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Mistress Khiki

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The Call to Serve

Writing: Blog

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Writing 2005-2008

The Yin and the Yang. The Light and the Darkness. D/s as the Natural Order of Things.

11/2008

Clearly not everything in my life is about opposites, but in terms of balance in the world, this makes perfect sense. Black and white, dominant and submissive. Balance. And D/s always made sense, it just didn't make sense in my life - until recently. In fact the funny part is I've always been hyper-aware of the inequalities in all my relationships. I've almost always noticed who was the "dominant" person, and most of the time it was me. In fact maybe every time it was me. And I never wanted it to be that way but, you know, someone has to be the dominant person. Right? :) Even when I was trying not to be, I was not able to let go and let the other person be in control. I'm not even sure I know what that means. I don't know how letting the other person be in control will change my behavior or my feelings. I don't know what "do" as a submissive - how to "be." I always ran everything - made all the decisions. I always made everything go according to plan - my plan. But somewhere in all that going and doing and planning, I never found the peace I was looking for.

What do you see when you look out into the future? I don't know what I see and that's part of my struggle. I don't "see" the goal. I can say the words "collar" and I can say the words "property" and "Owner" and I can say lots of other words too, but none of them have any meaning ... It's all an imagined experience.

So about the words and about my aversion to some of them. I think most of the problem I have with some of these words is that they don't have just one meaning - they have multiple meanings all in the same moment and (for me personally) I cannot look away from some of the meanings and pretend they don't exist. The words Master and Mistress are like this for me and so I get easily caught up in the meanings that don't work for me. And the more intense that is, the less likely I am to be able to "listen away" from those meanings. Other words have no context for me - words like Ma'am and Sir/Syr. These are terms of respect with no other meaning for me. I didn't grow up in the Southern US (so they aren't part of my cultural upbringing) and I'm not from a military home or background so those terms don't resonate in me. I don't "know" them ... they just function for me in an M/s context as that is, primarily, their history for me. Sometimes that's actually part of the problem - I'm not at all connected to these words either so I have to find ways to make myself connect with them. Part of the reason I've been going to MAsT meetings is to try to tease out what's happening in my head - to try to pick up all the things that make me uncomfortable or that resonate so strongly in me so I can know myself and so I can change my feelings when they aren't working for me. For me, the more I hear people say these words, the more comfortable I get with them and I think that's important because I believe they provide some of the correct structure for the relationship I want.

Some of this has to do with spoken language (or even signed languages) and how people "talk" I suppose. In the North East US vanilla world, we really don't use titles - we just talk to (or about) the person without "addressing" them. In the M/s world. of course you see a far far greater use of titles than would normally be "necessary." In fact M/s people will use a title as a substitute for the person's name or for the use of "him" or "her" to refer to their partner (on either end of the hierarchy). That's unusual for speech in this part of the country and it always draws my attention.

11/2008

So my brother came to B's Saturday night and hung out with the kinky folks and witnessed (I think for the first time in real life) a little bit of play (a short demo / scene). He was struck by that and moved to discuss it at length with me to try to unravel what he had seen. He had a negative reaction to what he saw but he rarely closes the door on any issue - so even tho I didn't have an answer for him, I told him I would "ask around" and see what other people had to say. We talked for a very long time about this ... cried over it actually and he and I talked about the possibility that demystifying this and unraveling it might cause me to lose my interest in it. You must know by now that my need to understand what I'm doing and avoid lying to myself far outweighs any need I have to keep doing it.

Before I can go forward with what he and I discussed I have to back up a bit to a conversation he and I have had many times but had in a new way this weekend. He long ago stumbled upon a talk show psychologist (now dead) named David Viscott who asked the question: How do people get (emotionally) better? He came to the conclusion that, in a very paraphrased nutshell, the source of people's unhappiness is "emotional debt." That a person's unexpressed negative feelings become "toxic nostalgia" - the sudden intrusion of old, unresolved feelings that prevent the enjoyment of life in the present. I am not one to go for psycho babble and I am suspect of the "simple fix" methods that people promote. However, his advice resonates in me - it echoes my upbringing and touches my heart because it is the same message my father gave me all my life (and still does to this day): that being honest with yourself and leveling with other people is the only way. I know that sounds trite and pat and I know you must be wondering what the hell this has to do with M/s or BDSM or anything kinky and I am getting there - I promise.

