Tag Archives: ageing

Shards and training

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It is funny to me how the ravenous cavern of emptiness inside of me feels different now. I notice that there has been a qualitative change in me in this AN time period. (After Noah, of course.) I’m at 15 months AN. It’s such a short time, really. Progress when measured in reverse is pretty shocking. We are doing ok. I am doing ok. No, I don’t feel “all better” but I can see where I am headed. I can see that I am doing what I need to be doing. More importantly, I can see that I really do need to chill on some pieces of impulsive joy even though I want to say yes to all of it.

I keep dating people who want to go to loud places with me. Why do I do this? Why am I picking loud musicians right now? Where are my Cheese damned priorities? I can’t hear. No, this is not a venue for deep conversation. So we will look at each for a few hours in an overwhelmingly loud space. Ok. This is happening. Also, I am too fucking old to make out in a pub.

It is really funny watching these layers of inhibition unfold within me. I can feel in my body how a younger me would have acted. No, I can’t do that anymore. No, I can’t ignore the whole audience and do whatever I want. No. The audience is desperately important. This is why I want to go to sex inclusive bdsm parties the most. That is literally the only environment where I don’t have to feel fucking paranoid about squelching shit I acted out for 25 years. I know how inappropriate I used to be. I have learned. It took a lot of researching child development for me to fully understand why I was so horrifying as a foster child. Right. That’s why they kicked me out. I was uhm, acting out in age inappropriate ways. I didn’t have much internal inhibition about sexual behaviour of any kind.

I’m 6 weeks away from having seen a whole healthy childhood. That’s been fucking wild. I have learned a lot of inhibition in service to being able to provide this to someone else.

My kids asked who I was going on a date with. I appreciated the wide eyes and big gasp before “Niiiiiiiiiiiiice.”

The show we attended involved a lot of the performers being there with their whole families in attendance. No, I was not going to make out. No matter how much that clearly would have been fine with Pretty Lady. She’s past caring. I am not. If I want to be useful as an ambassador for weird I am going to have to keep a lot of it behind closed doors.

When I was 21 I would have had my fingers up her skirt. When I was 23 I had been teaching long enough that I would have limited myself to making out with hands only around her waist. Now I could feel a shock in my body and I recoiled from her intense kissing. It felt out of place and wrong. That’s interesting and I should pay attention to that. It’s not that I’m opposed to the idea of kissing her, not even a little bit.

There are an interesting large number of power dynamic differences in this relationship. I am trying to pay attention to where I need to manage shit with a tight hand or it isn’t going to be sustainable to me. She has more ability to function on less sleep than I do. I suffer physically for days when I fuck up my sleep schedule. It’s why my pain levels are as bad as they are right now. My sleep keeps getting fucked up. I’m having too many late nights.

As much as I want to be all “Say yes!” I think I am hurting myself in stupid and predictable ways and it’s becoming a choice. I don’t love this form of self harm. It is really uhh crappy. Like, if I could cut and get a jolt of energy and power through my life with good cheer that would be a very small cost to me. Sleep deprivation makes every single aspect of being alive hard.

While the musicians were nice and all I need to say no next time. I need to be having one or two late nights in a whole month not one a week. This is getting really stupid. I am hurting myself and the amount of backlash in my body is exceeding coping methods. I’m struggling with exercise over the last few days. I’m having patches of numbness. Normal tasks are taking longer because I’m physically depleted and I’m dropping important bits of information out of my head.

I can’t keep impulsively adding late night joy. I am doing lots of planning around my body being able to handle specific events. I need to stick to those long term plans if I don’t want to get sick. I’m being stupid.

Saying no is hard. Saying yes is far harder on me.

My therapist asked me who is feeding me yesterday. They noted that I opt in to a lot of mentor type relationships, I offer help for parents who are overwhelmed, and I deliver food to neighbours who are going through tough times. All of this has pretty much resumed a close to normal pace on my calendar. I have a lot of relationships with people who need me to give. It was really nice that I could immediately rattle off a lot of people who are there for me near and far.

I want to get my sleep schedule back on track because it being fucked up means I miss the monthly check in call with my Elders. I don’t like doing that. It means that I don’t get to nurture that connection and it is important to me. It’s important to me that these people love me and believe in me and really want to continue being support to me throughout my life. They have been there through a lot of things.

I think I am messing up the balance and it’s not sustainable. New is good. Old is also very important. The thing about the long term friendships is the way we are witnesses to the arcs of our lives. Being impressed is not based on glamour it is based on experience and earned esteem. It’s like time with Bestie. The people who have known me the longest give me constant verbal affirmation about how far I have come. They saw the story happen. I don’t have to say anything or ask for anything from them. We talk about what has been happening for us each month and they stare at me with overwhelming intensity because I can see them playing the story arc out in their heads. They tell me I am doing so good and I can believe them because they saw how fucking hard I had to work to get to this moment.

I don’t have any scale for evaluating the evaluations of new people. When they give me compliments mostly I shrug. I don’t know how to hear them and understand them. I don’t accept any compliment without thinking really hard about it. I mean, in the moment I say, “Thank you” or if I’m feeling saucy, “I know.” The thing is, I know that each of these opinions is subjective and people vary in how they assign value.

I’m sorry to be so blunt about it, but compliments are part of positive behaviour modification. It’s a really common way that people train the folk around them. It’s usually utterly unconscious. I don’t think most people are trying really hard to be manipulative with a plan. I mean, I do but it’s because I’m super fucking autistic and I have learned that I need a detailed plan or I just don’t leave the fucking house. I have to know what is expected and what will be acceptable from me in a given environment. I no longer like places with fuzzy attitudes about behaviour. I have fucking learned the Social Contract like I want to stay out of jail. I will always err on the side of not drawing attention.

Wow. I really am scared in a way I’m not paying enough attention to. I think it is funny that three different woo fuckers have observed that I have a lot of blocked root chakra energy in the last two weeks. My life is hilarious. Yeah. Sure. Why not? Frankly, is that a worse thing to say than Generalised Anxiety Disorder? Enh? It’s funny how much more explanatory root chakra descriptions are than the DSM ones. It talks about where in my body I am experiencing different forms of stress around existing in the world. These things are often common among people. It’s kinda like how I can clock ECSA people by their bathroom habits. If you are raped a lot as a little kid you often have bathroom issues for the whole of your life. “Fun” fact.

