m going to think about it.

Want to be something different

I’m kind of a weird person. I both love being the center of attention and hate it with a fiery passion. Tonight many of my men will be in one room. I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude that my friend will be there and I can shove a bunch of attention in her direction. She’s already one of Noah’s play partners and… quite frankly… if I could play matchmaker with her and Deity it would be hilarious and wonderful to the end of time.

Age appropriate! Live super near each other! Single! Poly! Kinky! Wants kids!

I’m like a dating service. In another venue someone else I was talking to referenced this other couple and I managed to refrain from saying, “Yeah I set them up.”

I like hooking people up. I can’t have everyone. I want everyone to be loved and happy. Let’s find you someone better than me.

Strangely, this is the part of poly I do the best. I want the people I like to be happy with other people because good golly I don’t have enough time free to center you. You should be centered. You are wonderful.

If it means you move on from me and are no longer a partner, I’ll just barely sigh a few times. Mostly I’m going to be so happy for you.

It’s ok. I won’t pine away. Ain’t happened yet and unlikely to start now. I’d love to visit though.

I feel like I am doing both a good job and a bad job of keeping in touch lately with people. I’m renewing a bunch of old connections and I’m letting some younger ones sit and wait. Maybe they will be worth coming back to? I don’t know.

Right now I’m feeling pretty fantastically good about staring into the eyes of someone who has loved me for fifteen years. I like that. I feel appreciated.

I don’t know what I want. But I’m enjoying feeling adored. I’m enjoying how often folks are telling me that I’m a good girl.

Deity suggested that he should coordinate with Noah on some protocol to keep me behaving “good”. Noah suggested that standing right in front of the two of them is not when I’ll be a problem.

I guess that decade of marriage was educational.

On one hand it feels intensely transgressively hot that Deity is speculating about coordinating with Noah about controlling me. On the other hand, in the community I grew up in you don’t do that much shared protocol and it is just kinda taboo. Thus it feeling transgressive.

Relationships are very rarely more complicated than a dyad. Doesn’t matter how poly you are. Rules are between two people unless they are general for a house. It’s rare to see two dominants coordinating to control a submissive. (I know of Leather Families where that happens but I’ve never been even a little bit close with them.) Co-topping happens… but that’s different.

I think I’m getting closer to the time when I’ll be able to write Part 2. I feel like hanging out with that crowd again, and seeing how different it is is helping me understand the educational environment I had on offer from 18-23.

I think there is a big difference between being sorry I did something and being sorry something happened to me.

Michael in Texas. My first non-family rapist. I’m not sorry I befriended him. I’m not sorry I spent time with him. I’m sorry he raped me. I’m sorry I hurt Anna by screaming at her that she is killing herself and she needs to get a new dream. That was wrong. That was so fucking wrong.

Even if I was right.

There are things you shouldn’t do.

I’ve been poking around on Fetlife reading older pieces of writing from folks I respect. I was… directly called on something I did even though the person didn’t know they were talking to me. I haven’t done it a lot but I’ve done it and I needed to be called on that behavior. I was wrong and I need to stop.

I repeated a joke that involved racial elements. I shouldn’t have. I was wrong. It was bigoted, inappropriate, appropriative, and I violated the trust placed in me by the person who shared the joke with me.

Oh fuck. I didn’t do it many times. I didn’t make it casual. I picked who heard the joke carefully. I was 100% wrong anyway. I shouldn’t have repeated it once.

I am sad that I continue to need these smacks in the face to remind me of boundaries. I am so grateful that the universe puts these things out there where I can run into it of my own free will because I need it.

I am white. That needs to color my choices about my behavior. I need to choose limits so that I am not one more white bitch. I can’t ever do anything and just be off that hook forever. I need to choose and choose and choose again. I need to act right in every situation or… I’m just one more white bitch.

Because that is how reality works. I don’t get to do the right thing once or twice and call it good. Nope.

I… fucked up. Shit. Well… let this be a lesson to me. See, we never stop fucking up.

Hopefully I won’t ever make this same mistake again.

I need to grow past this yucky part of my personality.

I’m not good at jokes. I don’t have great timing. I don’t remember them very well. I only remember a handful well enough to tell. Unfortunately some of the race based ones stick in my memory a little too well.

That’s not a good enough excuse. It doesn’t matter that I will have to deal with a little more social awkwardness for not having a joke to exchange. I can go back to my dead pan, “I’ve yet to hear jokes that aren’t degrading so I’m opting out.”

Except our favorite: Why can’t a bicycle stand up by itself?

Because it is two tired.

