Small Pool Problems.

Apr 142013

In the midst of some pretty intense discussion of d/s and M/S stuff, a friend asked -

Her: So, who IS TheDominantGuy, really?
Me: His actual fake name is [REDACTED]
Her: OhMyGod I met him at ___ a few years back! [Insert titillating recounting of a fairly standard smoking hot TheDominantGuy breathless encounter] He’s really hot…
Me:I wouldn’t argue with that.
Her:…aaaand this probably isn’t making you feel any better.
Me: No, but its a familiar owie.

It is funny how you can have a shared experience, a moment that seems like a funny passing coincidence and then it has an oddly deeper resonances. I mean, hey, it is a small subgroup, the kink / Leather / BDSM/ swinger / AltSex / Tantra wide world umbrella, right? We are bound to have people in common. And I don’t mind it, except, sometimes, I do.

And I wish it didn’t feel so strange to me to have people I know having had intimate moments with people with whom I have been intimate. But, it is. The friends I tend to play with tend to be prolific in their love and appreciation of the pleasures of the flesh. Or they’re just really slutty. Some days, I wish I were back in one of my sluttier phases. Enjoying playing and fucking and not limiting myself by needing to have deeper connection in order to get it. That would be cool…wouldn’t it?

Because right now I’m a little icy and cold with the loneliness thing. Which is ironic, because I am surrounded by so, so much love and warmth and awesomeness.

And I am grateful for it, because it keeps me from freezing over.

Masters & Slaves & Love ~ Part One: Patrick Mulcahey’s Thoughts.

Mar 262013

“Big P” is also a pleasure to behold, no?

One of my friends who is also, secretly, someone I adore without boundary is Patrick Mulcahey. Not only is he one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever met on pretty much any topic involving Leather and BDSM, he’s also someone who walks the walk and talks the talk and steps up to the plate on many issues that other Leatherfolk decline to address. While I will never, ever forget how he took a stand, unlike so many other gay white Leathermen, in the face of the flagrant racist blackface act that was booked at the Portland Eagle. I won’t forget that, even as hundreds of other Leathermen belittled those of us who pointed out the hateful underpinnings of this act, he not only spoke to he spoke to his peers, calling out some pretty ugly truths.

Over the years, Patrick and I have had conversations about our lives, and about Leather, and about power exchange and so when I learned that he was doing a keynote at a Leather convention known for a very strong Master / Slave presence, and even more specifically aligned to certain beliefs that have become cannon on the M/S community, I was intrigued. And then I was hopeful that he might actually step up and share some of the more troubling realities of modern consensual m/s relationships And, of course, he did not disappoint.

Below I am, with Mr. Mulcahey’s permission, posting the complete text of his speech. I cant read it without goosebumps and tears an…well. A broad palate of emotional reactions.

I’ll be talking, a bit more, in another post, about my own struggles and thoughts on love within the Master / Slave dynamic. I have very strong opinions on this topic…and my opinions don’t align with the social climate of ”slaves are property and love will spoil, degrade and denigrate the purity of the master / slave relationship.” I have some very dear friends on all sides of this debate. And they’ve come to their own conclusions based on their experience, and their desires. It is less comforting to know that many come into the community see how others behave, and simply pick up on those beliefs without examining the level of resonance that they carry personally.

I invite you to read Mr. Mulcahey’s words, see where they resonate, and open your heart for a few minutes.

Six Years Walking Sober.

Mar 142013

Today, it has been six years and a day since I took my last drink.

If you’re on FetLife, you can join today’s event if you’d like, and share in the virtual party :-D

It is an amazing walk thus far…bumps and bruises and loss and so many beautiful lessons I have learned. Most wonderfully, I am alive.

This was what I wrote about Bubbles shortly after she made herself known as a facet of who we are.

And a handful of years later, I found myself still sober and sharing our story and journey on National Public Radio, of all places.

We have come far in not so very much time.

I am inspired and grateful for the example set by those who have gone before me and continue to walk a beautiful, clear, sober path. Thank you for leading the way.

I am inspired by and grateful to all of the people who have reached out and all of those who were pushed away by my poor behaviour, neglectfulness, ugliness. Thank you for doing what you could.

Courtesy of my Evil Jewish Lesbian Landladies, Laura and Karen, I was treated to some badassery in the form of a full body scrub in a Korean style spa today. The nice Chinese lady scrubbing and thumping me asked what my Bubbles ink was. She inhaled sharply when I said a hyena. “Very strong animal. Very strong. Its good. You strong, too.” Then she laughed.

