Ordinary..

There is a border world between fact and fantasy, a place where both bleed into each other.

Sometimes I think the best way to define ordinariness is as a lack of fantasy, and without fantasy there is no possibility...

It isn't that I'm after the extraordinary, but the the quality of ordinariness settles like dust on everything.

Eventually.

Ordinary life is about keeping things going; switching the light on when the alarm goes off and not going back to sleep, drinking coffee, putting clothes on...latter there is cooking and consuming both food and information. Then taking clothes off and getting back into bed. In between getting out of bed and climbing back in, there are things to be done to keep everything spinning more or less in kilter.

Everyone in the family has parallel lives, we trace similar circuits through out our days and intersect at this house, the things we do barely effect the running of each other's lives but every so often there are ripples and waves, fall out and debris from needs and wants, problems and accidents...

So where does that leave my FetLife statement that I live it (the lifestyle) 24/7 when there is so much ordinariness, in mine and probably in everybody's lives?

The 'I live it when I can' is the realistic answer, but isn't right. I don't forget my 'status', or rather I never consider 'us' as ordinary.

'Just in the bedroom' is accurate too- we have teenage sons, they walk in to the house with their friends at any time. When they are out is worse than when they are in. But we do have outside too, under the sky. But not the garden (overlooked! Small! muddy!) The fact that it is cold, or we are with our children, or motorbike clothes are too difficult to put back on may sound lame excuses, and I am working on it!

It is only February.

'Once in a while to spice things up' makes my heart sink; it too is accurate. Actually the list is making me depressed, I may have to go and make myself another cup of tea and eat a biscuit.

'Curious and want to try' gosh, all the world before you...actually I wouldn't like to be curious. The idea of trying *it* and wanting more, or less is uncomfortable.

I live it 24/7 sounds as if I'm chained to the bed waiting for my master's return or serving tea (not drinking it myself) to an assortment of gentlemen, who at any moment may chose to avail themselves of one of my ever ready orifices.

But even Roissey castle would seem ordinary after a while.

Fantasy leads to possibility and the 24/7 statement is more comfortable to live with than any of the others.

Forty six and two.

I dreamt that I'd been bullied into signing the 'watered down' contract.

A week of intensely good and intensely bad with some good old fashioned weirdness inbetween. A week in which we established that the harder he tries not to be 'like his dad' the more likely it is that he will be just like his dad.

Or I could blame myself and say that I'm unconsciously conditioning him to be like his parents so that I can have a hate figure (that's the kind of argument Gil used to use on me) in other words, I have a need for a scapegoat.

But that isn't as logical as assuming that a child learns behaviour from his parents.

My next assumption is that because he rejected the parental way of doing things, he can't recognise those elements of behaviour in himself.

I don't know if that mechanism is real or not, but it provides an explanation.

He invested a lot of energy in consciously rejecting 'the bad man'...but of course the bad man never goes away...no one is good or bad, everyone is everything.

All the things you wont recognise about yourself become the shadow.
The Jungian concept of the shadow merges all too easily with the tall dark stranger of romantic fiction, or Yeat's mysterious other who tells all the secrets:

'...I call to the mysterious one who yet
Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream
And look most like me, being indeed my double.
And prove of all imaginable things
The most unlike, being my anti-self,
And, standing by these characters, disclose
All that I seek.’
Ego Dominus Tuus

Even onwards to Crowley and the Abramelin, a complicated and arduous ritual carried out 'to obtain the Knowledge and Conversation of the magician's Holy Guardian Angel'.



In my experience the shadow is primitive (with all the negative connotations of that word) until recognised, not romantic in anyway, certainly not mysterious or even together enough to wear any clothes. A lot of my shadow was family heirloom- ways of thinking that were handed down, fears and means of self-preservation. Eventually the shadow becomes a protector and provides instinctual understanding of situations, but not at first....

Integration requires recognition of the split off elements or energy, and consciously giving that energy ways to operate in the day-light world.

Energy is most definitely a kinky subject.


Most people acknowledge the existence of a line between vanilla and kink, they tend to be polite about it and keep it below the line, in 'in the dark' meaning that kink has an aura about it- a whiff of brimstone and rubber, ether and formaldehyde.