I can learn to be ok with that being the one joke I get in this lifetime.

I’m really sorry. That doesn’t mean anything but it is true. I need to do better on this one.

I’m not always good at looking before I step. So I hit toes. Even in areas where I should god damn know better without having to be specifically told.

Fuck.

Unthinking rude bitch.

I’m not looking for forgiveness or exoneration. I’m too old to put this kind of burden down. If I stop carrying the guilt for my wrong actions I will err again. I need to be done with this mistake.

If a joke is not yours don’t tell it.

I think I understand “appropriate” just a hair more. (As in stealing culture–not as in being correct.)

I think the difference between guilt and shame is: guilt is knowing I fucked up and trying to learn from it and not repeat that mistake and shame is hiding at home because I’m afraid my friend will be mad at me.

I don’t need shame here. I’m not going to hide from this fuck up. I did it. I was a fucking asshole. I’m sorry. I’m going to keep walking though. This is not an end-your-life-mistake.

It’s just a fuck up.

How many fuck ups should be forgiven?

No one ever ever ever ever gets to define that for you. You decide how many fuck ups you want to forgive.

It is an inalienable right–how much forgiveness we have on offer. No one can tell me I have to forgive my family. I don’t. No one can tell me I have to forgive my rapists. I don’t.

I don’t have to forgive people who tell rape jokes in front of me.

My friend doesn’t need to be my friend if they feel I am a racist bigot.

All’s fair in love and war.

We get to pick our friends.

I don’t know how in the hell I lost this lesson. I feel like this is one I should have deeply ingrained long before now. How in the hell did I get casual about this boundary? It is so disrespectful. I wasn’t thinking.

I’ve been told to my face that I don’t have the right to tell redneck jokes. I’m not really a redneck.

I… think I should give up on jokes. I’m not going to be that kind of funny this lifetime. Instead I’ll just hit you in the brick with a juxtaposition that makes you cringe. I’m not funny. I’m something different.

You have to work with what you’ve got.

I want to be less of a fucking asshole.

I can be funny in pointing out how ridiculous life is. But I suck at jokes. It’s a thing.

Ok. I should stop typing. Ow. Today a friend comes over with her small to help with tile de-backing. I should work on the tree then. Ow.

Stop typing.

A “lazy” day.

How come my lazy days involve many hours of work? And driving for 50 miles. And running a bunch of errands. Lazy always means “I didn’t do this one job (tiling) today.”

Laundry. Babysitting in the morning. Running errands. Driving 50 miles. Dishes.

I… think I’m going to manage to sleep well tonight. *flop* Good. I’m going to a munch tomorrow. Noah is going for the first time. Deity is going for the first time. Cupid is a regular. I have lots of friends there.

Oh this should be fun. I will… go to bed reasonably tonight. Like, whoa. Like take night pills part way through Krav class early because I need sleep.

Krav makes it hard to sleep. I kinda hate the night class portion of it.

Yeah. “Lazy” day.

No wonder my elbows hurt.

I am also on day 30 of my cycle. I’m at the “joints exploding with burning pain” portion of the month.

Hey bleeding. Start now. Then maybe you’ll finish before my date next Wednesday. That’d be awesome-sauce.

(Haven’t started yet.)

Stop typing.

Suicidality x-post

This is a big hot button for me. I’ve been suicidal for most of my life. Given that the rapes started before I was 2 and I was cutting by 7 that isn’t surprising.

I have been somewhere “around” the bdsm community for going on 16 years. I go away and do other things sometimes but then I come back and my friends are still here.

Sometimes I see people I respect post things about how suicidal people don’t belong in play spaces. That’s why I used to not tell people about my problems very much. Because if I told people how dysregulated and distressed I was… I would be told to leave.

I would be told that I am too broken to deserve connection.

So mostly I lied for a long time. I didn’t tell people how much I hated myself. I didn’t tell people that often going to a dungeon or picking up random sex was what I did as harm reduction instead of killing myself.

It really isn’t the worst coping method.

I say all this from the strange security of not feeling suicidal. I’m 34. My life has finally progressed to the point where I feel more joy than pain.

I got here partially because a whole lot of weird people took me in even though I was a flailing, obnoxious, difficult child. Thank you.

Thank you for tolerating me through my mental illness, boundary issues, and attempts to grow up. I’m at a point where I now believe it is possible that I will finish growing up someday even though I’m not there yet.

I feel hope.

I no longer ask for beatings because I want to get through tonight. I ask for beatings because the week or two afterwards are so awesome. I want the chemical journey not the momentary distraction.

That feels significant.