I think that this kind of fucking around with my schedule because I want to please people is why I’m going to need to stick really hard with solo poly shit. I need to give people appointment slots. I can perform the kind of behaviour you want from me between these hours. During these other hours, should we be in the same space, I will be fucking sleeping. You can enjoy listening to live music without me. Oh fuck, fuck, fuck.

I’m torn because I want to support local artists. Also I feel like starting at 8pm is fucking insane and painful and cruel. Who the fuck are you people? How in the world are you fucking moving around and trying to be engaging at bedtime? What is wrong with you?

This is why I stopped doing theatre at 19. That was not a good career match for my body. I prefer jobs that start between 5 and 7am. I think this is partly because early afternoon is my preferred time for sex. Always has been. Noah and I literally built our life around making sure we spent as much of that time having sex as possible. Nights and mornings were more chancy because of vagaries of the day.

I’m going to have to be better about asserting my limits if I am going to date this woman. It’s on me. It’s fine that she asked. I should have said no. I made a bad choice. I’m not entirely sorry. It was nice to be asked. It was fun to dress up and catch at least 15 of the words she said all night. It was a high cost activity though and I am finding myself starting Saturday in spoon deficit. This was not smart. I am going to be limited in what I accomplish today. That’s not what I wanted for the day.

It’s my day to go make the big sweet breakfast for Saturday. I really don’t want to. That sounds vaguely like torture. It’s going to be the kind of day where I either get a burn or cut myself. Woo. I love days when I feel this bad and have no adult in the house to take over. Woo.

I miss Noah. Also, I see what I did to him by over-extending myself a lot more clearly. I see why he got increasingly picky about what I was allowed to do as our life went on. He had to pick up the pieces. I get it. Literally he was devoting his whole life to figuring out how to get me to rest more for the last 4 or so years. He was trying so hard to be a container the size and shape that would force me into healthier patterns. Of course that means there was behaviour other people interpret as abusive, duh. We were weirdos. We needed things other people don’t and we negotiated about them very directly.

Now I have to be an adult and carefully negotiate tiny pieces of interdependence over very long term periods. Itty bitty. Absolutely nothing is mandatory ever. Every step has to be explicitly agreed to. Every breech of decorum and assertion of an aberrant need must be explicit.

I am going to need to write a letter to talk to her. I need it to not sound like a rebuke because it isn’t. I am going to have to find a tone of explaining my needs that doesn’t sound like negative judgment about her. She is in an exciting period of her life. I get that she is going to be impulsive like a teenager. My whole life is dealing with what it means to live with impulsive teenagers. I feel really lucky that the main big impulsive things in my house are cooking, baking, writing, making or otherwise creating something.

Ack. I am summoned.

Invitation

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I feel like I have found my little livejournalesque bunch here and there are so many amazing ideas floating around in my brain. I find myself drawn deeply into the stories told by dominant women lately. A long time ago I found no draw there at all. I have changed. The funny thing is, I still don’t think I will grow up and be a domme. I don’t think that will ever be my primary identity. Not all that yields is weak. (Thank you Jacqueline Carey.)

I am freaked out by the idea of figuring out what to wear because I feel like I don’t know how to invite anyone into any kind of anything. I feel paralyzed, frozen, unable to assert my longings once I am in the room. It has been a very long time of being punished for identifying these longings too closely. He didn’t hit me or anything but he did talk to me most fiercely. It did redirect the mind control efforts quite a bit.

The worst punishment in the world is knowing that I disappointed Noah. His disappointment was crushing and devastating. He was my Daddy. He was my God. I wasn’t letting down an ordinary man. I was committing heresy.

I was talking with a widow friend in town a bit ago. It was sort of intense when she grabbed my arm intently and leaned in and said, “Don’t get married again. Hold on to your freedom.” Her second husband has been in the mental hospital for quite some time. He only got there after sufficient violence in the home.

Life is terrifying. There is so much risk. So many bad things happen. It’s always funny when some loud feminist tells me that obviously I have the views I have because of my enormous privilege and lack of trauma. I mean, I do have an enormous amount of privilege. That’s a fact. I completely agree with that assertion. My life is staggering. There are a lot of problems I don’t have to have.

I would quibble a tiny bit about “lack of trauma”.

I really like the way my brain works in musical interludes. I intensely walk around with my personal little sound track going in my brain. Right this minute out burst out with Garth Brooks belting [Standing Outside the Fire.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IaTYqFZ4-4) This was one of the songs I listened to for every nitrous trip dentist visit from 12-18. The dentist used to be so fun. Oh well.

I feel absolutely unable to contain the inferno inside of me. I don’t know how to express it. I don’t know how to invite contact with it in a way that feels fair and reasonable and appropriate.

Mostly what I am looking for is friends. People I can egg on into adventure. People who want to laugh and cry and experience life together. I want to have fun on my own terms and not at the direction of anyone else.

I want to search for sadomasochists. I want to find people who will lean in and encourage me to go harder when I hurt them. I want to find people who will be torn between wanting to hurt me and getting distracted by me hurting them. I want to tussle back and forth never certain about who is going to win until one or the other of us collapses from excessive want and someone can’t fight for control anymore. I want to not know going in over and over and over. I want to find people whose desire crashes over them as harshly as mine does. People who feel absolutely driven by the need to experience pain.

What I miss the most is Black Sheets. A long time ago there was a recurring party in a house that was normally closed to women. The entire house was decorated with phallic art from around the world. It was an experience. It remains crystalised in my brain as the epitome of what I wish kink parties were like. It was a queer sex party with heavy bdsm encouraged. It was what I dreamed of in my feverish masturbatory fantasies early in life. I got to participate. It was incredibly fun. All the fucking in all the ways with all the peoples. It was amazing. I loved my friends so much. I went often enough and socialised with folks outside the party so the sex was icing on top of a really great cake. The relationships were deep and complex but had very little to do with what one might think of in terms of a cis het mono “Relationship”. There were people who came to these parties and had no penetration of any kind with anyone but there was still a lot of sex.