So my brother and I spent a LOT of time this weekend talking about emotional debt, rehearsing how we have lied to ourselves rather than face some truth that seemed more painful to admit. We talked about people we knew and about how we thought that the lies they were telling themselves might be the source of their obvious unhappiness. We talked about how, for example, people go into relationships they know will not work out because the fear of admitting that they were afraid to be alone seemed somehow more painful than entering into the relationship they knew would not work. And there are other, more painful examples. Every time we have an emotion that goes unexpressed we create in ourselves emotional debt that becomes "toxic nostalgia." The feelings we repress WILL find a way out (and this emotional debt will only aggravate the initial issue) until they are finally correctly addressed. The original issue will become more and more magnified the longer we keep our feelings repressed. So far, so good? I see this happening so clearly in myself when I do it and I think I see it happening in other people. I can easily get behind truth telling - especially when it's my own painful truth - if that will save me some increased emotional pain down the road. The problem is that we are infinitely skilled at lying to ourselves and this is a very very good thing. If we were unable to do that, every story of every starving child in Darfur would cripple us without any way back.

Honestly this is all way too simplified for my taste and I have no familiarity with his words and terms. I have one of his books on tape that we started listening to and I need to listen more but I think you can begin to get the jist of it. The thing is that he and I were almost 100% of the time able to attribute lingering emotional pain we experienced with lies we told ourselves. And the longer this went on, the worse the situation got. So much so that when he saw a couple folks playing, he said to me: how is that possible? Why would anyone accept - ask for - beg for - enjoy - that kind of physical pain? The only reason he could come up with (and I had no defense against this) was emotional debt that was so big that only a violent assault could make the world and the lies fall away. I couldn't say "but I like it - it feels good" because that is the result of the lies we tell ourselves when we cannot face the truth.
So here is the the email I sent to him ... what we talked about and the conclusions he / we came to. The questions we asked that got us where we ended up and left me without a way back to the dungeon, fearful that the way back is a lie.

---

So the goal of this email is to trace the path back from the conclusion that S/M is the expression of lies we tell ourselves. That the bottoms are touching life the only way they can - by using pain to make the rest of their lies fall away. That the tops are talking pleasure from abusing people who are in the deepest pain imaginable. That the bottoms have a courage unmatched by many to seek the release they need without understanding what they are doing. That their courage is met with unmeasured cruelty by the tops dispensing that "relief."
I promised to try to recall some of the questions we asked ourselves and although I don't recall any specifically, I think I can reason forward from where we started, which was, "why would you want to do this?" Why would anyone move TOWARD pain - especially intense physical pain? Is it possible that these people are not, in fact, "sick?"

I think that I can do some of the reasoning here ... let's see what happens. It must be the case that people willing (or willing and anxious) to be physically hurt are getting some release from that pain - otherwise, why do it? Is it possible that there is some other legitimate reason? Perhaps it might be the pain of the denial we must invoke just to exist in the world ... to eat even a simple meal in the face of knowing that so many others go hungry. Even if we are now "just negotiating price," that price is an important factor. I do believe that there is some percentage of people involved in this that are otherwise pretty darn healthy. There's got to be some portion of the population that simply has a thing for this and isn't seeking solace from much more than the social denial that everyone carries. It seems conceivable to me that some people are just "wired" this way. Or, maybe this is the lie I tell myself to make this ok for me to do. I can also easily believe that it is all a momentary respite from the lies we tell ourselves. Having seen so much of it, either the familiarity has indeed bred contempt or there is something else going on here. Naturally I want to believe it's "something else" but I can't say conclusively that it is. I have spent many dark hours contemplating what I'm doing and why - trying to unravel my reactions and my perspective; trying to understand why I am drawn to this - and if I am in fact just lying to myself so I can keep participating in something that lets me keep telling more lies. I don't have any answers yet and I will seek them out. I can catch more than a glimpse of your perspective but it is quickly met not only with the pleasure of my own experience, but with the heavy doubt I carry about what I am doing and why. I have enough memories to draw from that I feel I should have been able to develop some defense against this "abuse" perspective. I had hoped that "it just feels right" would one day sink in ... it never does. I'm never satisfied by that answer.