Post therapy–I still think I’m funny.

I managed to do a good job of convincing my shrink that Deity is not the scary looming problem she is convinced he is and I managed to raise her threat level with regards to my submissive. That seemed… prudent?

“You don’t seem to understand that one of these men is professing undying love that will last decades. The other wants to fuck me. Which one are you freaking out about?”

She reconsidered after that.

I knew it would just take finding the right words.

I’m not saying I’m flipped out about my submissive. I just… sometimes feel bothered when my shrink just can’t perceive something accurately.

After a while of me rattling off “This person this that person this other thing that person over there was on quite a roll and…”

She stopped me and said, “How is it possible you know all of these people? How do you keep them straight in your head?”

I said, “Oh, you just don’t know how to compartmentalize them properly” (which is something she’s been telling me to work on–compartmentalization) and she laughed.

I felt funny yesterday. That’s not an every day experience. Normally… I’m kinda the opposite of funny. I suck the funny out of a room. But yesterday I made her laugh several times.

We are both excited that I’ve managed to get myself up off the floor before I start med trials. *cry*

Med trials is a phrase that makes me queasy. This has never gone well. I mean, I did get to Lorazepam and pot. Those have helped. But ugh. You know how I’ve been complaining about sleep dep for years? Nothing has ever been worse than Paxil. Awake for 14 days straight. I thought I would die. I… don’t want to get into the complications. They suck.

I’m nervous but I need to do this. My lungs need a break.

Harm reduction. It’s a thing.

I’ve been having mixed feelings (shiny change of topic) about cruise stuff for a long time. That’s gotten easier. K’s family deciding to come was apparently huge. I didn’t know I was hoping for that? I thought they were a no? I’m so excited I get to help my Bonus Kids go on this trip. This is going to be a blast.

The not my immediate family wedding party just about doubled from 5 to 9. I feel actually outnumbered by guests.

She told me, “I would spend the rest of my life regretting not going with you. We’re going.”

That made my heart soar.

I feel consumed with gratitude. You would regret not being with me. Oh. Thank you.

Ok no more time for typing.

Tired but satisfied.

I think I finished the facing wall for the shower. Now I can concentrate on the tree for a bit. My hands huuuuuuuuuuurt. I made a waterfall!

Today I need to call my lawyer and talk about what to do with the remodeling company. Ugh. Decision time. I have at least two months of work left once they start. We may not have a spring party. Ugh.

What I wouldn’t give for an hour a day of massage.

Noah has a spiffy date coming up! Woo! I hope they both have fun. Yay.

I feel a little bad being like, “Oh you want to go on a date with her? Well of course you do she is hotter than the sun” because then I feel like I’m objectifying her. And that’s not nice. But she is that hot. Is it objectifying to notice? I mean, we also like her because of her personality. She is in our lives because of her personality. But we notice the hotness too. Is that wrong?

Hot hot hot hot hot.

Today I have a therapy phone call, tile, and Bonus Kids. I can do it.

Maybe… a nap. I stayed up too late finishing a wall. But it’s done and I can work on tree.

This tree is going to be the center piece of the bathroom. It’s huge and fucking intense. It is tall and wide and all the colors and shiny and pretty and…

Oh I love this tree. And there will be a golden vine growing up the side. And a sapling nearby and water in the background and…

When did I become this?

Thank you Noah.

Body update

I haven’t been subjecting you poor people to hearing about my bowels lately. Blacksheep asked so I’ll catch you up.

I seem to have mostly cleared out the parasites. According to the woo doctor. She tests this with frequency shit so uhhh yeah.

She says she’s impressed with how well my gall bladder cleared out. She says usually folks spend six months or more doing that. I said, “Yeah I ain’t doing that.” She looked at the screen and said, “Yeah there would be no reason to.”

At this point there are still things she wants to work on and there is still a bunch of pills to go. But not in a big rush and not like before. I’m not doing tons. I can take it slow.

Ok, to be graphic about the poop now… it’s… shockingly normal. 

I poop two or three times a day. I think I still tend towards looseness the day or three around the start of my period. They are solid enough that I feel weird about it. My abdomen is frequently kind of uncomfortable because it isn’t sure how it feels about all this solid stuff hanging around so long.

I would say my energy has doubled or tripled compared to where it was when I came back from the road trip. I’m sleeping better (thank you Lorazepam) and I’m getting more energy from folks in my life (thanks folks).

My body is feeling… all over the map in terms of pain. Typing, tile, intermittent exercise with intermittent stretching is…

I need to get more systematized around this.

I know.

Ugh finish remodel. Ugh.