I feel like I got through the monotonous torture of early parenthood by remembering that I had a really fun self before they came along. Without Noah here as the bridge sharing before kids and empty nest with me the journey is going to be different. I agree with my therapist on this one. I can’t go back. I wouldn’t go back in a hundred ways, top of the list meaning I won’t go back to the US if I can help it. I do have to move forward.

I appreciate the kind offer of a permission slip. It worked really well when Noah did it.

I am going to have to find this somewhere else. I have to make some kind of peace within myself between feeling like being a white trash whore makes me essentially toxic to humans and feeling like I have a lot to offer. I do have the potential to be toxic to people. I am not in denial about this. There are going to be a lot of people who can’t be near me. Sometimes for reasons I completely agree with and support and sometimes for reasons I am going to hate. It doesn’t matter. Either way my responsibility is to back away as much as I can.

I believe that is the social contract.

When people tell me about the bus that hit them I am probably going to ask why they stepped out into the street and they are going to be incredibly upset with me. They are going to ask why I am victim blaming. They are going to accuse me of minimising their trauma.

I am really not trying to. I am trying to help you find the pattern so that next time you can avoid the next bus if that is very important. If possible I can help you decipher if a given bus is actually very fun to get hit by and maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Not because I will tell you that you should do it.

I am going to tell you that the sane thing is not opting into getting hit by a bus.

I will do that while consciously and deliberately looking down at the transit map for the perfect timing on stepping in front of certain busses.

I feel like certain other tantalising women do a better job of making this sound poetic.

So much of this desire is brutality and I don’t have the ability to make it sound ethereal and soul elevating right now. I’d better get ready to because book club is in 5 days. Woo!

I am very cheerful about getting to talk about this kind of stuff theoretically with other word people before going to the party. I won’t be actually doing any useful social networking because Americans but it will still feel reassuring. I’m still scared of the ways I will have to proffer my meat sack in order to build what I want to be part of.

I would love to find people in this country for the kinds of parties I think of with so much longing. I want to find the fire that lives in other people and stoke it higher. I want to be kindling. I want to help people feel permitted to desire.

I want Church. I want a river of desire and lust and wanting and permission and pain and transformation. I want to leave bite marks on chests while I use them to gain my pleasure.

Do you know how incredibly fun it was to go to a sex party with a bunch of friends when a verbal order to orgasm was fresh in my programming? I really really really appreciate that my partner went to such trouble when I was 19. That’s been fucking handy in life in all kinds of ways. It has also lead to a really deep and abiding alienation between me and the topic of owning my cunt. It doesn’t matter how dominant I act most of the time, I still need permission to come.

I can get to the point of begging from fairly little stimulation. If I don’t ask when I feel the urge I can make it go away entirely and then I won’t get off at all during the sex. That’s a complicated place to live in.

I cannot actually take my pleasure. Permission must be given. I really am a vampire. I cannot come unless you invite me in. Luckily when no one is in the room I’m fine. Or my life might be a much more miserable place than it otherwise is. I like this part of this timeline.

It complicates inviting anyone in. Needing to bring up that uhm situation fairly immediately creates a lot of tension and dynamic from the get go. Any amount of advertising myself in a sexy way brings with it the mandatory early conversation about orgasm control. It’s not an easy 101 conversation to have on the fly. “Well it’s fine if it’s just an impact scene.” No. No it is not. A lot of things drive orgasm in my body. I take nerve pain medication every day because my nerves shoot off in some troublesome ways no matter I do. Some aspects of this are very fun. I like that a lot of activities make me get off. It’s not that hard to get me off.

I have a sense of alienation from this at times. Needing this permission really triggers a lot of bullshit dominance behaviours from men. It’s a complicated dance at times. I feel like I have spent a lot of my life bouncing around in the manic pixie dream girl trope. Do you know what men want to do when they find their own manic pixie dream girl? Lock that shit down.

I do really love hearing about how other people pick their style. It would be convenient if I didn’t have such a knee jerk reaction to purple, perhaps. You know why and that’s enough. I don’t have to explain it to anyone else. I find this presence that is not present deeply comforting. Thank you for allowing me to talk to you again. I have missed you.

I have missed the me that I was with you. I have missed exploration without specific limits. “Go out; have adventures! Come back; tell stories!” I cannot go back.

How do I move forward inhabiting that kind of space, though? I’m still toying with the idea. Agonising might be a closer fitting term. This doesn’t feel fun. As the wise lady said, it’s a lot easier to gloss over how much suffering happens as you figure things out. Another wise lady was talking about why she stopped talking about her personal life in a public way many years back and she’s very happy about it.

This is how I figure out who I am and what I want and what I need to change to get to where I want to be from here. My life would be much easier if I fit neatly into boxes and didn’t need to explore the pain I feel when I consider exposing other people to the deep core of fire that is inside of me.

I do know that the power comes from me. Permission to exhibit it comes from relationships. Permission to radiate that power comes from active consent.

How in the fuck do I radiate a kind of sexy that contains the conundrum that while I want to rip you apart and savage your body I will still need you to control a pretty essential aspect of my biology. This is more than a little insane.

Honestly this is part of why I want to keep my clothes on with Pretty Lady for a very long time. Touching me changes the dynamic. If it is done in a wide variety of ways there I am begging and pleading for release.

I am not looking for people who want to have a go at the pinball machine. Not at this time. Maybe later. That’s for when someone is a friend and has already paid into the Bank of Krissy and _______’s Relationship. That’s for parties like Black Sheets.

In my mind and in my soul there is an understanding that such parties are not available at this time at any cost for me in this environment. That’s fine. I have less than 10 years left on the indenture. 54 is going to be a really good birthday for me. Halfway through the year after that I am free. Not that I will have an empty nest. But I will be free to pick up and go where I want and do what I want when I want.

Fuck. I want to feel E Ticket Ride sexy. You have to be willing to pay a whole lot of extra costs for me. I’m a lot. I have a lot to give. I have a lot I need to get. You have to jump over hoops to really get me to offer you my time in an ongoing way.

I don’t know how to describe this headspace. I want to open the door to serendipity. I think there is a very important difference between this and the app-driven mindset of “I have to keep looking at my options.” It’s a very serial monogamist way of looking at it. I don’t want to see if I can get an upgrade on the boyfriend unit.

I want to find out what kind of torment I can find with other people. Torment is my love language. How fucked up and awesome would it be if someone had to give me permission to come over and over while I told them no?