12/2008

I'm still searching for the "why" behind it all. For some time (really for a very long time) I've been asking other people - why do you do this? Why do you choose this life over all the other ones you could choose? What is it about D/s or M/s that attracts you - fascinates you? It's a good question and one I'm trying to answer myself. I'll try to dig through it and see where I end up.

I suppose that ultimately I'm willing to accept that "this is who I am" - it's something I'm willing to say about myself in other areas but, of course, those places are, among other things, less negative in the real world. Why do I like language or art or women ... why do I prefer one look over another? Well - it's who I am - or where/how I was raised. But the difference is that, in the larger scheme of my life, those things don't matter very much (they are just things about me like anything else about me). D/s and M/s matters - a lot. It's significantly different. Maybe there is no bigger reason ... maybe it is just who I am and I'm just going to have to come to terms with it - but I doubt it.

I was thinking about this one evening - trying to figure out what else in my life I have struggled over like this. I tried to find some other decision I have made about myself or my life that I agonized over like this and I wasn't able to find one. Many many people agonize over being gay and that certainly might have been on the short list here. The truth is I never believed being gay could be something that might be "bad" (harmful to me either emotionally or physically or spiritually) so I never questioned it like I am questioning this. In fact, other than accepting that I might be a submissive (or a slave or property), I cannot find one single instance of anything else I wanted to do or be that made me think "whoa - hold on a second ... I can't possibly do this until I find out why I want to do it." There are always murmurings in my head about why I want to do this or that or why I love the things I love but I have never had any fear about what I was doing until I reached this place. Being "a submissive," in general and in principle, runs against everything I know about the world and my place in it (as a woman, as a dyke, as a person in the first part of the 21st century) ... and yet I still want to do it. That's a new experience for me.

It's not unusual to know more about what you don't want (or don't like) about any given thing than what you do like and do want. I know I don't need "guidance" ... I don't need a teacher or a parent. I don't want to be relieved of responsibility. But what "do" I want?
Certainly on some level the attention is attractive though there's more to it than that. But I think that on some level the attention and time and focus it requires to have a D/s or M/s relationship has the effect of binding people together. And that's not a bad thing at all.
Another attractive element of D/s is the structure. I live a fairly unstructured life ... I come and go with little regularity (aside from work and school). But structure begets ritual ... things we do with regularity start to become tradition and ritual ... and there are a lot of powerful emotions there that feed our sense of closeness and connectedness. So I don't think the structure itself attracts me, but I do think that what the structure eventually becomes (ritual and tradition) does attract me.

Also there's the joy I feel from doing things that please someone - and I don't think that's just a submissive thing. People like to make each other happy - it's human nature. When we get what we need and want - when serving or being served makes the other happy, we are happy too.

Then a few days later I was poking around the net trying to find a way in to another email, and I found this.

I had another conversation about authority - about giving / accepting another person's authority in a relationship - that began to maybe put things to rest for me. Just in time too because I was starting to get burned .....

We were talking about why we do this - what we get from it - what's the purpose? What's the meaning? What's the benefit? Why choose this kind of life? And she said, in a kind of offhand way, "Well .... I mean, these kind of authority relationships exist everywhere in everyone anyway, right?"

