The 12 Gates.

He mentioned Dom drop.

2012-01-24T16:10:00.000Z

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.

2012-01-24T11:47:00.001Z

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.

2012-01-16T09:56:00.000Z

Here is the link.

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

And here are my results.

Alchemy.

2012-01-12T14:16:00.000Z

"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.

2012-01-12T13:35:00.000Z

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...

A rope workshop.

2012-01-06T14:56:00.001Z

The night had been cold, traces of frost were still on the car, but we went on the motorbike anyway- along the motorway, around traffic islands, to the back end of an industrial town.

We were early.

Google maps is usually (in my experience so far) not so accurate about post codes; we didn't know exactly where we were going. We got off the bike and looked around. The map image showed a single story workshop...workshops can be almost anything and anywhere...but I'd read in the invite that the dungeon was upstairs.

Clearly we were not outside the right place.

When other people started arriving we followed them; realizing that this building- off the street, with a courtyard and plenty industrial decay- was the right one, the good doctor left a very nervous me, to get his bike off the road and to park closer to the correct workshop.

I confirmed my name to the guy with the clipboard and instantly forgot- out of fear!- where I was supposed to go next. I went up too many sets of stairs...and then back down again, took a turning through a door that wasn't locked and found myself in a sitting room. Only the fact that there were lots of other people in there too made me realize that yes, it is OK.

I'm not in someone's private space!

I shuffled my way towards the coat hangers and tried to get out of my leather trousers and armour plated jacket without bumping into anyone or falling over and then spoke to the first friendly looking face I saw.

There were lots of us.
There was coffee.
I was still extremely nervous.

The first workshop was a rope 101 for novices, we made our way up the stairs, past the semi-medical set up, into the black room- a dungeon. 'We' were about sixteen people, all couples except for two guys whose partners had not been able to attend, and Lady X our instructor.

We sat down, we tied ourselves a one limb, basic, simple tie that would do the job and not get tighter!

Then it was tying two limbs together. The good doctor took my feet and tied my legs.

It was very jolly and absolutely the most normal and natural thing in the world to be sitting in a room, surrounded by metal and leather restraints and various devices, and lots of other people all tying each other up.

Latter, after food and drink we were on to getting hog-tied. Master X had us all in another room and by then we had fallen into conversation with Captain Winchester whose relationship was 'complicated' and who had come quite a long way to learn how to tie, but- because he didn't have a partner with him- was paired with the other partner-less guy.

Both the Captain and I were displaying our absolute naivety discussing what could be meant by a DVD called 'The use of Sounds' but the good doctor was there to remind us and I recalled with horror my days at the women's hospital (I was a member of staff...not a patient thank goodness).

The hog-tying, when it happened, was absolutely hilarious. The room wasn't very big and shrinking by the second as one by one we (the subs') were pushed face down onto the carpet. Captain Winchester cracked me up, he kept on talking, I think the guy tying him was rather rough...but his comment about the carpet 'not being very clean' struck me as soooo funny. Latter I tried to explain how being submissive means that you could find yourself sincerely apologising because the carpet wasn't dirty enough!

Latter in the conversation we discussed 'going out' do you have to go out and 'live the lifestyle'? He had been out once -one time more than the doctor and I- but was rather put off by the fantasy aspect: people having names that made them sound as if they practiced black magick, and the semi-goth clothing. It is true, Captain Winchester would look good in a white linen suit with a brightly coloured waistcoat and not so good in the fake leather and platform boots.

By the way, there is no uniform for Doms!

After a while it struck me as a shame that Captain Winchester had come all this way and not got to practice doing a chest harness on anyone. I was in a difficult position, I wanted to let him practice on me, but how do I do that? It didn't make any difference if I was attracted to the Captain or not, I'm not supposed to offer myself to anyone for any reason, good or bad...but it is my nature to want to give someone what they need...

Anyway, I asked the doctor, hoping that I didn't make him feel bad for not thinking of it before me.

I think three of them were tying me in the end.
I put my mind in neutral because I was being good.

Perhaps it would be better for everyone if I wasn't good?
I do wonder if my capacity to zone out is a bad habit.

Then back to the dungeon for 'erotic rope'. Lady X demonstrated and then told us that we didn't have to take our clothes off.

We all -except one- discarded our clothes. I have never had my boobs tied in the way you most often see- rope wrapped around them so that they are squeezed up and forwards. I think it looks ugly on me so I go and take a look in the mirror: it looks ugly and I don't like it at all! On the other hand, I had thought that it would hurt, but it doesn't, even with scratchy rope.

Captain Winchester and the other guy now had a woman to practice on as her partner, a paramedic- had been called out. I thought it very bad of him to complain that he thought that her boobs were too small so he couldn't get them to stay in the rope! They were not small at all, he couldn't let himself grasp them as if he meant it I think, but anyway!

The next lesson would have been suspension, but it was late afternoon and the light was fading and ice increasing...Having had a lot of fun, we said our goodbyes and left.

Tantra- "The Great Work".

2012-01-04T20:59:00.004Z

Valentine Worth:

'All of nature in its awful vastness and incomprehensible complexity is in the end interrelated - worlds within worlds within worlds: the seen and the unseen - the physical and the immaterial are all connected - each exerting influence on the next - bound, as it were, by chains of analogy - magnetic chains. Every decision, every action mirrors, ripples, reflects and echoes throughout the whole of creation. The world is indeed bound with secret knots.'

I can remember a time when sex was a wanty + shouty man trying to get his fingers into my bra and down my pants and then cumming too quickly, or not cumming but trying to, with a fixed expression of bored determination on his face...

I can remember a time when the promise of sex with...

... an emphasis on the woman's sexual fulfillment;
on a man's ejaculation control;
and acknowledges the spiritual connection between the couple and the Universe.

would have made me weep with relief!

Some part of me- at the age of seventeen after my first so called proper sex- soon realised that anyone I had sex with was going to be a new student who needed to be taught to slow down and enjoy...that no one else was going to take care of the erotic, or teach someone how to listen. It had to be me.

My problem was, at the time when those three promises of Tantra could have made me cry, I was married. The game was lost, my goose was cooked and I was thinking of leaving for good....

New Age Tantra could easily be Female led-lite, just tweak it a bit and I see a Cybele Domme and a small man on string. It is a bit of a porky pie (lie) to pretend that there is no power dynamic going on under the sweetness and light, New Age surface. From where I am now (finally with a man I can genuinely respect and willingly bow down before) New Age Tantra looks like a reflex, or inversion of what the Daily Mail and 'Women's magazines' tell us is normal; it is an antidote to the errors of patriarchy.

But it is just one way out of many, to deal with bad sexual technique.

Finally- some decades latter- I am grateful to what I learnt before I'd slept with anyone from books that alluded to 'Tantra' and I'm grudgingly grateful to my experiences of the real thing.

All in all the version of Sacred sex I use, never really was, and never will be, Tantra.

Though saying that, breaking taboos is a left hand technique and I do use a visualisation of a central channel filling, expanding and spilling (spilling is getting it wrong). But I don't 'refine' ching or chi; I don't use energy to cast spells, I do not become 'the deity', nor do I imagine my partner to be anything other than all that he is.

So, where did New Age Tantra come from and how did it get here?

In short: New Age Tantra borrowed images and terminology from two religions Chinese/Tibetan/Japanese Taoist ‘inner alchemy‘- Nei Tan- and Indian Hindu, -deity worship.

Deity worship is union with the divine, this includes visualizing oneself as the deity in the act of sexual union with a consort and/or "transgressive" acts such as token consumption of meat or alcohol (Dear reader, we are talking New Age here, you may not find the idea of coffee or wearing a fur coat so transgressive. Just accept that some people are less jaded than you or I). The most famous of the first books on this subject to be written in English was Shakta and Shakti by Sir Arthur Avelon (Sir John Woodruff) in 1918.

Modern day alchemists (Nei-Tan) having taken a Taoist view, use sex as a force to accomplish the circulation (and therefore purification) of ‘life force’. Probably the first book to introduce the ideas of Nei-Tan to English readers was The Secret of the Golden Flower translated in the 1920's by Richard Wilhelm

Tantra then, is practiced by people who wish to combine sex and spirituality; Tantra is a way to elevate consciousness to a higher plane.

Both interpretations require the practitioner to use visualisations in order to control, contain and focus energy/ consciousness.

Likewise, another use of sexual energy is to raise a 'cone of power'. This technique belongs to modern day Wicca. All spell work consists of visualising a goal, then focusing energy and intention onto that goal. The release of the energy with the imagined 'cone' is not always released then and there as an orgasm. There is no need for people to get closer than side by side in a circle and clothes can remain on. But there is still inherent in the cone of power the concept that sexual energy is a thing that can be directed and used for some purpose.

Wicca was- my apologies, this is only what I think- invented by Margaret Murray- Witch Cult in Western Europe 1921- Gerald Gardener and Alistair Crowley.

The Golden Dawn (MacGregor Mathers, William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott) follows the 'Hermetic' lineage and doesn't seem to deal in energy to quite the same extent as Wicca.

It isn't just pleasure.

Circa 1920, the idea of 'wireless' energy as a spiritual transmission, seemed to move away from spiritualism and towards sexual energy, libido as Freud called it. Wilhelm Reich- who worked with Freud during the 1920's- treated sexual energy as something analogous to electricity; it could be stored in its own special kind of capacitor called an Orgone accumulator: orgone being the name for sexual energy.

This lineage of thinking about living bodies and desire as a kind of magnetic force deriving from a flow of energy can be traced back to 1631 and Athanasius Kircher's first book, Ars Magnesia and before then to William Gilbert's De Magnete (1600).

Again in the 1960's old books on esoteric subjects began to recirculate, perhaps stimulated by Gerald Gardner publishing Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959). In the 1970's I was reading about techniques required for The Magnum Opus- the great work- in books about witchcraft, psychology and alchemy.

But finally, when I actually got to practice the things I'd read about I was in a situation that required me to practice ‘tantra’ within celibacy and this really does explain why being tied up or beaten, humiliated or given away, anything BDSM is, and would be easier than my three years as a songyum.

Sex within the practice of Tibetan Buddhism is used as a ‘force’ to induce consciousness to coalesce and to enter the various inner-channels. It was also used, in my experience, as an antidote to sex.

In the end I learnt a lot, but Tantra isn’t my path or calling, just something that I could do. I’d practised creating a belief in the channels and learning orgasm control years before, because such stuff was hinted at in books about witchcraft as essential, but I didn’t believe that it would lead to enlightenment.

The dissonance between being a partner in bed and completely separate during the day, ultimately proved too much. Interesting though it was because some sick part of me enjoys expending intellectual power trying to integrate something that is impossible to integrate. I simply cannot see sex as something to over come or grow out (develop out of because enlightened beings don't do sex for pleasure!). The Vajrayana was a discipline that enabled me to use what I already knew and to look at things from a different angle…I'm not ungrateful. I am puzzled that I didn't change my partner's mind...

Well so far this has been a list of all the things I have probably believed in at one time or another; but the basis for why goes back to my first experience of sex. Sex and the ignorance about sex made having sex as precious as finding water in a desert, sex was precarious, it was treated badly (not supposed to matter) it could be taken away at any moment, I decided that other people's ignorance made sex difficult for me. So I resolved to make things clear in my own mind, to deal with it- what ever it was- and I vowed never to go along with any paradigm that made sex out to be inherently a problem.

In other words sex+

From Crowley I took on the notion that sex is sacred because it is the simplest way to experience transcendence or complete immanence; and it was clearly a big mistake to have thrown the whores and lady-boys out of the temple.

From my own experience, it can be a mistake to treat sex as if it is an ordinary thing.

‘Sacred sexuality’ as I practice it has two main sources: Herodotus (far from accurate about ‘the Persians‘), and who ever first wrote ‘The epic of Gilgamesh’ (the role of Shamhat). There is no Higher purpose to Sacred sex, no enlightenment or altered state; but it is ‘a calling’. My ambition was to have become someone’s ‘Scarlet woman’ (perils of reading Crowley). But having read of some of the things Crowley put his scarlet women through, perhaps I took the right direction!

+Link For a blog entry on the Candamaharosana Tantra.

Next..the disconnect.

2011-11-21T09:31:00.001Z

The *disconnect* .
I guess it is something that happens to everyone some time.

So, how did it happen to me?

The timer is set to twenty minuets.
"I want you to be compliant", he says.

You would be correct to say that that the disconnect just means that I don't like what he is doing. Not liking is prime, but there is more to it than me just being 'mardy' and difficult, or not getting what I want. Also I can't help thinking that the disconnect may be the flip side of subspace, as if the disconnect was a desert. A long and unpleasant walk that ends in the blissful void.

This is, after all, what people usually mean by submission- that submission has to be forced somehow. I agree that submission is on the other-side of something I don't like, but only if I get through the disconnect. I'm not sure how to do that...because the disconnect is my withdrawal, there is nothing good about it.

It is when I disconnect from a situation. I consciously try to switch all feeling off.

I'm angry.

I can't see anything good in what he is doing.

When he put the pegs on my nipples it didn't hurt, I was too angry to feel pain.

I just felt ugly and numb.

I resented the burning sensation that was trying to be 'me', I refused to acknowledge it. I tried to shrink it into oblivion. It was hard to do, so I loathed the situation even more and wondered how much of 'vanilla' is like this?

So why didn't it send me to subspace; the rope, having to keep still?
Was it because I'd agreed to enter this space bordered by the start and end of the timer?

Or was it something else?

Well it's a scene!
I don't know of any other or better 'safe' way to explore this stuff. My agreement to a beginning and end was the reason why I didn't collapse into absolute misery at the end.

So, something else, not the format of *scene* caused the disconnect.

I think that when someone is tied- bondage- the shadows the rope casts are more important than what comes next or the actual feeling of restraint. The shadows cast by the rope are the implications; the meaning of what is happening and the possibilities. When he ties me we are stepping into a fantasy- for he knows me, he knows that he doesn't need to tie me! I'm happy to open my legs for him and that I don't need to be chastised or forced or made to do anything.

Rope, used on me- from my point of view is illogical and almost insulting unless he honors the rope -the activity of tying.

When he asks for my compliance he is asking for more than a refusal to struggle, he is telling me not to feel....of course he wouldn't know that, nor can he know until he identifies with that part of him.

He asks for compliance because it annoys him to tie a struggling person.
Also I feel trapped by my belief that he wants me to like what he is doing.

I can't like it because it makes no sense.
I'm not submissive until made to be!

I can like it and have in the past because I can put D/s into a sacred sex 'framework'.

When he ties me, unless I actively chose to slip out of D/s and back into 'sacred sex' I am dealing with someone and something that I don't actually like, to act otherwise is lying. Compliance is a lie. When he asks for compliance I hear him asking me to be someone who loves him and wants to be tied.

But that's not me...

Paradoxically I have to enter the scene because rope can send me into this disconnect or subspace. I need to understand the disconnect. I want to be in subspace.

Compliance though, via rope represents every time anyone has ever forced me or emotionally blackmailed me, restrained me, treated me like a thing and disregarded my feelings. By turning the rope into compliance, it becomes every time I've had to comply 'for the greater good' in some way or other.

When he ties me and asks me to comply he becomes my abuser. I couldn't admit that to myself before. I was too angry.

Which is how it should be...because I said that I wanted to deal with triggers. Triggers will make me angry and show me things I didn't know were there.

The only thing is, the process of disconnection is pretty horrible. I don't even try to protect myself- as I can't feel, I can't care. Nor does he understand what's going on (hence the need for the twenty minuets) borders and boundaries...

Subspace isn't exactly the opposite, just different. Instead of disallowing feeling, I identify with feeling; it is like becoming water, or smoke- formless- everything is more. It seems to center, for me anyway, on my relationship with coercion, on how I process it, on how I deal with physical and emotional pain, on how I protect or abandon myself.

Subspace is selfless acceptance- the coils of Tiamat- prima materia.

And then there is the requirement to trust *my abuser* and to respect him, which leads into the domain of sacred sex and out of D/s for me anyway...

How to create a 'scene'.

2011-11-14T08:16:00.001Z

How to?
Decide on how many minuets the scene is going to last, try just twenty for a start.

Who ever is dominant sets the rules.

When the scene is agreed upon and and understood- set the timer.

Ah, but before that...the safe word, make sure that we both know each other's safe word.

After that, for me: hot coffee, sugar, biscuits!

That, Dear Reader, is how to create a scene- in its simplest form.

For at the very least four years, probably since we got married (seventeen years...) I have been waiting for him to 'create' a scene.

I had told him why, and how a sensible person would keep well away from anything that came close to reproducing the 'feelings' that had created that fracture-line in the first place, but that I wanted to 'go there' and deal with it.

Actually I think that I am sensible.

I also think that anyone drawn to kink is bound to realise that sex, as portrayed by film, book and song: sex as a great tragedy or comedy...is only telling you half of it...

Energy is where it's at folks.

Dealing with that line of kink in me requires an abuser for the duration of the scene, and then rescue is the truth that this isn't as it was, that now I'm safe and loved.

I had asked him to go with me into my personal hell; and if he could love me there...I would not be free, but something would change.

The bad thing that happened was also good- that dissonance is the cause of the fracture line- when it happened I went through revulsion and into absolute submission. I don't distrust myself, or feel bad about it. It is just that there is a lot of energy associated with those feelings.

But this is a desire to play, it isn't therapy unless being sick of trigger points that lead to pain and wanting to reconnect with that energy correctly, is therapy?

I don't want rid of it, I just want the past to become the past and to stop leaking into my present!

What happened was, he pretended that he understood.
He didn't, not at all.

But nor did he ask sensible questions

What happened was he inadvertently activated the triggers and without any understanding- and that is beginning to make things worse...So last blog I had decided that if he couldn't set boundaries, then I would. I was letting him do me harm, hoping that it would help, hoping that suddenly he would see what was happening.

I still don't get why he didn't understand that it has to be done as a scene.

I thought that that was obvious...

If someone doesn't see something that is obvious their attention has to be distracted, and elsewhere; what was he thinking?

Saturday Sunday, talking about my feeling of betrayal...because it has been at least four years since I asked him to take me down (be my undertaker) and I feel that he has failed me absolutely...I am angry and hurt that he didn't take me seriously enough to tell me that he was out of his depth.

We talked about why he hadn't tried to fulfill his promise.

His experience was of feeling that there was something that I wanted from him but that I wouldn't tell him what that thing was. and so finding something that worked and sticking to it was all important and making some kind of (any!) mistake would mean that I didn't love him...

So he worked hard to fulfill his personal curse by making mistake after mistake, instead of taking me seriously?

So how do I feel now about it?

I'm only going into D/s territory in the 'safe way', that is, his usual way of 'owning' me is only slightly risky, the trigger point it activates (I'm beginning to think that kink is dependant upon those tight corners of the mind) is one I dealt with ages ago.

And scene, setting and using, is vital for anything else.
A safe word isn't enough...

Kiss the ground...

2011-11-11T13:02:00.001Z

At the begining I wanted him to be my Undertaker.

I wanted to be taken to the bad places in my memory-soul and to be allowed to be 'me'. I wanted to go to the places where I'd had to keep my mouth shut and to pretend...

It is as if some part of me is locked in amber. I wanted to go back because the places were real, the damage it did to me was real, and I needed him to release me from the silence by letting me struggle and fight back and by it being now.

But it wont work, can't work. There are two reasons for that. First, he is at the mercy of his own 'triggers' and secondly, he doesn't understand what I'm talking about when I say that I want him to take me back to the cracks in my soul...

And I'm stupid enough, or hopeful, or submissive enough to ignore all the warning lights and let things crash.

I don't use the safe word because I hope beyond reason that he will understand..

Wiki defines psychological abuse as:

a form of abuse characterized by a person subjecting or exposing another to behavior that may result in psychological trauma, including anxiety, chronic depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Such abuse is often associated with situations of power imbalance.

In 1996, Health Canada defined emotional abuse as:

emotional abuse is motivated by urges for "power and discontrol". Emotional abuse includes rejecting, degrading, terrorizing, isolating, corrupting/exploiting and "denying emotional responsiveness".

But I wanted to go back and deal with the pain and anger and I wanted to be there with someone who loved me and was sane so that when the memory replayed it wouldn't be the original version, it would be the new, safe version.

The location does not fade.

But he didn't plan it, it was never a 'scene'...I step on the cracks by accident and the fog comes down. I start to disconnect from everything (I shut down and close all doors, I stop listening).

Then he asks me what is wrong...but I think that he should know by now.

But he wants to know because 'he wants to understand what he has done wrong'. I hear his words from a thousand miles away, and I hear it as a selfish, ignorant, childish failure...he could have thought about it, asked himself what I needed.

In the beginning it wasn't about him.
He was not the one who had done the damage in the first place...

By taking me to the edge of that place and by not dealing with it the edges of the borders made of memory start to bleed into each other...and it is starting to feel as if he was my ignorant, selfish, abuser then and now.

Well, no more.

There is a lot of energy in those psychic cracks, but to go there with someone who is resolutely a nice man, is a very bad idea. It is time to start using the safe word, probably for the slightest hint of discomfort.

Solitary practitioner.

2011-11-04T12:20:00.001Z

In modern pagan circles, to be a solitary practitioner is considered as valid as being a member of a group. Solitary is making it all up, listening for the the voice in the dark, following the way...

I'm not so sure that 'solitary' is considered valid in 'kink' circles.

In Tibetan Buddhism 'solitary' is advanced practice, to be solitary you need first to have spent time with a teacher and secondly to have been given a practice.

Though I don't trust any assumptions about who or what anybody is, my guess is that most of 'us' are of the Fet Life generation. I mean have learnt it all from the internet, probably joined FetLife and possibly gone to local munches.

By that I mean most of 'us' have gone out intellectually, have read and written far more than was possible pre-internet, and then gone out to socialise in the flesh.

In theory 'we' should know more than 'they' did in the past?
But knowledge comes from doing and making, not reading...and I have a problem with that going out part.

I'm not looking for the complications other people bring. I don't want to fall for anyone again, I don't have any desire to 'give myself' away any more. Been there, done that...the pain is something to work with; but I've done the work.

Same with 'religious' stuff. Other people are supposed to be following the same teachings and doing the same practices, but actually most of it becomes lowest common denominator...people talk about what everyone agrees on; no room for dissent or new ways of seeing...

In kink terms, I don't want to be told things I already know, or to get caught up in other people's problems.

Right now I'm working on the 'being owned' thing, with someone who keeps forgetting that being a Dom isn't old fashioned patriarchy as depicted by the feminists, and so keeps running away from it.

My criticism of the feminist point of view is that it - not men- portrayed women as powerless.

This dominating himself thing, causes me problems.

It makes me think that I should have ignored it when he started looking at pictures of women tied up and allowed it to stay in the virtual.

I couldn't be jealous that he looked.
I was jealous that he wouldn't do it with me...

So I want to be owned because I'd experienced that level of surrender before, and he believes that he wants to own...but if I play a fantasy scene in my head and ask myself what I'd do if some long haired (the hair is important) slightly older than me, bloke strode across the room, grabbed me by my hair and demanded that I lick his balls...which version of me would win?

Sacred whore, or submissive?

The sacred one would comply without a seconds thought- sex is sacred. The submissive would look for her Dom to stop her, or make her do it.

I'm having an identity crisis, don't know which one I am anymore.

Am I feeling old?
Is that a part of the problem?

I see myself as from the pre-internet days, one of the 'old ones' who had to try a lot harder and seek a bit deeper to find other people and to learn better ways to do things. It is no surprise that every so often I read essays by someone from a pre-internet era of kink, lamenting the bad behaviors of the 'young whipper-snappers'.

Is it right to believe that there is an older culture of kink being written out by a newer, less 'heavy' version? Or is that older, heavier version obsolete, and any attempt to pass on that older stuff an attempt to ritualise behaviors?

Kink is, in my experience a way to engage with deep behaviors- sex and fear- and is necessarily encoded in a language that has to be an inversion of normal.

But normal changes.
Damn! Everything changes....

Is there really such a thing as 'old' kink?

I put myself on that 'old ones' side of the divide, Sacred sex was 'my thing', still is. In the past information was hard to find, someone to use it with even harder, and as 'my style' is a combination of 'Pagan' and 'Kink' I never felt able to fit comfortably into either camp.

The 'religious' sex as a means to enlightenment was always a compromise for me because it felt more right to me to use it as an offering. I'd worked on the architecture a long time before (visulising the energy going up my spine and holding it...) it seemed to be a trick really, a way to have better sex.

Being with someone who was trying to use and to extinguish sex at the same time and the strange double life I had to lead in a 'celibate' house, made me see how much I enjoyed discipline, again when it was an offering, done for a reward...That's how I knew that I was submissive.

The celibate situation required me to practice orgasm control. This wasn't a new thing for me, I'd used it by myself to create that energy pathway. Doing it with someone was terrifying as it required me to trust and to hand over my own wishes. I taught him my discipline...

The experience of such a submission was a drug; one I have no wish to give up.

Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm saying. Just I'm about to send a cheque to pay for a day out at a workshop with others and rope and it is making me nervous!

Red book.

2011-10-30T12:04:00.000Z

I am beginning to believe that there has been a purpose in all the negativity I've collected in my bloggings.

This is not a new thought, I've believed it before and then found out that I was wrong, but over all...even though It breaks personal rules to let myself express anger; I mean to be so angry and to be so public about it that I feel justified as I write it all out for everyone to see..I think it served its purpose, and it will continue over at The Blue Book.

There seems to be something useful in learning to recognize and reorganize. I needed to recognize the bad things because the good overwhelms the bad, really. Then to separate what works from what does not.

But for now and for here, well - enough is enough!

This blog is now the Red Book.

If the Blue Book is for disasters and crashes, then this one should be for the good stuff.

Let's begin.
A few days ago I discovered that lying on a hard, back-massager spike, had things in common with masturbation...the intensity of the experience was sending me down into a drooling dribbling mess. This may just be a submissive thing, something to do with how I process pain, I assume that it is.

Trigger points are found in more than one realm of my life. There are the psychological triggers and then there are the muscular triggers, the 'knots' in my back and across my shoulders.

The physical, muscular trigger points are tight bunches of muscle fibers that wont let go, they are in cramp. And because they are so tight they send referred aches and pains into my neck. I love to have them massaged, but a back rub is never hard or deep enough.

So I tried lying on something that would push into the heart of the trigger. Oddly there is something about it that creates a panic sensation as the muscle first cramps and then releases. The panic is I think some muscles in my abdomen tightening, a referred sensation.

The panic flows away as the muscle slowly lets go and then finally the muscle starts to twitch. The twitching also is lovely.

The whole thing takes quite a long time and what I suddenly realised is, the experience sends me spiraling down into subspace.

The first stage is to be overwhelmed by non harmful pain. Overwhelmed means to feel that it is too much and to want to run away..

The second stage is to understand that the pain is intensified by my tension and then to accept and absorb it. This is submission and the start of subspace for me.

As the muscle lets go (and I can't make it do this by will power, it happens only when it happens) I soften around it. As I let go I take the first step down into subspace. So the way into subspace is through a panic stage into unity with the sensation. The overwhelming sensation is not other, it is me.

Then I want more pain, and there is something about wanting more pain that sends me down one more subspace step.

It looks to me as if subspace and the descent into it, is a positive feedback loop in which more causes more, and down and down...I go.....

The shape of it...

2011-10-20T14:26:00.000+01:00

All of it...is supposed to be natural.

Sex is just supposed to happen like it is natural. When the mind is mentioned, it is usually described as the thing getting in the way.

Relax...relax...

The problem is both of us like self-control, actually I don't think this is a particularly kinky thing...just deviation from the natural is considered kinky, or isn't talked about.

I mean the alternative doesn't have to be tantra.
Where I want to be is just before the top of the crest. Just a nano-meter away from the drop. To get there and to stay there with someone takes a lot of skill.

My problem is...and this is a big problem because I don't want it to be this way...My problem is that he doesn't actually spend any time thinking or taking apart how sex works. He is still trying to please me, still projecting his negative feelings onto me or rather misreading submission as me not wanting sex.

The error in that statement is obvious. If I'm submissive and I don't want sex, either I'm in the wrong and there is something going on that he should know about. So the right thing to do is to find out....I wouldn't mind if he just assumed that I was being difficult, being treated as if I'm being difficult gives me permission to be an eel or a brat...both of which I suspect, annoy him, and he doesn't like it...but!

But eel and brat behavior have their place...

ah me, no time.
TBC.

I need a new tag..

2011-10-05T13:02:00.000+01:00

The Freudian concept: The Pleasure Principle- states that all people, everywhere and at all times use pleasure to feed the Id, our unconscious desires; and that everything we do is ultimately for pleasure, and to avoid suffering.

Sadism is, from a Freudian perspective, considered deviant.

And yet it is still all about pleasure.

Trouble is no one looks at the other side. People who use self-control consciously or unconsciously to avoid pleasure.

I personally found celibacy dead kinky, but I'm willing to believe those who tell me that they just don't like sex. But what of people who do enjoy it, but don't do it. What kinds of theories stop human beings fucking each other's brains out all the time...

Gil enjoyed sex; he enjoyed breaking rules. Then he enjoyed sacrificing it (and me) even more. I assume he has sex just once a week, same time, same place to stop himself going mad.

Bloody religion!

Is there a name for the syndrome of preventing yourself from experiencing pleasure?

So.
It is morning.
I've fumbled around and got the light.
Now the radio is on.
I'm exhausted from waking up...already.

Really, do we go to bed too late or what!?

He rolls over, lies besides me and behind me, around me, and begins rubbing my neck.