But if you spend your whole life waiting to get started on the most important supportive pieces?

Shit.

I hope Noah gets this job. That would make a whole bunch of things easier and more fun. *cross fingers*

If I could stop reaching out to my friends on the internet my body would improve. Whatevs.

You pay the piper for the life you choose. That’s just how it goes.

Love is infinite. Time is limited like a motherfucker.

Noah and I spent time working on the calendar this weekend.

I’m not seeing Cupid till June. May is just busy. That’s a bummer and yet… probably good on the balance? I’ll see him again. It may not be as frequent as I want, but I’m a big girl and I can be patient for an excellent good time like I’ll have when I see him again.

I have a Daddy date in May since he asked for one. That makes my heart jump. Usually he waits till I call him. We go months… almost a year between seeing one another sometimes. It goes on my timetable. This time he asked. Oh. I like that. Thank you.

I have a dinner date scheduled with my submissive for May. And I’ll see him at a party in May. That’s… probably a sustainable sort of rate. That’s not excessive.

Noah and I have carefully put dates on the calendar. Multiple in each week. Because I need to pay attention to him and act like he is my forever. If you have a fucktastically good deal… don’t fuck it up. Just… don’t. Be smart. Be long-term self-interested.

The professor told me with great emphasis that I do not know what he wants and he’s right. I don’t. But I haven’t gotten strong “Come here” signals either so… I love you. I’m so glad I get to be your friend. I don’t have enough chase in me for play. Once upon a time ambiguous was appealing, not right now. So I have no idea how much interest was there, but I know I haven’t been told “Come here”. So. I will redirect away from trying to change this relationship. Boundaries are awesome.

I have… told other tentative flirtations that I need to not add a new partner for a while. I feel that is responsible right now.

I think we are going to change the quota. It’s not working as is. We are talking about what it will morph into. It has worked for many years and I’m not sorry. I’m ready for something different.

I need to change the associations I have in my sex life.

Then we come to Deity.

(Isn’t it funny how I capitalize when using it as a name and I lowercase after an article like they are common deities or professors?)

Ahem.

Instead of talking about him in the third person I asked him how many dates he wanted. He said three. I felt my little heart go pitter patter. That’s… a lot but sane. Oh thank you. That’s like… awesome boundaries. Thank you. Three was probably the sweet spot for a lot but not inappropriate? It’s a lot. I know.

I feel weird and guilty and I’m going to feel weird for years over my submissive not getting the lion’s share of my extra time. There are a few reasons that is going to be hard and complicated. There are a number of factors involved here… not all of them I’ve put on the internet. So I’m just talking to myself.

It is easier to not wreck my life over wanting to see my submissive. He’ll be there when my kids grow up. If I don’t hurry up and see him all the time now… I’ll still have lots of bandwidth to be seeing him in many years. I… don’t feel that kind of assurance about Deity.

I trust my submissive to still be there almost as much as I trust Noah. Which… is kind of strange to realize. When I look around at the people in my life, the people I love… I spend a lot of time wondering who will still love me in 10, 20, 30, 40 years.

My submissive has already been around for fifteen years. He’s going to stick around. I can see the shape of his life. I can see the fault lines of his need. He won’t leave unless I’m truly awful and I have no intentions of abusing the gift I have been given. I appreciate the gift I’m being given.

Will I keep Jenny? What about Sarah? What about Kira? Pam? Daddy? What about any of the people I met through the home school community? What about the people I know in that community? What about Blacksheep? What about DSH?

I thought I would know Brittney forever. Alex. Chris. Marcie. Anna.

I love you still. Some of you can’t come back and some of you can. For some of you I screwed up beyond forgiveness. Some of you crossed my boundaries so badly I will not be inviting you back. Life is like that.

I have room in my schedule in April and May for playdates with children during the day. My date-time is filled, much of it with Noah and the kids. I need to keep my eye on the prize. This family is my lifelong goal. I need to preserve that. I will have tons more time to fuck around and play in ten or fifteen years even if things are as enmeshed and lovey-dovey as possible with Noah and my kids. If I hold the ship together and keep my priorities in line.

Ok, I can be smart.

I have gotten through almost ten years of this marriage so far. Noah is being incredibly flexible and supportive about how I can get through the next ten years. I should be gracious as I accept his leniency.

How many people would be happy about me picking up three regular-ish lovers overnight from nothing? The list is short. Be grateful. Be appreciative.

And holy tomato is he fucking me six ways from Sunday. I don’t feel disapproved of. I feel like Noah is thrilled to be married to me. Which is so nice because I’m thrilled to be married to him.