It is portrayed as Bluebeard's room.

A place the wife should not go.


Basically this is why I'm drawn to BDSM, my school motto really was 'out of shadows comes knowledge'.

But back to the dream; I dreamt that I'd signed the safe contract. In my dream a South African policeman direct from Apartheid South Africa (where black and white are to be kept separate)  bullied me into signing the edited, augmented, redacted 'safe' contract that would maintain the status quo.

A contract that wouldn't change anything, or cause any trouble.

The dream was troubling, it is a statement of what I think after all- nothing more and nothing less - I hadn't realised that I thought that way until I saw it played out. I am all the characters and at the same time seeing a metaphor. I assume that the dream is working because I'm thinking about it....it has called something to my attention that requires clarification.

But so far the outcome has been a reiteration of my understanding of the safe word and my complaint that he doesn't make me use it...

Black star.

I suppose that there are quite a few married couples who decide to try a bit of domination and submission, just to see where it takes them. Having done three years of 'celibate sex'...that is to say orgasm control, and being in a 'relationship' that was totally secret, I wouldn't consider myself particularly 'vanilla'.

For me, in this married relationship, and 'trying a bit of submission', my motivation was complicated; I thought that it would simplify things, and I wanted it to take me to the edge.

Vanilla doesn't exist in the real world. There is a kind of Utopian dream some people believe is true made from the games people play (in the Eric Berne sense) television, and other fictional images. People who need to fit in, try to fit in with the orthodox images of 'normality'. It is normal after all, to be normal.

Vanilla or rather how vanilla you are is a measure of how hard you are trying to be normal.

...none of us are normal really, thank goodness!

I wanted to simplify things because there were power issues going on in our relationship, and I just wanted the whole power thing to be clear. Basically, most of the time I don't see myself as powerless and I like it when someone else acts as if he has all the power. I relax. I let go. I can't feel threatened or powerless because I'm not so there is no threat for me in playing this game. I am submissive. I give away all my power to anyone who wants it, as if it is a great gift.

It is a kind of fearlessness, a desire to face something bigger than me.

I wanted to simplify things because he kept on giving his power away....and not in a good way...to me...treating me as if I would break down, or punish him for doing the wrong thing. He took what I said very seriously.

It got worse.

He had rules about what he could or couldn't do based upon what he thought I'd said. He projected his fears onto me. He felt that he couldn't be Dom enough or nice enough or normal enough or anything enough and resented me for it.

I'd thought that giving him all the power would make him feel safe...hmmm...wrong.

Next the edge and the cracks or why I'm kinky and what I wanted from playing with power. Most of all and more than anything I wanted him to fulfill the only promise we had ever made to each other- to stand by each other's side in heaven or hell, in life and at death.

Well there are two kinds of submission; the first I've explained as giving away my power as a sort of gift; a playing at being powerless. The other kind is the real thing...and it is terrifyingly powerful. A jolt of heroin direct into the lizard brain. To experience it you need to have gone where you should not go, to a place no one should go to...and to come back and heal. When the scar tissue is touched, memory of the wounding replays.

And if he touched that place in me and stayed with me the power was a pure, perfect light.

Each time he recoiled... he became my abuser.

Because it hurt me so much, he wrote rules to protect himself. But it is impossible to avoid the scars. Scars evoke the memory, as it replays he knows how much I need him and so he sets himself up to fail; as he fails he apologises and blames himself.

But there is no compassion
Just anodyne words supposed to bring me comfort.

But I need strength and a love fierce enough to face down all my monsters.

It broke me....tipped me into despair, so I forced it all into words. Explained it. Heard him say that he would be with me. Watched him let me down again and again.

If he senses need in me he cannot give.

This is after all the reason why I tried to shift 'us' into D/s; to simplify, to make clear...to pretend that I didn't need, that it was all about him...but he is cruel to himself and wont give himself what he needs either.

I had thought that proving to him that I'm submissive would be enough.

What I hadn't realised was that I was plain wrong. I was especially wrong in thinking that when he said that he wanted to be with me, or to 'take me there' and 'be by my side' it was true.

I assume now that it is his shadow- all those fragments of personality one disowns-that turns his promises into lies....