It's really nice, if I was a cat I'd be purring, but I can feel his cock stiffening and I know that the more I purr the stiffer it will get...

... and I know that no matter what I do he wont let me have it.

Because he doesn't think that there is enough time.

We have about fifteen to twenty minutes, which is not a small amount of time; if you were in the dentists chair having a tooth pulled, even with anaesthetic fifteen minutes would be a long time!

He thinks that it is worse for me if he gives it and takes it away...at this point I ask myself what he means by that.

I ask him.

He says that he doesn't want to upset me...

I assume he means I will want more and make him feel bad for not giving me more, for not doing what I want him to do, for being so selfish that he will actually leave me to go to work!

Pwfffttt is all I can say to that..
... and then ask, does he have any evidence to believe that this is what I'd actually do?

Have I ever done it?

I mean do I normally act like a three year old?

I think that he projects these feelings.
They have nothing to do with the real me.
I become his excuse and reason not to feel...

If I'm right then I've been respecting this refusing pleasure (another) syndrome, for years....because I thought that I was respecting his right to decide what to do.

What if, instead of doing the right thing I have been supporting his disrespect for his own feelings?

I put all this into words, tell him and get ten minutes of delicious fucking before he leaves me with the promise that as he hasn't cum, his cock will be extra springy, his balls more jiggly for the rest of the day and so work will be more interesting for him...

Leaving me to consider *cultural misogyny*.

In the name of science...

2011-10-04T15:52:00.003+01:00

Morning.
Sitting in bed, drinking coffee.
It's still dark outside.

The lamp by my bed is on, the radio too.
The world is shrunk to a pool of light.

He asks for a foot so that he can rub it for me.
I get the feeling that he is apologising...

Too weird, too weird, I think.
Why do I feel this way?

"Because of the way you dropped your hand on the bed last night"
He says...

"What"...??

"I felt as if you had wanted something"

"Really, I think that was me falling asleep"

"OK I feel bad that we didn't *do sex* last night while the house was empty"

"Oh...you need a plan then, you need to have a set of things we can do that will take half an hour" I say.

Do I need to say...it's such a pain not letting myself make the first move and now I'm being over logical in an attempt to make sure that things happen.

Submissive isn't passive, it is reactive.
But there has to be something to react to...

If he keeps handing over his power to me nothing will happen because I refuse point blank to pick it up!

I don't get angry, I get logical...

He is pulling the duvet out of the way, pulling down his shorts.

A hand around the back of my neck and now my face is against his cock.

At first I'm content to just breathe on him, but then I start to feel him with my lips. I stroke his balls with my hand. Soon only my tongue is sensitive enough for this and I start to wonder how far I should go. How much pleasure is enough, when does it reach a threshold point?

Actually I wonder why he doesn't just cum when he wants.
Is this another fragment of *the problem*...or a bit of the having to be better than my previous 'Sir'?

There isn't time to think, or ask him questions about this...time to get dressed.

The Dom who dominated himself...

2011-10-02T21:41:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately he didn't get anything out of it...

I am hoping that this is the final version, my last attempt to record my understanding of a syndrome that has developed recently. A syndrome in which he wont let himself be a Dom, and at the same time wont let me be submissive (which could be described as ultra-twisty domination...but actually, it is no fun at all)

Last time I wrote I realised that I was breaking my own rules, in all sorts of ways. Writing breaks the rules, being negative, criticising him...

One rule I keep breaking is the mistake of losing my head and I go along with his game.

That is most certainly a mistake.

So on Friday night, when I became aware of the bad thing, the syndrome, beginning to happen, I tried harder. I succeeded in keeping my head. I did it by turning the feelings into pictures.

Did it help to turn the feelings into images?
Perhaps it did.

I think it gave me some space, allowed me to distance myself from my feelings.

It helped me not to pick up on what he projects.

Having distanced myself, I asked him what he thought was happening.

It seems that the power-drop occurs when he starts to feel obliged to do what he is doing, and then starts to criticise and denigrate himself; ignoring any idea that crosses his mind, ignoring anything that isn't what he thinks that he is supposed to be doing right now.

Does something trigger it?
Seems to me it is just the duration of time.

I'm beginning to believe that if only I'd managed to reach a stopwatch (without him noticing...!?) then I'd see that it always happened after a certain amount of minutes.

My conclusion?
That he dominates himself and doesn't like it.
What a weird thought.

Some part of him projects onto me an internal dialogue full of self-criticism which feels to him necessary, it is to please me. A part of that self criticism is a belief that I'm just being patient and treating his proclivities as something that he will grow out of.

What have I done to cause this?
It's possible, I'm not saying that I couldn't have said or done something to make me seem this way..

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that I have never said that I wanted a beautiful, vanilla dream of empathic, total synchronous, two become one fantasy! I have said that I want to be buggered whilst I'm pleading with him to stop, to be tied up and made to feel utterly powerless, made to face my worst fears! I have broken my rules by getting so out of my head with the pain of rejection that I've hit him for not being my Undertaker, for refusing to take me down. The pain and sense of pointlessness of being with someone who promises to dominate me, and then refuses because he thinks that I don't like it, really does my head in! I had thought that I was marrying someone who would push me, who needed me and wanted me so much that he would demand proof, signs and symbols and sacrifices...if he wasn't that person I'd still love him just as much. But if I was right, what is he waiting for?

Meanwhile, the syndrome starts slowly and inexorably after an indeterminate amount of time fucking, is it because he feels bored (?) and then blames me because he makes himself act as if he has to give me what I want? Often the first sign is he tells me how brilliant I am.

Always a bad sign.

He becomes 80s man..

I really do not understand the 80s male thing about the father and the good man. As this quote shows, psychology books and papers were quite clear that male stuff is always a bad thing.

The archetypal Father was personified in films by emotionally uptight, Mr John Wayne: an old white guy who can't go native with the Indians - The long-haired, red Indians who live with nature rather than against it, and have better music and know how to dance. Nor can he tell his woman or child that he loves them.

Funny, that's exactly the attitude I have to use to keep above the pain of having desire taken away from me, and being given instead, comfort..

Anyway, apparently Father (the archetypal Father) is a bully because, we are told, he can't feel anyone elses pain.

The good man must feel other peoples pain if he is to be different, better.

So the son rejects the Father's stoicism and courage, blaming him for hurting his mom...because his mom tells him that if only his father would listen to her, then she would be happy...

Actually his mom really does say that..

So 80s man comes to believe that empathic pain is purification helping him get rid of patriarchy. If he feels any hint of suffering he gets down with it and into it and it feels so good, so Holy, so pure; he believes that the pain is speaking to him, teaching him something!

This is submissive behaviour, I understand it completely except in this case this is my pain we are talking about, my pain, albeit psychological pain. And since when did I say that it was caused by him not listening, or being a brute, when did I say that I had a problem with John Wayne?

I want pleasure, I want to be wanted and he is telling me that he wants to make it all better, and that he wants to understand -implication being, my pain has some other meaning. A deep and mystical meaning I suppose! No where is the recognition that perhaps I'm a tinsy wincy bit unhappy that his cock, so stiff a minute ago, is now wilting. How can I object to his cock being soft and, why am I not happy that he's started to be nice and now he is stroking me and looking into my eyes expecting me to be grateful!

It goes on.
He wants to explore...to listen, to understand and all I can think of is that this is because his mom still waits for his dad to leave the room before complaining how her husband doesn't understand..and deep inside he's gone along with this, he believes truly that's what women are really like, me included.

So, guess what, I'm not saying thank you, I'm not even looking at him, I'm just becoming more and more angry until I feel torn apart. I want to leave, find someone who isn't so cruel. I can't understand why he thinks that I will be grateful to him for stopping himself acting like a Dom.

And underneath it all he resents me.
That's the worst bit.

He dominates himself, the logic runs thus: he has to be nice, so he can't look at porn, he can't tie me up. He makes himself be the person he thinks I want (to fit his fantasy, to give him the excuse he needs to dominate himself, to criticise himself and make him a better man).

The outcome is, underneath it all, I'm being blamed!
Apparently I'm the one taking things off him!?

The wilt happens because he dominates himself into playing nice, but his cock refuses to play along. It tries to tell him stuff that would make it hard, but he's in dom mode, he wont listen! He's enjoying how much this hurts because it proves how good he is. He wilts because he isn't submissive.

So that's what happens.

I suppose talking to him about it is perilously close to going along with what it, the syndrome, demands, but confrontation didn't get me anywhere.

It was honest though.

Finally I don't think that there is anything left to say about this subject. Just it remains a weird case, the Dom who dominated himself...

Breaking rules.

2011-09-30T14:00:00.002+01:00

I have been breaking my own rules: could be I should have written myself a list, could be only by breaking them do I know they exist!

I'm annoyed with myself.
I'm annoyed with him.

By making a note of all that goes wrong it looks like that is all that happens.
On the other hand, what has been right recently?

I suspect that a part of a dominant's make-up is projecting, or rather experiencing things that he wouldn't like to happen to him, onto someone who gets off on experiencing those things. I allow him to vicariously feel what it is like to be in those submissive places, of enjoying being bullied, or hurt. There is a fascination because there is some kind of tension.

I also think that when he says that he wants to know what he has done wrong -ostensibly so that he can put it right...he means that he wants to feel bad for a legitimate reason. I feel that I'm supposed to play along with this, without the safety of being asked to switch.

I don't believe that he wants to learn anything by talking, because the subject is *What he has done wrong* . If he wanted to put things right it would involve talking about what we could do.

No, cut that!
I'm going along with his version again.
If he wanted to put it right all he would need to do is to either turn it into an ordeal, or forget about himself for a second and give me some pleasure.

The trouble is, he leads, I follow.
Being submissive is a problem now, it's got me into problems before.

But why has he never attempted to over-write the trigger he has created.Why did it get made, why wasn't slipping into D/s enough to stop what ever it is that happens to him? I thought it was because he was dominant, but thought that being dominant was a bad thing...

So self-loathing?

All the things that D/s allows when *the bad thing* starts to happen, he doesn't do. He is carried away by it, thinking it is something useful and important, whilst all the time it tears me to bits. It doesn't make sense on any level to me.

He says that he doesn't want it to hurt.
He doesn't do anything to stop it hurting.

When he looks at me, wanting me to give him permission, to give him reassurance, to act dominant, it is the cherry on the cake.
I fall apart.

I suppose I better work out some rules then, for myself.
But it feels awful...and I suspect that it's impossible to mend what has been broken.

Some part of me thinks that I should write fantasy from now on. Try to feel something good. Try to remember what I like...

I feel awful.

The Iron Age...

2011-09-27T12:41:00.000+01:00

is what I'm supposed to be writing about elsewhere, but there is still this afternoon...

I thought things were fine, I thought that they were sorted out. I felt close to him, I felt as if he would no longer keep himself at arms-length away from me.

Then it happened again, the glitch, the power-drop, the thing that has no name that I associate with him taking pleasure away, punishing me without calling it that.

I thought I'd been punished enough, I'd thought that he'd finally understood...And if there is punishment it should be an ordeal and made to serve a better purpose than his unconscious resentments and fears.

The power-drop is the psychic equivalent of being smashed against a wall; It leaves me disoriented, bruised, angry. I can feel the thin energy-lines that were only a moment ago brimming with a fine blue light, now filled with heavy, leaden pain. It is poisonous and killing...it's the kind of thing that creates depression, proves to me that life is not worth living. Really, too much of it and I have to leave because I know that this stuff is too wrong and should not be endured.

Now he wants to talk.
I really do not want to talk, there is absolutely nothing positive to be said.

But nor is there anything else to be done; he wont see what has gone wrong and do something to help me, it wont occur to him that the solution isn't to be found in an intellectual discussion, or that trying something, anything, is better than entering the spin-wash cycle that is his 'desire for purification' gone wrong.

Eventually, via words, it looks as if the cause is his method of orgasm control.

He doesn't have any.
He may call it control but I certainly don't.

Control isn't being able to switch off!

Since when has the way into consciousness, knowledge, staying alive even, been switching off! The dead are switched off, the drug addled and ignorant are switched off, much more of this from him and I will joint them.

So, his method of control is to drop the energy, regardless of what that does to me!

He doesn't hold it and let it fill him.

He is like a child that has been shouted at and just lets go into being 'good' without paying any attention to the consequences.

Needless to say I would be ashamed of myself if I did it that way, if I treated him so disrespectfully. Sex is union, in his case it is a union with more than just me...Sex for me is prayer and service.

I don't care a fig what he uses sex for, but for me it has always been sacred.

One's partner feels the energy, that is why I was a good consort, I could allow the energy to fill me and not drop it or lose it. I wasn't greedy or weak...but I am proud.

So that's that...

If you are wondering how to stop yourself from falling into orgasm obviously it isn't taking your mind completely out of it, it isn't dropping it as if it's stolen goods or something you have been told not to touch. The way is to to treat it as one does thought, in meditation. Just let it be, let it fill you, but don't let it connect with the (in my case) top of your head.

I assume it is better to visualise the energy system as a network of channels. Orgasm fills the channels during sex. The main channel goes to the top of the head. When this is filled, orgasm can happen, but it is best to let the energy fill this channel and let it remain there for as long as possible...in the seat of the thousand petaled lotus.

The pale blue light that fills the channels is beautiful and good, there is nothing more beautiful...the solidification, the caustic dry ash belongs in the Plutonium realm; it blows through the underworld...

The blue book of crashes...at the edge of vanilla.

2011-09-23T13:07:00.002+01:00

I like the title Edge of Vanilla, Tom's blog.
But the edge of vanilla is not a happy place for me to find myself.

I thought that pushing things into a D/s template would sort the energies out, prevent his anxiety, allow me to experience the edges and go beyond. But we have stayed too long, are stuck at the edges of vanilla.

I don't want to say that I'm wrong about it being the right thing, but it looks to me as if I am wrong. He can't go any further with me than the sea shore...there is no solar ship to cross through the 12 gates.

I fell in love with him because I trusted that he had a taste for the dark. I trusted that he would catch me if I fell, that he could go where I go and that he could love me for it; that the fracture lines in my soul could be made to sing.

I think I was wrong.

So to record the crashes and the bad bits, another blog:
The Blue Book.

There is a link at the side of this page.

Last night.

2011-09-20T10:25:00.001+01:00

He said nettles and threatening to stroke my clit with the leaf...to make me feel vulnerable because it makes me wet when I feel vulnerable.

And I said why?
Why what's the point, what do you actually want from me!

And he grew angry, so I glared back at him because honest to god, does he just think of me as some kind of machine, input -output...doesn't he understand that if all he wants is someone to torture he is wasting his time with me.

I get an image of a little boy burning ants with a magnifying glass.

I said, look, I have a choice about how I feel, the context is all. I could just switch off the pain, I could feel abused, I could love it. But it would be up to me because you don't expect anything from me!

Hooray, we have reached the real, true core of the problem.

He doesn't have any expectations, doesn't ask for anything!
He expects submission to be automatic and nothing to do with who he is!

I'm pretty sure that you can't be a Dom unless you take pride in yourself and what you are doing. That's obvious isn't it? The consequence of not taking pride is grayness leading on into seeing everything as shit... When he blames himself for me getting hurt (triggers) he misses any opportunity there may be, to over-write them. That's one thing. But worse, by blaming himself, by not being proud and strong...I look down on him.

I prefer mad, posturing, egotistical glory, to shit.

And then there is the question of what is it am I submitting to?

I don't mean the physical dimension, I mean the intangible, symbolic aspect. When I was with Gil, I followed the rules because I submitted not only to him but out of respect to the Holy Dharma. I was very small in comparison, I liked the feel of the weight of it, and the irrationality. I was submitting to rules that made no sense except in the context of where I was...I could only do that if I actually respected the rules.

I had to step into thin air, supported by nothing except faith.

I said, don't you want me to worship you? Isn't that really what you want, what all Doms want? Why don't you expect it, ask for it, aren't I worth anything, don't you want that from me? You make me feel worthless because you let me off, you make me feel like I'm a victim, when really you should be proud of me...

and on and on...

So what would I be submitting to if I was tied up and this man was threatening to prickle my tenderest parts with a stinging nettle just because he liked to make women writhe around and beg him to stop? Well it would be fun, I agree. But basically I would just be playing a game, there is nothing real here, nothing to push me. I am happy to play...but not when there is this serious absence of true respect and gravity in our relationship.

Glory..

2011-09-19T15:18:00.003+01:00

So the question is, how can I get trust back?
How can I find my way back to the lost path?
--

People talk about becoming submissive as if it is a learnt thing -and I suppose it may be- but in me, submission is something I do until I have to stop.

It hasn't stopped, just it isn't asked for.

And that has always been the problem.

Non submission got punishment, but there was no reward for submission...and it wasn't asked for, it was more like he had found a dog that did this weird trick...

Where to?

2011-09-19T13:55:00.000+01:00

Mostly I feel as if I'm fighting; sometimes I think that anything that requires such effort is obviously wrong.

So let's go back to the beginning: the first time we kissed I had a problem. I didn't give any sign of wishing to stop, I would have stayed with him all night...

But he stopped.
I was confused, his body language and the way he had looked at me.
Hadn't I seen that he wanted me?

So..if that's true why did he stop?
I assume now it is because he didn't let himself feel the way I kissed him..

Weeks latter he asked me to marry him.

A few months latter together in a hotel room, I spilt some champagne on his bare belly skin, I thought it would be fun to lick...fun to feel across my skin the contrast the hot room the cold and bubbling and my tongue hot.

He made it clear that this was out of order...

A month or so latter I bought some chocolate spread, an image in my mind of sucking it from his nipples. It didn't happen, wasn't going to happen.

It was a silly idea.

Fast forwards to me lying absolutely still whilst he did things. I was lying in an agony of anticipation, trying to direct his fingers by telepathy, knowing that if I said anything or showed any sign of wanting or not wanting the spell would break...

The consequence of these episodes scattered amongst all the normal and difficult, the good and the bad of being parents of small children, was that I felt disallowed. To keep everything stable I was good, I followed the rules, I came when I should (always before him because that is what he wanted) I read the subtle clues and I didn't get in the way.

But deep down I didn't feel loved. Oh, I knew that I was loved -and I can hear generations of older women using that unconvincing phrase, he loved me in his own way- but what really proved corrosive was that I was not allowed to love him.

What does that actually feel like?
To be loved but only if I don't show my love...
I can't remember without crying...

What does it mean, not allowed to love?
That I'm not allowed to initiate anything, or express my point of view, or have a preference. It was proved to me over and over that if there is something that I love, anal sex for instance, it becomes a battle ground: he will see me as making him do something that he doesn't want to do, making him give something he doesn't want to give...

Or, do I believe instead the body language that actually he doesn't want me?
My own personal jury is out on that case, still.
I await the verdict.

And if I wasn't allowed to love him I would not be able to heal my broken heart...that was the worst part for me. I was supposed to accept and never ask for more or less. Accept and never criticise. But let's face it a criticism could be telling him that it is generally the left side of my clit that works best, not where he thinks works best...without any evidence to support his belief!

But if I don't speak I should simply comply.
But then I'd be lying...

Once more the motif of taking away from me returns. If I broke the unspoken rules he would take things off me: himself, his pleasure, attention...and call it self-discipline as it hurt him more than it hurt me.

Assessing my position then and comparing it to my previous role, made me consider myself better off. But from my point of view the weight of irrationality and the cost of it to my soul and the way it was impossible to create a bridge between anything was like being stabbed with a dagger made of ice. The wound was there, but the weapon was invisible...or at most just a pool of water, how could that hurt anyone?

When I broke, when I needed to be treated as real, he rejected me. I was of course totally out of order, asking for something he didn't want to give.

So I began to fight.

So where are we now?
Still in a country where all bridges are forbidden, where I'm not allowed to function as myself...fighting to make sense, to break and re-join pathways.

What hurts me the most now is that I believed him to be my Undertaker. While I believed that I could trust that the negative aspects were important, part of my path.

I can't find my way back to that space.

2011-09-09T12:46:00.001+01:00

Am I'm bound so that I can't get away?

In truth I was bound for the photo; I'm almost a cliche.

Except -and you can see by the way I'm pressing down on my knees to push my increasingly naked bottom, upwards- something flips in my head and thoughts become empty bubbles.

The picture leaves me wanting more.

Last night was horrible. He called me over to look at his computer screen; the page was my Fetlife home page, he thought that I had changed my status: under-the-protection-of, and owned.

The owned had gone, he wanted to know why.

Unfortunately I have no idea if it had ever said owned or not, had it fallen off, or had ever been there, I do not know, I don't spend much time at Fetlife, it's not like the first 'social' gathering space's of my web-life and I'm amazed at this new experience: years ago I found my way to places where my hard gained knowledge was useful. My long-time ago favorite haunts were places where knowledge was specific: a handful of codes and tried and tested solutions, and in-jokes.

All of it was peripheral to my real life.

In contrast at Fetlife most people know more than me, or the subjects are so diverse that it would take too long to find anyone else in the same place as myself.

In my real life I've never been able to separate myself from I fuck therefore I am...

Also at Fetlife I'd gained a friend and I hadn't asked permission to click accept. In theory I'm in the wrong, surely if I was really owned then his questioning of me would have been right, it wouldn't have felt as it did, as if he had put his hand around my heart and was crushing my life away.

As I looked at the page, fighting back the heat and shame of being spoken to as if I'd been an unruly, willful child, I had thought that my status had originally stated: owned, but I hadn't edited it to the contrary. But, if I had edited it, then talking to me as if I'd done it as a malicious act, or even as a provocation, is counter productive. The secular version of sacred whore is 'the ethical slut' defined as:

"a person of any gender who has the courage to lead life according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you."

My first experience of being made to feel ashamed for not being a pure virgin was at the age of seventeen. My boy-friend became moody, preoccupied, finally telling me that it made him feel weird that I'd had sex with others. He wanted to know details, probably wanted to know if he was better than them.

I refused to play...it was like those seventeenth century tests for witchcraft: the drowned witch is innocent, shame she is dead.

I was shocked, hurt, suddenly transformed in his eyes from a nice girl into the role I'd willingly taken on.

I didn't ask him if he wished that I'd slapped his hands as he tried to pull my pants off and ram his cock into me the first time we were alone, or had wanted me to ignore, rather than to sooth his throbbing cock (he hadn't got a condom! what did he expect, me to be an idiot!)

From then on did every ejaculation prove to him how bad I was, how unworthy of his love?

Probably.

I was shown quite clearly there and then: male possessiveness stems from Mother Nature whispering to his bollocks 'is that child really yours?' running on a poverty-stricken, hungry-ghost mentality. It never gets any better -but you can live with it.

Gil did the ultimate rejection of me, recognising in me, as the good books say, woman as gross mater, a trap and fiendish creation to drain spiritual qualities from men and prevent their escape from 'the Iron Prison'. And yet I am almost pathologically out of the Iron Prison of social control, I don't embody those negative female voices, I don't insist on following societies rules..I wouldn't have been in his bed if I had, nor would the good doctor have felt able to ask me to marry him, if I hadn't let him share my bed.

Now the good doctor is talking to me as if I should feel ashamed!
Ashamed of the very thing that I should be loved for.

Of course I need to be held tight and wanted. I can't stand being thrown away ever again...when I needed to be held onto the good doctor stood by and let me fall. So this is an over reaction on his part, but it was the tone of voice that really hurt. Nevertheless, owned goes too far when it conflicts with my right to make decisions about my own conduct.

I never could go back to sleep...

I must isolate you Isolate and save you from yourself

The last thing I have to say is that owned is a recognition of how things are: I never said that I liked it, I've always lived with it, been kind to it, tried to negotiate with it, but I've seen it as a way to take care of other people's fears -and in the end, other people's fears are just too much..

So, in answer to the question: why am I tied, am I bound so that I can't get away?
My answer is: there has never been any need to tie me...

Passion.

2011-09-05T16:54:00.000+01:00

Something I was reading this morning, the writer was making the point that passion is forbidden territory.

We are supposed to be sane and safe and passion to be confined by common sense I suppose, but the writer was explaining how the danger of passion is a lost art.

The writer is Elizabeth Badinter, and her book: L'un est l'auter (the one is the other) she writes:

"we are less concerned to dominate and possess the other than to be loved, protected, consoled, understood, and forgiven. More than ever, the model of love is that of the mother for her child"

I never know how seriously to take the notion that men and women in the past knew how to be real men or women, but the book laments the loss of distinct, sexual identity which enabled codes and rules of conduct, and that includes the shadow-rules that guide the breaking of moral laws for the sake of intensity.

I agree with her, I think.

Which brings me back to why I started to write this blog.

I married a 1980's New Man, except I didn't, New Man was a fantasy figure created by the media feeding feminist theory back in to itself.

Nevertheless, New Man existed, rather as Doms exist..

My husband thought that he should be a good man, nothing like his father of course, and I was (for a few hours at least) desperately in need of being loved, protected, consoled, understood, and forgiven until it went on for too long (one year was already too long) and his New Man-ness prevented him from holding me tight enough. I needed to be dominated and possessed. He was tall, dark and handsome, long black hair a pirate's smile, he looked disreputable.

Getting me to cut my thumb was exactly the right thing to do...but there after, when he failed to hold on to me, offering me nothing except soothing comfort, leading up to the most awful crash, I decided there and then that Mr Too-Good had to learn some important lessons.

So I proved to him that he wasn't so good when he believed -using the nice New Man theories of the 80's- that he was being good. I did my best to show him that New Man is a sneaky, fear ridden thing that did neither of us any good at all.

I showed him, by insinuating myself around his trust circuits and getting him to show me his fantasies and what was really in his mind, and in this way I introduced him to his dominant nature. Also I proved to him that submission isn't something I (or anyone else as far as I know) pretends to, it is a location on the soul; a way to react.

I do it.
It makes me happy!

And now, just to play with your definition of submission, I chose to set rules.

Here they are : vaginal sex is non-orgasmic and there can be no D/s activity or thinking at all, whilst anal sex is release -submission, fantasy, the more D/s the better.

There is a third rule about fingers and learning better technique, but I'm way out of my submissive comfort zone here; there is no way that he can do orgasm control without knowing more than he knows now!

The Mr Dom part of his brain has no intention of learning anything, this is not helpful.

But most of all for me anal sex is trigger for the last and most pernicious aspect of the problem. The problem that made him reject me when I wanted to be held onto and I thought that I could undo by showing him that I love and appreciate his right to be a Dom. I had proved to him that he isn't Mr New Man, but the deeper problem remained, again manifesting in him taking anything he perceived that I really wanted and needed...away from me.

Metaphorically what happens (what the problem looks like) is this -I mean it is now officially a syndrome: first there is a genuine mistake, I 'fall' down and instead of finding out what is wrong he metaphorically starts to kick me, or pull me up roughly (paradoxically he does that by being *nice* by treating me a if the mistake is a tragedy and that I am the victim). Then he engages me in intellectual discussion concerning those shiny, shiny shoes -the ones he has just kicked me with! as I slowly become more and more angry.

Eventually I'm so angry and so frustrated I call him selfish and stupid and hate myself!

At that point, he has definitely won. I'm a complete wreck and want to die. But anger protects me and I can't ditch my belief that it is possible to avoid the stuff that doesn't work.

I have told him many times that the original error is the only thing that really needs attention. His strategy is to 'protect himself' from doing any harm by withdrawing and saying sorry. He blames me for not respecting his right to avoid making mistakes...he is quite right.

Because I know that you don't get to what works unless you learn from mistakes..

So I evoked those crashes, to show him what the sorry mess looks like.
Next I proved to him that the only reason why he couldn't 'do' anal sex was that he didn't want to get it wrong, and that most of it is technical rather than will power! it didn't occur to him to ask me about how he could go about it.

Actually it is fairly easy to get inside. I think that receiving is the more difficult of the two roles..not that's I'd know but anyway! Letting something that big in does not come naturally, it takes quite a lot of relaxing of muscles that I don't normally think about, so it annoyed me considerably that he made out that getting it in was such a big deal.

At the moment all is well.
TBC...

Id?

2011-09-02T13:20:00.000+01:00

As in identity.

Lesson 1: In every moment of living there is the experience of what actually happens and at the same time there is the narrative making sense of the raw information. There is also a lot of missing information -things you were not conscious of feeling, or aware of (Doors of Perception -Aldous Huxley).

Sacred sex is a narrative, a story that weaves facts together. I write this so that you can decide how well sacred sex fits the facts, whilst keeping in mind that a close fit to truth does not automatically mean a better story. A narrative gives names to experiences and language allows the manipulation of ideas into new things. Narrative enables the map, and creates ways to place experiences together; a narrative may be misused as a way to ditch anything that feels uncomfortable that perhaps should be reassessed and judged. A narrative, no matter how beautiful should always be criticised and checked.

So now my lines of reasoning:
Sex is a sacred activity because it has the potential to create new life and to gift other humans with a 100%, endogenously produced drug. Both these attributes of sex mean that it has the potential to open the gates to heaven and to slam those same gates in your face, cutting off fingers...whilst opening an express elevator under your feet direct to hell.

The physical aspects of virus and fertility control provide a wide range of ways to respect the real consequences of real bodies. The foundation stone of sacred sex is the respect for the power and gift of sex -respecting the often incoherent, often irrational needs and feelings all of us have and for the patterns and rhythms of sex, meaning it is bad technique to give pleasure in a pattern that frustrates; it is cruel to give pleasure in a random, start/stop way; to tease someone with the conscious or unconscious intention of depriving them of pleasure unless the ultimate aim is to inflame and ultimately to increase their pleasure.