A lot of what I love about our marriage is how real it is. We don’t pretend for each other. We talk about the various ways we need to be selfish assholes. We are supportive of one another doing what we need to do to be properly selfish. That’s how we will make it through the long-run. If we both encourage one another to figure out what we need.

You can’t do that if you are always too worried about rocking the boat. You can only stretch your wings properly if you know you have a safe place to land.

I have a thing for mixing metaphors lately.

Trite! Predictable! Other people have had every thought already! Yeah… I know. That’s the thing about writers. We take words other people have used and we recycle them. Such is life.

I am feeling… ridiculously happy right now. I’m going to have a two week window where I gasp don’t have a date outside my house and… that’s… feeling really ok. I’m not bored. I’m not dissatisfied. I’m good. My bruises are healed but I don’t feel the need to replace them now. I’m ok.

Ok, I did ask Noah to cane me yesterday. But it was only a little switching. Not hard enough to cause me to make noise. So it barely counts. It was perfect though.

I like the way Noah’s face lights up when I ask him to do things. Any thing. Even after almost twelve years of knowing each other. “Me? You want me to do that with you?! YES! THAT SOUNDS GREAT!” He’s not subtle.

I love my subtle-as-a-brick-through-your-window-husband. We match.

Noah performs delight-with-me. Because I like it. Because it makes me happy and helps me feel secure. He does consciously work at it. He has changed in his displays over time and at this point he has just about exactly nailed my preferences. I feel so lucky to be loved this way. He looks at me. He has stared at me so long. He knows what I want in such intricate detail. He thinks about me.

I want to do the same for him. He is harder to know. He doesn’t volunteer as much. I have to probe harder. I have to snoop into the rare times he writes down his private thoughts so I can say, “Oooooh. Now I get it.” I’m not sorry, not even a little. I want to know Noah. I want to know him inside and out, the good and the bad.

Noah can be a right son of a bitch. But he’s mine. I can live with that. I am a complete fucking asshole pretty regularly and he loves me to distraction.

Noah has supported me through the most incredible journey. Everything I’ve wanted to do in the last ten years the answer has been, “Ok how will we make that work?” The answer has never been “No.”

That’s…

That’s fucking amazing.

Ok I’m sure there have been no’s in there. But they’ve been small and easy to forget.

I think he’s told me no for sex maybe six times in our marriage? I’m probably up to turning him down ten or so specific times? (Pregnancy sucked. Sometimes I turned sex down. Healing from birth sucked. I refused sex for months.)

We don’t like saying no to sex requests.

Money is complicated. I feel he maybe should tell me no on money more often but he doesn’t. As a result our debt is currently intense (it was planned for in advance… then I bought way more tile than I expected) but I’ll pay it off fast.

I feel guilty not increasing his wealth. If I’m going to be an expensive pet I need to earn my keep. I need to make it worthwhile to keep me around. If I’m going to be expensive I need to pay that back with wise investing of money every single month. I am trying.

When I feel guilty I go look at the fact that the investment stuff I started a few years after having kids is up to over $65,000. I am investing money and I’m doing ok.

That is my attempt to make sure my kids and Noah are taken care of long-term. It’s not close to the bulk of our investments. Those predate me or are 401ks from Noah’s jobs. Those are much larger.

But I am helping.

I am not just a drain. I am not just stealing to be selfish.

When I think about what I want to get done over the next few years financially… I kinda sweat. I have such big goals.

Guess what, motherfucker? I’m going to reach them. I’m going to find a way.

I mean, some of these goals are going to change. The kids are saying a year of travel is just too hard and they don’t want it. (We’ll keep talking. They don’t understand I mean four long-term locations with a couple of shorter week or two trips in between long stays. Not the constant travel of the road trip. We are talking. 2021 is still far away.)

So much to do and so little time.

Life is so big. There is so much I wish I could take in and there just isn’t enough time. 

It occurs to me sometimes that I could probably take more in if I could forget more of my past. And then I listen to songs like this on repeat. For days.

I don’t regret my life. I don’t want to forget it. Not the good parts and not the bad parts. I wouldn’t be who I am without all of those pieces.

What does broken mean?

I’m feeling… freaktastically good. Not manic good, even though it is the middle of the night and I’m not asleep. That’s… that fact that I have 6 nights of sleeping pills left and 11 nights to get through.

I am strangely excited about this psychiatrist visit. I’m ready to try something else. My attitude is in the right place.

Let’s see if we can slash my medical expenses. Ha. Pot is expensive.

Can we make it easier to travel?

We’ll see.