I MEAN, HOW COOL DOES THAT SOUND?! I mean, I have mental possibilities of sound tracks but they are all vague because this is potential space.

I have never done what I want to do now. This is a huge amount of moving forward into a kind of power I did not and could not have when I was young.

I don’t know how to radiate this power because I don’t know what it feels like yet. I have not yet been sexy in this way so I have no idea what it looks like or feels like. I took the yielding, perhaps too far when I was young. I didn’t know how to protect my crappy meat sack. I did not know how to limit the checks my mouth wrote by the amount my ass could cash. I was hit by a number of very large busses. I am not sorry.

I want to pick a route with a smaller bus next time.

I want to feel the sparkling electricity that comes from masochists slamming into each other with mutual gasps and squeaks and moans because does it hurt or does it feel good? I don’t know or care just don’t stop.

I feel like a raging volcano. Advertising as if I were just slutty would be underselling the experience by a lot. It would feel really unfair. It would feel like false advertising and trying to draw people into a web of intensity they are not actually prepared for. They would interpret my intensity as drama. I don’t intend to create drama and I work really hard at not disrupting peoples lives in bad ways.

It’s a risk though. If you trigger people to go through transformation sometimes there is some drama. Change is not always appreciated by the other folks in someones life. They liked things as they were.

Chaos agent. Chaotic good, if you will. Mostly? I strive but I fail. I am only mortal. I like to bit off more than I can chew and then I wonder why I choke.

I want so much that I am burning with it. I don’t know how to keep being normal without getting to bleed off this energy. I want to hurt someone so much my fingers itch. My cunt aches and longs for interaction. I want to rake my nails down your back because it makes you lust harder.

I do not know if I want a glamour. I do not know if I want to come naked under a sheer supplicants gown. Please use me. Please allow me to use you.

I actually own the dress I have in mind. I need to run a few hundred miles before wearing it again will happen. I am going to go for a run today.

I want and I want and I want. I do not know what manifesting this in fetching garb looks like yet. How do I attract what I want? I force and interest in leaning in to change. I don’t want to do the same tricks you have done with everyone ever on repeat. I want to find new tricks together. Don’t tell me what was best with other people as if I am supposed to try hard to best someone else’s personal score on the video game of your personal pleasure.

You don’t want to play that game with me. You really don’t. My pinball machine best score list is not something you want to think about. I was married for a long time to a really good lover. The person who instilled the initial programming considered a personal hobby to help me hit 4 digits of orgasms in our relationship. It was an intense experience.

Please, for the love of Cheese, don’t whack the pinball machine like you are desperate to be the high scorer. That’s just not a good look.

I don’t want to just be a pinball machine. Sometimes I refer to this feeling as being treated like a service provider. I’m a vending machine of the experience someone wants to order up.

I am not real big on “spontaneous” but I am huge on serendipity. It’s not an accident I walked into that room. I probably planned it weeks or months in advance. What happens once I get there is not fully under my control. I have to throw the dice and see what happens.

It’s not that “dating” means nothing to me. It is that dating is not the same as marriage and it is not the same as ownership. It means I have not relinquished my autonomy as a single adult head of household. I need to go in. Time to do that head of household bullshit. I want to alternate between typing and masturbating all day. Oh well. Such is not my lot in life. I wanted this Indenture. Time to serve it.

They won’t know that hiding behind my grin and cheerful, “Good morning! Good to see you again” will be a simmering need to savage someone’s body.

I am an excellent liar.

Here’s a problem: feeling sexy

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Gentleman and I were discussing the subject of party clothes earlier today. I have a handful of legacy fetish items but mostly I can’t wear them right now. Maybe in a few hundred miles. We’ll see.

We were looking at various items of clothing and I kept pulling faces. It’s hard for me to imagine myself dressing in a way to encourage a lot of sexual attention at this point. It freaks me the fuck out. I’ve been dressing as unsexy as possible for a long time. My wardrobe is childishly fun more than it is sexy. I do have a handful of pieces because of hunting last year. See previous reference to maybe I’ll wear them again after a few hundred miles.

Very little of what I own makes me feel sexy. I like wearing split crotch bloomers under layers of skirts and knowing that I can have sex without bothering to get undressed. That’s fun for me. It’s a very specifically coded kind of sexy that most people won’t be able to read at any kind of distance. Mostly I just look very modest and conservative. I like to wear my hair long but braided up. I look like a religious conservative.

I now have less than two weeks until I am going to a party. I don’t have much on between now and then. I have time to think about clothing. I keep wistfully thinking that I want to feel sexy. I don’t know what that means though.

I can’t help that growing up I heard over and over “If you go out dressed like a street walker you’d better come home with money.” I believe if I dress in overtly sexually suggestive clothing I’d better expect to be harassed. I expect to have to be ready to fight if I go out wearing slutty clothing. Amusingly I would not be very tolerant of a man stepping in front of me to fight for me. I might knock over the earnest would be knight in my zest to get to whoever was fucking with me.

Dressing slutty is inviting fighting. It takes a very specific kind of mood before that feels sexy for me. I have to feel strong and DTF with pretty much everyone and anyone.

I don’t think I have that kind of boldness in me right now. I wish for it. I miss it. I don’t know that I will have that again.

What makes the me I am right now feel sexy? Mostly I feel desire in my body and clothes are fairly irrelevant and we simply rip them off. That’s been true for a long time. There has been no point in trying to appear sexy because it made absolutely no difference in any way shape or form. Gentleman is like Noah in this regard. They just don’t care that much about clothing or appearance. Which is great! It’s very convenient having relationships with people who are fine with me being the low maintenance bitch I am in terms of frippery and hygiene. I can (and do) dress up but mostly I wear a few basic outfits with high practical value and little to distinguish them.

I don’t feel sexy. I feel like I want to have sex. I feel like I have been absolutely blessed in this life with partners who are as antsy to have sex with me as I am with them. Hallelujah and thank Cheese.

I haven’t been in a relationship with someone who felt meh about having sex with me since I was 22. I feel good about the trajectory of sex in my life. The orgasm gap in my relationship is (apparently) more like a cricket score. This was a new idiomatic thought process for me. Now I know there are wickets (10) and runs (however many you get away with). Ah. Sure. I can get away with hundreds.