A practitioner of sacred sex is a sacred whore (whore from a word meaning 'one who desires'). There is no getting away from it, it has a religious background. I stepped out of the 'Eastern' version in which sacred sex is regarded as a way to purify the mind and to eliminate psychological defects (in practice both ways of saying that passion has to go!)

I have have stayed with the belief that holding onto pleasure to bathe my mind and body in total bliss can awaken the latent powers of the consciousness, but that is most certainly not my purpose.

The practice of sacred sex is the connection with something much bigger and older than myself, a descent if you will into the primal layer of the mind. There is no restriction of the kind of sex, or who or why. The only real law is to maintain respect. When things go wrong it is an error to act as if something is too difficult or repulsive, or to be too assertive about one's own likes and dislikes.

The way through moments of difficulty when something one's partner wishes for is just plain impossible, is to preserve the original energy and to find something both of you prefer rather than looking for a compromise.

A sense of moving together is a thousand times better than feeling blocked or coerced.

Sacred sex...again.

2011-08-31T13:10:00.002+01:00

I find myself a little pissed off at the moment with the macrocosm (so to speak) of 'our' culture's demand for freedom and for everything to make sense -be rational, and the microcosmic version of this in my relationship so far with the good doctor.

In my experience rules do not have to be restrictive and limiting, they are there to make energy flow correctly and to prevent people getting hurt!

Bad rules should be rewritten, but the pretence that no-rules makes life easier and better is plain silly.

It seems to me that the rules of sex in our society pretend to be all about freedom, whilst placing romantic (unobtainable) love on a pedestal as something we should all achieve. As there is no such thing as freedom (except in the head of a psychopath) and romantic love depends on ones ability to manage frustration, so most people fall for the easier to achieve version, in which sex is for consuming, rather than enjoying...Hence the aneasthetically enhanced condom and the the cascade of dehumanizing scientific read-outs, in which sex is reduced to a cocktail of erototoxins and maps of nerve-endings.

This paradox has made me return again and again to my own beliefs and to actually write down what I believe. I was given the role of sacred whore so many years ago I take it for granted that what I think makes sense, but it strikes me that not everyone thinks like me.

I believe that sacred sex begins with the temple, the institution so many thousands of years ago that developed as a way to moderate society. The place where food offerings to the gods are latter shared between the people, the institution charged with bringing people together in rituals designed to make life more numinous and meaningful. Sex required moderation, the temple's function was to make all human experience, including sex, Holy.

I have to face it, sacred sex isn't one thing so I'm not going to be able to pin it all down; different societies have created different modifications on the same theme depending on the prevailing myths and beliefs of that society. But one thing most people do agree on is that the original home of sacred sex was the temples of Inanna and latter (thousands of years latter) the temples of the Phoenician's (descendants of the Mesopotamians) goddess Ashtart, sometimes known as Tanit.

Society, at that time, had agreed that young women should be 'deflowered' in the temple, that it would provide a home for anyone whose sexuality could not fit in with ordinary, societal rules and that the temple would also offer a premium rate service for those able to pay.

In Carthage the temples to Tanit (Ashtart) were a liminal space where sex was governed by different rules to those used in the streets and homes. It was such an old belief that the king ruled through the goodwill of the Goddess (from the Sumerian tradition) that the truth of the matter couldn't matter less, any more. There was no need for things to be rational. The king of Carthage experienced, as had the Mesopotamian kings before him, the heiros gamos, the sacred union with the goddess through her priestess. In Carthage, through this act, he became God-like...Heracles (Greek name), Melqart (Phonician name), Baal-Hamon (Lord of the City).

But temples need money to survive and so it made sense to offer a heiros gamos to any man who had the cash. After the temple and with the rise of the strange, castrated Dionysian religion known as Christianity, prostitution became a dark and sinful act (was it worse or better than wanking in the hierarchy of sexual shame?). Prostitution had once been a socially acceptable way for a rich man to have sex and to gain favour with the gods. Without the regulation of the temple, it lost it's sacred status and became instead a perceived threat to society.

Sex has always been a powerful and taboo act in everyday, ordinary society, but not because because people are ignorant and hate freedom, but because regulation is a way to make things work and to maintain society...

But it is the banishment of the respect for sex that is for me the real mystery...one which I'm not even going to think about!

It was Wilhelm Reich who came up with the terms: sex-positive and sex-negative, after deciding (as had many others!) that the Western view of sexuality is decidedly negative. It is difficult to disagree with his conclusion. The church had done its best, as it should, to moderate sexuality, as had the ancient temples of Carthage, but the monotheistic, male centered church would not respect sexuality, and found it very difficult to give it a place. Sacred sex remains as marriage, but the roles of god and human are reversed: the husband represents God and the woman is humankind.

But as we all know the goddess Inanna becomes the Virgin Mary and at the same time casts a blood red shadow -the Whore of Babylon, and though the man is supposed to represent god, that would never do in our rational society!

Anyway, I've spent too long already thinking about this!
I stop.

2011-08-30T21:50:00.001+01:00

I'm tempted to write:

Method.
Result.
Conclusion.

On Sunday we used the dread Endurance condom. It is designed for men who suffer premature ejaculation, it is made of extra thick plastic and the lubricant contains an anaesthetic -benzocaine- which, not surprisingly anaesthetises me too.

Anyway, the anti-jizz-butter (Benzocaine) gives the effect for both of us of dissolving his cock. This is not good, but it is interesting.

We went on to the next crash site after that and as I'd purposely evoked a situation that couldn't work I had some protection against the way everything looked and felt. I mean it hurt -a lot! but ultimately how else is there to deal with these things.

Yesterday morning there was an accidental crash; three floppy cock incidents in two days was too much for me and I cracked completely; the cognitive dissonance between the physical experience of being rejected -because I can't see a floppy cock in any other way! and the verbal explanations which sound like bullshit to me, was too much.

Result:
I couldn't help but believe the physical reality rather than the story...

After many tears and arguments somehow we find our way back to trust, all I remember clearly was the riding whip (the way it is black leather) and his surprise at the effect using on my left nipple had on me.

OK, conclusion:
Other than realising that he'd assumed that he was supposed to be training me (the reason being that mostly Doms write as if they are teaching their partner how to submit) and the cure for that was for me to access my bratty side (which showed him just how well behaved I am because normally I suppress that side of me!) the next main problem revealed by these forced crashes is that though I learnt how to be submissive in a previous relationship, I learnt for a good reason; orgasm control is absolutely at the heart of sacred sex, and my practice is sacred sex.

Someone who is a Dom by nature does not consider his or her version of how to proceed to be wrong. The path looks clear, straight and true and maintaining control over one's partner is sensible because someone has to set the rules!

But my whole submission thing from before was based on orgasm control, and in this new relationship he wanted me to cum; I had learnt that refusing orgasm is not the same as switching off pleasure (absolutely the opposite) and that it was wrong to make someone cum because once that has happened the amount of pleasure is reduced so it was odd to spill what I'd learnt so hard how to save.

Another problem is that if I touched him (I soon learnt not to unless I was asked) some part of him felt uneasy because he felt that I would treat him as he treated me -try to make him cum to prove his love for me! This made me feel not good enough, but I kept to his rules out of respect.

Well, my real conclusion is that by provoking these crashes I can explain what goes wrong for both of us and by doing this he learns what I am...

Lock and load.

2011-08-28T17:20:00.000+01:00

The no-touch didn't last long....much was recovered and explained, but of course there is always more; and that feels like weeks ago, it's been too long since I last wrote.

This morning I set two rules: the first that he can lie inside me without a condom for as long as possible unless I come...he of course cannot come until I do, and if I don't the only way that he can come is elsewhere (I blush).

I set these rules knowing that they would lead to trouble...

Triggers are fascinating -nothing quite as exhilarating as calling them out into the open (I'm being sarcastic now) but I see no other way to deal with and to destroy the lines of reason that pull them into existence. Triggers trigger realities that do not exist; realities that belong to the past.

What I thought would happen started to happen.

He feels compelled to give me what he thinks that I want and to resent my imagined demands. Let's get this straight, I'm submissive -he treats me as if I'm the one in control, so I take control!

I set two rules.

I didn't say how they should be applied.

I knew it would lead to trouble.

Limp cock, porn on the screen, frustration.
I let myself sink as I rub my clit safe following a tiny bright line of pleasure, ignoring what ever he thinks that he is doing, ignoring everything except what feels good.

The point where he gives up is where the apologies come from; I don't want to hear it, any of it.

But it don't half hurt; it makes me so angry to be treated as a victim; that he feels sorry for me because he isn't 'good enough' and to hear the reasons (all perfectly logical) as to why it didn't work this time.

There is absolutely no need to apologise to me. More than that the act of apologising does the damage. I have caused this situation to happen because unless the process is recognised it will always be there, waiting to happen accidentally.

The hard part, other than becoming so angry and having to go through the anger, is that I have my own sets of triggers and to do any of this I risk falling into some horrible play-back and losing my sense of balance...but over all, this way is the way I've chosen to go.

2011-08-17T13:49:00.000+01:00

The trouble with blogging...

2011-08-12T22:45:00.000+01:00

As I said in the previous blog entry, I don't rate bratty behaviour very highly. But for most of yesterday he had been happy in thinking that when I allowed myself to simply react- that ah ha! this is the true version of her, the thing she has been keeping from me!

Then he read my blog.

I will say that acting like a brat is entertaining for me and different to saying outrageous things to punctuate the oppressive heaviness that descends sometimes. It takes no intelligence at all to be purely reactive. On the other hand I'm sure that it wears pretty thin very soon.

I had thought that he enjoyed it because it was so easy to see what aspects of my behaviour needed discipline. I thought that he had enjoyed forcing me to call him Sir, his cock certainly seemed happy enough.

Over all, though the experiment was short lived, it was a useful thing. It made him see that the civilised version of me is better than the 'natural' and that actually civilised is more natural for me than being 'natural' because I'm a bloody grown up!

But the experiment also left me feeling all at sea; I had believed that I'd known what I was doing. We had got into D/s because it takes care and honours quite a few uncomfortable feelings; playing with power is a good way to face feeling out of control, it allows one to explore scary places, consensual non-consent is just about the only way for me to face some pretty nasty memories and I keep catching sight of an aspect of him I call *The Good Man* - a character who thinks that everything he does is right, and that everything he does is for the best; anyone in this paradigm confronting, or dissenting from his opinion is challenging him and should keep quiet.

He is made of shadow, he is all the things a son dislikes in a father.

So I thought that I'd like to play with The Good Man; I'd enter his hidden chamber full of other women naked and bound, and torture tools...The Good Man is a bully, I'm happy to play that game!

The only real clue I had was that he kept on acting as if I was keeping something from him. I thought that my submission would reassure him and give him permission to demand anything at all from me; and the greater the challenge the better from my point of view.

D/s didn't work; it didn't reassure him. So what was it that he wanted; what did he think it was that I wouldn't give him? I'd thought that submission was impressive enough: it is not easily found or accomplished, I certainly wouldn't slip into that role so easily with someone less worthy than he.

Unfortunately every so often he'd catch sight of The Good Man as if through his mother's eyes and project her disapproval as if coming from me! He would imagine that I was criticising him, or believe that I was waiting for him to wear out his fetishes and to become something clean and wholesome.

Through her eyes his behaviour was reprehensible.

I'd failed to prove to him that I don't think that way at all! I'd underestimated the strength of the projection.

Being bratish was all about making it easy for him...but really, the problem is much more complicated than that.

Last night I sat on the bed and read all his note books (kept since 1999). I looked for reoccurring images and themes. My conclusion was that he had decided that I didn't love him, he had decided to call himself unworthy because I'd hurt him... so I deserved to be thrown away...

Which is quite a big thing to deal with especially as it doesn't manifest as anger towards me, but as his feeling that I'm keeping something from him. When I started my relationship with C I promised that I would not leave or stop loving...I didn't understand my relationship with C, I just knew that I had to spend some time with him. When what ever it was we needed to do had been done, nothing in my relationship with the good doctor, from my point of view, had changed. The only difference was that C had mended me, given me back something I'd lost.

But of course from the good doctor's point of view, everything had changed...

This answers the riddle: what am I supposed to be keeping from him? The answer is not my love (he knows that I love him) . He had retained his beloved, but no longer believed that he was my beloved.

Meanwhile, I awoke this morning feeling totally confused. Out of the aethyr I plucked the idea that if being bratish had convinced him that I deserve respect for being submissive, I thought I'd really take things off him so that he could see the difference between the feeling that I'm keeping things back, and me really keeping things back.

He isn't allowed to see me naked; to touch my breasts or between my legs. The question is: how to re-sanctify sex ( I fully admit that this is probably the wrong question, but I really do not have a better plan at the moment).

When I know what any of this proves, I'll let you know!

A more 'natural' version of me is called for.

2011-08-10T18:44:00.001+01:00

Solution so far: to ditch everything I did before and access my non-submissive nature. To say the things I'd never say before: to be difficult, to express my distaste. In short to act like someone who has never learnt how to be submissive.

It is quite a lot of fun and uncomfortable.
It feels like an un-learning.

Which is funny really, as one aspect of being submissive is a letting go of who you are into the divine space of thy will be done...this is actually requiring more submission on my part than being text-book submissive.

For instance, this morning lying in bed side by side and then being pulled into various positions until his cock could go into my mouth and me being difficult all the way. The more unwilling I am, the more annoyed he becomes; the more annoyed the more justified he is in pinching and tickling and forcing me apologise and to call him Sir until his cock is semi-stiff and dripping. With my face pushed down into his balls I am utterly repulsed.

Instead of visulising the liquid as amrita...

I'm repulsed by a dripping anything: nose, cock, saliva drooling from a semi-conscious, uncontrolled, messy, unhygienic! So I grab the edge of his dressing gown and wipe the liquid away which gets me a stern order from him to never do that again, nevertheless the offending liquid is gone.

I have won.

Which is an odd way to think of it.

Win...lose...

Somewhere in the back of my mind I disapprove of myself for using this black and white system of win/lose.

It is a hard-won skill to convert anything difficult into pleasure, the more difficult, repulsive, awkward or taboo the better. In this new place this aspect of me is not called for, and actually causes problems.

It was as if I was speaking a different language to him before and expecting him to understand.

The fact is the path leads through a region in which a more 'natural' version of me is called for.

I fought a long hard war against natural most of my life! I was never happy with the hair 'god' gave me, I dyed it, I bullied it into dread-locks, I added fake hair, I shaved it all off, grew it, added to it with blue and copper. My skin is tattooed, I don't let myself orgasm without getting to the edge of orgasm and refusing, at least three times. I don't do natural.

Almost all of my life sexual experience has been about accessing something higher than myself; trying harder, being better, stronger, braver. Love was burnt into sex at the age of thirteen. I wanted love, but I was better at sex and I chose to use it as the transaction of choice -in which I was paid for my permissiveness in knowledge.

Mine was a bargain with Lucifer, mine was the ice-frame clarity of the abyss.

I gave it up when I married the first time. I returned to it as a way out of marriage eventually returning to my role of Sacred Whore for the second time in my life.

So does that part of me feel threatened once more because I'm switching off something that I consider valuable and precious, to use the most negative metaphor I can think of, being 'natural' is like ditching words as a method of communication and instead I point and grunt.

Well if that is what is required, so be it.

This morning, as he lay inside me looking at pictures on his laptop I felt us sliding into the safety-zone once more. There is a division in his mind that pushes anything taboo into OK. Instead of going further with something that once felt dangerous, the energy is ripped from it and it becomes akin to an inoculation rather than the disease...

So we talked.
Seems someone had asked him to be a friend on Fetlife. This had been in his head for two weeks! She doesn't live far away, is into the things that he likes, and is almost exactly half my age (I'm 51) everything there pushes all my buttons magnificently.....

Blue book: conclusion.

2011-08-09T06:26:00.001+01:00

I made an effort!
I made myself sit down and finish the blue book of fatal exceptions.

Stage one: Inertia- the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest.

There was one entry, written September 2009 that could have been written last month; so much for change, learning and moving on! It seems getting sad, apologising, getting angry, talking about things...doesn't really change anything at all.

The metaphor here is inertia, it's not helpful..

Stage two: Paradigm shift -There are anomalies for all paradigms.

A paradigm is a landscape of knowledge, it is the place where I live, it is the mental map that runs on brain 'hard-ware' and it is normal to miss things that don't fit into this landscape, it is faster and simpler to create a map using memory rather than seeing, so I don't see.

It's not easy to duck under the memory screen, the art is to notice the anomalies. The blue book, which is in effect a record of errors, can only point to anomalies; working out what lies underneath is never going to be straight forward.

The method of creating a more accurate paradigm is to make a guess about something and to try it out!

What I didn't see is that it is normal to assume in D/s that the Dominant person is training his submissive.

When submissives blog, we prefer to write about the experience of submission; and the exciting part of a relationship is being pushed; training requires someone who wants to push at my boundaries to make me more submissive, is all about playing with the edges of the hideous concept that if I become more submissive, my husband will be less disappointed with me. ...is knowing that the task being demanded of me is hard and that punishment will follow unless I do what is asked of me correctly. It is much more fun to write about those kinds of experiences than to interrogate myself about what is actually happening.

My problem is that I know I already know how to be submissive.

Being submissive is a problem because my partner assumed that he was supposed to train me, but the only examples of training involved what other people want, and do. He hasn't looked at his own wishes and desires in relationship to me as my user rather than my teacher.

Regards this blog I'm left with the question: how to write!
The experiences of trained submissive woman, with Dominant by nature and inexperienced man is ~~never?~~ rarely written about.

But this is where I am.

Inviting the demons.

2011-08-04T17:47:00.000+01:00

You ghosts and demons, enemies of the Dharma, I welcome you today! It is my pleasure to receive you! I pray you, stay; do not hasten to leave; We will discourse and play together. Although you would be gone, stay the night; We will pit the Black against the White Dharma, And see who plays the best. Before you came, you vowed to afflict me. Shame and disgrace would follow If you returned with this vow unfulfilled.

When Millarepa came back to his cave and found it filled with eyes as big as saucers demons, he tried to be nice, he tried to fierce and in the end he decided to treat them as he treated all realities: as the play of Dharma.

I like his approach, Mila didn't disbelieve his own eyes, he didn't consider himself mad -though a diet of nettles and isolation in a cave may well have unhinged several doors one is supposed to keep closed. Mila treated the demons with humour; actually, he sang to them...Mila, dreadlocked yogi whose 'Highest' teaching to his student Rechungpa, was to show him his arse.

You have to love Tibetan 'saints'.

And since 2003, with Mila as my hero, I have been calling the various 'demons' out. Most of them seem to be family heirlooms, family memes that pinch like ill-fitting shoes. All of them are described in my Blue-book (or would be, if only I'd worked on it every day). The Blue book, as in Window's 98; a book of crashes, of fatal exceptions.

Well here is another blue-book episode.

I don't remember too much except that he was lying on top of me. As he began to speak, my heart sank. He asked me, words to the effect, what had I given to others that I didn't give to him? He then went on to explain that he meant to help me identify things that I could now *be* with him.

Right...

I translated this as another instance of him believing that I was keeping things from him. It made me feel worthless and ugly. It made me angry.

The next thing I remember is that we were lying side by side. I think he was stroking me. I was listening to the sound of dust falling onto my nonexistent soul and thinking that yet again he must have decided to see me as preferring Mr Soft and Gently, to Mr Bad.

I have no idea why this happens.
There is some line of code somewhere in our relationship that is seriously messed up and causes this...but for now?

For now I decided that it was time to metaphorically start singing to the demons. I started by telling him that this plain lying here, side by side, supposedly comfortable and nice, was boring. And that I had thought about climbing on top of him, but he wouldn't want me to. So I wasn't going to.

But then I did and told him that he didn't have to worry because I wasn't going to touch his cock. To make that clear, I shifted myself further down so that my open legs were over his thighs and no where near anything that could get scared.

When he tried to push me, or maneuver me closer, I resisted. He ended up pushing me over an forcing himself into me, but only after I'd proved that I would bite his nipples HARD. My Vajra song continued. I voiced the most ridiculous fears and ideas I pick up from him. I told him that my cunt wasn't wet, I said that I was just making him believe that it was ( a patently ridiculous statement). I don't know what else I said, but I did everything in my power to justify his desire to control me, to tie me and bind me. It was going quite well I thought. I thought, any minute now he will get so angry that he will tie me...

Silly me.

Again propped above me, him looking down, he says, we should talk. He said that we should have planned this, sorted something out, that he didn't know if I was telling the truth or...blah, blah, blah...I felt the tears gathering behind my eyes. I wished that I hadn't put any eye-make up on because now it was going to run. I was so hurt, so crushed, so powerless. This sudden STOP made me hit the ground at a thousand miles per hour.

Next stage.
As always he treats me as if I'm a victim of something; that there was something left over from days ago that should be sorted out, understood, made clear before we would be *free* enough to do this. And I was so mad, I just hit him over and over with my fake leopard skin hat and told him that he was so unbelievably stupid to think that he or I or anyone for that matter, would ever be 'sorted out' enough, sane enough, free of baggage enough!

Enough for anything!

This fucking stupid idea of perfection is fine in its rightful place (religion or rather as a religious ideal) but this is us in the here and now. In the messy play of Samsara/Nirvanah and one day I'll be sodding DEAD and never sorted out enough, in his eyes, for anything!

The shadow-tree.

2011-07-01T13:03:00.004+01:00

It was Hawkwind in the car again this morning, as I drove my son to college. Lemmy singing, 'I've got a Orgone accumulator, and it makes me feel much better'.

I said to my son, the guy who made the Orgone accumulator, they burnt his books and put him in prison, and he died there'

My son said to me, 'did you hear of the man who made a nuclear reactor in his home, he could have powered the whole street with it'...[link].

Civilisation has barely changed since the Akkadians decided that the movement of the stars indicated the will of the gods. Now, the names of the gods and demons have been changed, and the locations of the portals to their realms are computer terminals and drugs (not 'pop' music anymore). Sumerian cuneiform morphed eventually by the Phoenicians into the first alphabet (syllables instead of words) add a few thousand years it still encrypts the fears of mankind. And the content of forbidden books appears different, whilst the continuity in superstition is breathtaking.

Pays to have a Geiger counter handy though.
Some demons are more real than others.

Anyway, last night when I was in the kitchen the good doctor told me that he had read a post by someone saying something along the lines of, the only way to deal with bad-locations on the soul is to re-enter and re-encode.

Well that's my way of saying it.
I don't know how many times I have said it.
Most of this blog is about dealing with the gin-trap of post-traumatic play-back.

I was instantly plunged into misery; did he really mean what I heard? I heard him say between his words, 'someone else has said what you have been saying so now I understand'.

Hurt, and angry I felt the weight of time; the times adding up like grains of sand into a massive, heavy sandbag pinning me down. Each time he reacted to me as if I was a victim, in need of niceness, gentleness and I went first through psychic agony, and then got angry enough to speak, I explained that I needed him to be my Undertaker, that I needed to be pushed through and into, instead of pulled out; and each time I explained it he would say 'Ah, I see...I'm sorry...so you mean that you will still love me if I'm bad?'

Each time he understood it, the understanding lasted at most for a month. But now someone else has said it, he gets it?

Back in the kitchen, in my head I was in that space where I do not know what I'm doing. I lose trust in myself.

This is the problem, I'm with someone who wants to be good, who spent years trying to be a good man, trying not to be the bad-patriarch, trying not to be anything like those stupid, belligerent fuck-wits who ignore their children, belittle their wives and make all the decisions; get drunk, screw around, make a mess and don't have the brains or pride in themselves to be a man. . OK, well I never saw it like that. I mean I like the book Iron John, and I applaud any man who wants to go play drums in the woods with his brothers, but really, this whole metaphysical discussion about what is or isn't good should never be put in its entirety onto one man's shoulders.

Good and bad are not sub-clauses in an insurance document, or fatal errors in a program....

If I think of it in Iron John Terms; it is true, he has got his mother's voice in his head telling him how to be a nice man. I thank her for it, but she and her husband's relationship is nothing to do with us! I come from a different place, I was the bad girl and proudly so. Being bad wasn't an issue; nor was it exciting or forbidden, it was plain rational.

And now, he and I, we are a partnership, we work stuff out.

The good doctor made one point though, he said that a lot of writing about D/s was aimed to make D/s appear more normal. Everyone gets bored of the question, put in a better way than I'm about to, but at the core the question is: what's wrong with you to make you want to be abused? The question is boring and annoying, who ever asks it just hasn't thought very far, so the answer they get will be just as shallow. So people write about D/s as if it's a *lifestyle* choice. It is easier to do this than to dig deep.

The consequence is that people avoid using the word kink in a way that makes it mean: a positive response to psychological damage.

Psychological damage is supposed to be treated by an expert. The modern way is to make the memory loops weaken until they are like strands of amber barley-sugar, instead of bloody piano wire. Drugs that retard the absorption of neurotransmitters give the seeker-after-peace more serotonin, more virtual, self-induced love. A councillor talks through the problem, real-world solutions are found. The drugs are reduced...

If you are alone and you remember, if you go into play-back without the drugs, without the expert it is believed that you will make the loop stronger and bigger, more hungry. It will grow teeth!

For this reason it is sensible to go back; the loops cannot kill you. Pain (self-induced) cannot go too far. You can find a way through. You become immersed inside the energy stream and re-direct it. The psychic pain is the sensation of charge, of feeling full of pent up energy; an energy that has nowhere to go and starts to burn the flesh. But the flesh isn't being burnt. The pain does real damage, but not enough to warrant leaving well alone and increasing the dead-zones within the soul.

My version is re-writing. There is no cure for the loops in my opinion, they may be changed though, and changed enough to re-integrate. They are like the Qliphoth, the shadow entities empty of real existence; or images frozen on the event horizon of a black hole. To change them, proof of their unreal nature is required. The psychological equivalent of entering the shadow-tree, or the event horizon.

So, where does this get us?
I don't know...it is a shame because in the morning he had enjoyed tying me up and making me cry. I was tied, and he shaved me. It was the purple dildo that really upset me though; it is ugly, I felt ugly..

And the voice of reason, of confidence says of course I'm not ugly, nor do I see that reflected in his eyes.

The cognitive dissonance is enough to make me cry, but how else if the mirror glass to be washed out of my eyes?

Cervical smear.

2011-06-29T13:29:00.000+01:00

I don't write when things are going well; I want to, but I tend not to.

And then, when thing's aren't going well I get sidetracked, I don't want to bother, I write stuff in my head....And I feel like I'll go mad if I don't write, but there isn't any time.

And now here I am.

It was the cervical smear that set me off, falling like Alice down the rabbit hole. The nurse made me bleed, so that means that it hurt as much as I thought it did, the pain I felt was my skin coming off! Apparently bleeding is normal, or rather blood doesn't ruin the results anymore.

I almost managed to like the speculum, this is a big step forwards for me. Normally I want to scream when the speculum goes in, it isn't about pain or discomfort, it is everything about loss of control without being able to discharge the energy. It didn't help that the nurse tried to talk to me as she bristled my inner parts. I answered through gritted teeth, with my arm over my eyes, and tried to sound OK.

What I couldn't do was to take control of what I was feeling, can't do that if my mind is elsewhere.

As I walked home I tried to think of the experience as an ordeal, and the idea kept reoccurring that there was no where to put the energy of fear, the desire to run or kick out -all the things I had to suppress during the smear. It reminds me of the problems we had when he first used rope, he expected me to comply and to enjoy, but I needed to be me! And of course it rolls on from that, I needed to express my discomfort, disdain, enjoyment, love, pain all of it but he just wanted me to say thank you! At first I got the impression that I wasn't allowed to use those energies (fear, need to escape, anger even) because if I did, he would stop what ever he was doing and feel bad; I'd feel as if I was being punished, he would feel that I was taking his toys off him.

Then the energy would go nowhere, it would sit and then condense as poison.

Well that's all sorted out now. But the other thing he does, the other thing that caused most of our problems remained until we were in bed.

In the evening we had a free hour together...and he was nice to me. He stroked my legs, he rubbed my feet. He treated me as if the part of me that had (as far as I'm concerned) been violated should be left alone to get better. Trouble was, it was full of fear and anger like a ball of lightning; I longed for more pain there and the freedom to enjoy it. When I say pain, I'm aware that it is difficult to describe the difference between pain that gives pleasure and pain that feels like damage; I don't rate damage as good at all...

When it comes to down there and medical he puts a barrier around me and blames me for it, he believes his own script, he believes that I have said 'don't touch me' he believes that I'd call him a pig for being inconsiderate.

Result?

I feel unloved, ugly, abandoned, unclaimed, thrown away!

One thing that needs saying is, it takes so many repetitions of the same lesson -over and over again- until anything begins to change. I can't believe how long it has taken for him to understand that I am not what he thinks I am, and that any disapproval from me isn't what he thinks it is!

If I turn that around, I should stop believing that when he doesn't touch me or show signs of wanting to fuck me that it isn't because he doesn't love me...Trouble is, when he looks as if he doesn't want sex, this is the same as not having sex, if you are the submissive one.

Initiating or asking for, are not a part of my submission -unless he tells me that I will have to to beg of course. And I'd be terrible at that because we had a bad experience with me begging before!

He interpreted it as me trying to take control.

On the other hand, it would be intolerable not to play with energy. I don't think it is possible to avoid mistakes, I don't even think that 'we learn' much from them, I think mistakes are just a price I pay for getting things wrong, but the hit I get from things being right is so overwhelmingly, mind blowing...

Silver chain.

2011-06-06T12:00:00.000+01:00

There is a silver chain on my wrist now; basically it is a collar, but less noticeable. And you may be forgiven in thinking that the whole coller thing is simple -a kinky wedding ring substitute perhaps? But in fact, I don't think anything about relationships is simple; save the basic human drives underneath.