I am starting out from a place of feeling pretty happy, not sad and desperate. That increases the likelihood of success. I need help staying up, not helping getting off the floor. That’s a different experience.

I dragged myself off the floor. With the help of my friends and time and gradual building of connections. And money. So much money.

As I’m thinking about nonmonogamy and how I feel about it. I reflect on the messages I got as a child. Stuff like this. I’m not a homewrecker. I want you to have a happy home. Ahem. And I’m supposed to want to beat women off of Noah? Uhm. How about if I just leave the room till you are done and then we can have snacks afterwards? Is that ok?

I don’t hate you. I don’t think you are going to wreck my home.

Do you know what would wreck my home? Me acting like a giant bitch.

Let’s be real here, motherfucker.

Noah can handle a lot of insecure and scared and sad. He can’t handle me being mean to him. He got enough of that with his mom and I think that’s just fucking fine. I don’t need to be mean to him.

I’m supposed to be really sad at the idea of sleeping with other people. But then I think “It’s been just over three days since my date with Deity and my throat is no longer actively sore… yeah I’ll handle the three dates in eleven days in May.”

But but… my sleeping around is more like this. I already have my degree. I’m doing this to have a connection with new ways of thinking outside my family. But I don’t want to go.

Reba was the first three concerts I went to. She has been formative on my life. I’m not sure she means to encourage me to be a big slut but I’m not sure she’d care either. She divorced her first husband after ten years. Her second husband left her after twenty-six years. I hope she’d tell me to do what I need to do to be happy.

Also: I bought pants from her clothing label. Please be ok with me, Reba. I’m loyal. I’ve loved you all my life. You give me reasons to think about what I want.

Would I do it the same as I did back then? No. I do it different now.

“I don’t need any more accidents in my life.”

You know… something like 1/2 of all children are “accidents”. That’s a fucking loaded line in that song.

I’ve had four planned pregnancies. Two that didn’t complete. It’s interesting thinking about what it means to be adapting to accidents and choices in life. What kind of grace do you need to handle different life events?

“I learned more from the stains than I learned from the paper.”

Life is like that.

The way you handle the things that just come up decide who you are.

Noah says I’m a lot nicer than I used to be. I’m not getting upset at small bumps the way I used to. I’ll say, “Oh that sucks. Ok.”

You made me a lot safer. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel insecure. I don’t feel like I’m going to be homeless or hungry any minute. I have a lot more nice to offer. I feel nice. I feel happy.

Reba reminds me that I need to make things work or I won’t like the results.

This came after I was an adult, but it was a remake of a song that came out when I was younger. I think of my family. I used to think of my mom. Now I think of my kids. But I didn’t learn to play it safe. I learned to jump into any pit of vipers because it would be better than where I was starting. Now I am trying to consciously learn how to stay safe because I have learned what it feels like. My heart has been put back together piece by piece. I need to stay safe because my kids don’t need to experience me being traumatized. It feels like a lot of pressure. I can’t come home and flip out. I just can’t.

This song is why I left so many other partners. That’s why Noah talks to me. Noah does show me what I mean to him. I need a lot of display of emotion. Noah has learned quite a bit of that over the years. I’m frankly impressed. He has listened to feedback and changed. I’m a feral cat. I stay if I have a good deal. I have such a good deal.

I gotta say Reba, I think I do better than you at some of these topics.  We had a good chat with the kids this weekend about pornography. What it is, why it exists, why it isn’t sex and how to think about it as a thing that is neither good or bad as itself.

I mean… it was simplistic and not graduate school discussion. Solo sex is awesome sex. It isn’t training for sex with a partner it is to be enjoyed for it’s own sake. Porn is often part of that for many people. At this point in time… you can’t act like folks don’t use porn. You need to teach them how to do it in a way that is respectful.

And I won’t have trouble with kids who are partying. “Baby I can forgive you for anything. I love you. Thank you for trusting me enough to call.” I will never do what my sister did and hang up on a teenager who calls saying “I’m at a party with drugs and I’m scared.”

That’ll be easy.

Eldest Child is in a cute phase. When we ask her if she did something she says, “Yes. That’s true. I do not want to tell a lie. I did that.”

I will earn her trust by reacting well hundreds of times to little shit. Then when big stuff happens… I will have a full trust bucket.

I love this job.

I like this one. I may be nostalgic about all the people who didn’t want me the way I wanted them. But I fucking love where I am. (Ok the dancing in that video is just more proof that white people can’t dance. Whoa.) Puppy told me that he wanted to break up with me because I would spend my whole life bitter and angry and vengeful.