Pretty much all of that sex happened without me feeling particularly sexy. I felt horny. I feel an unholy amount of spontaneous sexual desire. Feeling desire is not the same thing as feeling sexy.

Years ago I was up at one of the house parties in Seattle and this woman walked through the room. Her hair was long and super dark black and it shimmered in waves. I thought, “she has actual fucking flowing raven locks”. Her hair seemed like the sexiest thing on the entire planet to me. I don’t think I have ever felt as sexy as her hair looked to me.

My hair is going grey and I can’t be arsed to do anything about it. Besides, my hair was always just a dark brown. My curls are neither completely proper spirals nor fun waves. I’m a tangled mess most of the time if my hair isn’t in a braid.

I don’t think the route to sexiness comes through my hair. I really miss the braiding that used to happen when I worked fair/faire. (Different weird reenactment shit. One was a Victorian Dickensian Christmas fair and there were a bunch of Renaissance faires. The dancing was so much fun.)

Dancing makes me feel sexy.

I feel deeply amused and powerful when I observe how intimidated people are by the bog witch shit I wear. I feel like “ha ha ha I am scaring you”. It’s silly. It’s also perversely sexual. I’m not wearing anything revealing in any way shape or form. This is desexualised clothing for the world. Yet I feel sexy in it.

I feel sexy when I feel like Mrs. Whatsit. I feel powerful when I feel like I am toying with someone’s perception of the world. Amusingly, I got a lot of this with Engineer. I’m glad that I am still talking to him. It feels weird to say it, but I feel like he treats me the way I treated my Shaman. He comes to me with ethical dilemmas and I force him to talk it through on his own. I have only questions, no answers. I don’t have to live with the results of any of his decisions so i should have no voice in what they are.

He treats me a lot like I treated Vicki. Well, sort of. Vicki kept her clothes on 100% of the time. I feel this weight over my shoulder. I have this responsibility to perform the behaviour I was antagonised into articulating as correct. I don’t have the right to tell other people what is right or wrong. I can only ask questions and decide how close I want to stand to them.

Vicki was sexy even when she frankly needed a shower and to change her dang clothes. I wish I could channel power the way she did. She lived so securely in her sadomasochism that there was never a doubt that she had power in a given scene. It didn’t matter if she was submitting or dominating. It didn’t matter if she was displaying masochism or sadism she had power. In that way I wish I could be more like her. I wish I felt entitled to embody my full power no matter what I am doing.

I don’t want to be exactly like any of my mentors though, not really. I don’t want what they lived. Not because they are/were wrong, but because my path is different. It’s not a repudiation. I like different things. We were always only going to be holding hands for a little while.

What makes me feel sexy?

The way Noah looked at me made me feel sexy. It had nothing to do with what I wore. It had to do with his perception of my soul. Noah looked at me as if I had all the terrifying power of a God. He believed that as much as I had the power to give love and life and nurturance I was even more capable of destroying and harming. He looked at me with awe.

It’s fun that Gentleman is currently working on how to send the right kind of signals for me to understand he is feeling interested in me. He’s getting way more grabby and assertive and verbally silly and it’s really great. I feel besotted. He is such a kind and wonderful man. I love that he puts himself out there in the world even when he doesn’t feel fully confident. He does it scared. His bravery and willingness to try new things make me feel really tender and loving towards him. I want to keep coaxing this bravery. Explore! Have fun! You only get one life. Get every morsel of joy out of it.

If I were a monogamous human being this would be the time when my brain would start to filter out other humans. It would alter my attraction pattern. However, I am not a monogamous person. My brain creates a big sturdy container that looks promising and like it has potential for a great deal of awesome over a long term. Then my brain looks a fraction of a degree to the left and sees vast amounts of self that is not in any kind of container and then there is some vertigo and oh holy shit balls no. No.

I don’t want to leave those parts of me in the dark. I miss them. I love them. I love them enough to not let go of them even though it would be deeply convenient for people who love me if I did. I love these pieces so much that I held on to them through over a decade of hypnosis and NLP work trying to force my brain into only desiring one man.

I’m not saying any of this as a criticism of Gentleman. The man sat very still and waited for me to complete a house chore before he left. He knew if he stood up to go I would get distracted and not finish the task. That shit is pretty magical. He made sure he kept me company so I could get a little bit more accomplished and head into the week with a lighter load. He is a super rad boyfriend and I’d like to keep him.

I’m really happy with this relationship. I feel pretty fucking seen in a lot of really deep and profound ways.

I also feel like the parts of me that fit inside this relationship represent a very small fraction of who I am. I feel guilty and ashamed of this knowledge. I wish that I had come factory standard instead of being so fucking extra.

I think the parts Gentleman puts into this relationship are a very small fraction of who he is, too. I am not trying to be self centred here. We are middle aged fuckers. We both have history and stories and complexity.

This is all tied up.

Throwing bait in the water is a complicated thing. I have inched my personality out in person here in the kink community while Noah was alive. Luckily most of the hyper local people don’t really read my writing (phew!) so they have gotten to know me in tiny pieces. In person I am a lot more reserved than you might expect. I wait to be approached. I ask a lot of questions and deflect questions I receive with non-answers or partial answers because my stories are all so complicated. Pull one tiny thread and who knows what fucking thing will fall on your lap. I endeavour to avoid trauma dumping so that means I have to be careful what stories I tell. I am genuinely afraid of being the reason someone else’s nervous system gets dysregulated so they can’t participate in fun.

I want to feel sexy. So much of feeling sexy is in being looked at and desired. I confess that even though it is great that this fella responds as if I am equally sexy in my comfy jammies and a bathrobe as I am when I dress up sometimes I want to feel like someone appreciated the effort. I write about the mixed feelings I had in relationships with fetishists. It was difficult being simply an object and not a person. I didn’t like the way I was appreciated more in latex and high heels. I find both fairly fucking uncomfortable. They are both challenging on a sensory level for me. But gosh I appreciated one lover I had very briefly who took like two hours to undress me every time. Sex took, like, four hours. It was amazing. Undressing was part of the show.

I think about wearing lots of layers for seducing Pretty Lady. My cunt will not be easily accessible. Oh holy shit no. My cunt will be the very last thing on the menu. It will be earned with thousands of words. I don’t need to take any clothes off at all to rub one out. I am a miracle of orgasming ability. There had to be some fucking benefit to all my weird health shit. Woo.