I wanted a silver torque.
Problem.
I already have a silver torque. How right would it be for him to take it, rededicate it and tell me to wear it? Also, I couldn't sleep in it..

Buy a new one?
Or a silver neck ring that could be worn all the time?
Silver is really expensive right now.

So, how about iron, rather than silver? Iron with its connection to The Story of O, and slave rings? Metal used to be warn as jewelry, to desplay wealth, copper was worn to be traded (early Bronze Age) and Iron too with its connotations of down to earth, utilitarian, good and practical, blood strength and blood spill...haemoglobin and Iron Age post 'Bronze Age collape'...swords and hill forts. But I couldn't see anything pretty enough, or suitable in any way. So that takes us to Stainless steel -electrically forged child of the industrial age. But Stainless steel is medical (at best body modification and piercings) and a stainless steel slave collar is at once too much of a cliche, and plain too powerful to be worn everyday! Right in the right context, wrong in a supermarket.

How about leather?
Could make something?

We settled on an old expensively heavy and rather complicated silver chain that had belonged to my mom. It was silver (and silver is good) it is pretty, it goes around my wrist four times so it looks like an expensive bracelet.

Next comes meaning, actually gold wedding rings are too heavy in meanings for me to dare wear one -gold = purity, financial (the more paranoia in a time, the more gold is worth) gold is ostentatious and a wedding ring itself has too many years and tears sealed within its history. I wear a copper serpent and a silver spiral. I guess if I put them together in some lemon juice, I'd get an electric current.

I like that idea.
Need a voltmeter!

The collar or in my case wrist chain means that he has all the power...it means that I am owned, which is exactly what the wedding ring tries not to say -but means. Because marriage is backed up by law, and because the conservatives expel so much hot air bleating on about family values and the sexualisation of children, and because my first marriage was clearly more to do with the state, families and community, than to do with the two people marrying each other, I am somewhat cynical! Everything about being owned is open for discussion, the law -either the imaginary law passed down from our relatives, and the official law of the land- is not involved.

My question to myself is, how much does the lack of ceremony associated with the chain going around my wrist matter to me? Also, it's not good that the chain belonged to my mom. I've just sent for a fairly cheap necklace that may work, it kind of fits in with the earrings I wear, and my ink; it is stainless steel and rubber which sounds a bit medical, or a bit kinky?

As to ceremony, that is a problem too. I do have an idea though....but the time isn't right to bring it into the world of words.

Miss Lovecraft...

2011-05-09T12:07:00.002+01:00

There is nothing quite so good at making an itch worse than to decide to ignore it and then find that one is being constantly reminded of how good it is to scratch; this is the power base of of kinky celibacy.

Unfortunately it works just as powerfully in the vanilla. So in the name of 'sacred sex' right-wing, do gooders make out that our society is dangerously sexulized (that sex is everywhere, cheap and nasty, in the gutter) that sex is actually very dangerous and that sex can destroy ones mind (OK, they just say it destroys innocence).

Most tellingly, the word fuck is rarely used as a blessing, more as a threat tinged with a vague sense of promise.

Yet fucked up rarely means anything good.

I am not saying that bad sex is OK, I am saying that knowledge is destroyed by people expecting sex to be *natural* when it patently isn't natural to ignore such a powerful itch in the first place! I am saying that knowledge is the only thing that will help. In this society fucked means used, abused, discarded. It will hurt, it may make you bitter, but you haven't lost anything, you wont go mad!

Fucked is supposed to be different to 'making love' which happens only after (according to the Rt wing Xtian folk) innocence ripens gently, unfolding like a flower; and the first time one makes love it is a melt into pure union.

Poppy-cock say I! chances are sex will be crap even if you expect it to be sacred/wonderful/special. Sex isn't that easy; it is a skill and practice makes better, positive stories dripping in erotic content and good information will help. It is true that kissing is a thousand times more satisfying than penetration when a guy has no idea of technique and is lost in the urge to procreate, so lost that he doesn't even know where he is or what he is doing!

Sex with an older guy will probably be better -but that's only because he knows more...can't guarantee it though!

Ah, but someone who has known me (in the biblical sense) may well be a good lay, I don't like to brag, but you know...

Meanwhile, back to my rant. The right-wing love the idea that the common folk are ignorant, rough, germ ridden and miserable. They love the idea that girls dare not say no out of fear of appearing frigid (yes, the woman on the radio actually used that word) they want girls to have additional sex-education lessons in which they are told of the benefits of abstinence -because sex should be special, I was actually waiting for the word hygiene to make its return.

Now the use of celibacy as a way to make sex more powerful depends upon sex being given a high status -made sacred in fact. Sex isn't naturally sacred, making it so is just a bit kinky, don't you think?

You see, the reason why the right-wing attitude bugs me so much is that this stuff is my territory, self-appointed sacred whore that I am, I've done the bad sex, I've visited more than one of the grim islands of rape, I've paid my respects to the High Queen of Heaven Herself (legs wide open) on the alter of Inanna, but I have also done the celibate sex trip. Consequently I think that people approaching it from the fear angle are not helping anyone but themselves, or if I say what I actually think, they are plain ignorant themselves!

I don't believe that abstinence until the 'right time' can guarantee 'making love' rather than a fuck, I think that sex is sometimes an almost unconscious force, and then clothes do melt away and the earth stops spinning, and orgasm seems to flow out of pure joy, but most of the time sex is a transaction and works much better as a transaction. In fact the only time sex has ever been a melt into orgasm for me is in dreams. Sex for me has always been a transaction, about power both temporal and internal (life-force/chi, what ever name works best) but that's just me.

I was never innocent.

Deus Ex.

2011-05-06T13:54:00.001+01:00

No...I'm not doing very well.

The reason why I don't use the 'safe-word'?

I don't use it because I keep waiting for things to get better, I'm not very good at respecting my own limits when it comes to psychological pain.

So, what happened?

Let's face it, his theory made sense. I'd just said that I enjoyed ambiguity. Ambiguity is a whole subject in itself, and not to be explored right now. But his next statement hit me hard; he implied that he would lie to me that he may or may not tell me about where he was going in the hope that I would enjoy the implications my mind would construct out of a lack in information.

I called that lying...

It isn't exactly a lie..

My main objection to his statement is that he is assuming that I can cope with anything, but perhaps he chooses to say or do something to imply something shocking to me, and I'm not able to cope mainly because I'm cooking tea, or with the kids. My mind works slowly, I can see myself only working something out too late and when I'm not in a 'safe space'.

That isn't fair.

It is risking hurting me in a situation in which I can't speak freely, it destroys the purpose of the 'safe-word'.

And then there is the use and abuse of pretence; when does pretence become a lie? When does a fantasy cross the line? And what about 'liminal' space? What about 'Sacred space'?

I simplify the whole thing in my mind by making a division; I don't divide things into real-physical (as better) Vs fantasy-virtual.

Instead I divide by how much energy something possesses for 'the user'.

A fantasy that crosses the line because it is: illegal, physically disgusting and down right dangerous may attract or repel (+ or - energy). There are mind consequences of emotion and there are physical consequences -increased heart rate, erections and oozings. But because it is primarily a virtual experience, it is physically safe.

Psychological experiences of attraction, revulsion, hope, fear and desire or sadness happen in physical, real space because real is never without a 'virtual dimension'.

There are positive and negative changes in perception as a consequence of experiencing things virtually. He said that he would use deception -consequence- I felt unsafe...

It was temporary, I didn't want to feel that way, but it shocked me to think of him as careless.

The liminal space is supposed to exist between the worlds of physical and psychological-mind space.

Warren Spector famously described 'game space' (referring specifically to playing Deus Ex) as liminal. In Deus Ex 'I' failed to dissolve into Denton and failed to forget the clunking differences between the real world and the virtual. Warren Spector was defining liminal space as a 'place' where social mores and cultural rules can be temporarily abandoned, re-examined and playfully transgressed.

There is more to it than that.

The liminal space of a game has boundaries. It is therefore a 'sacred space' not exactly liminal. Entrance in to Quake3 or Portal 2 or Second_Life is via a computer, there are passwords and knowledge is required, no one is there by accident.

The way in to a liminal space is through ritual, be that simply double clicking Steam and selecting your game, or by lighting candles and then visualising the protective circle.

The anthropologist Victor Turner studied religion and ritual and defined a ritual as having three stages:

Separation or the pre-liminal (after limen, Latin for threshold), when a person or group becomes detached from an earlier fixed point in the social structure or from an earlier set of social conditions.
Margin or the liminal, when the state of the ritual subject is ambiguous; he is no longer in the old state and has not yet reached the new one;
and aggregation or the post-liminal, when the ritual subject enters a new stable state with its own rights and obligations (Turner 1967:94; 1968b:576-577).

Turner also said that all rituals "celebrate or commemorate transcendent powers" (V. Turner and E. Turner 1982:201) Transcendent implies a going beyond, a reaching out. Originally Turner set out to study social conflict and 'the social mechanisms brought into play to reduce, exclude or resolve conflict' and ended up joining the Catholic church.

To be honest I don't recognise Turner's three stages unless we are talking about social rituals such as weddings and funerals in which case those stages fit. Ritual is union with the Divine, a practitioner does it to benefit her community and herself; the ritual itself may well be secret. The practitioners and the practices are 'other' sometimes absolutely secret.

D/s has its symbols -physical objects with a powerful virtual aspect (their psychological meaning). Symbols are used in ritual because we acknowledge their power to act upon and change the persons involved in ritual.

But anyway!
What I wanted him to understand is the importance of ritual, that 'symbols' be they action or idea evoke energy and that sex in particular can be practiced in a high energy, powerful way (or not). If people use the high energy form, transgression is a short cut to a hit. Energy isn't of itself good or bad, just good when it runs in the right way and devastating when it runs the wrong way...

But it is OK now.
I know that I go off at the deep end and I know why I do it. It is because it seems to me that as long as I stay in the hurt place I'm giving him a chance to turn things around.

Like last night when I refused to kneel to take off his boots...
He was hurt.
He sat a long while.

Then he walked over to be and pulled me with his hand around the back of my neck to kneel before him.

What had been heavy, painful, sad was instantly changed.
I almost laughed with relief.

Safe word.

2011-05-03T17:16:00.000+01:00

Ever so often I try to retell the story; of how we got to here. As I recall all the things that have happened I find myself asking if being dominant or submissive is like being left or right handed, a natural inclination? At the moment my best theory is that a submissive person needs to experience things directly whilst a dominant person experiences them through the responses of the submissive.

Both the dominant and submissive person experience discomfort and feel the edges of personal boundaries and rules being stretched.

We have that in common.

So, back to problems. I needed a neutral space in which to say things, if I say things it feels to me as if I'm trying to change his behaviour or being irrational and so I go quiet and try not to think...anything at all. Obviously that isn't good, it is in fact down right unhelpful!

He suggested a box -for me to write out and put inside the box anything that needs to be discussed. But my mind doesn't work like that, most of the time I'm thinking about what ever it is that I'm doing, and problems are raw things, happen in situ, they don't happen unless something goes wrong...

So we need someway to designate a neutral space between us that is free of any D/s dynamic.

Which reminded me of the safe word. I had thought of it as a way to get to 'a neutral space' a kind of time-out space in between. But the other day I realised that really for me it is more important than that, and that I don't see myself using it in that way. If I had seen it as a way to 'create space' I would have used it in that way already.

A safe-word is to be used when a limit is reached and I don't believe that I can or should go any further. OK, so that sounds like I'm talking about triggers (when something reminds me of something else and I'm flooded with emotions relating to a particular incident or bad memory).

Triggers are weird -time-travel and instant insanity!

Also it feels wrong to have a safe-word; in an idealised D/s relationship how can there ever be too far (because Master and slave seems hotter and more real). But safe-words are like condoms -plain sensible.

Paradoxically I keep saying that I want to go deeper into those triggers, I don't imagine myself using a safe-word to get me out of something psychological.

But I see that the good doctor acts as if he expects me to want to keep away from those bad places, and by acting in that way he has taken away from me the only thing that could help me heal them. I need to go there so that I can get out...because when there was no escape I had to lie...there is something about the lie that is corrosive.

Returning with a safe-word and someone who will listen restores my integrity.

I know because I felt the possibilities -as he fucked me, playing at rape. In his head it repeats "how could you love me for doing it like that" as I begin to push him away, feeling the play-back in my head, but this time combined with freedom; I don't have to keep my head, I don't have to make anything OK, I can call things by their real names, it made me cry with relief.

Getting better...

2011-04-18T16:03:00.001+01:00

I actually feel lighter, fitter, better.
It must have been weighing on me a lot!
Not much sleep last night, hours of him deep inside me.

The main thing that I learnt is that there is a problem in how I communicate my needs. It is almost impossible for me to say what I want directly, not because I don't have the words, but because of the power dynamic. I can't tell him what to do -even asking feels as if I'm trying to change what he wants to do...

Because of course I am trying to change what he wants to do.

I am also assuming that if he wanted to do something to help me, he would read my mind. I am unreasonably expecting him to do this and then I'm feeling unloved because he can't read my mind.

We need some way to step into a space in between, a neutral space where I can explain things.

But last night if I hadn't looked so miserable when he was about to put on a condom and continue; if I hadn't shown that I needed something different to what he planned, I wouldn't have ended up face down feeling his Latex covered fingers stretching me open. It made me want to cry in frustration, I was so sure that he was going to take it away from me...but I didn't listen to that voice.

His cock pushing in.
There is an instance of it being easy and then suddenly difficult; there is pain. It is as if there is a gate in there that I have to undo (blind fold...) I don't want to express the pain because again, I fear any sign of things not being perfect and he will stop! But it isn't possible for him to push past this, it is me and to undo it means relaxing and kind of gently pushing down...

Then he is inside and I am consumed with fear, so much so that I wont let myself feel anything at all. There is also a deep relief, but again fear, so much of it...

He looks at porn, watching what he is doing happening on the screen in a feedback loop and eventually I let go of fear and begin, tentatively, to trust once more

'Why are you submissive' ?

2011-04-17T20:10:00.001+01:00

I returned to Fetlife, I see that the old question of 'Why are you submissive?' still runs and runs.

The answer I liked best was something like,

'Because my mother told me not to be'.

I am beginning to think that being submissive is like being gay, or hetro; there is some wriggle space, but fundamentally it is something I was born to be. It isn't a result of abuse or reading the wrong kind of literature (being corrupted!).

I just didn't get what other girls meant about playing hard to get.

Basically I was brought up with the idea that if you gave boys what they wanted, then you were being 'used'. Being used seem to mean letting a man get his hands into your knickers and cumming all over your skirt without the dubious benefit of being in a long term relationship with a man who wouldn't demean you by such behaviour. But I wasn't sure what I was supposed to get out of a transaction if I wasn't being used (since being used seemed reward enough for me).

Other girls said, 'Don't give boys what they want. Make them wait! Or else they will think that you are too easy' and I always wondered about that..

Like what do I get out of making them wait just so that I can say no over and over?

It just looks plain cruel.

Besides which I like making cocks spurt.

But the message was clear from my peers and TV; you shouldn't give men what they want or else they will first abuse you and then get another woman when they are bored with you.

The game of restricting sex will give you power they said.
It will give you self-respect.

Not for me.
I'd already thought this one through.

Giving someone what they want is a gift that benefits the giver. Withholding or taking away pleasure, unless it is done to make sex better, is just a way to score points, a way to feel good because you have done the right thing and made someone else feel small.

See I'm beginning to think that the so called vanilla version of sex is just plain ignorant sex, full of people finding submissive or dominant elements in themselves and using them badly. The religious thing, may at first seem different, but enforced celibacy (enforced by a value system that makes sex seem even more valuable or dangerous) is a fascinating experience.

It makes everything become very rude indeed.
You end up almost cumming just by looking at cucumbers (OK, I'm exaggerating...a bit) I think it is better to use a chastity device and to call things by their proper name, enforced celibacy is after all just another good old fetish.

Oh but isn't it terrible that some people really believe that having sex out of wedlock is bad? No, there are plenty of arguments against prohibition, they can read books and change their minds...sorry, think I'm going to call it karma.

But anyway, back to me here now: the problem was evoked again last night. The only benefit of post traumatic stress is that each time I go there I learn more about what calls it up and get some kind of insight into what to do about it.

First, my basic yet byzantine theory on how the mind works:

The rain fell, more rain than I have heard for many days. The the sky was fractured, the air polarised. When fault lines were found, the cascade of electrons ripped the sound of bright energy; a resonance between the real world and that of my soul.

The Tesla coil was once known as the 'Resonate transformer'. Deep. Deep down in the heart of my mind there exists a process I symbolize as the Tesla coil. It used to be known as libido; the 'life-force'. It was elaborated upon by Freud and re-interpreted by Jung, Freud regarded libido in its pure, most direct form as sexuality.

The energy 'trapped' underground that needs to be discharged, or made to flow freely tries to free itself by resonating with things happening in the 'upper world' of reality.

'Triggers' resonate with that energy.
The experience is rarely pleasant.

What happened to me last night was a trigger.
It's happened before.
Here is a previous blog entry from almost exactly one year ago:

2010-04-26T21:40:38.497+01:00.

I begin to slip under and down into the crack between mind and body, riding the delicious sensation of dissociation until nothing exists except the core of pleasure his fingers call to the surface. His fingers begin at the fire-tip of my clit, and enter the salt water of my cunt then beginning to trace the entrance to my bowels...I begin to long for his cock, for nothing else is that perfect, nothing else can fill me in that way.I begin to make bargains, to give everything away. But I know I'm on dangerous ground, metaphorically offering him anything is tantamount to digging myself a grave, saying give me the gun, I'll kill myself in front of you if only you let me taste what I desire before I die.

But the fact remains; the connection between us is worth more to me than my life.

He doesn't understand.

He wont give me what I want. He tells me that he is scared of making a mistake, of hurting me and I tell him that he is cruel and an idiot. That all those times he thought that I was keeping things from him it was not true. He started with everything but was too dumb to use me; the time I pleaded with him to cum (and just written down it sounds stupid) but he wouldn't...then something in me was destroyed: my trust in him, my faith in that connection

I knew well what was triggered. What I didn't understand is why I felt so bereft and abandoned by the good doctor.

The original experience was the first time I'd been sodomised. And yes, I still love the word. It happened a long time ago now, before I would have called myself submissive; it was my (now ex) husband and I've written about it before and don't really want to think about it in detail again.

The outcome was, he'd threatened to kill himself and my daughters and at this point the only thing I could do when he started to kiss me was to placate him by responding. A submissive nature in this case helped me, if I'd refused or fought the world would forgive me and understand, but perhaps we wouldn't have got out of that room alive.

When he started I was faking it, but it turned real.
His cock hurt, but I loved the pain.

I didn't hate myself for it, basically I was proud at keeping my head and getting out of that room with all of us alive. But it left a fracture line through my soul.

I still like that bit in my memory when he told the councilor that it was the only time I'd ever responded to him. I didn't tell her what had happened, I let them carry on talking about me as if everything was my fault. I didn't want to see what would happen if I told her that he'd threatened to drive into a wall unless I got into the car with him and let him drive us to a hotel. I was in fear of my life, but I had my daughters with me. I wasn't going to tell her that basically it was rape.

If we are talking about self-respect, it was my self-respect on the line here. I'd dealt with the situation, I'd diffused it. I was not going to play any kind of victim or even think of myself in that way for a second.

Nevertheless, I got hurt and there is no justice, no one to tell him that he should apologise to me.

So, anal sex brings that awful hotel room back, drops me right in it. The experience isn't straight, isn't about anger or a desire for escape; the experience is twisty. The first time the good doctor so gently pushed his fingers into me the ground swallowed me, when his cock followed, he was with me...back in the room.

I hadn't seen that.
All I'd seen at the time was light, pure light and the feeling of being so close to the doctor, never closer...Instead of it being my ex-husband it was now the good doctor with me. I was no longer alone in a nightmare. I hadn't known until last night that that was why it hurt me so much. I am bereft and I am abandoned.

The year without anal sex, or rather with him attempting, withdrawing, feeling bad for 'not giving me what I want' has in effect erased that precious connection.

When he touches me there, attempts to get in, makes me want; I fall back into the hotel room; my children are asleep, I'm having to keep silence, my ex-husband pushing into me and no way out. I am abandoned. There is just me and death, I'm acting to keep death at bay.

Now it is as it was.
My connection with the doctor, severed.

As I wrote last year:

then something in me was destroyed: my trust in him, my faith in that connection

I don't know the way out of this. I'm at the mercy of various protocols and beliefs in him that make him resent my need.

The thought of him touching me there is panic and betrayal.

Needs and wants part 2.

2011-04-16T19:07:00.000+01:00

Or The echo.

The echo is inside my head.
It makes me think that I could switch...

The echo happens when there is a gap.

The gap is between what is happening and where I'd like to be. It refers to a narrative, without the narrative there could not be a gap.

The gap is filled with expectation.
If I didn't think that I knew what he was doing, I couldn't have an idea of what he should be doing.

Start again.
We don't 'do' scenes in a serious, ordered, pre-thought out kind of way. I'd like to, I'd like us to think of some situation and play with it and for it to be heavy duty.

What happens is?
Sex happens.

There is a beginning + middle + end.
And the narrative is the story: where we are going and how we are going to get there.

The 'narrative' is almost always about maximizing pleasure, and finally me being pushed over my boundaries into orgasm, this gives him 'permission' to cum.

But I'm supposed to be the submissive one..

The echo is the voice inside my head that would 'top from the bottom'. The voice that says, 'I wish that he would do such and such'. The voice that says 'I want him to do such and such'. It happens because I know where we are going (the narrative) and I can see that there are better ways of getting there.

I don't like it because it makes me sound as if I want to be in charge, I don't want it because I want to hand myself over, I try to ignore it but...

But if I was sensible I'd know that this isn't a problem as long as for now I switch the voice off, remember everything I'm thinking and discuss it latter. Remembering is hard to do, the situation becomes emotional, I'm flooded with feelings of annoyance at myself and with him. And up until now he hasn't realised quite how seriously I take things, I don't think that he understood that I'm not playing at being submissive and that, for me it has always been at the core of our relationship.

This morning we were talking about the use of the safe word, and I said that it was for any time, all of the time, that we didn't need to decide if a situation might need a safe word beforehand and I didn't need permission to use it because I'm good at looking after myself, on the other hand, I don't think that I've ever used it -perhaps once when the rope really was too tight.

Because he asked about the safe word and didn't see that I don't draw a line between 'vanilla' and D/s did he think that I'm just playing at submission or that D/s is for special occasions?

Well anyway, the narrative.
I can't initiate sex with him because it crosses the line. When our relationship had just begun, it puzzled me that I could feel that something was wrong if I 'asked' for sex. I found it hard to understand, full stop! Yet he thought that I should be demonstrative even though he didn't want me to be, because it would prove that I loved him.

It was difficult.

Now the ground our relationship is built on is better understood, he understands that he has the right to use me; if I can't take it, the problem is mine. I have the safe word for serious 'can't take it' but it is understood that I am his to be 'used'. Sex isn't about a joint decision based on us having the same degree of libido.

Sex works better if it is based on how he feels, it is up to his cock.

During sex the energy we evoke, has for some time now come from exploring the edges of jealousy.

My jealousy that is.

It works well.

Each time he tells me about a situation, or a scenario that could, or has happened, it makes me go down further into submission..until I'm lost in pure pleasure, trying hard not to cum, because when I do, sex is over.

But the echo voice in my head occurs when, in the middle part, I feel his cock not so hard and yet he continues with what he is doing, even though he would rather be doing something else.

Is this 'bottoming from the top'?!

But today the thought occurred to me, if I have a voice in my head saying what I want to happen, surely he does too? Thoughts like these make subs think that they could be switches, and in some cases it is true, but not for me...that's why I see it as an effect of knowing the narrative, it is a kind of 'gap sickness' and it is about needs and wants.

When I know what would make things better (because the narrative is about me being full of pleasure, just under orgasm) I can't say there and then what I want to happen because if I do that I'm breaking some kind of rule in my head, and worse, should he use my suggestion he will be giving me what I want, instead of doing what he wants; his Domness fades and I switch off.

In both cases all the energy dissipates for me if I speak!

But the thought remains, surely he has a voice that says what he wants me to do, surely he has a voice that is pleased or annoyed with me, a voice that dictates to him what to do next to make the pleasure greater for himself?

The difference is, as a Dom he can use it...I don't understand why he doesn't.

Thinking now about before; when I was with Gil. The narrative was dictated by where we were; we lived in a house that had a rule of celibacy, but celibacy in this tradition does not mean *no sex*. It meant non-orgasmic sex. It also meant that our relationship was *secret* or rather it was non-existent in 'Western' terms. I was the 'secret consort', and I had absolutely no control at all over the narrative.

Out of the house, in a hotel or anywhere not 'Holy' we had a relationship, and sex included orgasm...he didn't like it and his dislike made me feel low and childish for wanting the reassurance of ordinary sex. I was better at the other kind of sex, with discipline. But it froze my soul whilst blasting it with heat...it wasn't a comfortable place.

The narrative there, was not open for discussion.
There wasn't even an echo of a voice in my head.

Out of the Holy house the narrative was defined by him as being all about me and my needs. This made him act in a submissive way (out of compassion!) and made me hate it if anyone tries to please me...

Fetlife.

2011-04-15T18:31:00.000+01:00

I was thinking of returning to Fetlife; I don't know if you have ever tried to leave, to close your account? It isn't as straight forwards as I'd like; the people who run Fetlife want Fetlife to be a good service and they really do want only what's best for us, if I was having a bad experience because of their site they would like to know and to prevent any such happening to any one else.

OK...

But it took me three emails before my account was closed.

And I left because I couldn't trust myself, not because of other people (the world is full of them!) and the Internet is such a curious medium, it promotes dreams and fantasies. I didn't want to explain this...I found it hard to make myself hit delete and I wanted my choice to be respected.

The background to my decision was that around that time I'd found myself saying, more than once to the good doctor that I wished the world would send me someone; that I needed someone who would 'take me down' and not back off! I felt that he had let me down, that he had been punishing me for too long and that he didn't understand anything I'd said!

So, when I was messaged by a Dom who doesn't live too far away I decided that the best thing to do was to close the possibilities that the world offered; I left Fetlife because really, sometimes it is easier just to hit Esc (or Ctrl Alt Delete) than to commence all the problem solving, trials and tribulations that running a new program may bring...More than that though, the circumstances of our marriage wrote a contract in blood.

But in the background, nagging at me, is my friend's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. The invitation dropped through the door perhaps a month ago and I still haven't been able to bring myself to reply. The invite made me question what people mean by marriage. My friend's marriage looks grim to me: he has a bad Amazon habit (there are piles of books everywhere -and their house is big....) I know that she has had affairs, but we are no longer close enough to talk about such things, children and marriage and me being the *bad* wife and leaving my husband to become part of a 'cult' (Karma Kadgyu) getting pregnant etc...and she writing to tell me that I was just repeating my life over again by marrying the good doctor.

The first type of marriage I thought of when I asked myself *what does marriage look like?* was the 'companionate marriage'. I asked Google for clarification but I see that there is a language problem between 'us' and the Americans.

The British concept describes an evolution from the arranged marriage. It is believed that in the past people married primarily for financial reasons and stayed together primarily for financial reasons. This arranged marriage system evolved into the companionate marriage, which begins as a love match and simmers down into a social unit. Marriage exists for the sake of family and friends and is about friendship and cooperation, marriage as a long term commitment. Things such as silver wedding anniversaries celebrate the longevity, stability and order of a passionless union.

Eros turned to agape, or a festival of passive aggression?

It doesn't help that the last photo my friend uploaded to Facebook shows that she has had her hair cut just like her mother's and indeed, she looked just like her mother. I find that hard to take, I don't think it is age itself that bothers me, but if I had the same hair as my mother and saw her every time I looked in the mirror -oh, I don't know!

But in America the companionate marriage is one in which partners agree not to have children and may divorce by mutual consent, with neither partner responsible for the financial welfare of the other. The word companionate is devoid of baggage.

In early 1927, Judge Lindsey co-wrote a controversial book about what he called "companionate marriage," in which he suggested that young men and women should be able to live together in a trial marriage, where the couple could have a year to assess whether or not they were compatible. The only caveat was they had to agree not to have children.

But I'm not American, so a companionate marriage is one in which partners slip into roles and abide by traditional rules and provide companionship for each other. Honesty must be tempered in order to retain stability. Sex as a subject to be discussed is almost out of bounds. Honesty would be devastating.

Unlike *Taken in Hand* division of labour means that women still do the house work but feel guilty for not being 'emancipated'. A joke is used to diffuse the tension: 'Oh he does help out, but he doesn't know how to use the washing machine'. There is too much honesty and self-discipline required in, what the vanilla world regards as a kinky relationship.

And some people believe that by improving the status of women and undermining patriarchal authority, the process of capitalist industrialization encourages the growth of unstable marital patterns across cultures. Women no longer bare-foot and pregnant run away!

In 1992 Anthony Giddens came up with 'The Pure relationship' and this seems to be (in short!) a relationship based upon an intimate examination of minds, personality and sexuality, and is in effect a social relationship for its own sake which survives only as long as it provides enough satisfaction to both people.

To quote Stanley Kunz:

Giddens's point is that modern marriage is slowly being divested of connections with anything beyond the purely emotional bonding of adults. It used to be that the love of husband and wife was only part of the picture. Men and women were held together by love, but also by economic interdependence, and a shared commitment to parenthood. But gradually, says Giddens, the marriage alliance is becoming less and less about a shared project of prosperity and parenting. Increasingly, marriage is being reduced to a strictly emotional connection between two adults: "the pure relationship."