Guess he should ask for his money back on his Magic 8 Ball.

On the shallow front, it occurs to me that a fun bathing suit would be really awesome on the cruise. Some folks are campaigning for a two piece but I like this one and this one. Opinions? It isn’t that I dislike my midriff. It’s that I don’t see any options that make me go “Yeah that’s me.”

I think waiting until 12:30am on Monday to start typing is like my subconscious’ way of saying “I sorta did what I tried to do.”

Can I go back to sleep yet?

I spend so much time feeling so shitty. I’m feeling… really good.

had help this weekend on the mosaic. It was a regular work party. It felt so good. I had so much fun. Thank you friends. And I should sleep cause I’m picking one of them up again later today for more help. (She needs to be out of her house for fumigation reasons. Yay me!)  And another friend is helping later this week. This project may actually get done this month. Ha.

This is good and bad. If I finish… before they are getting close to tiling in the bathroom… I’m totally going to paint the kitchen ceiling. I have mixed feelings about that right now. It is bugging me so much that it looks bad. And I can’t keep remodeling shit this year. So it is get it done before the end of the bathroom or don’t do it.

I’m trying to have some boundaries.

So yeah. “Can have playdates” means people can come over while I remodel my house. Cause I’m fun like that. Hi. Uhhh… at least it is artistic?

Yeah. That just makes it slower.

Although… no… I won’t make that dig. Ahem.

The canopy of the autumn tree is gold and green and red and orange and purple. Blue shines through for sky to help shape the branches. It’s beautiful and I’m proud of it. I have posted some pictures on twitter.

Ok Reba. I’ll look at people. But I won’t stop at one. Oh. That’s not what you meant? Oh well.

Noah reminds me that I should go back to bed. He’s probably all responsible and such.

Promiscuity and permission

I had a thought. And even though I’m trying not to type much this weekend I want to write this down.

The difference between me doing what I’m going to do and feeling good about myself and me doing what i’m going to do and feeling bad about myself… is mostly about how I’m perceived.

I’ve been a big slut chasing sex since I was in preschool. Rampant promiscuity is part of my life.

This time… I’m coming home to a safe home. With a partner who grins at me and who wants to hear every filthy detail. He’s concerned about my safety and my rate of adding partners. He’s concerned about me stepping outside my carefully vetted pool because in the past that has been a mixed bag for me.

He’s not telling me to stop fucking my friends.

He’s not sure what he wants and that is a slow process we are talking about a lot together. He’s not entirely sure what he thinks will be sustainable in terms of my behavior but we are talking.

There is no shame.

I need to say that again because it is so important: There is no shame.

There are uncomfortable feelings. There is a tinge of sadness on both or parts. We wanted the fantasy of monogamy. We liked it. We wanted it to work.

It didn’t work well for us. We are going back to stuff that has worked well for us.

But we are doing it from a framework of a very happy and supportive marriage. We like each other. It is a little weird going back to dating from the point of view that I’m blissfully happy at home and I love my marriage… I just do better with a variety of sex partners in my life. I like bouncing off of people.

It really helps that since I started fucking around Noah is inspired and he’s been fucking me more and better than he has since the first year of marriage. We are getting close to our pre-kids sex life.

Which is fucking awesome.

We are getting back to the sex life we had when I was dating Spot and…. I can’t remember who else. It’s embarrassing how bad I am at remembering who I dated when. I can remember that I dated someone, but I need to really think about it to figure out which period of my life. (Actually… it may have been just Spot and Noah because I was teaching. I was real busy then.)

“Which slut period did you overlap?”

But I remember Spot. He’s one of the few who made it to 9 months. I liked Spot a lot. He was… a nice break from the assholes I had been dating. Ultimately he was too nice for me and that’s ok too. I’m one of those terrible people who likes assholes.

I need you to have brick wall boundaries because I am going to throw myself at them. I don’t want them to collapse. Usually only assholes can do that. Assholes know “I go out this far and this is where I stop. Get the fuck off my wall.”

But this is what I was thinking about this morning. Permission. Noah gives me permission to exist in a way no one else ever has. I’m not sure it would have occurred to anyone else. I’m not sure anyone else would look at me and think, “Oh there’s a person quaking with fear because no one has given her permission to act how she wants to act.”

Snicker.

But it’s true. I do. I do what I’m going to do anyway. The difference is whether I feel ashamed of myself afterwards for acting in a way I think I’m not supposed to act or whether I feel fine because I was told I am fine.

Noah does that.

Noah gives me that.

He tells me I am fine.