This party coming up on the east coast is uhm, not like a date with someone who already finds me thrilling. Let’s be clear that I assume that the most likely outcome is some awkward conversations that don’t really go anywhere and no play. I don’t know people well and I have very consciously held myself back for most of the years I’ve known them.

I don’t think I have it in me to strut in like I am hot shit and you should try hard to get me. I think that requires a level of security and being known that I currently lack.

The thing is, I haven’t earned regard here. I have not been in anyone’s life all that much. I don’t go to anything bigger than our Thursday munch every month. I know the two men who are the regulars at that munch very well. I’d be ok strutting in front of them because they would grin and tell me to have a good time. They wouldn’t act like it was for them. They would simply be my friends. Mostly I do not have the right to act like I am someone anyone should like. I have no idea how I am going to fit in with the social community in larger Scotland over time. I assume I will be disliked by a lot of people. There are already a couple of people who significantly dislike me and I’m ok with that. It feels inhibiting though.

How do I feel sexy walking into a room full of mostly strangers by myself when I don’t have any particular faith in this moment that I can be sure if any of them will like me in 10 years? I could strut into a Second Saturday party in the Bay without hesitation even though I don’t know most of the people. I don’t need to know everyone. I need the anchor people. I need my friends. I have not put in the time to have many friends over on the east coast. I’m not there for an event every year.

I have very particular metrics in my mind right now with regard to short/medium/long term goals. Yes, I am absolutely interested in Mx/Ms/Mr Right Now. Mostly I am looking for who is going to become a bigger part of my life. I don’t have a deep and broad network of friends yet. I haven’t put in the time. I haven’t shown up and been witnessed. I haven’t been the witness of other people’s stories. People will think I am hot shit based on whether or not they observe me to be. I don’t get to dictate that. I don’t get to act like me earning that off screen has any value whatsoever. Social capital is not transitive like that.

Frankly, I’m so out of practice at all of the skills of topping that I should not be trusted more than any other newbie. My muscle memory has gone to shit in the time I was married. Any amount of raising my arm was met with extreme hostility and force. I didn’t have to actually hit anyone. Any kind of threat was absolutely the same. No, hitting my friends in a consensual bdsm scene wasn’t permitted; if anything that was even more forbidden. Noah probably would have been more forgiving of me spanking the kids than he would of me spanking a friend. It would have seemed like a mistake, not a choice.

How do I feel sexy when I feel so insecure? I feel the lack of connection to the community here. I was not allowed to join in more than I did; I was allowed the Kids. What I got was somewhat grudging. Noah resented me wanting kinky friends because I want to flirt with them if they are old enough.

I am sad that one of the people I had hoped to hide behind will not be at the party. I haven’t made many friends on that coast yet but I count this person among them. We’ve talked a lot over the years. This is most unfortunate for me on an entirely selfish level. Such is life. I will go anyway. I have to start somewhere.

I am spending far too many brain cycles wondering what I want to wear. I went hunting as a slutty bog witch. It was really fun.

This is not that.

I do not want to walk in as if I assume I will ever have any kind of power over anyone present. I want that genie in a bottle. I am not Vicki to ooze power over anyone who came nearby. People who had their own power met hers as equals and she never played dominant pissing games. Ok, she usually didn’t. Sometimes she did. When she did she won. I don’t think I have arrived at having this kind of personal power. I feel like I forfeited any sense of power by how I handled this last rape. I feel like a failure. I feel like I failed to have any power at all. I feel like a stupid piece of shit. I didn’t handle that in a way Noah was proud of. I made the last 5 months of his life very hard. I feel deeply ashamed of wanting to reach so hard for new connection right now. It feels like I am trying to avoid sitting and home and stewing over what a complete piece of shit I am for failing Noah.

I do not know how to feel sexy walking into this environment right now because I am not sure how to walk in with any kind of feeling of power. I think the two are tied together for me. There is power in being submissive, a slave, and a masochist. The power does not only reside on one side of the slash. Perhaps I will spend a lot more of my life being sadistic in the future. All of these expressions come from personal power. I’m afraid both of attracting the wrong thing and attracting nothing at all. I couldn’t tell you which would be worse. If I go in hoping to make friends that’s really about as optimistic as I should be.

I want to feel sexy. I want to feel seen and appreciated. I don’t want to feel afraid. In order to not be afraid I have to feel safe. I don’t believe scene spaces are ever fully safe spaces. I go there to drift around in the ocean of predators and prey and see who is living in this little ecosystem.

What kind of predator am I?

Oh. Oh that is an interesting question. After thinking for at least 13 seconds I’m going to go with lazy. I am a lazy predator. I like to know the history before I step in old shit. I am a predator who usually hunts predators. This is how my soul is deeply tied to you, Ale. I hunt for people like you. I deeply appreciate and value that you never fucking sugar coat how you feel. I find affirmation of my humanity in the ways we reflect opposite sides of the same coin. You understand my need to be a victim. I hate being a victim. It is a thing I feel unable to escape. I, at times, have learned to embrace being a victim because in its depths I find more about my strength and power than I do in any other way.

This is where I fear I am wrong and Vicki is right but I don’t know that I can follow her good example. Vicki taught me that power emanates from a person like heat from the raging inferno of a soul inside the meat sack. I experience my power coming from relationships. My power doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I have power only in as much as I have the power to help, to harm, to create, and to destroy parts of other people.

I think of you and I feel such shame. I harmed you. I was cruel and inflexible and overly demanding in ways I was not entitled to be. I failed you.

I am so afraid of this power that sparks to life and begins to burn and rage at the tiniest sign of connection. It’s like watching a pilot light go from being barely a flicker to being on full blast. Someone wants me to look at them. How delightful.

I am afraid that it is a terrible thing to be touched by the power within me. I appreciate the way that folks in my in person life are commenting prodigiously on their appreciation of my mothering. That’s nice and all, for people who actually deal with my family to think I’m doing well. I inhabit the power of this role uneasily and with great caution. I am terrified of fucking this up. I am now all they have. Someone else can’t fix what I fuck up. Not really. There used to be someone here watching me, giving me course correction advice. Letting me know when I was getting too heated or loud. Now it is just me. Am I gentle enough?