Well that's fine and dandy, it explains a lot.

It explains why people think that there are only two kinds of marriage; the companionate (British translation) and the selfish!

The *pure marriage* described by Giddens is reduced by film and plays to people using a relationship primarily as a way to improve their mental health, share deepest feelings, each person asking 'how can my partner help me to understand myself'. After all the secrets are disclosed and all the closets opened, there is nothing left to do but to break up!

The film: 9 Songs epitomised this 'myth'..as it moved location from the heart of London to the frozen Arctic wasteland, punctuated by 'real' sex and Brit-pop. It made the companionate marriage look good by comparison.

So?
So what!
People are interesting, their hopes and fears, the way these are rationalised into a set of behaviours. But these narratives of rationalisations woven into action may function as traps. Very important to ask yourself what is it you fear...I think.

As to me?
I really am all at sea about what to do about the invite.

But back to Fetlife?
Well we talked about it and decided that I should give him my password so that he can check my messages. This makes me feel much better.

What do I fear?
I fear my capacity to be called.
It's an old habit, it wont go away.

Andrea the pornographer..

2011-04-07T17:38:00.001+01:00

Feminism and its subversion of sex...

I noticed a question put in the comments box of someone else's blog:

"Do you imagine that you like this kind of treatment, or are you just deluded?"

I like the distinction made between consciously imagining that one may like something that one does not like, it makes my head hurt to try to twist my thoughts into the Escher-like form I would need to imagine how I could suddenly see that I am wrong whilst thinking that I am right, let alone imagine that I like something that I don't like!

Basically I don't consider: "Do you imagine that you like this kind of treatment, or are you just deluded?" a proper question. It reflects a world that seems to have been created in the last half of the nineteenth century, and given new life in the 1980's: a world of subhuman males and victimized women as the norm...

So I thought I'd go to the source, visit Andrea Dworkins' web site because she often writes of male domination and female submission. But reader what I'd forgotten is, Andrea actually writes, despite her best intentions (to shock and to horrify) pornography. It is a trick used by those who spin stories of satanic abuse, the audience can side with the right and the good as the evil is so clearly shown, whilst vicariously enjoying the thrill of the forbidden.

I suspect that what she is actually doing is plagiarising The Story of O by Pauline Réage. I like her style though, I like the way she makes D/s absolutely real.

Try this from a lecture given by Andrea Dworkins:

A man has not thoroughly mastered a woman--he is not thoroughly a man--until her degradation is publicly witnessed and enjoyed. In other words, as a man establishes dominance he must also publicly establish ownership. Ownership is proven when a man can humiliate a woman in front of, and for the pleasure of, his fellows, and still she remains loyal to him. Ownership is further established when a man can loan a woman out as a carnal object, or give her as a gift to another man or to other men. These transactions make his ownership a matter of public record and increase his esteem in the eyes of other men. These transactions prove that he has not only claimed absolute authority over her body, but that he has also entirely mastered her will. What might have begun for the woman as submission to a particular man out of "love" for him--and what was in that sense congruent with her own integrity as she could recognize it--must end in the annihilation of even that claim to individuality. The individuality of ownership--"I am the one who owns"--is claimed by the man; but nothing must be left to the woman or in the woman on which she could base any claim to personal dignity, even the shabby dignity of believing, "I am the exclusive property of the man who degrades me." In the same way, and for the same reasons, she is forced to watch the man who possesses her exercising his sexual sadism against other women. This robs her of that internal grain of dignity that comes from believing, "I am the only one," or "I am perceived and my singular identity is verified when he degrades me," or "I am distinguished from other women because this man has chosen me."

Andrea Dworkins the pornographer; I wish she had said more, much more as I start to think about and long to be at that place of total and absolute submission, the place where:

"These transactions prove that he has not only claimed absolute authority over her body, but that he has also entirely mastered her will".

Once you find that location within yourself, then revisiting is exquisite...I can't explain it. Nor do I care if masochism looks bad to Andrea, I forgive her for the line "we can almost touch the bones of our dead". I love the way that she writes:

In pornography, we see female love raw, its naked erotic skeleton; we can almost touch the bones of our dead. Love is the erotic masochistic drive; love is the frenzied passion which compels a woman to submit to a diminishing life in chains; love is the consuming sexual impulse toward degradation and abuse. The woman does literally give herself to the man; he does literally take and possess her.

Yes Andrea and then she gets up and life goes on.

When Andrea turns her attention to the male in the audience she shames him into admitting that he enjoys fucking, chastising him for it; making his cock tingle with apprehension as she reminds him of the myth of the castrating teeth:

What then is behind the claim that fucking is pleasurable for the male? How can an act so saturated with the dread of loss of self, of loss of penis, be pleasurable? How can an act so obsessive, so anxiety-ridden, be characterized as pleasurable?

She almost makes me wish that I had a cock, a cock seems the very essence of vulnerability to me and her words are a rough cats tongue, scouring my balls!

I don't deny that she has a point (if you read the whole essay) but I do think that she is ignorant about how people use what culture, nature and nurture give us. Submission as part of a relationship isn't about bullying or victim hood. Submission is something I can only give to someone who is good enough, self-protection circuits come on when things appear to be going wrong. There are lines that can be crossed, there is behaviour that is too bad. Each time the good doctor enters into a scene with me he is playing with that edge -his fear of rejection for being bad- whilst I play with my fear of being too much...too wet, too sexual, too female, too much everything!

Edges, hope, fear, revulsion, hate and love.
"All of it, not just some of it".

Needs and wants.

2011-04-05T13:07:00.001+01:00

I divide what I want into two piles.

The first pile gets labelled: What I want.
The second pile: What I need.

I have been thinking about this for two weeks now. It is easy to see that what I want and what I need are different.

It isn't easy to divide the pile correctly.

And then there is the problem.

The problem doesn't get addressed, it goes on and on.

Intellectualising gives me words to write and makes me keep on trying to solve it, but it doesn't cure it; and nor does it help me.

I have a lot of self-control.
Consciously or unconsciously I have been automatically dividing things, and do you know what, I can't tell the difference between what I want and what I need!

How is it that I can't discriminate correctly between what I just want, and what I really need!

I can only tell that I haven't got what I truly need because, at the very point when what I need is not what's going to happen I crack up and became absolutely, icandescantly, angry before dissolving into silent agony...trying to make myself believe that need is really want and that I'm in the wrong.

I've been doing this for over a year now.

I should apologise, by all the rules of submission apologise is what I want to do, it is easier, less messy, it gets rewarded. An apology clears things up, draws some lines, recreates some boundaries, lets us move on..

The problem is....
the problem is anal sex....

My problem is I can't ditch all the emotions it evokes. I wish to god my problem was that I hated it and never wanted him to go anywhere near that part of me, but the fact is nothing pushes me under the blue-black rippling ocean of subspace more than anal sex.

I have some very bad memories linked to anal sex. So when his fingers drew close to that part of me for the first time, I closed my eyes in panic, feeling the earth give way beneath me as I fell into total conflict: I wanted him to touch me / I remembered the circumstances of the last time someone pushed into me, there. I was in both places at once having to submit to reality rather than memory, submit to trust.

I felt, the first time he lay inside me, totally owned, absolutely safe and the experience was so opposite to the other experience that even now it makes me cry to remember the contrast.

Another time, his cock deep inside of me, him looking at porn; I feel into a brilliant, white light; all thought gone, just total purity....

So why did it stop. I can't even begin to ask myself that, I will cry if I think about it; not because I remember an occasion, an incident, something done or said....oh no...the answer is I don't know why he took it away from me.

I hate to write this but I have a theory that he is punishing me; and if it was a conscious enjoyment kind of punishing it would be an acceptable part of our relationship.

But it isn't conscious, it is wrapped up in lies.

So I have said all this to him and I hate myself for saying it out loud. I can't make it my fault, I can't say sorry, I've thought about it and I really think it is his family's memes. There is a kind of misogyny he learnt at home, it makes him forget that it is me..

I'm feeling utterly vulnerable and scared that though we seemed to find a way out, he will forget and it will go back to how it was..

Ages ago he bought a butt plug, it has a rather hard tip. I think it was this plug that caused him to shut any thoughts of doing anything there, with me, away. He tried to put it inside me, but it hurt -which is just the way things are some days, anal sex isn't a matter of will power! I think that that is the incident that caused him to stop...

It still feels like punishment though; the unsaid script is "Look I spent good money on this, and you don't like it! You can take a cock up there, and this is tiny compared to that, but you say it hurts. OK then, I'm going to throw it away!"

As a result of him not being able to be angry the script remains unsaid, and it festers into: "Last time I tried to play with your arse you didn't like it. You hurt my feelings and made me throw away my toys. Don't think I'm going to forgive you!".

This happened with rope -like I was meant to flutter my eyelids and go into subspace just because that's what submissive women do?! I got the message that I was supposed to play along, to let it be a game, not be real...but I only fake for people I don't respect. Faking pleasure is kind, but on the other hand also a bit insulting. But he is my husband! I promised him my whole self, I wasn't playing any game, there is no need to play *safe* and keep it as a game, with me...

Oh...I can't write anymore of this. I'll just have to wait and see if anything has changed. for what it's worth, people don't change, but it is possible to find ways through problems and to avoid crashes....

Submission.

2011-03-29T13:11:00.000+01:00

Submission to what?

But first, back to *The Problem*.

I've not been able to apologise when I've felt myself to have been in the wrong.
But then, of course he wouldn't expect me to...

So I had to ask myself, how do I know that he is basically Dom-inclined, I mean, what if he genuinely doesn't like to be in charge, what if he would prefer me to tell him what to do, for it to be me who sets boundaries?

He kind of acts as if he wants me to be assertive and express my needs, or rather he expects me to act that way...wanting me to, or expecting me to are quite different things.

I needed to know: is there a test, or an exam for Dom-ness?

I think there is.

I am not a switch, but on the other hand I do know what I like. I know that I like to feel powerless (because it makes me feel powerful). I know that I like to be pushed into thinking about things that hurt me.

So I can do those things to him if I pretend that I'm doing it to me.

I've done it about twice in sixteen years.

I know that when I have done those things with him, he gets angry because he doesn't like it. I see that he doesn't know how to submit and I don't understand why he can't offer himself, pure and open and slipping down, down and further down.

Nor can he understand why I open up..he thinks I'm doing it to please him, when in fact it is automatic.

So, the test for Dom-ness is to see if he can think like a submissive. The less able he is to think in that way, the more Dom he is?

Possibly...I mean surely I shouldn't have to ask any questions, surely everything should be all worked out and easy and blah, blah, blah...no.

I approach this whole Domination/submission thing as a construct, a way to play with taboos...I also believe that domination and submission are hard-wired and down in the behaviorist layer of psychology. I believe that some people have an aptitude for being dom or sub and that I'm no good at being dominant at all.

So, a definitive test for Dom-ness would be nice, but the best I've come up with is to see what happens when roles are reversed. Also, to ask questions about what he thinks a submissive person should do in certain situations. I don't mean ask what he would like to happen, but ask questions as if it is a friend of a friend's problem. When I do this I see the difference between us, that he cannot think in a submissive way and tries to solve the problem by looking for ways to stop what ever causes the problem.

So for now my theory is that this absence of submissive thinking in him shows Dom-ness.

But the question I started with is: submission to what...
What do I actually submit to?

I had to think about this; submission is such a primal thing that it isn't covered by saying 'I submit to' then list various activities. It seems to happen in response to Dom behaviour, but what is it really?

What I submit to is his maleness, to all those things that his testicles make him want to do, to anything that makes his cock stiffen. I refuse to carry his self-control or moderation for him, I refuse to be the one who tells him to behave...

Why does that require submission?
Because what submits is the part of me that is scared and fearful and is full of panic. Each time I hold fast to the erotic and let the panic spin away, I am blessed...

Blood.

2011-03-25T16:06:00.000Z

From The Purfumed Garden. Sheikh Umar Ibn Muhammad Nefzawi.

Long ago there lived a woman named Moarbeda, a noted philosopher who was once reputed to be the wisest person of her time. It is recorded that one day some questions were put to her, and these were some of her replies:
"In what part of a woman's body does her mind reside"?
"Between her thighs"
"And in what place does she experience her greatest pleasure"?
"the same"
"And what is a woman's religion"?
"Her vulva"
"And with what part of herself does she love and hate"?
"The same...We give our vulva to the man we love and refuse it to the man we hate."

Imagine: "Moon," leads to "month," to "mother," to "mouth," that from the moon we get "menstruation," "measurement" "mathematics," "matter,"...

Words draw down a ladder to the moon.

Yet..

Blood is the stuff of life. Menstrual blood coagulates into the fetus, just as the moon and stars are curds and clots of mother nature's milk and blood...

I was thinking about menstruation huts, about how it would feel to become so poisonous, or so dangerously powerful that I should go away... into a positive woman's space, a place to have a break from my usual workload, and the mikvah.

Is the segregation, no matter how small it has become (from the hut to the mikvah) better or worse than my culture with its imperative to take painkillers and to use super absorbent feminine hygiene products to keep the horrible secret, safe?

And in other cultures infibulation or clicteredectomies...

Infibulation is female genital mutilation and is more than the removal of the clitoris, it is the cutting off of all of it -

The rationale for infibulating girls is that such infibulation creates a chastity belt, which provides living proof to the prospective bridegroom and his family that the bride's virtue is intact. Yet another primary object of the entire procedure is to dampen the girl's sex drive. It is generally believed by those that practice it, that this can be achieved by removing her most sensitive sexual parts..

When Hanny Lightfoot-Klein talked to the women in Sudan who had gone through this she found that:

Not only is the day of circumcision the most important day in a girl's life, but the very idea of not being circumcised is totally inconceivable to them. Only slaves, mental defectives and the daughters prostitutes, are uncircumcised.

She is indoctrinated from earliest childhood on by woman elders, that she has been born with a revolting disfigurement between her legs, one which is of potential horrendous danger to her. If it is not removed, it will make her so voracious sexually, that she will become uncontrollably promiscuous. Unless this noxious piece of flesh is cut away, she will become a prostitute, and dishonor her family. What is more, this terrible piece of flesh will make her stink disgustingly and grow, cancer like, until it dangles like a goose's neck between her knees.

Hanny goes on to ask about sex:

They tell me that they must lie, unmoving as blocks of wood, during the sex act. They also tell me that it would be terribly shameful to be anything other than totally immobile. The kind of woman that shows overt interest would be branded as wanton and promiscuous, unquestionably and irrevocably. Such behaviour would give her husband grounds for immediate divorce. They deny all interest, all pleasure, and they seem not to know what I am talking about when I ask them if they experience orgasm.

Hanny asks

“Are you able to enjoy sex?".

My translator poses the question to her, and this woman begins to laugh. She laughs and laughs and laughs, more and more violently. She laughs so hard, that eventually, she falls off her chair. When she is finally able to stop laughing long enough to gasp out her answer, my translator begins to laugh as well. The two of them shriek and shout back and forth at each other between hoots of laughter, and eventually the translator is laughing so hard that she falls off chair also.

So here are the two of them are, virtually rolling around the floor, slapping the ground and clutching each other, and I'm wondering what it's all about, because I haven't the faintest notion of why they are laughing and what it all means.

Finally, I slide off my chair, sit down on the floor next to them and wait until they quiet sufficiently so that I can make some sense out of the whole situation. And when at last my translator is able to gasp out the answer that this woman has been trying to give her, the lights suddenly go on for me.

She explains: "This woman says that you must be either a lunatic or a complete fool to ask anyone a question like that. She says, of course she enjoys sex! What woman doesn't? The Pharaonic cannot change that! She says that no matter what they cut away from you, no one can change that!"

Hanny Lightfoot Klein, M.A http://www.lightfoot-klein.com/orgasm.html

Well, where I come from we are expected to understand that orgasm is a mechanical thing; it happens in response to stimulation. Without a clitoris, and having had that kind of terrible thing happen to you, you really shouldn't be able to enjoy sex. If women with perfectly functional clitorises can't reach orgasm without their clitoris being *stimulated* then the women who feel obliged to pretend that they don't respond to sex at all for fear of appearing wonton or promiscuous, shouldn't be enjoying it.

But they do.

This is of no surprise really though, is it...not here, not in this world of kink where there is a difference between a fuck and an experience.

But the thing is, because I have this massive imperative not to let on how much I like sex. I understand exactly why the Sudanese women feel that they must lie still. It seems absolutely wrong to me to either initiate sex, or be too expressive. It is too easy to make a man reach orgasm and it takes control away from him to do so.

Perhaps that is why being tied up seems right to me?
That because women wont keep still and will take control unless a man makes it otherwise, then the rope signifies his desire to enjoy, rather than to have sex.

Pride.

2011-03-24T10:48:00.004Z

I have kept away from blogging for a while; I had the feeling that anything I wrote here wouldn't help because he reads my blog and working stuff out is messy. Work in progress means things are dug up and put in the wrong order, that some things are too raw, and some things should plain never be looked at directly!

But I'm stuck with believing that he needs me to like everything that he does. This is where that blasted word *consensual* gets in the way!

Marriage goes beyond consensual.
Beyond a collar.

What actually happens is that if he doesn't think that I like something, or something that he did ages ago caused a problem; it wont happen again. To all intents and purposes he forgets about it.

But forgetting isn't a kind of losing something, or a passive process. Forgetting is an active process -I mean forgetting in his case means 'cutting off/getting rid of' and I see that as taking something away from me and it bloody hurts!

I find his process of forgetting worse than any punishment...because it is cold, an amnesia, it is unconscious, a part of the zombie realm.

It is worse than punishment because logical thought leads me to the conclusion that I'm not good enough. I have to get used to it not being worth his while to tie me up, it isn't worth the effort of looking for the rope! The thoughts that follow hurt me worse than physical pain, I think: it must be because he finds me too boring and only has sex with me because we are in the same bed. In this safe, anodyne world love means being friends, and I don't give him a hard-on, or I do, but only because he would get one anyway..

This negative dialogue makes a lot of sense, I'm perfectly able to believe it, I mean I'm old, we've been married for ages, why should he want me in a passionate, hard way?

The logical and positive part of me provides another explanation; isn't it possible that he wants to be in the land of safe, vanilla sex because he doesn't like that Dom voice in his head?

That inner Dom makes him feel uncomfortable, un-safe, because who knows where it may lead? His anti-Dom voice asks: how can a man be proud of wanting to do that to a woman, of making her open up so much to him that she has no secrets, and no self control left?

But it is me, not some stereotype!
Like I'm supposed to feel bad because I'm letting the feminist side down by wanting him to humiliate me, or to make me feel ashamed?

Have I ever said that?
Does he really imagine me saying to him, 'I didn't like it when you obviously enjoyed X, Y or Z because it means that I can't trust you/ you are obviously in need of therapy'!? Our whole relationship is based on a fractured trust and because of that fault line, both of us are aware of our promises to each other, more so than if we didn't know just how damaging getting things wrong can be. I don't have a problem with him wanting anything...And in truth I have absolutely never said anything to that effect because I just don't think that way!

But I do have a massive problem with things going missing.

Nor do I understand not being proud. I'm proud of being submissive, I love the vulnerability of it and how it can make go down so far that I fall into pure light.

But if he doesn't like that Dom part of himself, and he unconsciously puts his dislike of himself onto me, then his version of me wouldn't like him for making me so debased that I'd promise the world for his cock

But the real me needs to go there; I'm an addict, totally!

So I'm saying that the solution is to be more Dom -but of course I'd see it that way!

Here we meet the other problem: giving me what I want is impossible because he is too Dom!

The Dom part of him knows when I want something and it makes him feel that I'm pushing him (not a good thing!) But if he stepped over half way and totally into Dom, he would stop feeling bad and simply be absolutely justified in reasserting his right to give me exactly, and only what he wanted to give me, and he would refuse to do what I wanted until he wanted to do it.

In short, if he dealt with the problem of his discomfort of *letting me down* in a *hot* way, he would push all the bad feelings onto me, he would blame me and say, 'I was about to do this to you, but'...and then make up a really hurtful excuse and continue until I was pushed into begging for it. Then it would be up to him, but the subject wouldn't be forgotten, glossed over, lost...cut off.

And I wouldn't have to feel too old, too pushy, too needy, thrown away and lost....

Purity -the path down.

2011-03-01T09:14:00.001Z

The landscape of human sexuality is hard to describe, it is experienced and in experiencing I am changing. I try to remember incidents: part A alongside part B, as X enters Y: the degree of resistance, the experience of penetration, or joining, of violation. The answers I try to capture: for how many minutes, for how many heartbeats? The names of the ephemeral, the ghosts and elementals drifting through the experience of, the landscape of, of the glittering city of the Land of Fuck.

The landscape at the beginning of the year is a cold bed, warm blankets and dark, cold air. Besides me and part of me skin warm and hot and cold. Breath dances rhythms, I feel the increase in 'animal heat' between us, the opening in the darkness, the subduction zone. The stiffness of his cock amazes me, a thing of wonder, a gift beyond measure under the embroidered, slippery darkness. Easing his cock inside me, the chains of words spinning around my heart, turning feeling into symbol, dissolves into flame.

No words.
No I.
No he.

My vulnerability is the lesson I studied so hard to learn...that anyone could do this to me down here in the city, in the room, in the bed anywhere. The chain of reason, the cords of words that define me dissolves from my core, replaced by cock.

Here is purity beyond measure.

The real word is mapped and imposed upon the world of skin; he slips his cock into the memory of cunts, fattening his cock, feeding it, strengthening it, increasing its power. His cock is fed and washed in milk brimming from my cunt, my fear of losing this cock makes it a hungry mouth, watering in anticipation, unsatiated by being filled, wanting more, to take the whole deeper into the place where I will crack into pure submission.

"Tell me that you want me to fuck her"
I look in to my heart, I hear the voices pleading with me to take care. I feel my cunt tighten as a wound, his words are salt. The sensation of making myself say it, taking on the full meaning and weight of the words drops me into free fall.
I feel the submission in the words and speak.
"Yes..please, I want you to"
"You would be gagged" he asks
"As you watch me"
"Yes" I say. My compliance a gift.
"I have no right to speak".

I don't add because your cock is Holy to me...

Return...

2011-02-25T22:44:00.001Z

I never got on with WordPress, don't ask me why. Now it says I don't 'exist' and my password doesn't work. My brief sojourn to WordPress was probably enough to confuse the bloodhounds (imaginary or not?) on my trail.

So I'm back.

With the code sorted so that the web-spiders that crawl through page-code indexing the Internet have been told to -nofollow- ignore my pages, and there is a change of name for me...I quite like it: 3hadow3un

Even though it came originally from War Hammer (mother's of small boys will know what I'm talking about here).

The whole identity thing has been quite difficult.

I fled the 'Net because it is important that my husband isn't connected with me. He is supposed to be a good, honest and vanilla husband, it doesn't do to be a man who likes to tie women up. My argument that a man who is pure vanilla is less likely to be good and honest than one explores what thrills him, isn't what the world wants to hear.

And I have Facebook and Twitter under my old name and then Google put this blog on the first page connected with that name, but I only noticed this after I'd made the mistake of posting information to him at work from my address, thus connecting my name with his...He didn't tell me off, but I felt guilty enough to delete this blog.

2011-02-04T21:49:00.001Z

The loving Goddess of Creation has another face. As she brings man into time and his world, she also removes him from it. So she is his destroyer as well. No-one can be a successful Tantrika unless he has faced up to this reality, and assimilated it into his image of the nature of the Goddess. There are many rituals, some of them sexual, carried out among the corpses in real (or symbolic) cremation-grounds, which bring this necessity forcibly home to the practising Tantrika. There, in the red light of funeral pyres, as jackals and crows scatter and crunch the bones, he confronts the dissolution of all he holds dear in life.
Philip Rawson, Tantra: The Indian Cult of Ecstasy

I don’t remember it that way at all. But then, the charnel ground doesn’t look like that around here.

I think that those old yogis have it too easy; we have to use supermarkets with their rows of plastic-wrap meat joints, pots of anti-aging cream, the voice on the escalator saying “You are reaching the end of the conveyor, please take care” and motor-ways tattooed with the ominous reminder that the wheels on lorries sometimes explode, sending the truck hurtling out of lane. as our reminders of death and impermanence.

Non-practitioners always make ‘ritual’ practices seem so exciting, as if ritual takes place in a festival space. But if the boundaries dissolve and there are no rules, then there is no power in the transgression.

For this reason, tantra is full of rules.

But more to the point, I haven’t written here for ages.

I haven’t told any of my fellow bloggers my new address, I haven’t even had much sex!

But that last bit isn’t the problem, no. I’m still feeling sore from a trip I and my son took with Gil (father of my other son, a Lama).

Ah me, Tibetan tantra is a man’s game, I mean that the language and symbolism used suits a man’s desire for transcendence and enlightenment. In Sacred sex a human woman represents the Goddess -the Dharmakaya, the Void- but, quite frankly the Goddess in this case isn’t anything like my experience of Her. I have never felt the Goddess to be other or distant -She is so familiar, that when you finally recognise Her you wondered how you didn’t notice before.

But anyway, I was saying…So, there we were, on this trip to the theater for the sake of my son (doing some research for college). I drove us the bus station so I wouldn’t be able to think too much, parked the car and we walked to the bus stop.

It was cheaper to get a *family* ticket…and that kind of did my head in because if *we* were a *family* then the only rules that fitted, were divorce rules.

I know a lot of people pride themselves on being civilized about their divorce: how their ex baby sits for them, comes around now and then for a chat, I know all about that because I have done it. My conclusion is, quite frankly it would have been better for all if I’d screamed and raged and been totally unreasonable…because if I’d been honest about how it feels I wouldn’t have colluded in the dream that all is OK…

So, here I was once more, with an ex, getting on a bus, with a family ticket, playing *happy families*, abiding by the rules.

And it struck me as infinitely sad.

In another universe he may have been trying to get me into a dark corner and his hand in my knickers, or even flirting with me, allowing me to experience a transgressive thrill of desire or revulsion. But in this universe we had *divorce* rules. No eye contact, no closeness in any way, no anger or joy or anything at all.

It is a deadening, soulless kind of interaction and it left me kind of numb for several weeks.

Cool water on burning sand.

2011-01-06T09:47:00.003Z

If you ask me, I don't do secrets.

What I mean is I can't remember when I last felt that I should not speak about something because it would shame me, or make me feel bad in some way; not since school anyway.

I can live a lie of course, that is an essential skill for hard times when honesty would cause the walls of my life to shatter. But having done that, and having escaped, it is hard for me to see anything that would induce me to take that path again, even for a short while.

So I don't lie.
I just don't tell.

To avoid useless mental conflict I created a mental version of the medieval oubliette (from the French oubliette, literally "forgotten place") -a small, underground chamber into which a prisoner was forced and ignored- it is a kind of compartmentalising that goes on in my mind; I swiftly drag and leave troublesome thoughts / experience / possibilities to a 'safe' place.

I will not return to them.
But it isn't forgetting.

It is different when thoughts or experiences need to be integrated or understood, I make a note and always deal with...eventually...but some things just go straight into the oubliette; and there they would stay.

If it were up to me.

He asked me about FetLife and I remembered that I'd left and that I hadn't told him about it at all. Leaving FetLife had seemed easier than dealing with...Leaving FetLife was a way not to deal with.

It was an oubliette thing to do.

Someone there wrote to me and I just couldn't face any of the possibilities. I couldn't accept or deny this request for friending. I didn't want to discuss it because I know exactly how my mind works, I wouldn't learn anything new, or make sense of something I need to make sense of...so I used the oubliette. A kind of self-discipline I suppose.

During bad times I want a way out. I have promised not to take any way out at all...can't argue with a promise made of blood.

I hadn't told him because I couldn't imagine a way to say it. He saw it as proof that I'm trustworthy I think?

So that was one.

Next came embarrassment.
Guess what.

I don't do embarrassment.

Embarrassment falls through the trap door directly into the oubliette or else I'd never write here at all...So it is kind of funny to admit to myself when I am embarrassed sometimes and to feel it.

I automatically switch things off.

It's supposed to be the other way around, people are supposed to find it harder to look away, or ignore...let go of the thing that hurts. I think that is usually because the thing that wont go away has something to give ( there is a lesson to learn) but the need to deal with is redefined by others as 'not letting go' because obviously things that need to be looked after hurt, so it isn't a happy experience!?

But me...I'm gradually learning how to let myself experience things again.

There is a lot of freedom when the bad things are dropped into the oubliette, a kind of space, of disengagement. But now here, not now, embarrassment is going over my head, way beyond.

I'm leaning over, face to the wall, feeling him looking. Feeling his fingers begin to open me up. I wanted the ground to crack, to swallow me whole. It felt like being crushed into shame. The light was too bright, there was no where to hide...I sound totally sane and rational when I say as if as a throw away remark, that I'm 'feeling a bit embarresed' trusting that my embarrassment is no longer going to be read as a sign for him to back away and leave me to recover.

80's nice-man rules.
Un-do, undo and be gone!

The next thing that made me embarrassed was my confession that when I saw The Swans, this song almost....

made me come.

Embarrassed?
Only because it was a bit like having sex in public -not that anyone could tell what I was feeling, because I hide that too...and it is hard to explain my desire for 'cruel arms' and being taken down...

3rd attempt...

2010-12-16T13:32:00.006Z

..at writing.

Subject: Rubber condom soaked in anaesthetic.
Impression: not good.
Conclusion: The ideal situation is supposed to be the *scene*. Consensual, worked out, safe word.