Keep trying

How am I doing? I’ve been asked by… six or seven people so far? Most of whom genuinely want to know.

It’s a good day. Given how fast I peel tile off of backing and how fast other people peel tile off of backing… I’m glad I did four hours of work today and I’m glad I only left the size of pile I left for my friends. If for some reason they finish (I doubt it) I can ask for help with taping. There’s work to do. I always have work for willing hands.

And now I have no excuse to avoid doing more layout at every spare minute. Sigh. I did about four hours of tile work today.

Lots of back and forth with lawyer and contractor. Festivities continue.

Medical appointment. I was very limited in what I want to pay for so I walked out with very little stuff. Ha. She says I’m doing surprisingly better. She hinted at but didn’t actually share stories from her hypersexual days. Ahhh. A friend.

“Why are you looking so happy?”

Well let me tell you about last night. And the night before. And the night before. And the night before. And the night before that.

Like, whoa.

It has been a good month.

Like, Noah and I have had sex more times than there have been days in this month. And we’ve missed days. It’s a good month.

I mean, my throat is extra sore and that’s all about Deity but I felt no need to be that specific with any of the folks who were asking me how I was. Even I have limits. Barely.

Sex is such a funny thing. What does it mean? What is it worth? Why do some people want some parts of sex and not others? What is sex?

I’ll tell you. In my considered personal experience sex can be an awful lot of things. It doesn’t always look how you think it looks.

I’m kinda boring. I really like a good long missionary fuck. I have friends who just aren’t interested in going there. I like it.

We all get to have preferences. I like lots of other things too, but it is important to understand yourself. It all comes back to wanting to watch someones eyes for me. Yes it is intimate. Yes it involves kissing.

Doesn’t that freak my spouse out?

I think people are wonderful and adorable and cute in how they express their boundaries.

Sport fucking is fine. WHY ARE YOU KISSING PEOPLE?!

I love the people in my life. Oh my goodness.

I kiss people for the same reason I want them to alternate telling me I’m a good girl with calling me a whore. I want them to be thinking about how weird I am and connecting with me.

Because I really kinda want to be both. It’s complicated. I’m not sure I know how to explain. I know that the whore thing will continue to be a problem because it is complicated reclaiming words. How can you deal with parts of your identity?

I’ve never been a for-pay sex worker. I’ve been called a whore a lot anyway. So what does that mean? It means people don’t pay attention to what words mean when they use them. It means that psychology doesn’t care what my IRS statements list as my job.

My cunt knows that for a lot of my adult life I’ve had explicit written or verbal agreements with my providers that I was to trade sex for housing/support/etc.

I’m not saying that marriage is the same as prostitution (another problematic word).

I’m saying people are complicated and my story is mine. If you are lucky enough to put your dick inside me… I probably want you to call me a whore.

I… honestly can’t say that I’ve ever had someone with a cunt try it. That would be novel.

Why do I care about what someone has below their waist when they are using words? I don’t? I’ve never had that kind of sex with someone who had a cunt. I have always been the aggressive party.

Which is so complicated.

I continue to have feelings about Michfest. I picked monogamy and I stuck to it through quite a bit of temptation. I saw some gorgeous folk there.

And I’m not chasing anyone new like that. I’m just… going where I’m already adored.

I continue to wonder if I made the right choice in not going all these years because of the trans inclusion issue. There were far more trans* folk there than you’d think. Of all stripes.

I…

If I could turn back time.

Ha. Oh well. Move forward from where you are.

Where am I?

It’s raining men.

Ok. Good thing I like them all. I can deal with this.

I’m going to slow down so I don’t scare Noah more. What is that going to mean though? I think it means not adding new people for a while. I need to practice my “no” for a few months. (I’m not saying forever.)

(This is mostly noting for Noah but uhh passive aggressive notice and all.) Daddy asked for a date in May. Err… Cupid expressed interest in a date and I’m thinking May. My bruises will heal by then.

I want to ask my submissive for a dinner date in May. So yeah. Err uhm. Let’s see how things go with the deity. Nothing booked in May yet. Four in April was uhhh yeah. Self control.

Cause oh man.

He suggested tying me up. Because he wanted to. I almost came out of my skin trying to act casual. “Yeah. Sure. That would be fun sometime.”

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

We need to figure something out. We got this far, Noah. I like you. You’re my best friend. Let’s put some dates for us on the calendar. You aren’t feeling like I’m being very inspiring. Heh. I can work on that. Ok.

Sobonfu told me I would never feel like I fit anywhere. She said I was going to have to go build it myself.

Ok. But I’m not a good sustainer. That’s going to be a problem.