It is very hard that the relationships in which I have the most sense of power are entirely ones where I am terrified of crushing a delicate soul I love very deeply. It’s part of why I was so hard on Noah. He was the only sturdy soul in my network I could really unleash on. It had to be done in ways he permitted.

He wouldn’t allow me to push him to the edge of his boundaries because him exploding was even less permitted than me exploding. I am not trying to say I had the worst deal in my marriage. Noah was also in a very constraining box.

I am saying that I am stepping into a different environment where I have no sense of my place. I don’t want to come in my mother/auntie vibe. I don’t want to. I want to come as a peer. I want to come as someone who both initiates and receives desire.

For many years I have said, “Anyone who speaks at my funeral is required to start with ‘Krissy was a motherfucking bad ass’ and if they don’t, boo them off the stage.”

I don’t feel like I am truly inhabiting that. I feel weak. I feel vulnerable. I feel deeply unworthy of ever being loved. I failed Noah. How dare I walk on as if I am a whole creature.

I am not a whole creature. I am a sundered being. I am a tree that was twinned for many years before a lightning bolt took my love from me. I miss Noah. I miss the certainty of that container. I miss feeling that secure in being loved like a wildfire. I was ok with being burned if that was the price of that relationship. It was worth it. I miss Noah. I miss Noah but he is gone and I have to carry on. My day job takes a lot out of me. I need to fill my bucket.

I need to make myself happy. This is a pragmatic understanding. Most of my life depends on me being a cheerful, upbeat, optimistic soul. It doesn’t work when I am deeply depressed and buried in anxiety. I start being poor at my job.

I want to feel sexy but I don’t know if I can. I know that it is tied to my sense of power and my happiness but it depends on relationships. I can’t walk into a building and assume anything about anyone. Sure, they are there but they aren’t there for me. They are there for their own story. I am very afraid of finding out there is no story arc overlap potential. I am afraid that I am not walking into the building with any sense of personal connection and anchoring. That means flirting feels like inviting a fight when I don’t know anything about the turf the fight is happening on. That feels so dangerous and stupid.

I want to feel sexy. I am afraid I will only feel afraid.

Love and loss

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One of the attractive parts of poly is knowing that you get to share a divided self in the appropriate containers. I have found a delightful man who wants to explore topping in ways I find absurdly fun. I have found a delightful woman who is keen to explore submission.

I win!

I appreciate the way that both of these humans are interested in getting to know me and figuring out what a long term thing can mean. I don’t feel used or exploited. I feel like I am going to get as good as I give in both of these containers. That’s lovely.

I got to explain to Gentleman yesterday about some of the ways I have struggled with relationships in the past. I don’t like when I feel like someone is treating me like a service provider only they don’t even pay me. And yet some folks who have sort of done that have actually turned into long term valued friends that I will prioritise going to see at any opportunity. I am a complex creature.

Right now I am trying to ease into poly with two people who have zero experience doing anything like this. I feel like it is incredibly important that I keep my pace slow and careful. I can see long term healthy ways that both Gentleman and Pretty Lady are folks that have the capacity to be stable partners. I’ve watched some folks have a lot of churn in their romantic lives. I’ve watched some folks have really stable poly situations that last decades. I’m moving slowly and carefully because I have my eye on the long run.

I am mindful that when I choose to date people who are 10 or 20 years older than me, when I’m already past middle age, that I am signing on to a situation that will involve mutual care in the not too dim future.

I have to admit that given how young Noah died it feels slightly insane to want to love people that much older than me. It feels like courting more pain. Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Noah was a major risk taker. In very particular ways the two folks I am interested in aligning my life with at this stage are very energetic folks who don’t take risks very often. Maybe that will be more stable?

In the long run I am incredibly happy about how I handled Travel Boyfriend. I’m glad I didn’t give a shit about his impulsive desire to spin up a relationship instantly. I’m glad I forced a waiting period before we saw each other because then he could disappoint me without me having to experience life collateral damage as a result. I am going to move slowly with Pretty Lady like I have with Gentleman. I feel like I have done an A+ job on integrating Gentleman slowly. His inclusion in my life is gradual and in tiny increments with lots of scaffolding.

I am learning that sometimes I need to stop having a conversation in text with Gentleman because I have so much hostility towards me in my brain that I can’t manage to hear/see/understand the correct tone. I don’t like getting butthurt when I don’t need to get butthurt. Some things I need to process with him verbally in person so I can see his body language and properly interpret his tone of voice. When we talk in person we don’t struggle to resolve conflict at all. Sometimes I’m misinterpreting stuff in text; I hear it more harshly than he intends and I hate that I do that. It’s a long term issue of mine and it totally is not his fault. This is a thing I struggle with. My internal narrative is pretty hostile towards me and it’s not because of anyone in my current life. I’m actually way better about this than I used to be! I’ve come a long way because Noah and my friends worked very hard to overwrite the hostile tapes in my head with their voices. With new people I still have to consciously overwrite my impulses/self talk and that’s hella annoying.

I feel so much hostility towards myself that I struggle with not projecting those feelings onto other people. It’s not fair at all and is a thing I will have to manage more carefully in the years to come. I confess that I got really lazy about demanding that Noah engage with that shit. I didn’t manage it all myself.

It feels really good to have earned Gentleman’s love. He is not scarred and broken in the ways I have traditionally tracked down like a blood hound. He feels comfortable and comforting and like a balm to my soul. When we are in a room together I can check and find out that his careful and reserved body language isn’t disgust/repulsion. It’s cultural. He’s not a grabby person. He takes a lot of encouragement before he feels entitled to be pushy. Luckily I am big on giving encouragement so this is going well for me. He gets way more pushy as the months pass and I am here for it. Our sex life continues to be over the top fantastic.

I must say for the record that my desire for novelty and difference is not about me feeling unsatisfied sexually. The more satisfied I am the more novelty I want. Sex is very addictive/additive for me. The more I have, the better it is, the more I want. Gentleman is a fantastic lover–he’s generous, attentive, and incredibly motivated towards getting me off. The orgasm gap functions differently in my life than it does for the average human. I have to really insist on time to adore him and focus on his pleasure. It’s a really fun balance. I like when I can get him to relax and lay back and let me do him for a while. Much fun is had. So much fun.