Yet reality is messy and wont mesh with ideals no matter how hard you try.

Fact, I want to be pushed into places I don't like because I need him to prove that I can trust him not to let me down.I've been to bad places before, I need to go back with someone I can trust.

Fact, he feels bad when he does anything like that.

Fact he then tries to intellectualise, knowing that talking buys him time...talking is a neutral game and gives him the illusion that he is doing something, perhaps giving me what I want. As if his apology and an increase in my understanding (as I help him to work out the same old thing again and again) of his problem will make me feel better!

Result...he lets me down and I don't trust him.
I can't accept being let down where there is no good reason for this. So I have to find a way around it.

What is really happening is (when ever things go wrong -yes- I think there is just one real problem here) is that he resents feeling obliged to *give me what I want* . Basically he feels obliged to be nice, when he doesn't want to be nice.

But then, I would see it that way wouldn't I?
Obviously the answer is, don't be nice, get out the rope, humiliate me by looking at pictures and telling me who else you want to fuck. Why not go into it, why not?

Well gentle reader I've explained all this to him. The solution is to give me something else... but he just can't help believing that when I'm upset he should stop being mean and be nice instead...and being nice means fulfilling his obligation to give me what he thinks I want (another subject for latter).

So either he doesn't get a hard on from rope, or he does....and he does...so what does that mean?!

Well hells bells, just about everyone I've ever known and will ever know resents giving someone something when they don't want to give it. But being nice to me about it, takes the biscuit.

Being nice is what you do when people are upset.
No one can argue with that.
But I have to!

Here is where the condom literally goes: to reach this point of feeling obliged to give me what he knows I want, the only controllable way is to make his cock go soft using chemical means, because this mimics *something being wrong*.

The effect of numbing a cock that is full of life and bursting, is to make it deflate. It feels wrong to him, as if something is wrong, as if desire is evaporating as the benzocaine does its job. Psychologically the sensation of numbness is read as something going very wrong. He knows that I want it hard, he knows that a hard cock means that he wants me...He begins to think that I'll think that he doesn't love me because his cock is all wrong, wrong, wrong!

He knows it is the condom, but I'm not being nice, I'm still expecting him to perform for me -though he would use empathy and sympathy and never say he felt obliged to perform for me..because he is nice and not annoyed.

except of course, he is annoyed really because how can I expect him to give me his cock when it is broken!

In reality nothing changes, yet the evidence of his cock is that everything has changed.

And he feels obliged to give me his stiff cock.
To be nice...

So he apologises and tries to ignore it. And I'm laughing with glee at this point because finally, finally I've found a way to get to this *bad* place where things go really wrong. I'm bored of this happening, of him firstly trying to pretend that everything is OK and telling me that it isn't my fault (!) telling me how wonderful I am (as if he is trying to convince himself, I think) then finally me having to give him permission to be *bad* in some way.

Why can't we skip the compliments, the panic, the pretence and go straight into BEING BAD?

Conclusion::
This is very much work in progress. All I've done is to find a safe way to cause conditions that lead to a crash. Changing the embedded meanings of those causes, so that they lead to pleasure is my next task.

Lucky dip -Endurance.

2010-12-06T12:21:00.001Z

"Mates Endurance condoms contain a special lubricant that helps to control climax and prolong male sexual excitement, giving extended pleasure to both of you"!

The next time he dipped into the assortment bag of condom goodies, the one that came out was called Endurance. This evil or genius modification on the ancient theme of condom, is accomplished by the addition of benzocaine.

In other words the condom is slippery with anaesthetic!

Now I'd know that this condom was waiting in the bag and I hadn't expected anything good from it, but nor had I considered what it could be used for. As a cure for premature ejaculation it may work wonders, as a way to make sex better -and you need to decide what that means to you, but for me better means feel more not less- I wasn't expecting much.

The condom went on and slid into me; it burnt a little which was good, but then it started to numb me just a bit...but definitely I began to lose some feeling. I thought, what kind messed up world do I live in where orgasm is assumed to come from ramming my cervix, rather than my whole vagina feeling the whole length of a cock gliding in and out and in and...well, ok, my clit will still get pulled and rubbed incidentally, but anaesthetising my cunt is not on..

And worse was to follow.

Numb cock!
So everyone knows that condoms are wonderful things, they keep babies and germs away, they can be sooo rude. The condom has a secret life, it says "you can have sex with anybody as long as you wear a condom." and no one will know -no finger prints- liminal sex without any consequences or fluids exchanged.

But a cock with condom isn't naked and Mother Nature knows that you are trying to get in Her way and She has all the codes, and you? you are just Her play thing.

So she makes you want the condom off.

She makes it seem like too much trouble to put it on, She tells you that it's all OK not to wear that condom.

She wants you to reproduce, and She doesn't care if you die because her reproductive mandate includes viruses for they are all Her children...So we don't listen to Her and we ignore the truth that a condom isn't as nice as a bare cock, and eventually Mother Nature gives up and condoms become as naked as skin...

Until you get one with benzocaine on it!

Now there is a use for this condom, but it is quite an essay so I will write about that next.

Coloured condom.

2010-12-03T10:33:00.002Z

I wish that I'd taken a photo.

For accidental reasons we have a variety pack of condoms. There are the alarmingly medicated with numbing agents -so called endurance-ones, there are flavored ones.

I opted for the flavored.

The foil packet was opened and out fell something like a child's balloon that smelt of strawberry and was as red as a tomato.

It was slippery
like a fish!

But the colour as he rolled the slippery-strawberry-balloon-fish over his cock was shocking, truly disturbing. Of course it was red, but red looked so wrong.

"Poor cock have you been boiled, roasted, fried or flayed"?

Mustering all my tender feelings of sympathy, tentatively I reached forwards and flicked it with my tongue, it didn't taste of anything which was more weird than if it had. I thought of strawberry laces and the sweet shop on the way to my grandmother's house where the red laces were stored in big jars..I didn't know that the path led here.

As he rubbed my back I let go of my aversion to the colour, taste and texture and concentrated on what I was doing and tried not to notice how the colour of the condom affected my thinking.

How would a green condom look?

Oh my!
It would look ill, a zombie cock!

How about blue?
No, no...cyanosed, deoygenated blood, heart attack!

Yellow?
Would look 'plastic'

Orange?
Just too weird!
Too saccharine, anodyne.
Wrong!

Black?
Black and the smell of coffee?
Could be good.

Licorice but I mustn't bite.

I decided in the end, that dark blue with silver speckles would be my choice if I should ever have such freedom.

A starry cock made of sky.

Strawberry and cock isn't right at all. Red chili cock would suit me better, red and chili would be pretty darn good.

The Path.

2010-11-19T09:10:00.002Z

Little girls, this seems to say,
Never stop upon your way.
Never trust a stranger-friend;
No one knows how it will end.

As you're pretty, so be wise;
Wolves may lurk in every guise.

Handsome they may be, and kind,
Gay or charming - never mind!

Now, as then, 'tis simple truth—
Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth!

I have been playing The Path, a beautiful game reminiscent of Myst and Exile and disturbing as there is no BigFuckingGun to save me. On the other hand, finding the wolf is the point...

As the story is Little Red Riding Hood...there are wolves.

I like the way each of my 'little girls' behaves in her own way, but I feel very uncomfortable watching what will happen to them, it is like watching my daughters.

The game is:

... a dark and somber re-envisioning of the classic tale, brimming with sexual innuendo, heavy psychological violence and a wealth of adult themes, all captured through an extremely rich symbolic scenery, whose interpretation quickly becomes the main draw of the game.

Mitzi has reviewed it here: [LINK].

My True Body...

2010-11-17T13:21:00.006Z

Now I am your mute wife, you wrote your name on my back with your knife, my pain is pointless and endless. I'm your stupid child now, who is shaking with grief in your mouth, and I'm calling your name from hell.... The shining black horse on the ridge, is snorting and choking with it, I can feel the texture of your suffering. My memory's an ocean, littered with useless debris, please stop me now from thinking.
From My True Body -words: Micheal Gira.

Mainly I've been trying to make myself write notes in my blue book; I got as far as September last year.

My blue book is a record of the things that go wrong.

Sensible people like David Allen (Getting Things Done -whose book has become my bible!) and any modern practitioner of therapy will tell you not to focus on the bad things...but I need to know what's down there, shimmering at the bottom of that lake of tears.

So I play the story back, again and again, trying to see in the dark.

Because I go there and because I wont look away I know why I react as I do to the triggers, but the triggers themselves remain hazy.

I need to work on that, it is useful to know where the elevators to hell are situated, though trap-doors may be a better metaphor.

Each time I recite the nature of the problem things do get better.

Each time I re-read, re-understand and re-tell it the good doctor sees that the problem is that he lets me go when I need to be held tightly.

The first time it happened to us is located at a place and time, it exists as a day on the calender, it was probably recorded between words in another of my blogs, too. The trigger took me into the past and made me fight against betrayal and rejection. I was fighting for myself, to prove to myself without any shadow of doubt that I didn't deserve to be thrown away..

Sensible people at this point would point out that no one deserves to be thrown away, but you and I know that this world isn't just or fair.

Betrayal happens..
The good doctor had promised to love me.

I'd believed him.

And, as in a fairy tale I needed him to step beyond his world to prove to me that he could love me when I'd gone too far...

Well, what is too far?
A location on a map?
A 'here be dragons?'..

No, I'd inadvertently set off one of his triggers and instead of him meeting me half way he put a shield around himself and locked me out.

Going too far probably always means that?
I think that it does.
Setting off someones triggers is going too far....

Triggers aren't obvious, and I certainly didn't understand then, but I understand now that I'd triggered something in him..
'You have gone too far!'

I went too far by pleading with him to fuck me.

And he?

He couldn't give a fuck.

He could be sympathetic, nice, kind, loving...but no anger, no energy, no passion, no strength and no sex..

See at that point I'd held it together for quite a long time; my ex-husband with his threats to kill himself and the night that he'd raped me after threatening to drive himself and my daughters into a brick wall. I'd gotten through Gil telling me that he loved me -placing all my trust in him- and then his leaving me carrying his child as he goes into retreat. I'd gotten through three years of having to leave my daughters with my ex and return each morning before day break and leave when ex returned, then my mother's death, stupid ex-husband not even letting me have the car after I'd made it plain that he could keep the house, all my stuff, just for gods sake let me go!!!

Then marrying the good doctor again trusting in his love for me and as just about the only way I could give my daughters a chance to stay with me, and to give my son a father...

Some part of me had had enough!
I wanted brute simplicity.

I wanted mindless, animal need want and strength. I wanted something as naked and raw as childbirth, I mean I was also facing my own mortality at that point (about to go into hospital to have a lump removed from my cervix)...

For five years I simply didn't have any space in which to break down, face the facts, deal with the mess and create something new. I was instead given the discipline of the monastic life, of integrating daylight celibacy with an invisible other life as secret sexual consort.

I pushed the bad memories into a cupboard and tried to ignore the blood from 'my true body' seeping under the door...dripping onto the floor.

Then I was with the Good doctor and the part of my mind that had the key to that cupboard must of decided to let him in. I thought he'd face that open door, the bloody mess of my previous lives with me and bring me back to some kind of unity.

Unfortunately I got the middle class nice boy, rather than my Undertaker that night.

All this I've said before and all this I already know.

What I hadn't thought about before were his triggers. I don't know how it is for him but it looks to me so far that at the first sign of his own wounds he shuts the iron shield around and locks me out with a black force field made of disdain?

So I had set off to find out what was in his closet; in there I found quite a few sparkly things and it gave him permission to tie me up and to think of bad things to do to me..

But most of the time, ultimately he made me feel as if I was doing it wrong. Doing it 'wrong' is an odd concept really, but the idea that I should look pleased to be tied up, must be balanced against the reality that submission is not a mindless, automatic reaction.

It is created and practiced and made..

The word consensual was a problem. When ever he thought that I didn't like what he was doing, to remain 'consensual', he would stop.

And this was horrible for me!
Half the time he was interpreting my body language incorrectly and the other half of the time he wouldn't give himself permission to enjoy my discomfort.

So consensual began to mean that I should like everything he does!

I said,

'Do you ever see images of women being tied up or are they always tied up when the film or photo is made?'

He said, 'You hardly ever see the women being tied up'.

So, I said

'you imagine that they just let it happen? Or basically as it is an image, then reality isn't in the equation is it!'

I said that I want it to be me...I don't want to be expected to be anything at all...I want clear instructions. I want to be punished if I do things wrong. For christsakes, I have a safe word and if I don't use it it is my fault!

And I've said all that before too.

So, time to go somewhere new.
Time for me to learn about his triggers.

Triggers.

2010-11-03T12:11:00.003Z

Triggers interest me. They are like bear-traps, the ring of steel edged with teeth hidden in situations or real locations or within certain objects and sounds.

Spring-loaded and immobilizing...

Flooding the mind with agony and confusion.

The sound, image, object, location often have a warning haze around them. It is as if the air is harder to breath in their presence; the heart slows and there is a sensation of energy, both repellent and attractive. Triggers are portals to a place in my past that was so potentially damaging my brain took active steps to protect me from them.

I think that most people have the common sense to avoid the edges of that haze, that they either don't notice the air shifting strangely because the memories are hidden deeply enough to protect the person from any play-back or portal experience, or they notice it subliminally and keep away.

Thinking of my three years with Gil now; there were clear and unmistakable boundaries at the heart of our relationship. It was important to take care of anything that threatened to blur the edges of those straight black lines. I let him tell me how to think about things, and I agreed to use his method. I practiced my hyper-sensitivity with him and it was useful....each thing I found.... it was as if he took a big black pen and drew a thick, uncrossable line around it for me.

After Gil came out of retreat I tried so hard to over come the play-back of being made to enact a truth that I knew to be a lie. It was the blackest of all black energies washed from all those uncrossable lines...

The only way through for me would have been to use the energy of that play-back. To take the energy and to weave it into something better, something functional, make it into a path rather than a bear-trap portal to hell.

To use the energy we would have needed a common goal, people talk about trust and consensual relationships, but I had never trusted in him 'to be there for me' I had trusted in myself to become someone he would want to be there for and I don't think that our relationship was ever consensual..

Here is a kind of heresy: I don't believe a relationship that deals with the blackest things can be consensual.

Trust is a different matter though.

I could trust Gil to hold the religious view despite any truth or evidence to the contrary.

After his retreat (3 years) he doesn't acknowledge psychological discomfort or pain, he regarded any hint of it as irrational, as empty of any truth, because, logically the past is gone...his method worked for me when I allowed him to draw lines; it could no longer work after I'd left his 'world'. And his method of refusing to feel even the haze, let alone the push/pull may well protect him, but it is damaging for me.

So now I don't speak to him or acknowledge his existence unless I have to out of politeness (my kids being around). I must seem vulnerable, violent and altogether volatile and vile because I will not use his way of looking at things...I'm not controllable.

For me it is more important that I respect someone rather than trust them. Gil had had my respect until he put religion above humanity.

Why am I writing this?
Because I don't trust the Good Doctor at all...I expect when ever he next finds me desperately clinging to the the edge of a bad place I know that he will accidentally make it worse for me. He wont understand, he will ask me to help him to help me, he wont know why I'm feeling abandoned and sinking under waves of betrayal into a kind of overwhelming bereavement...

But he has my respect...

2010-11-01T13:57:00.001Z

Crashes.
More interesting than what goes right is...
What goes wrong.

The bad is so bad and so deep, learning how to deal with it is the only thing that makes sense... if I write it out enough, the loops and patterns will show up and I will see how to re-configure them.

That is what I keep saying.

So, the error?
No error.

If I blame myself, no error...

The error is that I most of the time I'm pretty confidant and sure of my place in things. I don't do jealousy unless I'm feeling insecure. And generally I only feel insecure when I have 'let myself down' by not being confidant...

Oh?

This sounds ridiculous to me; I'm asking myself to be confidant, generous and strong all of the time. I wouldn't ask anyone else to do that!

So what makes me lose confidence?

Under my bed I have a big suitcase full of anything and everything I've ever failed at. What happens is, if the Good Doctor asks me to do something and I simply can't take it, I fall into the suitcase of failure, the lid snaps down and I'm lost. The Good Doctor watches me, concerned look on his face, he is looking down at me from one thousand miles away, watching me in the hope that something I do or say will give him a clue on how to respond.

But I will give out nothing as I crumple and finally crack into an agony of nothing.

Excuse the mixed metaphors.

The trouble is I've written about this so many times already, I've identified the causes and the solutions, I've told him and he still responds the same way each time. The dialogue (when I finally find anger to lead me out of pain) goes something like this:

Him- I didn't think that that would hurt you, I thought that you wanted to do more of that (what ever *that* is at the time).

Me- Normally it's fine, normally I can cope, normally...

Him- Why did it hurt you this time?

Me- unable to speak, falling back and further down into pain...

My final answer when it's gone too far and 'I have to save myself' is

'If I tell you what to do, how to stop me feeling this way, then you will have failed utterly and what I tell you will be of no use whatsoever!

So I'm going to tell you what he should have done, just in case it happens to someone you are with -you do something, he/she goes quiet, you wait, you ask questions, it all gets worse the only thing that is happening is the impossible sound of energy draining away...the answer is -in my case- to side with my strong side.

Right?

First, don't make it worse by praise. I mean -and this is the thing that got to me both mornings- he thought that I wanted to 'face my fear' OK, yeah, I like playing that game as a rule. So he began...and I went quiet. He praised me...this made it worse. He watched and waited. So I fell deeper and deeper. The praise made me feel more of a failure, I wanted to say I CAN'T DO IT, I'M NO GOOD..

Next, don't say 'but you usually like this' because this makes out that you are doing me a favor by doing something to me I clearly can't cope with at this moment. Apparently the 'I' I am supposed to be likes this and so you are doing this for me?

If it was for you it would be worth it, but you have done this for me...

I think it must be obvious that I'm falling...but in truth there is nothing clear about it, because I'm trying with all my strength to make it work, so all you can see is me being very quiet.

How could you know?
Difficult.

But it doesn't feel good on any level, and if you ask me if I want to continue I will feel as if I've failed...so you have to be clever.

What you need to do is to find out what it is in me that is getting in the way. Physical is physical, nothing to be done, do something different. A mental barrier though, that's the interesting one.

Often the brave and courageous side of oneself needs reinforcing, when I feel as if I can't do anything because I'm not good enough this leads into jealousy, insecurity, the whole set of demons...the only real solution is to find out what I'm scared of and to side with the strong version of me, never the victim.

Telling me that my fear has no grounds, wont work.

I need the antidote made fresh from the toxin.

There are two methods but both start at the same place: First find the insecurity!

And find it by intuition (method 1) -don't ask me, I don't want to let you down or admit that I have a problem, it feels demeaning to have to say what I can't do- if you are pushing through it though (method 2) you would make me say it and then do more of it and worse, whilst making it clear that it was entirely for your enjoyment.

Back to method 1, you have to make an educated guess and then play with it. This is like the habituation method of dealing with phobia, by playing with an idea and approaching it obliquely, things get easier. Sometimes the insecurity is very deep though and linked to something bad that happened in the past. Sometimes understanding it is enough.

Method 2 is about treating me as strong enough, by treating my insecurity as absurd. This wont work if you have already said things such as 'I'm doing this for you' or 'This used to work so what's wrong'?

My problem is that the Good Doctor is more inclined to method 1 than 2 and method 2 is something he never does and is something I need him to do.

I used to think it was *the nice man* who got in the way, now I think its a lack of understanding.

On the other hand the fears that get me are both terrible and absurd and by inflating them to the furthest degree possible...they might just pop!

Or explode...

And I have no way to know that until I go there....

At the edge of Armageddon.

2010-10-19T13:00:00.003+01:00

Entering now into the secret dome, he is filled with horror and astonishment. He is seized with loneliness and total perplexity; he is unable to move a step forward, and at a loss to find the entrance to the way that leads to where he aspires to, till the prophet or conductor lays open the anteroom of the Temple.

(Themistius Orat. in Patrem. 50)

The 1990's were too much of a blur for me; I could have done with Micheal Gira to sing me through. How come I didn't know about The Swans?

Within our room, weeks or years ago the rope went tight around my upper arms, the good doctor began to bind my wrists. I wasn't willing. I twisted out of his grip, but the rope around my arms began to bite into real pain and so I promised to keep still as he loosened the knots. As I switched off the impulse to struggle I felt a tide of amnesia, a sense of disconnection and sadness...Making that promise was right, but each time I do such things I let myself down.

Really and truly, that sensation needs to be explored..there is more to being bound and gaged than the obvious.

But that was days, perhaps weeks ago.

The tyranny of the alarm clock, the portents of dread described each morning on the radio, life measured out in coffee cups, rather than spoons.

Most of the time my mind has been on the subject of The Mysteries. The Mysteries were 'closed' they happened out of sight of anyone not prepared physically and mentally to see/ epopteaia the unspeakable.

Thus death and initiation closely correspond; even the words (teleutan and teleisthai) correspond, and so do the things. At first there are wanderings, and toilsome running about in circles and journeys through the dark over uncertain roads and culs de sac ; then, just before the end, there are all kinds of terrors, with shivering, trembling, sweating, and utter amazement. After this, a strange and wonderful light meets the wanderer; he is admitted into clean and verdant meadows, where he discerns gentle voices, and choric dances, and the majesty of holy sounds and sacred visions. Here the now fully initiated is free, and walks at liberty like a crowned and dedicated victim, joining in the revelry; he is the companion of pure and holy men, and looks down upon the uninitiated and unpurified crowd here below in the mud and fog, trampling itself down and crowded together, though of death remaining still sunk in its evils, unable to believe in the blessings that lie beyond. That the wedding and close union of the soul with the body is a thing really contrary to nature may clearly be seen from all this.

(Grant, F. C. Hellenistic Religions p. 148)

Translating Ancient Greek only provides an intellectual framework whilst dissolving the past and future into the present requires experience of the other, the unspeakable..

But Gira takes me into a desolate, tumble-weed street.

Gun fighter territory.

At the edge of Armageddon.

The sky burns a smokey orange and the Geiger counter on my belt ticks at an uncomfortable rate. All is washed in grey and oily black. I and hear the distant flow of traffic and feel the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

He takes me towards the church that looms over the dead, I look up and see the fatal star.

From within the church LED white light tinged with cyan, a deoygenated blue; the sickly butchers shop blue of electrocution.

I walk through the lych gate and follow the ghost road. At the entrance to the church I stop, carefully I push open the door just enough to see. Before me the church is full of people entwined within the blaze of noise and light. The congregation sway, their arms outstretched. Some carry razor blades and their blood streams darkly from self-inflicted wounds. Above them all stands the preacher; an old testament figure translocated to the edge of nowhere. He is swaying with his people, dragging the terror from the air and focusing it into a dreadful force.

I am home.

Elemental.

2010-10-01T10:46:00.002+01:00

The sky is like moonstone, milk and grey
and the rain falls.
I am overwhelmed by its beauty.

Disappointed by summer-acid colours of heat...

In a minute I will go down stairs and add the flour to the potent brew of honey, yeast, water and spelt which has been sitting all night in the stone jar. The days are colder now, the temperature in the kitchen probably about sixteen degrees Celsius -so the yeast demands patience.

And through this practice of patience I have learnt that bread doesn't work the way I have been told. I don't think bread is about kneading. I think it is about the yeast breaking the flour into something silky and beautiful. Kneading comes much latter on and is necessary to work in the bits of flour that have not mixed in; it is a joy, the dough so much like flesh.

Latter still, when the sun has past midday I will leave the bread to rise and cook inside the big black iron pot.

Water, earth- metal-stone, and air to support the fire...

Robert wrote:

In a sense. What we call 'dominance' and 'submission' (in a sexual context) are really locations, markers along an energy current. A circuit. Mostly, this circuit remains open, undirected. Stuck. If the circuit is closed however, and the energy contained and directed, it is allowed to flow. When this happens, the words 'dominance' and 'submission' become at best irrelevant and meaningless. At worst, they become misleading and damaging...

I have such a problem with the words dominance and submission you have no idea!

I am caught between using my own sets of signs and signifiers or to keep to the straight and narrow but well-worn path of those who have tried to forge a language as they travelled through this land before me.

Words limit and confine, but they are also bridges between ideas and keys to new experiences.

And..

And words filter out other forms of expression and they mislead. Some people write deliberately false paths, using words that are considered powerful and so catch the attention of the reader. My aim was always to write the truth -even as truth transforms before my eyes- as the process of writing changes me.

My problem is that it is easier to use words that most people use...

But domination and submission as locations along a circuit..I don't believe that people are fixed in any one role, but as with religious practice, some yidams or gods fit better than others - they are a"choiceless choice."

And as in any religious practice there is the outer, inner and secret aspect.

The inner practice of submission is offering, of stepping over and out of edges and boundaries. The outer practice is appearance, it is good to have the right kinds of things on the 'shrine' : the rope, the flogger - objects that crackle with a cruel beauty.

And the secret practice?
The secret practices are to do with visualisation. The imagery I use is not secret, but nor is it open to discussion.

Anyway, back to the everyday stuff...

Doing it just for sex

2010-09-30T13:57:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I was looking at web-sites set up for married people to meet other married people; for those who don't want to lose their primary partner but wish to start an 'affair.' I noticed that most of these kinds of sites let women join without paying a fee, but for men it is about £40 a month!

Does this indicate that it is mainly men looking for someone else, or does it mean that men want lots of choice and would like it to be a virtual cattle market?

I guess these kinds of web-sites make quite a lot of money doing what people have been doing for years in forums and blogs all over the Internet. I suppose it removes some layers of uncertainty though, and then adds plenty more, which adds excitement for those of us who like adrenaline.

The site gives advice:

Setup a new email account separate from your everyday account

Think about getting a separate mobile number, so that people you meet through whynot.com can contact on your new number only. Be careful of where you meet – try not to meet where you have a chance of seeing someone you know. Also, always have a plausible explanation for being there in case you do bump into someone unexpectedly.

Now the question is, is it true that most people believe monogamy to be a sign of a good relationship and that most people who use the sites only think that they are in a good relationship?

Or is poly more natural, and these sites meet a need?

All I know is that I get wet when my husband gets hard for someone else and that I love the rush it gives me thinking of him as good enough to take time and pleasure giving pleasure.

I don't know how people distinguish the excitment of looking for someone 'safe' to have a 'safe' relationship with, from being, as I would see it, more honest and calling it a desire for more sex?

The layers of understanding are hard to navigate and so in a kind of despair I returned to FetLife where that whole dimension of lying is wiped away. I went to my local group and started reading a post from a woman saying that she was married, had some kids, wanted to be dominated and had asked her husband who doesn't seem inclined, for his permission to find someone to tie her up once or twice a week.

On one hand I was in awe of her honesty, because though I have thought about doing something similar (when things have felt too complicated and too difficult) I didn't do it because I can't submit to someone who wont be there for me when I really need him.

I have too many scars I guess...

Mainly I didn't do it because I want it to be the good doctor.

I mean he was looking at BDSM images without my prompting and I accessed his fantasies. I suppose if he felt that he really couldn't be Dom enough I'd start looking for some other way into that energy.

Orgasm control is my thing after all, but D/s is the easiest way into it.

Mainly though it seems too cruel to say to someone I need this thing and if you can't give it to me I will have to go elsewhere for it.

But sometimes that really is the truth.

So which way is better?

She could have joined the whynot.com for free and tried to get into a kinky-lite conversation with someone there, but instead she told her husband and joined FetLife.

Of course I fantasised about my husband getting in touch with her, especially as she thinks of herself as plump...but that's another story.

The Wicker Man.

2010-09-26T17:12:00.004+01:00

All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable...There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, a fourth thing which says not, It is enough; that is, the mouth of the womb. Wherefore for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort even with devils..

Malleus Maleficarum.

After the pope's visit to my home town last week and the various ravings from people reporting on the dangers of secularization, we watched The Wicker Man not I hasten to add the recent version, I mean the original.

The remake version with Mr Cage in is so stupid and crass, I mean really do not bother to watch it. Go pluck your eye-brows or wax your legs for more fun.

The original Wicker Man channels the fear religious people seem to have today, with secularization and I can't be bothered to wonder why and I certainly can't do anything about it. But watching the film again made me feel some sympathy for the Christians who had gathered around pope Benedict and truly felt 'under attack'.

-That sure went away after watching Agora.

In the story the policeman comes to Summer Isle to search for a missing child; as he becomes more aware of the pagan belief system these people use; their lack of shame concerning sex, their lack of fear (fear of judgment day and hell) surrounding death. The policeman suspects that the child is being hidden in readiness for a May Day sacrifice.

In fact the policeman is being tested.

Willow's Song:
With the line "How a maid can milk a bull, and every stroke a bucket full..."

In one scene the policeman sees the Lord of the Isle bring a young man to be de-flowered by the landlord's daughter.

In the epic of Gilgamesh she is Inanna, known as Siduri:

And there in the distance, at the edge of the sun, probably the Mediterranean Sea on the Phonecian coast, dwells Siduri, the divine barmaid! Gilgamesh hastens thither and inquires of the her how he can get to Utnapishtim, to obtain from him the secret of immortality. The barmaid at first tries to persuade him that his quest is vain, for there is no escape from death. She therefore advises him to enjoy life in full measure and to abandon his hazardous, yet hopeless, undertaking.

In the film if the policeman sleeps with her, he may avoid becoming a sacrifice.