The trouble is some kinds of sex will open the door to that hotel room (the place in which I was split into kink) he will take me to the door and push forwards as the door sucks me in and slams shut. I'm in a hot darkness feeling the knife slip into my guts and my self bleed into an oblivion of pain...He wont step through the door, there is no rescue...he is sorry.

Domination provokes this transit from fun, to the door. The difference between staying with me or betrayal, is energy. He betrays me when he steps out, breaks the dream, fractures the spell and abandons me. The bright energy solidifies into a black star radiating blades under my skin, deep in my belly.

Staying with me means sliding with me into the heat and darkness.

But because that is what I need...he wont give it.
That's the rule.

So what do I do?

A quick note...

I said, it's just about energy!
How could it be anything else.
What is the problem...why does it have to be complicated.

I said this through rage.
Through tears.

Same old old.
All is fine and then he starts asking me questions (mid fuck) and I have told him a thousand times, I can't do intellectual thought and feeling at the same time. I mean do you want me electric, or want me for a discussion?!

Next comes anxiety...
sorry I'm out of time!
TBC...

He mentioned Dom drop.

So I went looking.

Dom Drop is described as a loss of power, or energy.

There are several main idea about why it happens with the most logical describing it as stress and the least helpful - in my view - describing it as being out of kilter with one's inner energies and proscribing meditation to reconnect to one's various chakras.

The most logical things I've read describes the cause of Dom Drop as a dislocation either between what a person thinks he wants and what he really wants or between trying to be a full time Dom in  the real world- where Dom behaviour is less than practical 24/7.


When a person tries to act in accord with a role,  rather than taking account of feelings the result is stress and stress makes it difficult to think clearly about things..


The rules, inexplicit or explicit, written down or not can cause problems. The rules are made up of all the things the Dom wishes for and imagines he would like. Some days the rules just don't fit reality: hormones, illness, tax bills, visits to in laws. When things don't work it can feel as if you may as well throw away the rope and toys because you have failed to live up to your own high standards.

That for sure is Dom Drop.

Unfortunately,  it is hard to understand what's happening as it happens and some Doms interpret the feeling as the submissive basically stealing energy or it may make him feel resentful that his partner is trying to get him to be more Dominant by being too submissive, trying to force him into dominant behaviour.

It is incredibly painful to feel rejected for being submissive, or worse too submissive.

The doctor and I don't have any rules or rituals. I sometimes think that we should, but researching Dom Drop has made me think again about that.

I do have a role though, my role is to give him pleasure and my skill is in making sex more. As it's a role I gave myself decades ago, I've had a lot of practice and as it isn't an overt sort of thing in the outside world- no need for equipment or anything really- just a set of protocols, really, it is easy for me to act in accord with my role. It's mainly about allowing the erotic rather than getting in its way...hard to explain.

But if I was trying to be stereotypically submissive, doing things 'by the book' it would be too easy to find myself resenting the time it was taking because I have other things to do. My compliance could easily be only to get a reward.

I don't want to be in that position. I don't see submission as an outer shell or mask, it comes from inside, from respect; submission has to come from genuine respect.

So Doms who blame subs for being too submissive...perhaps it is the system.

Anyway, back to Dom Drop, what's the solution.

Mistress Steel, of all the pages I've read today is the person with an answer that makes any sense to me; she explains it here: (LINK):

In her experience it makes sense to divide time into: ON, and a neutral OFF for the ordinary things, talking, filling in university loan forms for one's offspring, deciding which film to watch etc.

The ON happens when ever the Dom feels like he wants to take control and is signaled by words or gestures..

His hand on the back of my neck is particularly pleasing for me.

There.
That's really simple isn't it, but I'm not dismissing the caffeine and chocolate or ale and cakes!

Silence is my restraint.

up

The way someone looks at me, his expectations allow or disallow.
Only the electricity is mine.
Physical events take me there.

Path is ambiguity.
So brittle; a dark bridge on a dark night over an even darker abyss. Ambiguity is nowhere, nothing to hold onto.
I dissolve in it.
It tastes of flame.
~
When he says things to me and I don't know what is true.
Wanting to ask questions, to get to the facts, refraining is a discipline.
~
Silence is my restraint.
It makes me itch, it is uncomfortable.