And my demon…dude, we are walking.

We are above the earth. And walking.

And not just walking…shining.

Ain’t that some shit?

What You See Is NOT What You Get: or Why You Really Don’t See Me.

Mar 082013

I love presenting on kink, teaching classes, and leading discussions. But not every day is me striding in there all “YEAH LET’S DO THIS!!” Some days, it is tough. And I feel shaky and not confident. One of the “tricks” I use when I am feeling insanely shy, my self-esteem is circling the drain or I’m just plain off-kilter is I introduce myself to the class. Individually. I will wiggle though the aisles or go around the circle, shake hands with folks (provided they’re OK with that!) hug the huggy types, and make sure I make eye-contact with each and every sentient being in the space. Once or twice it has cut into class time because there were so many people. But that will not stop me, because my coping mechanism then becomes a teaching moment.

If I make eye contact with people, the sea of anonymous eyes pressuring me to be smartfunnywiseenerrtainingseriousbrilliantallknowingandtotellthemeverythinggoddammit goes from a monolithic creature to a bunch of people with whom I am hanging out for an hour or two. I can breathe. I can focus on that one person who seems about to cry or that other person who feels defensive and bored but then runs up to me after class to share with me that they’ve had an epiphany and wow, that’s a big fucking deal.

Eye contact turns enemies into friends. Or friends into enemies, or strangers into threats, or the unknown into the known, or the intimately known into a total stranger. It is powerful and scary and sexy and perverts sometimes know this and strenuously avoid it, because holy shit, it is too much. For me, it really can be too much, because some people aren’t aware of what happens when you look….really look…at someone else. Continue reading »

Another voice.

Jan 202013

I don’t even watch “House” but this quote from the TV show made me jump and shout “Eureka! Perfectly turned!’

I don’t often feel someone else grab my insides and says “No, THIS is how you feel.” I am adept at expressing myself.

Except lately, that hasn’t been the case.

There are many factors, but the three I’ve been able to isolate are fear, anxiety and loneliness.

The fear hit me in the face when someone told me that they were very glad to meet me in person, because they’d found my online “persona” to be “too much.” TMI, too over-sharey in general, other things along those lines.

My self-esteem being a newborn creature, I took that hit pretty hard. I felt compelled to defend, but I stood down. I wanted to kick them and say “Fucking persona?!That’s ME you’re dissing, you bastard!” but my fear of not being liked took over.

I was, at that time, still reeling from another emotional hit. I’d had someone tell me that they’d heard some very unpleasant talk about me behind my back. They refused to tell me who they heard this shit from, but advised me to change my approach on a key aspect of my life as to make sure that those people thought better of me.

I took that hit quietly, too. As a public person, you know people are gonna talk shit about you. Them’s the breaks. But I held close my heart, trying to defend it against this anonymous attack by my haters, carried directly into my heart by someone who had my ear.

I then had the most unpleasant experience of being treated rather poorly by someone in whom I’d been very interested as a potential play partner. They took some emotional liberties we’d not negotiated during what became an emotionally difficult scene – as a direct result of their psychological and spiritual “Pushing” into places they’d not been invited. They rounded that out with some really poor social skills, incredibly selfish behaviour, and then the non-apology of “Yeah, that’s crappy but that’s just how I am.” which felt like anther slap to the face.

I hadn’t realized how badly I was feeling kneecapped by these events, all hitting within a two-month time-span until I did that horrible reflective “Taking Stock of Your Year” thing that one does around the New Year. I looked back and felt sad, humiliated, and alone.

This was an awful feeling because I felt I was, somehow, being ungrateful for the delightful blessings I HAVE received this year. Continue reading »

I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day.

Sep 062012

Sometimes I stop and take stock and crack myself up.

I’m living my life from the inside so I don’t often think about the reality of how amazing it is, really. So this morning when I said to my roomate / Evil Landlady (who happens to be internationally known author and speaker Laura Antoniou) and said “You know, I’m sitting here all tired about the shit I gotta do because my day looks like-a-this:

Get up go into Manhattan to meet my famous photographer friend Aeric Meredith Goujon, who is editing the film I’m producing as commissioned by Madison Young for an exhibit for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where I’m performing in the same program with Midori. Oh yeah, and the film is me being spanked by Lolita Wolf, Sinclair Sexsmith, Nayland Blake, Lee Harrington and the aforementioned evil landlady.”