But the stuffed shirt, up-tight and good man will not abandon his faith. In the end he dies a martyrs death, praying to a god whose demands are just as insane as the islanders belief that the policeman is a Holy fool who has chosen sacrifice! The end scene makes me cry because the policeman in the film truly is a good man, just the kind of policeman I'd want to search for my missing daughter!

But I love this film because it is one of the few that shows an alternate universe in which it is considered right and proper for a young man to be taught sexual technique.

I'm fascinated in how this trope has two forms; the rare version is portrayed in this film, the more common version shows the young man being wrecked by such an encounter, such as in The Graduate.

It is as if the fear of witchcraft as has never gone away. In effect the title witch to all intents and purposes meant depraved woman. For instance in the Spanish Laws of Forum Torolii, it was written, "A woman who bewitches men or beasts or other things, if it is proved against her, shall be burned" but "If a man happens to be a magician, and it is proved against him; he shall be shaven in the form of a cross and scourged and banished".

The remake of The Wicker Man is actually an offensive film -if I think about it and I'm trying not to- On one hand it plays out as a black-comedy with Nick Cage running around hitting women for no good reason at all; the self-discipline of the policeman in the original replaced by Cage's character's psychological problems and bee allergy!

On the other hand the Wicker Man remake is deeply misogynistic and I'm not going to think about it ever again!

Here is another song from the original.
Gently Johnny:

i insist!

2010-09-22T11:45:00.001+01:00

The title is En-Cyst.

When I fire up MixCraft and start importing and distorting Oggs [open source encoding for sound files] the thing I make is made so fast thought does not intrude upon the process.

I call the music anything that comes into my mind.
This one has a persistent persistence that really is insistent.

Ah me.
SEX!

No, not really.
Too much work, too much getting up too early and falling into bed and passing out too soon. There would be more of it if I'd never had children. But there is something wrong with that statement, seems to me I couldn't have one without the other, you know.

And then there is the idea that when they are grown up, then we will have time and space and freedom.

Huh, forget that!

There we were, just got into the bath together, both sons at the cinema, one daughter in Sweden, another in London...I hear the front door opening, and my daughter shouting up the stairs to us, "Hello"!

What do I do?
I'm never going to change the locks or know when my kids will walk through the door. Perhaps this is why I blog? I mean my youngest child is fifteen and though I don't like to think about it, it is possible that one day he will come across my blog and I'm trusting that he (being our son and all that) smiles and gets on with his own life, knowing that he has happy parents who would love to have both the time and space to go too far...As to my daughters (ages twenty-five and twenty-three) I see myself as a good example.

More on that subject latter, another day.

Wasn't there a photo somewhere?

This photograph reminds me of something I wished to say about this kind of stuff; it fits in with an earlier post of mine about stalkers murdering women and how D/s or any relationship that involves power is often portrayed as a gateway to real abuse, or as symptoms of an underlying pathology that leads inevitably to a loss of control by the dominator.

Well domination isn't my thing, I only know about the bit where I'm on my hands and knees, all reason dimmed by a light brighter than a thousand suns.

It is I who submits, therefore I am the one who makes the difference between a man who is entitled to do this to me, and one who is not. It is also I who determines the difference between submission and coercion. I wasn't born knowing the difference though, it is something a person must learn for herself.

The behaviour of domination and submission is hard-wired, it is something older than being human, it is way down in the primeval sludge in the bones of our ancestors and I know that I can submit to someone not trust-worthy, or any other kinds of worthy.

At first I had problems with that knowledge, it made me feel vulnerable but now I see it as an empowerment. It is something we all learn eventually or not...

Knowledge is power, it may not feel nice or make me happy, but I know my weaknesses and I know better as a result.

I'm not saying that it is impossible for me to be in a bad relationship, but I am quite clear in my own mind about good and bad to be able to state categorically that the most coercive relationships I have witnessed occur when there is no time or space made for questions or any desire for questions to be asked; for it is obvious that a question is a veiled threat or attack.

The boot is none of those things.
I liked that boot a lot.
I liked the shock, I liked the way I felt small.

Nothing is hidden.
It simply is what it is....

Sometimes I ask myself what time and space would look like for us; but in the end I trust that I will recognise it when we have it!

2010-09-14T14:00:00.002+01:00

There is a photograph of me, naked, his boot is in the center of my back and I'm being pushed, face down into the bed. As I think about that, I shiver; there is a sense of anticipation, of promise.

I didn't think the morning would lead there.

As I lay in bed by his side I was feeling stuck; a mixture of frustration, guilt and annoyance.

The way out looked so clear to me, so shining, so clear, so bleeding obvious! I see it like this: where there is energy, either transform or leave well alone, but don't ignore.

But here I am again with 80's rules; the nice man respecting my privacy, the nice man who never has any right to be angry with me, so nice he never gets angry or never knows when he is angry!

In truth, what he had felt he had automatically let pass, leaving me to feel disconnected and cut off and unloved.

During the evening before I'd handed him my flash drive so that he could give me some photographs. As he opened the folder he saw a photo of C. that I'd forgotten was in there...if I'd have known, I'd have handed him another drive.

I'd felt the air go very still, but thought that I'd imagined it. When I looked in the images folder in my flash-drive I saw the old photo and knew without any doubt that he'd seen it. But it was late and I didn't actually know if he'd seen it or not, so I left it.

Next morning I'm in a quandary; I can't say "Well, don't you want to punish me?" because perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps he has dealt with it, perhaps it didn't hurt him, perhaps he simply doesn't care. I want to know which way it is.

Is he cutting his feelings off, is this a kind of lie?

Why does he think that he should dissociate himself from the pain of it, why doesn't he see that he can use it?

I almost laugh at the paradox, because of course if he really wished to make me suffer, acting as if everything is normal and being open, nice and happy with me is the way to do it.

Eventually I manage to get the conversation going in the right direction and then he remembers that it hurt him to see that photo. But it is quite a big leap from there to punishing me for something that of course isn't a big deal, is all done and dusted, sorted out...over. To go into it would mean opening up old wounds and being irrational.

Heaven forbid!

But the experience of life is not linear; the past can open up suddenly anywhere and anytime. When he saw the photo something of the past hit him hard and I am to blame for that, even though ultimately like an onion and its many skins, blame and meanings and reason and every single thing in this multi-verse can be taken apart and reduced to instances of nothing...

I know that this capacity to reduce things into painless, meaningless moments is not good.

Going into the energy and blaming me makes sense, it adds up and it creates a bridge.

I accept the blame within the pressure from the boot, and being pushed down becomes a blessing because I need it to hurt and I need him to become hard knowing that he has the right to do this to me.

Within and around all of this is trust. The appearance of it and the power dynamics are screwy really and not clear at all. It is not how it looks, no one is diminished, both of us are more; both of us are 'powerful'.

The image of the naked skin and the black leather boot is all addition, no subtraction..
But better still is how it feels.

I think it's going to rain....

2010-09-05T13:01:00.001+01:00

The way I colour in the links between events is all...

I find myself at a crossroad, blogging does that to a person; I mean there are enough crossroads in life anyway, but writing I get to see them approaching.

The heart of the matter is writing; basically writing changes the way I see things; story-telling is a conscious dreaming, a defrag..

But...there is also truth.

Here is one more version.
I need him to treat me the way that he treats women in his imagination and so, to this end, I'm constantly accessing fantasy. By that I mean we have been talking about things that shock and push both of us. By doing this I learnt that there is a right and a wrong way to use fantasy.

Fantasy is used correctly only when it is *unsafe* and connected to real possibilities. A fantasy draws its energy from roots deep in the truth. When fantasy is used like this (by telling the truth to shock, to dominate and to force me into accepting against my will) we are connected.

When fantasy is used in a repetitive way (a particular fantasy used again because it worked well last time) it starts to become a barrier, almost a condom-like barrier, and the fantasy becomes *safe* even if the subject matter is in itself deeply wrong and shocking. A safe use of fantasy creates a disconnection between us.

When he puts his mind in a safe place by identifying completely with the fantasy so that even if I'm in the imaginary picture, he is not looking at the real me, finding out what hurts and using that (in this way he steps out of reality). Then the the fantasy is -closed- it is an end in itself.

I mean when there is no possibility of the *terrible thing* really happening, it is as if its roots have been cut off and there is no energy in it.

Meaning, there is no energy in me.
I'm not even interested.

Sexual pleasure is technique and incoherent, psychologically produced chemicals. It is also about self knowledge -the more one knows, the better one fucks. I dare say hormones play a part, but adrenaline and oxytocin for instance, can over ride background hormones.

Technique and chemicals, definitely over ride common sense.

This is why it is possible to be fucked by someone you really don't like...and to cum. Here -within the split between mind and body- is the danger of sex, here is why it is supposed to be done only within marriage, here within the unconscious divide is where 'grooming' takes place and why it is seen as so damaging,, here, in the darkness of the abyss is why many people see the *safe word* as too safe.

Without the razor-blade, the honey is just a kind of expensive sugar.

In falling into love I experience the edges of that split between mind and body. There is the possibility of so much pleasure and so much pain. We weave a story to pull the edges together and this is marriage. The promise not to take pleasure away from each other, not to leave and never to abandon.

Is that as true or as false as the notion of a *safe word*?

Falling in love is never safe.
In the end..it is just a tattooed scar.

Last Sunday.

2010-09-03T11:19:00.002+01:00

We got around the problem with Gil's mom. I made it clear that I was not happy about being ignored; she had told my son to ask Gil to bring them over to see her whilst she visited Gil's girlfriend's house. This has happened to me before, the message goes to my son, he and his brother are invited out somewhere and I'm not told.

My son tells me about the invitation, and this puts me in a difficult position.

I should see it as Gil respecting my son's autonomy, but I can't see it that way at all!

The real questions are: why not talk to me?
And: I am not invited, because?

The first time it happened, the reason I was given for not being invited was, 'Sandra's house is too small' for everyone.

When I first heard that I believed it.
After the second time I made it clear that I would not be treated this way, and so we all visited...a Christmas time.

The house actually has more space than mine!
So, no one could use that excuse again.

Again, this time, when it happened again, I made it clear, that it is out of order to ignore me.

I didn't start off with anger.

For years I was kind, I stepped over my own boundaries and forced myself to do the *best* thing. Now I know that I was completely off my head to put his feelings first. The scary thing is, this *doing the best thing* is a continuation of my submission. I justified it by calling it self-discipline. Really, it was just self-sacrifice, I expected far too much from myself in for absolutely no emotional reward whatsoever...

Instead there was an occasional, out of the blue, donation of cash!

So I was a kind of whore before; but I was paid in knowledge, and the submissive aspect made it so powerful...But in this case, what?...He plays at being dad with my kids (one of whom he accidentally caused) and for this I used to get some money sometimes.What kind of idiot accepts that deal!

The true madness was my refusal to *be mad*.

How did it happen that I would be hurt and disempowered when Gil asked my son and ignored me and the Good doctor?

I justified it by believing that there were some very bad emotions or feelings that should not be allowed to run wild. Really though, isn't it just more and more and more of the same submission script?

The scary thing is it happened automatically. I couldn't let go of believing that under the surface there was something worth respect.

The funny thing was on Sunday, as we sat at the table eating, it crossed my mind that if Gil's mom was to chose who she would prefer as a daughter-in-law, it would be me rather than Sandra. Me with my children, me laughing and saying "I don't believe in chiropractors", and me who gets hurt and admits it...

And finally?
Finally writing the play was the cure for me, I said in it all I had to say. Incidents like this (the no invites) hurt and bring back bad memories, but the wound has healed.

Therapy Culture.

2010-08-25T17:40:00.002+01:00

There were some really terrible stories on the radio the other day; stories of how various men had made the lives of women they 'loved' into a living hell because they could not let go. Each story ended in murder. I felt a tinge of guilt, surely when I write of being tied up, of how I need someone to submit to, it is kind of like letting the side down -because the men who do these terrible things are being possessive; too male.

Encouraging it must therefore be a bad thing?

When I say that I need that deep and possessive kind of love, that I can't face the idea of being without the Good doctor I hear a chorus of a thousand feminists cliches. They tell me that I've sold out, I have bought the male dream and made myself into the warm, wet and willing friend in bed men of the kind men are taught to believe exist only when she is paid in cash.

One feminist version seems to be 'he' wont love you if you give him what he wants or he wont love you if you give him what he wants. Real love© is a version of Courtly love; it never involves penetration, only a mingling of ideals and fantasy. It is illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent( Francis X. Newman, ed. (1968). The Meaning of Courtly Love, vii

The feminist message distills down to never give him what HE wants
He should give YOU what you want.

Which is?
Which is your autonomy.
Your right to be a person in your own right.

So odd, I cannot imagine not being me or gaining autonomy of thought or action by refusing to give myself to someone...when it is my autonomous will to give myself.

But things can go too far and nothing in this world is safe.
~~Not even Playdoh...~~

Common sense dictates that sexuality isn't something one treats lightly; it isn't just genitals and orgasms and nice feelings because humans didn't get to be the most unpleasant and yet the most intelligent beings on this planet (as far as I know) without being possessive and potentially violent. Learning how to kill for food, and for fun...is a paradox and it is our heritage.

So I play with the truth of it.

Mostly love is possessive and because I love I will get hurt. There are a thousand thousand razor sharp blades poised above around and finally through my heart should my children die within my life time, or the good doctor fall out of love with me, or I out of love with him. The truth is one day one of us will die, leaving the other. I can't bear to think of that, it really is too terrible for me, the only way is when we are old enough (the children in their thirties or much, much older ) we die together.

Losing my love into death is worse than death. But isn't this refusal to accept pain something that leads men to kill their ex-partners, or jump out of windows with their children rather than 'lose them'.

Don't they too feel that death is better than loosing someone so precious?

My answer to those who see BDSM as a symptom of some underlying pathology, is that all of us are equally vulnerable to being hurt beyond endurance by love; but only some people are ever going to become cut off and cold enough to kill others.

A desire to explore boundaries is not the same as switching off, or being overwhelmed by despair -quite the contrary.

Yesterday was a day of much sudden pulling and pushing, and the Good doctor always seems genuinely surprised when I say thank you. This morning he told me that he had wanted to pull my pants down and leave me almost in view of the delivery man, whilst he answered the door. He asked me, would I enjoy that? I answered truthfully that no, I would not like it at all.

This made him smile.

This afternoon he asked me why I didn't think that he was terrible for getting a kick out of such things...

Well my son had a letter today from Gil's mom (Gil is my son's genetic father) saying that she would like to see him (and his brother) while she visits Gil, this Sunday. She doesn't mention me, or my husband (the guy who changed her grandson's nappies, and brought him up). This oversight on her part hits an old wound, it brings back all the dumb things she has said or done (she offered us no help what so ever with her grandson's education -he was home schooled, has just passed his exams and is off to college.)

All she ever offered was to buy him a school uniform!

The letter today, which seemed plain rude at first, brought back all the dumb stuff Gil said and did, the way that he too is unable to see that his version of things isn't the only version, and the way he wont argue or discuss and has a way to make me feel as if I must be mad to even think something could be wrong!

Both of them belong (are practitioners of) what it is easier to call therapy culture. It is a part of therapy culture to make those who are in pain absolutely certain that the pain is all their own fault, but in the nicest, sweetest and kindest possible way.

"You are looking at things the wrong way, you are holding on to bad habits, you are simply hurting yourself".

This is surely because the therapist has everything to lose if you realize that there is something actually wrong with the situation.

So the therapist is so nice, so kind, so understanding because the therapist is nice and kind and understanding, whilst actually being pretty stupid or rather...it isn't to the therapist's advantage that you suddenly see things differently.

At first it can seem a relief to be told that the pain is your own fault, it means that it is up to you to sort yourself out. But the fact remains, sometimes things are wrong -external things- at this point (as the Fall song says) sometimes you just got to extricate.

Then the therapist will lose validation of his/her self as a *good person* and also of course, your money, but you will be the loser because you didn't have enough faith!

So when the Good doctor tells me that he'd like to do things to me that I really would not like, there is no pretence here, no bullshit at all. The power transaction flies as straight and true as an arrow...

And that is such a blessed relief!

Thinking about Gil and his mom and trying to work out why she didn't ask us if we would like to see her too, ties my head in knots. I wasn't feeling this way about her at all until I read the letter, in fact I was just thinking about her this morning and wondered how she was getting on as a councillor. So that's all gone now, I don't want to know. Her letter dropped me into the past once more.

I wont challenge it.

I've gone as far as I can go with it.

I need them to be honest, and able to say what makes them annoyed, or what hurts. They don't see any value in that, so there is no room for dialogue. I have told both of them what hurt me and why I was angry.

This is met with a resounding silence.
Even admitting anger or hurt is too shocking in the sweet world of *just let it all go, we love you, all is well*.

Sometimes I think Gil may actually have a clue about therapy culture and how it drains life by disabling so many *bad* things.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think bad things are good, just the list of what is really bad gets very long indeed when you make your life out of being good; because the more bad things you can name and refuse to even think about, let alone do, then the more *good* you are being.

And so...paradoxically thinking and doing *bad* things (that may shock, but are within a 'scene') is absolutely the opposite to the shutting down being *good* requires. The tying oneself up in rules that don't actually need to be there, numbs first and then paralyses..

I think real pathological behaviour is born within a cold, dead place. I don't think being *good* necessarily leads there, but a refusal to empathize with the anger or pain of others is a pre-requisite to being able to really hurt and not to care.

I don't know.

2010-08-16T17:13:00.001+01:00

Something has changed.
When he touches me now he is inside the touch, no longer outside, no more the voyeur.

And yet...

And yet...

It went like this. I was tied up; my arms bound to my sides, hands close to my shoulders. Everything he did made me sink, falling through layers of pleasure, slipping down into the deepest place. One pleasure following another.

But nothing lasted for long enough; each time he started something I knew that at some moment, a totally arbitrary moment he would stop what he was doing and try something else. It wasn't as if what he was doing had no effect, but he does not see what he could do with what he has...

So...

So my thoughts after half an hour run like this: oh, he's taken the dildo away from me, ah the vibrator buzzing on the rope that streaches between my legs and...oh, now fingers...oh back to the dildo, but, but I don't think I can take this, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to cum or not, what does he want?!

Each start is followed by a stop.
The stop could be anywhere.
I try to see -is this making him hard?
Is he doing this in a kind of trance, mesmerized by just playing with me?

My conclusion:
this is plain meaningless!

I have no idea how long something will last for, he doesn't seem to be taking my quivering state into consideration because if he was then he'd either push me, or deprive me on purpose.

I decide it is worth getting angry as the alternative will be to start crying, feel worthless and then console myself by making a resolution to find a man who knows what to do.

If I get angry there is some space before I collapse into misery.

In the end I say, you know what? When I say that you are cruel for doing this to me, it's because you frustrate me so much that it actually hurts! It makes me want to lash out so I tell you -and I hate myself when I do this- that you are ignorant and dumb for not even seeing the state I'm in (I mean...clit standing on end, cunt full of juice and so tight that you can hardly get a finger in obviously your belief that I'd rather be doing the washing up or reading my emails must be correct!).

Why don't you see me?

Why do it this way, what is the point!

But you know when I tell you that you aren't being fair you should say to me 'Tough'! You should cover my face and tell me to be quiet. You should tell me that you are sick of my self-control and that you would love to have your fingers inside someone who didn't think that she knew everything and especially not more than you.

You want submission right?
Well ask for it, demand it!

If you don't make me submit to you when it looks to me as if that is what you want -the rope kind of gives it away?- if you think tying me up is a lightweight thing, a kind of decoration and I should just play along...you are so wrong.

2010-08-13T17:19:00.002+01:00

Eventually there will be an instant short-cut appearing; the moment he think that he needs to sit down with me and understand the short-cut will appear and he will push me down, or over and undo me!

Yesterday it was my fault, I wanted to know exactly what he meant by the word *blockage* how he thought a mistake in the past could block something now? In my version, something hidden deep down in the past that casts tangled webs of dark-confusion in the present will speak if asked. The communication comes in symbols, in icons in dreams, though. Then the art is to use, but never to fix the meanings; to allow the *blockage* enough ambiguity.

It cannot use words, let alone make sentences at first.

I don't believe in blockages, but conditioning is a bugger!
Conditioning can be accessed, re-written, danced with and eroticsed; the erotic being my preferred medicine.

I was thinking that when I first saw him standing next to Gilgamesh he seemed to me such a barbarian. Our (Gilgamesh and I) our self-control was exquisite. The good doctor was so psychically naked, so un-protected, for him sex was all about love and commitments... Gilgamesh and I were powerful because of our secret. We lived at the tide-land between Heaven and Hell, each night he offered me Heaven and each night I refused; then I would do the same -offer him the universe and eternity -the heroin of orgasm.

Refusal made us so strong.

But to live at the edge of Heaven and Hell requires a kind of courage that is madness, and it marked me. It left me needing more, I'm some sort of addict I think. I really do not want to go back there, but that kind of relationship that was ostensibly egalitarian and all about autonomy...made me see myself in quite a different light. I understood that there is no freedom as long as one remains human, and I have no real desire to push myself far enough to become inhuman!

So, sex as a short-cut to understanding?
Bypassing hours of discussion, of churning over painful things?
Yes!

When he pulls me, when he uses me to replay some memory, when he fucks me whilst telling me things that by pass my mind and go straight to my guts, my heart and womb; words like lemon juice -sharp and pure so clear that I cannot help but wince; I am loved.

When he keeps me at arm's length or strokes me as if I'm a child in need of comfort.

my heart breaks.

Just made this!
A patchwork of sounds found in MixCraft folders:

Moon coils..

2010-08-06T17:59:00.001+01:00

To continue from my last blog entry -I'm sitting in the kitchen listening to the hiss of gas from the cooker cooking bread made of spelt and wheat, and am aware of my sons talking to their friends somewhere up stairs. I've left my other computer loading Steam, because I've got it into my head to make a model of Woodhenge just to try out the 'hunting theory' that places like Woodenge were once hunting arenas.

Time to put things into words quickly before I go back to the strange, endless grass field in G Mod.

As a part of thinking about the ground as a site to leave the dead, I made a skull labyrinth; G Mod, not real but it still made me feel uncomfortable.

In the late Neolithic/early Bronze age the land was already treeless. Woodhenge could have been a place once upon a time for the defleshing of corpses, towers of Silence, but latter on it became something else...possibly...anyway, there are a lot of pig bones around that site -pigs fed on sweet things who had bad teeth- the pigs who were killed around the time of the winter solstice. There is an idea that the henge part (the deep circular ditch) and bank would provide seats for spectators, whilst the hunters played deathmatch with his of her query within the artificial forest.

Pig feasts and winter moons...one thing I like about being British is that though it's possible that someone there was an ancestor of mine, it's more likely that my genes came from elsewhere. It is very difficult to think of myself as anything other than a mongrel, like this language so full of Saxon and Norse, with Hindi and Celtic, Latin and Greek additions.

The Twelve Gates, a sex blog?
I don't write about sex unless things are confusing or difficult or plain wrong!

Hence the lack of words recently, on that subject.

But yes, the same dire themes reoccur in slightly different colours or shapes and my ability to remain nice about it becomes less and less and my desire to learn from it becomes greater. This morning is the morning after a confrontation with *the bad thing* and so my shields are still up and I'm in analytical mode -thinking about why he doesn't understand that he has to lead, meaning....if he is doing something and it has no energy in it, continuing because it 'hides' his lack of energy, or continuing in the hope that I don't notice is a waste of time. Solution, do something else!

But a part of him -an 80's part- thinks that I should grab him, I should pull him, I should lead and encourage him because otherwise *he is being a man* if he just pulls me and does what he wants. Oh dear, 'no' I say 'it isn't like that, men do not need any encouragement, only hints and ambiguous promises. Honestly, I never lead, I allow, I encourage, I have never ever met a man yet who needed to be 'warmed up', and plenty who need to be slowed down! Cocks do not need to be made excited, the pleasure needs to be controlled and that's my job!

And the bad thing was?
The bad thing was more of the same really, a technique problem, his lack of understanding about what works and why. As always it annoys me that he has made no attempt to find out, or learn, that learning for him only happens when I'm as mad as hell and he is shocked that I take sex so seriously.

The bad thing was, and always will be ignorance!

Catching up!

2010-07-22T16:00:00.001+01:00

...is a never ending process.

I never catch up with myself, I'm always off and onwards; that part of me that asked to know keeps on making notes. I trail behind trying to work out just exactly what it is I've seen or heard.

More than that, it is patten recognition.

My eldest son laughs at me, tells me I'm a hippy and just how good capitalism is. But yesterday, I can't remember what it is he said exactly, but poor thing, there he was saying something that sounded decidedly hippy to me.

By the time he gets to twenty-one he will be baking his own bread and washing his own clothes by hand having absorbed the ethos that there is dignity in simple things, and knowing how easy it is to make good bread, of course.

I remember the day my daughter told me that at school they had made bread. They kneaded it on newspaper, let it rise and then threw it away. The subject was *food technology*. Actually the lesson was to show children that home made bread is just plain wrong; there is no good reason to make bread, when you can buy it already made, and the bread one makes cannot taste like home made because of various absences of preservatives so...so don't bother to enter the learning curve.

School is such a wasted opportunity.

It used to be that arcane knowledge was difficult to get, often it was simply Pythagorean via Plato or experienced via a mystery. Now the true mystery is how to accomplish the most basic of tasks -how to bake bread, make shoes, to hunt and to recognise plants that are good to eat. The arcane knowledge: the correspondence's of planets to metals, the names of various angels (even the Enochian calls may be found on-line) has been distilled into science and science is open to all. Real, practical everyday knowledge on how to take care of oneself has become the new mystery.

People must go to experts for help.

Even cooking raw ingredients together is too difficult.

My son, as a 21st century sixteen year old knows the theory of nuclear fission and how to use Pi, he can make fire from a flint and kindling but he still believes that pasta sauce is best from a bottle, rather than from fresh tomatoes. He has built a couple of computers, learnt to play complicated drum pattens enough to get him a place at college and now he recognises that he is going to need to buy a bike to get to the train station and a season ticket for that train, to get himself to college.

Home-education isn't so bad.

2010-07-16T12:29:00.001+01:00

I have set myself an impossible task. The first page is here [LINK].

The last time I wrote I was trying to explain how empowerment isn't confined (or limited) by tradition. There are official empowerments and, as with the mysteries of old, these empowerments are secret -details cannot be disclosed.

Empowerments in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition are mysteries. The form they take is explained here.

Unlike the ancient Greek mysteries, they are not open to the public and there is no throwing of piglets into gaping chasms.

The word mystery derives from myein, meaning *to close* and that could be read as either close one's mouth and do not speak...or before the initiation ones eyes were closed, now they are open to the light.

I believe that the roots of Tibetan Buddhism (as tought by Guru Rinpoche) contain many ideas that were originally Pythagorean (that is to say belonging to the Orphic tradition). As I'm teasing out the history of a symbol (the history of Persephone) my mind is full of questions about the Hittites, Minoans, Babylonians and on and on and on but basically I'm grateful for my religious education. A formal religious education provides a key. Religions -regardless of what they are or what they truly mean- all religions may or may not point to God, they do point to the similarity of the religious experience.

Alexandra the Great got as far as the Swat valley.

In Alexandra's day the Eleusinian mysteries still had another 600years to run, his teacher had been Aristotle.

Meanwhile the Swat valley is where Dzogchen (call it Maha ati or leave it at Vajrayana), in other words where Guru Rinpoche came from. Alexandrian links are easily found in Tibetan culture, the Tibetan days of the week correspond to the seven planet -Tuesday for instance is Za mig ma -red-eye (mars). For us it is Tuesday because Tiwaz was, acording to our Roman rulers, similar to Mars. Originally the days were so ordered because of a Greek version of the universe that can be traced back to the 6th century BC...There are other ways Tibet could have got the Greek system, perhaps?

My money is on that Greek-Swat valley connection.

Another link in Tibetan culture is the concept of the horned man -a famous motif is the image of Alexandra as having horns- but I digress; except to say that fundamentally 'our' practices are a mixture of Pythagorean mystic and half remembered Shamanic, ritual.

But in one's own life empowerments, devoid of pomp or ceremony: no legomena, dieknymena or dromena, are experienced.

As Aristotle wrote (Synesius Dio 10):

'initiates do not learn anything (ou mathein ti) but experience (pathein) and are put into a certain state of mind (diatethenai)'

But in my experience it often requires work to enable a mystery to be transmitted.

I have a feeling that there is always a price to be paid, too.

And I'm wondering if the world divides into those who ask for empowerment, and those who prefer to trust in good fortune? I don't think it is possible to walk both paths at the same time.

Meanwhile, at some point (and at the moment I'm stuck in the mythology of the late paleolithic, early Neo-lithic seeking the Mistress of Animals and wondering if the girl at the center of 'The Sanctuary' her burnt bones found under a standing stone..and the child in the center of 'Woodhenge' were sacrificed or simply given an honoured grave after a 'natural' death) at some point I need to trace how the Heiros Gamos became a christian sacrament.

Walter Berkert has become an invaluable guide, for instance painting this image from the 'flower festival' a time of drinking the new wine, of ghosts and finally in a small temple hidden out in the marsh land:

"This woman offered the unspeakable sacrifices for the city; she saw what as a non-Athenian she ought not to have seen. A woman such as this entered the room that no other of all the many Athenians enters save only the wife of the king. She administered the oath to the Venerable Ones who attend at the sacred acts, she was given to Dionysos as wife, she conducted for the city the ancestral practices towards the gods, many sacred, secret practices." (Burkert, Greek Religion, p 239.)

True, he does point out that perhaps it was all just symbolic, Dionysus being perhaps nothing more than a mask hung from a post. On the other hand, by the time of the Romans, things had gotten real enough for girls to come home pregnant.

