Before the end of the year and I am finished packing my owner/s suitcase. I have a particular system, as one might when packing and unpacking bits and pieces of one’s life around the country and all over Europe has fallen into the realm of the quotidian.

Or at least a couple of times a month.

Packing cubes have saved (the shredded, desperate wind and time torn tatters of) my sanity and I can count out the number i need with a sightless hand in the basket where they are stored. One smaller pouch for 10 pairs of socks, another for 10 underpants, 10 undershirts in another, pants for work and relaxing in their own container. A light jacket, two swearers, 3 button-down shirts and 2 turtlenecks in a garment bag, folded in half as to minimize wrinkles. Into the suitcase goes an addict’s tools: a portable Nespresso (one of two, because we need one that runs on USA as well as EU currents) and sufficient pods to facilitate the caffeine addict’s daily drug dose. Into the suitcase also go the gifts for his youngest offspring, with whom he will be visiting as well as the games that they play together while he is with her.

Packed and weighed to insure that it is under the weight limit, I add in some slippers, just in case his feet get cold.

He returns to the bedroom, smiles as he sees me stuffing the last of the shirts into the last of the pouches.

“Dahling. Thank you. I can feel the love you give me.”

His consideration of the reality of service as love and erotic fulfillment is still new.

When we were in Europe, we had a wonderful series of private sessions with my friend Rebecca Lowrie, a sexuality and intimacy coach and…healer, really. We were with her to talk about some of the Stuff we are working on in our relationship. Too much to mention here but we have, my owner and I, very different experiences of our sexual histories.