Yeah, typical Thursday morning.

photo from “IMPACT.” by Aeric Meredith-Goujon

The funny part? It is the way lots of my life goes. And I forget that I’m a daily miracle. Continue reading »

What I’m not saying.

Jan 252012

Leather Reign The past month or so has been difficult in ways I’ve not seen before, and to a degree I’ve not previously experienced.

I’m used to doing my processing out loud, and it has helped me immensely. I thrive on tossing up my inner workings, letting them come to light, welcoming others to join the chorus of “Me, too!” and shine light into my dark corners, hoping that, by proxy, others feel less alone.

I’ve had some deep impact hits, life-altering shit that for which I do not yet have words, but weigh heavily on me. Part of what was so difficult is that my old coping mechanism (blackout alcoholism) no longer is viable, and my newer coping mechanism (sharing in the public forum) isn’t really viable in real-time, as is my wont.

I have had the challenge of now having to overcome my fear and having to reach out to my friends and say

“I don’t know what to do. I’m hurting. I need help.”

And quietly, beautifully, I’ve received it. From people I know well, from people I’ve only recently had in my life, from friends of decades of acquaintance. From kinky folks, from family, from Family, from people who don’t even realize that they are helping me get through this, one day at a time. Continue reading »

Unnatural submission.

Dec 282011

When I first became involved in the kink community, I ran into plenty of people who held themselves to a very high standard. Of course, being an overachiever, I did as well. And then I started running into people who branded themselves as “naturals.”

These rarefied few were willing to share about how dominance or submission came “naturally” to them, that it was never a struggle, that every moment was a blissful reverie of sacrosanct, sexy, sensual sublime subbly swooniness.

And I felt pretty shite, because my first relationship didn’t have much of that!

It was a struggle. Not all of it, but enough of the time? I felt I must be barking up the wrong tree because it felt anything but “natural” to do what I wanted to do to get where I THOUGHT I wanted to be.

And then, 13+ years later? I’m trying again. I’ve learned a lot about myself in the interim. And I am a different person.

And I am working to embrace the struggle. Continue reading »

Broken and grateful.

Dec 182011

I have no fucking idea what the hell I’m doing…it seems all I can do to remember to breathe.

Wonderful. You’ve finally understood what has always been true. The breath you are taking right now is all you really ever have.

I’ve been working hard on meditating, and have been less than successful. Several deceptively simple assistive measures revealed themselves to me last month, and I’ve been tentatively experimenting with ‘em. Also being revealed to me of late is a rather shocking amount of information about my internal process that makes me wonder if I am either crazy or so not crazy as to have had a massive breakthrough. I guess we’ll have to see how that works out.

Someone sent me an article MONTHS ago and at that time I thought “That’s a fascinating, powerful meditation.” And today someone sent me the same article I read it and thought “That’s me.”

When 2 different people send you the same bloody piece twice, I think that is [INSERT YOUR BELIEF SYSTEM'S PARADIGM FOR "COINCIDENCE" HERE]and something to which I need to pay attention. Like, for REAL real. Not for play play.

Why Lying Broken in a Pile on Your Bedroom Floor is a Good Idea.

~ Julie (JC) Peters

From the article:

In pieces, in a pile on the floor, with no idea how to go forward, your expectations of the future are meaningless. Your stories about the past do not apply. You are in flux, you are changing, you are flowing in a new way, and this is an incredibly powerful opportunity to become new again: to choose how you want to put yourself back together. Confusion can be an incredible teacher—how could you ever learn if you already had it all figured out?

Who are you to change us?

Dec 142011

So LilyLoyd posted a response (On FetLife) to my recent post about training. (The same post is here on this blog) As I mentioned in that post, I have had many hours of brainhamster energy spent running around about training in the BDSM and Leather context. What it means, how it is done, what the purpose is, why the fuck people stop thinking past the obvious and surface meaning of the word to see that there can be very fucking profound spiritual, emotional and psychological repercussions…yargh…bark… growl…

Or maybe that’s just me.

Like most of the people I know who I’d consider ethical and who are thoughtful beings, LilyLoyd questions what business she has taking up the responsibility of training someone.

“On the other side of the equation, I’m very reticent about training Holly. Training her to do a random, and ultimately trivial collection of things seems like an insult to our bond. But training that is worth the name would actually change her. And who am I to do that to her?”

My answer was not one I had to ponder.

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