Slipg8.

2010-07-11T19:13:00.006+01:00

Empowerments are permissions to practice. They happen in a public space hired for the occasion by which ever Dharma center has requested the specific empowerment to be given.

The Lama arrives and you follow.

There isn't a mailing list for this or perhaps there is.

You know about the empowerment only because you have been in the right place at the right time and you are there because you are willing to accept the commitment to that particular practice.

And willing to accept any commitment the Lama asks of you.

I've been fortunate, no Lama ever asked too much of me.

Of all my traditional empowerments, my favorite is for the practice of Yeshe Tsogyal, the consort of 'Guru Rinpoche', his intellectual consort...the one who asked question such as:

"What does that mean?"

when ever her master said something that she did not understand and then asked him questions such as:

"Please give advice on how to keep the deity in mind whilst meditating on the yidam deity".

His other famous consort was Manderava, I was never inspired by her at all.

I remember a sad afternoon, it was time to leave and we, Gilgamesh and I were standing out side the retreat center by a stone that contained foot prints or hand prints left by some saint or other as proof of their mastery over 'reality'. I was trying to put my total misery into Dharma perspective, that is to say to tell my version of how I felt in acceptable terms; I said that in my view if, when Guru Rinpoche left Lady Tsogyal -as the story tells it- Lady Tsogyal tore at her hair and cried out for him to return, then Gilgamesh's demand for my stoic, tearless, calm and ordered acceptance was alien to this religion, and my desire to tear my hair and cling to his feet were justified.

He told me the story was symbolic.

~sigh~ Almost everything *emotive* in Tibetan Buddhism is dismissed by that word, I'd got used to that fact even by then, though I hadn't yet criticised it enough in my own mind to be free of it.

Unfortunately for me, Gilgamesh was then, and possibly still is, imagining that he had found The Truth and the truth demands (as in the Christian tradition) sacrifice. In his version of the truth -the Vajrayana- demanded rigorous courage in the face of overwhelming misery.

Only it wasn't my courage, fortitude or strength that he was asking for it was more silence.

Ever heard the word alexithymia before?

I hadn't come across it until a few days ago, but basically it means *without words* meaning an inability to identify ones own feelings or mental states because one is without words or images, literally without the means to access feelings and thus create understanding.

Putting feelings into words is a useful trick, pretty fundamental to emotional intelligence. The theory that alexithymia could work backwards is not justified by any of my experiences ever!

Allowing oneself to be coerced into silence does not staunch the flow of pain. When someone is coerced into silence, the process of self-censoring creates a gap into which emotion floods endlessly. Only by re-entering the gap and restructuring the experience, can the pain be transformed into amrit...understanding and wisdom.

But, back to empowerments.

There isn't a mailing list or perhaps there is, for The Black School. In the real world, or rather, at the interface between the real world and the mind of a religious person there are empowerments to be taken. The Lama manifests in what ever form is required for the empowerment, the empowerment is transmitted -as in the traditional empowerment- via words, images and gestures.

When I put this into words it sounds to me as if I'm describing either a way of seeing, or a kind of madness.

But I was thinking specifically of the non-religious empowerments I have taken, those moments that felt as if I were at the crossroads somehow, that felt as if the air shimmered and change was a choice.

The crossroads is the slipgate, the portal, a *no going back*. But there is no invite, no preparation guaranteed to work, no certainty in Black School empowerments. It always will be *out of the blue*.

The moment of empowerment is given, it is a gift and a crossing-over and you have no idea at all where it may lead.

2010-07-07T09:30:00.006+01:00

There was a woman on the radio yesterday talking about protecting young women from older men. It makes me wonder; the girls I knew who longed for older boy-friends with cars, and the friends who found one and married him.

Well to be honest, just two of my friends married *an older man*, but the idea that there is something abnormal going on annoys me.

I wonder why there is no one warning middle aged women about wearing leather and acting out fantasies of domination and submission?

Could it be that normality -an all pervasive thought suppression field fed via the cathode-ray nipple and You magazine type crap- has taken away *power dynamics* and replaced them with passive aggression?

Or is it more lucrative to gain the attention of mothers of young girls and draw upon the years of deep resentments against men, plus their fears for their children?

Normality has its place no doubt, but I was brought up with so many taboos; and the taboos are still there: it is taboo for a woman to *be easy* because 'men will not respect you' (oh, I thought, do I want to be respected for pretending that I don't like sex?). It is taboo to bleed *period!*. It is taboo to tell a man that he is doing it wrong, and getting around that without a vocabulary, or narrative that means *I am not rejecting you* is very hard to find.

Other taboos: 'What you want someone to treat you as if you are nothing but a means to pleasure? What, you don't mind if he looks at porn? What, you like it when his cock gets hard for any reason at all so long as he gives it to you'?

As far as I know *working at the relationship* which is apparently what marriage is all about, means knowing what makes me wet and respecting anything that makes him hard.

And that's mostly it!

What else is there to work at?

If I was with someone I couldn't talk to, or whose fundamental beliefs were to me, wrong, I wouldn't stay with him longer than a week. If I was with someone I didn't believe loved me, I'd fight to be loved and go away eventually when I was sure that love wasn't possible.

But paradoxically I keep facing my fear that I'm not loved and drawing that fear into a power dynamic, because how else am I to deal with it?

But I am loved, I know that. The problem is that the good doctor has trouble handing himself over to me...is this at the heart of Domination -that the Dom projects his discomfort into the body of his sub? and by doing this he draws into himself the energy of facing/dealing with it?

But here's me again making out that we use the D/s dynamic in a traditional way (the rope, the ordeal, the begging...) we don't.

Or rather, we don't enough for me.

The energy flows down different pathways, around boulders that can't be dealt with quickly, cleanly or easily.

2010-07-06T09:47:00.003+01:00

I heard about HTML5 and my heart sank!

This attitude of mine towards the web and the increasing phenomenon of pages either being pay-for content, or copy-and-paste (and covered in adverts) intellectual equivalent of You magazine...depresses me. I don't see myself ever quitting Blogger, but with HTML5 I'm guessing that SoundClick will go (Flash based sites?) I hope not. YouTube has enough cash to remain. I don't actually know what change HTML5 will demand, but if it were up to me, everything would stay at xhtml because it requires effort.

Oh dear, sorry.
But it is true, intelligence and effort are good and better than the feeble minded jumping up and down plain noise of nothing to say, everything to sell.

I'm beginning to prefer pen and paper to e (including my Eee).

So, where are we?
I have decided to write a book (it will be a web site too, because my love affair with teh internet will not go away). The Book of Persephone follows an archetype (which is problematic...do I believe in archetypes?) ok, will follow an icon, the icon of 'the lost girl' from Bronze age into now.

It occurred to me this morning that sex is a part of this story. It hadn't occurred to me before, but the desire for the Dom of all Doms -for subduction/sub-space/seduction- will need to be included somehow.

And this book will require first hand experience; which pleases me. It means trips to Greece and elsewhere so far unknown. In my usual incoherent way I have no idea who I am writing for, the kind and class of language I should use? But years of blogging is years of experience, I'll just be me.

The older form (the paleolithic) form of Persephone is the consort of The Bull of Heaven, the oldest Goddess of the lot. I've always had a love hate relationship with Her. Other, more contemporary envisioning of Her give Her *care* and *love* but in my experience She is the pulse of life, nothing more, nothing less.

Desire is Hers; so is death and so is blood. Each period of menstruation is an offering. I'm looking at what She has in store for those of us who no longer pay Her that blood? I mean so much of my behaviour has been based on *reproduction* (my choices of partner, getting pregnant despite contraception, hormonal effects of oestrogen etc). I think She has finished with me as a mother, I don't believe that the background Goddess-driven desire for reproduction could still be running in me.

In theory post-menopausal women are supposed to leave now, and go into retreat, to pray for the world. It is time to think about the deeper questions -or so I've heard from plenty of copy-and-paste web sites adorned with adverts that are about as deep as You magazine...

Blue...

2010-06-30T08:18:00.006+01:00

My blue book requires attention, but I don't want to go there; to get into the crashes and make myself write them out/re-live the feelings. But here I am crashed and knowledge has to be forged.

Interesting concept -to forge knowledge- as opposed to absorbing it naturally.

I've tried to explain before why I think natural becomes a disabling concept. Basically there is nothing un-natural about the discipline and work required to create and knowledge is a created thing. Yet the concept of being natural is, it seems to me, a Western approximation of Wu Wai: "action without action" or "effortless doing".

The next question becomes: Why is an attempt to Gnow (as in gnosis) the Tao and flow with the limitless energy paths that are Wu Wei a disabling concept?

Simple answer: because any concept is not Tao.

But fundamentally, a Western concept of Wu Wei acts/non-acts as passivity; and next thing that happens is -common sense goes out of the window!

Better answer: Because human affairs require knowledge; and the gaining of knowledge is not a passive absorption.

Why am I crashed, well same old, old.

The rule in our relationship is that I must follow. Now I don't use a concept of Wu Wei, I don't believe sex is natural, I do believe that I should act at all times with self-discipline and this means that I 'take care' of his feelings, rather than express my natural feelings.

I mean think of parenthood if you wonder what I mean about self-discipline; I mean would you tell your older daughter what you really think of her boy-friend (unless asked for an honest opinion)? Would you rant and scream at your toddler when he pulls down a carefully arranged display of chocolates in the local supermarket, or would you count to ten and then use intelligence and a sense of humour to solve the problem?

If I did what felt right, right could only be as right as my understanding. Understanding something is more complicated than trusting an inner sense; and all too often what feels right is nothing but a bad habit, something your parents did, or something that comes from a flood of anger or adrenaline!

The good doctor has a concept of natural and extends it to me, so he does not understand that I fit in with him out of knowledge and I always do what I do to make things better. This means that he cannot fit in with me, cannot go *down* to where I am because for him this would be *un-natural*.

The Blue book is to provide me with information, but my real problem centers on why he will not *go down*, why he remains resolutely in the upper world. Obviously what hurts me most about that is my interpretation; I don't think he loves me because he wont follow me, will not let go into timeless-wordless-union...

Ah me, there are so many ways to have sex, so many different levels of honesty and psychic nakedness; but this morning when I reached out to him my soul was absolutely naked. I thought that he would respond to me; I didn't think that I needed to keep anything closed, I didn't think he would be so careless of my feelings.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"

Einstein.

2010-06-29T08:39:00.005+01:00

Vinnie Tesla asks, why isn't there a word for it? [LINK]

Sometimes I can believe that silence is better. Sometimes I long for the word mystery to have meaning but even as I write it here, I see the syllables skitter off the page and re-home themselves inside books with Stonehenge on the cover, or books by Enid Blyton (The Ring 'O Bells Mystery...did I really read that book when I was a child?)

Female parts and female activities are either honoured by mystery, or from a Western point of view, silenced and hidden.

You chose!
And here, in Gillette's blog is a counter argument to mine -which is broadly in favour of Logos [LINK].

Feminine and secret go together for students of 'The Black School'. The Black meteoric Stone hidden in the corner of the Kaaba, the Dharmakaya, the Plenum Void, ineffable secrets that may not be apprehended in words are very often classed as female, and this concept of knowing rather than -thinking- engaging in endless mental chatter/discursive thought- lies at the heart of esoteric knowledge.

Sometimes I dislike my desire to confine mystery by words; ultimately though Logos does not necessarily limit or confine, it elucidates.

So, back to Vinnie, would the world be a better place if female secretions had a name?

People do talk about it, the lack of a word doesn't mean that it is a taboo subject, but we are confined by the word *wet* and limited by the ignorance of others: the ones who either call it *female ejaculation* (and it isn't!) or the ones who limit it via a functional approach and class it as *lubrication* .

We are limited by the fact that it (wetness/lubrication/secretions and I'm wincing at all those words!) is caused by pleasure. For any talk about wetness has to include pleasure, and pleasure is the real taboo.

This, I think explains why there isn't a word. The words we have are a symptom of the past -an idiotically weird time when experts described women as not wanting sex, just babies - and those that did want sex as neurotic; the wet being axiomatic of their sexual incontinence!

Zombie ideas.

2010-06-24T10:28:00.007+01:00

Feminist thought fastened upon male-Dom, female-sub as characteristic of our less than noble cultural past (one of many varieties of slavery perpetrated by men on women and children and creating victims)

Therefore any practice even remotely D/s is still a kind of heresy.

The relations between male and female should be better now, as a result of feminist revelation?

And yet there is low level virus of despair abroad in the world. it sinks in from the skin, deeper and deeper, eating right into the heart.

There seems to be a problem, but it is not with male oppression of women, but with *vanilla* relationships.

The template from *the world* told us that women are strong, free and independent; that we should get out of any kind of relationship that did not fulfill us, and that we had a right to expect rational sanity all the time from the person we have sex with.

Basically in what situation is anyone of us: male/female/gay/old/young... free from responsibility to, and dependence upon, others?

This world is a web, nothing is independent.

Yet I have (all my life) watched women try to get their men to be more dominant, then sinking with a kind of inevitable sigh into passive aggression; talking about *him* as if *he* has never learnt how to be a man, to goad him into action.

Culturally defined sex roles cannot suit everyone. But replacing one culture with another isn't any kind of step forwards!

The word *natural* comes to mind.
80's man was supposed to be natural.

I ask, is it more *natural* to relax into a dominance/submissive stance, or is it a triumph to ignore our animal ancestry?

The longing for the *tall, dark, stranger* which intensifies into the archetypal rape fantasy is made worse by an insistence on separation between reality and fantasy. The division maintains the polarity between what the heart portrays as its cure, and what the mind believes should be...

Dismissing the energy of a fantasy is depressing.

I think one of the biggest problems is that concept of *natural* though; love and sex are supposed to be natural, but sex is learnt, technique matters.

Dominance and submission may be natural, but likewise, how it is used makes all the difference.

How we do stuff is largely cultural, rarely natural (un-tutored).

Yet in truth, learning, exploring the world to learn more, is the most natural thing.

So I blame the magazine-level theories so many accidentally believe in as a cause of the low-level miasma of sad. These are zombie-ideas, bad ideas that don't even know that they should be dead! Dead but living, the zombie-theory is quoted again and again and each repetition makes it stronger.

A culture contains plenty of clever, but plenty more dumb!

Still the question remains in my mind, would my vanilla friends find a D/s shift in their sexual relationship to be really a paradigm shift?

Often, and this is a zombie-theory if you ask me, it is believed that anyone expressing their Dom or sub-ness in anything more than a fantasy, is in need of therapy.

Right now I find myself thinking the opposite.

10.

2010-06-23T09:36:00.007+01:00

The most puzzling aspect of our relationship, to me, is that he doesn't really believe that I gave myself totally to him, from the beginning.

Sometimes I long for the rope just to externalize the truth of this, when the rope is around me the inner truth and the outer are united; I am bound to him, the rope makes it visible.

Physically bound, I no longer have to explain anything.

I suggested the rope go around my throat,

'I think that is illegal'

he said.

I agreed that it should be illegal, but that as neither of us are out of control or irresponsible and I'd keep my finger inside the coils until they were done

'It will suit me'

I said.

The rope is black and silky smooth, not jute or natural, it is like woven hair. He begins to wrap the rope around me and I find that I need to keep my finger behind the coils, he doesn't mean to pull it tight, but it easily becomes uncomfortable. The trickle of primal fear fills me with pleasure...

2010-06-17T11:39:00.002+01:00

My other blog -the one about ordinary stuff. [LINK]

Someone else said this, but I agree: people stay together when 'we' is more important than 'I'. I have never wanted to be on my own, I've always been in love with someone and if I'm not in a relationship, I'm trading sex.

But at the moment I'm in trouble. I'm getting old -I don't like the way my skin is beginning to show this. My role as home-educator has changed (yesterday was third child's last exam, my other son has exams next year so I'm not quite finished as their policeman/teacher/watchdog/councillor/friend/adviser and mother..but I can see the end (my retirement).

I'm losing faith in myself as a 'sex object' an art I rated very highly(!) and I'm losing my 'job'. I do not like this getting old stuff at all, death actually seems less cruel. Regardless of that, the changing roles stuff is daunting; I don't have any idea where I could fit in with 'The World', my paper qualifications don't count for much. My 25 years of parenting count for even less.

But, the important part: My relationship with the good doctor started off with plenty of rules, there were plenty of boundaries and borders and trust; but inevitably both of us acted in ways that was best for 'I' because unless we did there would be no 'we'. The rules and boundaries, the borders have all been broken and remade, rearranged or fallen into disrepair; yet there are changes going on (and for him too).

My feeling is, the boundaries are good and some of the ones that have gone missing need to be mended.

Normally I'm the one who sorts things out; I sort things out for my sons, I create the map, plan the route and direct them when they get lost. When the good doctor is lost, unable to see what is making him feel edgy and uncomfortable, I search out the causes...but when I go down -as now- when change and age make me realise that I have nothing to trade anymore, the good doctor tries to do what I do for him. He tries to seek out answers from my past -but my past is never a good place to take me- he does not see that primarily I need something good; it would be better to support me by being kind, praising me, give me flowers and doing all in his power to prove to me that he is 'on my side'.

Anyway, I'm sick of the negative stuff.

So, I stop.

Triolite.

2010-06-09T10:51:00.006+01:00

People become possessed by all manner of demons...but this culture makes all evil appear anodyne unless there is money to be made out of selling fear.

Don't be tricked by that, don't fall for it.

Evil happens, evil is banal but never anodyne. Ghosts and demons are made of the same stuff as memories and old songs, symbols resonate with the inchoate thoughts, feeling ride the underground streams.

You are made of this.

The crossroad is the threshold space, often hard to find it in the real world one must learn to carry it within a small shrine box (my Eee, the space of my Dell or Inspiron. My hard-drives are spinning mandala palaces).

The guitarist was surrounded by a rising tide of noise that only I could hear. I increased the speed to increase the tension, and summoned the black wind and the red; the lost and the found:

Brier Rose.

2010-06-08T09:25:00.009+01:00

Define the sacred...
On a day when the sky bleeds grey light, and rain provides the soundtrack.

From Tim Boucher defining the Troubadour as:

a life dedicated to the renewal of divine love within wrought existence, through an endless journeying through the world, a questing after its glorious truth.

To the text book definition of sacred as that which lies beyond the boundary:

Latin sacrum, which referred to the gods or anything in their power, and to sacer, priest; sanctum, set apart. It was generally conceived spatially, as referring to the area around a temple.

For me it was always about giving, opening up; never set apart from anything.

The magic of the moment is all.

Especially so during sex.

The good doctor knew that sex was about taking, the world had told him so. Wanting to fuck someone would take something indefinable away from that person -it would remove her unobtainable status, she would be known and then possessed: her freedom would be lost. Sex is taking control, he thought.

No one wants to be possessed.

How can sex be about giving when ultimately you are getting what you want?

Paradoxically simply by thinking that way he transmits it; in how he moves and in how he acts. His remedy of ignoring the mild discomfort, his remedy of appearing confident compounds the error.

Then if I give, he interprets it using the same mechanism, so his belief that sex is about taking control leads onto: 'when she touches me she is trying to make me fulfill her expectations'.

To get out of this conflict, I metaphorically step away or down or out. I get the feeling that he doesn't want me to touch him and that when he touches me it is better if I'm asleep -beyond submissive- way down into a non-critical subspace in which all meaning falls into oblivion and I'm lost in pleasure.

Then the issue of control is no longer a problem, for there can be no conflict (with a sleeping person). He doesn't want to be in control but feels compelled by something to believe that he is *in control*.

I (non)act to remove the conflict...

00:57 Sunday morning.

2010-06-06T00:56:00.004+01:00

A hot night, the feeling of thunderstorm in the air but no lightning relieves the heavy atmosphere. I can't sleep, and the weight of unwritten words is getting heavier with each day so...

it must be time to write now!

Actually the main reason I couldn't sleep was my daughter's last few Tweets.

On one hand I'm feeling like I should do something, but she is in London and without doubt can cope. On the other, I'm so glad my parents didn't know about my trials and tribulations especially when I lived in London.

As much as I love Twitter sometimes I think I'd rather not know. But her last Tweet was about going out to a party, so I shall quit worrying now! Except I haven't heard anything at all from my eldest, no texts, and no Tweets, no FaceBook...

I spent this evening reading 'The Hollow Heart' about a woman's -her phrase not mine- baby hunger, how the need to have children is so overwhelming that she goes through literally hell to conceive. How she fails to become pregnant and loses her husband, too.

A part of the problem is that she has been sensible; put her career first, waited until she had enough money and felt 'old enough'. Now my life is sorted, now I'll have a baby.

I picked this book up because I have never experienced what she has put herself through, and because to some extent I was thinking about a friend of mine who had IVF, and of my daughters. My eldest is now the same age as I was when I gave birth to her; her sister is eighteen months younger. I thought that I was quite old when I gave birth the first time -I was twenty four. I also thought that I was old when I had my fourth child -thirty four. The idea that babies should fit into one's life-plan, rather than babies as a part of life, is plain wrong.

It is a sad story -Martina Devlin: The Hollow Heart. But here I am at the other end of the story, trying not to worry about my grown up kids and wishing for the thunder to roll, to break the heavy sky.

Time for me to go back to bed.

Ever see sulphur burn?

2010-05-31T22:34:00.001+01:00

The spaces in between...

2010-05-26T10:39:00.001+01:00

This video has stayed with me for days now.

2010-05-25T08:18:00.005+01:00

Imagine if you will; drifting away, someone you love is touching you and you can feel his eyes filling with you, his fingers fill your world...

...and then he asks a question which sounds to you as if he is either making conversation, or asking you for some cliched reply.

What he actually said was:

"What does it feel like to have a big cock against your arse"

which may sound rude or shocking, or dirty even, to you?

But to me it was a kind of

'hey come back, tell me that what I'm doing is exiting because I'm getting bored'.

This morning I was awake early. Before it was properly light I lit a red candle to Meslamtaea, and offered some incense.

This is something I haven't told you about; that a while ago (possibly about a year ago) the good doctor had said that he wished to be 'my consort'. I explained that I don't use magic as a way to get or achieve anything, basically I'm a religious person and I have always made offerings to 'the deities'. From from my teenage, Crowley inspired years onwards, I embody...but after my education at Karma Ling, though I'm interested in, and have created the 'energetic architecture' for 'Tantra', I don't 'do' enlightenment either.

I tend to explain this stuff -if pushed into it- via Jungian concepts, because Jung bridges the divide between the two worlds, but really all it comes down to is -I'm unable to unsee the sacred. The good doctor interprets *workings* as a part of individuation, a way to access archetypes so as to make the energy of the psyche flow more smoothly.

I cannot confine the meaning of deity to archetype.

As a part of last years *workings* I used oil dedicated to Mars and Pluto (Meslamtaea). Since then, that oil has been used by the good doctor as if the original meanings were relative; that the oil was only a ritual object in the context of a working.

This is not so.

Anyway, I needed to reconnect the oil and apologise for the misuse; hence the candle and incense.

After his question my mind returned to the upper world and to curiosity: why does he do this? Why doesn't he go down into the deeps, why doesn't he change what he is doing if it no longer has any erotic energy?

Why does he talk to me instead of acting?

So I went to the toilet to think.

Back in the bedroom naked me put on her fake tiger-skin coat and picked up his rope. He allowed me to begin tying his wrists together, but after only a few coils of rope he fell into fear, telling me I was tying the rope too tight.

I checked the coils; tight yes, but not too tight. I know about being tied, and I know what tight is. I could get my finger between the rope and his wrists, and no -as far as I'm aware- there are no nerves especially close to the skin at the wrists!

His fear was interesting but unfortunately I don't have any kink about being in charge or dominant, just I wanted to show him something.

Then I poured some of the oil onto his belly and rubbed it into his cock, his balls.

He had blamed the oil before for making his cock feel cold and told me that he didn't like it; but I think that originally he had liked it but he had allowed the oil to become linked to failure (times when he had used the oil wrongly). The oil is cold, it contains camphor and mint, it is also luxuriously thick.

Then I took the leather cock-ring I'd sown for him and rubbed the oil into it. I placed it on his skin without tying, just hinting that it would be put on...and then I looked at him.

He was beginning to sink below the limin, entering the edges of subspace.

I took his hands and began to untie the rope.

I trust that it was a shock?

He shocks me each time he breaks me out of that delicious descent.

I don't know if I'm right or wrong when I do this stuff -the teaching him a lesson stuff. I don't like it. I'm assuming that either he doesn't respect subspace or that he can't recognise it when he fails to take care of his own needs? By showing him how it feels to enter that space and then to have it shattered creates a link (conditioning) not a good link either. But on the other hand, if he really understands that it hurts and is counterproductive...he will stop and think and ask himself what it is that he wants.

If not taking care of his own feelings is the cause of this problem?

I don't have much more time left to write this, but I'm wondering where this fits in with the guy trying to work out how to make his beloved cum by rubbing and licking ~~the Holy Grail~~ the right place?

The similarity is a forbidden word -boredom? An unasked question is, what is in it for him to sit there trying to do the right thing?

Falling into compassion without passion, rather than subspace (and that's not the right word ~sigh).

--

Ah no!
All time gone.

Cybele.

2010-05-24T15:38:00.003+01:00

Before Cybele and cybeline practices became linked with female Dom and male sub, the most noble and famous followers of Cybele were the Galli.The first Galli arrived in Rome when the Senate officially adopted Cybele as a state goddess in 203 BC. Until the first century AD, Roman citizens were prohibited from becoming Galli.

After the Theodosian edict of 391 AD All Cybelene temples were destroyed, with orders that they should never be built upon. As a result the only surviving records of the Galli come from historians and archivists.

This doesn't stop J G Frazer though, in The Golden Bough he paints a picture of the Galli (followers of Cybele)as a scary bunch of emasculated blokes, dancing around in dresses, being outrageous and frightening the citizens of Rome.

I'm all for that kind of thing, I mean there should be more of it!

First solution.

2010-05-22T08:25:00.003+01:00

For instance books and videos will tell you (as a woman) to show your partner what feels nice, how to rub and where to touch so that he can do it right.

This is amazingly logical and should work; in an ideal world. Fact is, there is more to pleasure than technique. I've shown the good doctor many times, I've done things with objects...I've explained the theory and the practice. I'm happy to lie there, legs apart and to be watched, but in the end it became too clinical.

It is the stuff of fantasy, but it can also be intimidating. I remember that one scene in 9 Songs where the man watches his lover using a vibrator; it marks the beginning of the end of their relationship.

It never me helped one bit!

So, here was my solution. I asked him to film me. I rubbed in my usual, slow and languorous way and he filmed as he pushed his cock into me. He filmed my orgasm and saved the film on his hard drive.

I have not watched it, I don't think I could which is odd; I don't know why I feel that way about watching myself. I rationalise it by saying that I know the feelings from the inside, I don't want to be confused by the image -but that doesn't make any sense.

The translation from the real into virtual turns my cunt into any cunt, but one he sees himself really fucking. When he watches films he imagines himself fucking...but this film makes it more true. I draw back the energy he gives away.

Plus I am objectified, I could be anyone. That makes the film work, there is no weight, no emotion with images. Best still, whoever or whatever I am, what I'm doing is real and it isn't fast or rough; it is perfect.

There is more to it than just technique though, intention matters too, often intention matters more than actual technique; so if he touches me and asks me 'was that good?' anything that was good about it is instantly destroyed. Sure, I'm meant to be big and noble and strong and patient but I am not a saint! I will not reassure him, there is no point. There is nothing about finger-fucking that is difficult or dangerous. Reassuring him does not make him better, either. It makes him worse, it confirms his worst theories about himself.

A confident, open attitude is better than cautious and careful because confidence and an attitude of giving do not ask for reassurance. There is nothing about touching someone to give them pleasure that is difficult. The only bit of anatomy that it is useful to know (for a bloke) is that the clitoris is like the frenulum of the penis, and the entrance to the vagina seems to be like the balls (scrotum). In the same way that it is nice to have one's balls stroked and that it takes the frenulum to be rubbed enough, understanding that it is the same basic set up for women, helps.

Empathy matters.

The good doctor has a voice in his head which tells him that as he is a man and a loner, an outsider, the stranger, that he cannot possibly know or care enough about a woman's 'mysterious' feelings.

When I use the word empathy, it bounces off this belief and makes him feel inadequate.

I say, what is there to know? Sex is easy, pure loveliness, why is it difficult, how could it be difficult?

Answer: it must be difficult or else it would be easy...and it isn't.

Hard to argue with that one.

2010-05-21T12:30:00.004+01:00

No the bathroom isn't finished...a tiny bit left.

I record the crashes and I feel bad for doing this.

I keep thinking that I should make the best of -mostly this concept (to focus on the good and let the bad pass by) derives from common sense! But, I have several scripts that push me too far in that direction.

First -the whore's script is full of ways to make difficult moments pass by. There is a distinct start, middle and end to this kind of sex, and there are many ways to reach one's goal. Letting the difficult moments slip away (unless there is a fast and easy answer) makes total sense.

But marriage is different, I'm not trying (though I am!) to be *an experience*. Out of habit I try to switch off any kind of 'error reporting' and refuse to see things that annoy me. Sacred sex accidentally becomes a way to escape facing real problems (though also contains the solution). When I weave everything into a Higher meaning, I run the risk of allowing nonsense to make sense.

The submissive script also pushes towards glossing over problems; and is harder to drop because I want it to work. Once I let go of a submissive frame of mind it I disappoint myself.

But...if I don't speak up and criticise, I have to work very hard to make wrong things right.

So, lets' talk solution!