I burn in discomfort, refusing to run or fall.

So important to keep my balance..and to stay in the dark between worlds until I dissolve blue flecked with gold.

Down.
Submission is below the horizon, a sunless realm. Subspace is a station of the soul, absolute zero- where the electricity flows unimpeded for eternity.

---

The quiz.

Here is the link.

http://quizfarm.com/quizzes/Sex/poeticthinker/do-you-have-an-inclination-for-bdsm/

And here are my results.

Alchemy.

 "Look for the Stone in the fires of Sulphur, which are, in Man, the fires of the unredeemed passions. Before the sacred Stone may be discovered, the Fires must be put under control."

It sounded the correct thing to do- to pull the energy back down into his balls- but it wasn't.

It felt as if the energy had gone, he had just switched it off, disconnected it.

 It's what he does.

 This time I spoke.

Switching off or cutting or disconnecting serves no purpose. It is better to keep the fire flowing. The only time it's right to 'pull the energy down' is to prevent orgasm for then the pull to come stops the energy dissipating; do it enough times with orgasm about to happen, and the energy remains quiescent and 'radiant'.

 I never told him before that when he cut the energy off that it is wrong. I respected it and took him at his word, I thought he knew what to do

A contract.

Contracts is a subject I keep meaning to get around to.

My problem is that the good doctor and I undoubtedly have some kind of a contract- but nothing at all has ever been written down.

The only rule we had was that the invisible, inexplicit contract that contains all our hopes and fears about relationships, should be reconsidered each year on May the 1st.

In theory, the contract should be at the beginning; written down, explicit and signed before any intimate, physical contact. But life isn't like that. When I think back over past relationships, such a contract would have been reassuring, and could have made tough decisions a little easier to make.

But I've never gone into a situation knowing the rules before hand, I never knew where anything may go, and the idea of such a thing as trying to work out what anyone wanted offended against 'being natural' and could be dismissed as controlling. It also feels as if writing a contract could prevent exploring forbidden territory and behavior...

Nevertheless, the rules (the invisible contract) are always there...somewhere. Even if there are supposed to be no rules, the invisible rules easily turn into areas of confusion and finally conflict when accidentally broken.

Ultimately it must be better to know what he rules are instead of tripping over them and into argument and misery.

So I'm going to imagine that I'm about to enter into a relationship with someone for the purposes of playing with rope. I've only shared coffee and basic information with this imaginary person- take it for granted that the relationship is about power and sex- but not necessarily domination/submission; more top and bottom!

By imagining that scenario, I may be able to write a basic contract someone in a similar position should be asked to sign.

---

A contract.
This is an agreement entered into by.......and........on the 12th January 2012.
This contract is in effect for three months ending on the 12th April 2012.
It can be terminated at any time, by either person with out need for explanation.

This agreement is private.

During this period (dates and times to be arranged) I will use rope to immobilize you for the purposes of erotic play.

Please answer yes or no to the following:

Do you understand the use of a safe word.

Please write your safe word:..............

Do you consent to rope being used to immobilize your limbs (legs, and arms).

Do you consent to being immobilized, unable to move, roll over etc by rope.

Do you have any known psychological or emotional triggers that should be avoided.

Do you have any health issues such as hepatitis, HIV, asthma or diabetes and medication that you my need to take during a scene.

---

Now would I be happy with someone asking me to sign such a simple contract?

It doesn't mention what may or may not happen, so I would assume that anything could happen- but I have a safe word. there is no list of things to create a menu such as 'is it permissible to use, vibrators (outside your clothes) vibrators on your skin, nipple clamps?' there is no mention of limits either. But this is erotic play, not master-slave, or edge-play or orgasm-control.

The situation is one person tying another for pleasure. But perhaps there should be a list of possibilities skilfully written like a tempting menu?

The only important thing missing is mention of safe sex. I don't hint at it with the question do you have a latex allergy or say, 'do you understand the term: fluid-bonded? Sex is a kind of elephant in the room- tying someone isn't necessarily a prelude to fucking...but it may lead there, and it has to include 'rubber'.

I'm assuming that just so long as one person knows that, there is no need to say it?!
That really does not sound right!

TBC...