Knowing that I have the potential for a fun, glowy future with him makes me feel borderline insane for insisting on dating. I still need it. I will do my best to be respectful and careful. All the signs are there indicating that Pretty Lady is going to have big feelings really fast. I get that! I’ve had a crush on her for a long time already. She is already someone I have strong feelings of attachment for given our community associations. She hasn’t had a huge number of relationships and someone wanting her is pretty exciting and novel. Our emails are scorchingly hot.

The things I want to do with her are things I can’t/won’t do with Gentleman. He’s never going to be my buddy for Pride. This is ok. She wants parts of me that are not parts he wants. He is not motivated by submission and he is not a bottom. I accept this in him and it doesn’t bother me. I want to have people in my life also who are motivated by such things.

I like that she described me as more vivacious, energised, and emancipated on our last date. I feel like that. Even though, technically, this morning I’m feeling kind of rubbish. My body is being bitchy.

I like the way Polysecure tells you to find your reason for polyamory. For me the reason that I hold on to is that I need a larger range of loving people than most people do. I need it to feel whole. I need it to feel like I am fulfilling my purpose on this earth.

In many ways I think of relationships as keys that unlock potential. These don’t all have to be romantic but they work best for me when they are. Is romantic even the right word? I need intense emotional connection. Like with the Kids. I need those kind of intense emotional connections with people. The relationships I have with much younger folk allow me to feel like I am healing something for other people that I could not heal for myself. I could not fully deal with my own massive mother wounding. I have mostly spackled over the cracks and moved on. When I can turn to a younger person and give them the acceptance, the permission, and the guidance I didn’t receive I feel like I am completing a cycle. I feel like I am part of something bigger than myself. Yes, it’s great being with my actual children and being an actual mother. That’s a big deal. But the Kids are different.

I give the Kids what Vicki gave me. I find it hilarious just how many of the Kids I find are trans; either they are on the path to transition before I meet them or I meet them as eggs. Part of what I have to offer is my religious belief (thank you Ale) that gender diversity is one of the most basic aspects of humanity.

In general, I believe that one of the things I offer humans of all stripes in Scotland is my fervent acceptance of and devotion to people getting to transition. Even when I don’t “understand”. Even when I privately occasionally have a cunty thought that isn’t perfect because I am a shitty human being. I don’t have to understand. I don’t have to agree. I don’t have to agree with someone’s motives. I will die on this hill. Gender diversity is a human right. I encountered my first transgender person before I had two digits in age. Several friends in high school transitioned. At my first munch, at 18, I met two trans women who would shape my adult life in overwhelming and comprehensive ways. My friends group has always been 1/4+ trans despite the usual percentage in the population being closer to 1%.

I feel like part of what I can give Pretty Lady is also tied to what I learned from Vicki but it’s different. I feel like part of what I can offer her is the belief that by consuming her as prey I can make her more whole. She longs for being possessed. I can work with that. Vicki taught by example that predators are an important part of the eco system.

I’m not talking about serial rapists/massively abusive predators. I am talking about people in the bdsm community who seek out people who want to be consumed. I am talking about tops and dominants and masters and sadists who look for people who need to be used, possessed, forced, and beaten. There is something special in this dyadic meeting. We need one another because alone we are broken and out of sync with what society needs.

I think there are reasons that of all the people I’ve met since I moved here 6.5 years ago this was the one that I went “Her. Her. I want to ask her out.” Noah could see why I was intrigued. Not enough to get in trouble with her. I hoped to earn the right to ask her out after the Indenture. I am grateful I don’t have to wait so long. I’ll be honest and say she isn’t a spring chicken and I’m glad we will have these years to be festive before she needs ever increasing gentleness and support. I would have been up for just the support in the long run but I’m selfish. I’m glad we get to pay into the fun bucket first.

Sometimes, I will admit, I feel a little bit like a wandering prophet. Let me tell you what love and acceptance of diversity has to offer you. Let me tell you about gender diversity and human variance. Can I share with you the glory that can be found on the edges of the bell curve? I am from Queer Mecca and I’m here to share with you stories about how you can be loved and accepted even when you are different from the majority of the population.

I remain grateful that it is not up to me to decide who is redeemable and who is not. I can’t promise that I would make unselfish choices. I think it is a good thing my father is dead. I think it is a good thing that Bad Timing is in prison and likely to stay there for the rest of his life. There are people so bad that humanity has a right to say stop and I am glad that I am not the one who decides who those people are. I do not have faith in my own fairness.

What I do have faith in is my ability to fall in love with excellent humans.

It may be rough on everyone that mostly what I want is to go forward bouncing off of people and moving forward on my own. I am deeply uncertain how far I will go in binding my life to anyone. I will share time, resources, attention, support, and adventures.

There is a part of me that needs to know that I trudge on forward with the certainty that at the most terrifying and painful parts of my life I will feel alone. I may not always be alone. My children were in the house when Noah died but I am the one who failed to use CPR effectively enough to keep him alive until the ambulance came. I failed him all by myself.

I wasn’t alone very long. Bestie came for me as she has done since we were teenagers when she came for my brother and father’s suicides. I wasn’t alone for any of the big deaths. For most of the other ones I have sought community and support.

But I feel alone. No one is in your soul with you. I need to be able to live with my soul. I need to know that I am going to feel alone no matter how many people I love or how many adventure buddies I pick up. I feel the need to know that no one is leaning on me too heavily.

Just like even though Noah tried terribly hard to isolate me and prevent me from having support other than him I held on to my network of people. The people who came in relays last year. It turned out I didn’t want a full year of support but people were willing.

I am not alone in this life. I am loved in vast and deep and broad ways by a shocking number of humans spread across the globe. I am happy when people hold my hand and walk with me for a time, but I always return to walking alone. I have since I was very small. It’s like the way my first book is chaotic and hectic and full of so much change that it feels hard to wrap your brain around. That was my life and I moved through it alone with the speed of a bullet train. Noah held my hand for 20 years.

I am afraid of holding anyone’s hand too tightly. I need to love with an open hand. I need to be willing to let go and walk away with grace and ease if someone changes their mind. I cannot grasp. I can’t clutch. I can’t need anyone too much. I must appreciate the bright shining moments in between being alone. They fuel me.