Ohhhhhhhh yea that's right. I knew that! We've talked about that before. I've known that for a looooooong time. I have felt this all my life about every relationship I have - from work to friends to lovers and playmates. Why had I forgotten this? I knew there had to be a reason that, despite my alleged discomfort and my amazement that so many very smart people could come up with no other real reason than "it feels good" or "it feels right," I was still very comfy with my hierarchical relationship - awash in the warmth of the separation of our roles and not really very anxious about my place in the life we were building.

So maybe the answer really is that we are simply acknowledging, supporting and intensifying what is already happening everywhere in our lives. It's not just me and you and my fellow perverts - it's everyone. It's everywhere. Even people that strive for an egalitarian relationship will acknowledge that (perhaps in different ways and at different times) one or the other is the dominant partner. Yea .. that's working for me actually. It fits that "human nature" thing without making me too queasy. It makes sense to me that some of us might look closer at that and push it to varying degrees and want to live like that "on purpose." Truth is, for those in an acknowledged D/s relationship, while we let the "D" in the relationship have the final say, we are not so mismatched that the "s" in the relationship is ever truly or deeply (significantly) unhappy overall with the decisions that get made. If we are, we can (and do) leave. We're not really "slaves" in the traditional sense of the word. When we "give up our authority," (ohh that one had me down for the count for a while ...) we're not having it taken against our will or handing it over to some asshole who doesn't give a shit about us. Most of us choose carefully and wisely (I hope) the people with whom we choose to engage in a D/s relationship - to whatever extent that is. We like to play with authority - we like to touch that aspect of our relationships and it feels good when we do that. Thinking about it now - as an extension of something that is clearly happening in every relationship I have anyway - doing it just doesn't nag me at all. The voice at the back of my mind that wouldn't stop chatting at me suddenly got much more quiet. Why "give up" my authority"? Because even if we were trying for an egalitarian relationship, I'd be doing that at some points anyway. That any of us might want to do it more (or less) often than other people is something I'm willing to chalk up to personality.
Whew .... some here do get out alive :)

6/17/2009

I don't have many vanilla friends ... if they don't know about my lifestyle, it's too painful. I can't say what's really on my mind and after while, it's clear that we'll never really know each other. Or rather, they will never really know me. And once they do know about my lifestyle, they often aren't friends anymore.

Often it seems, vanilla people think they are capable of handling WIITWD, but most of the time, in reality, they are not in the least prepared for it. It's great to think you have an open mind and you may think you have a "live and let live" policy, but S/M is one of the acid tests for that and I've lost more than my share of potential relationships and friendships over it - over telling as well as not telling. The problem is that telling scares people, but not telling places a barrier between us that is wider and more powerful than you might think at first glance.
But recently I decided to "come out" to a new het vanilla friend whose life, in some ways, couldn't be more different from mine. Bolstered by the success of my last "outting adventure," I took the risk.

We spent the afternoon clearing out old ideas in her head, making room for new ones. We threw out the "channel 10 news" version that cannot go deeper than making my life into some perverted freak show. It wasn't hard - her mind really is open. At some point in the conversation, I said "The truth is that I can avoid the issue. It really can go like this: You can ask, 'So how was the party?' And I can say 'It was great! I had a lot of fun.' I can withhold the details, leaving out any notion of just how cool it really was."

"Or," I offered to her, "we can really know each other." She said preferred the latter and I hope that's true.

I know that the reason I'm still waiting for the bomb to drop is that I really care about what she thinks - I really value her opinion. And if it all goes badly, I've ruined not only a very cool friendship, but other important aspects of my life as a budding terp will be affected as well. I'm shaking a bit even now as I write this, afraid that maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, she will say what I have heard before: "You know, I really thought I was ok with this, but I'm really not."

I understand that, from the outside, this lifestyle has a VERY big "eww" factor followed almost always by reactions ranging from horror to disgust to outrage. I wonder if anyone ever really gets used to it - I wonder if my heart will ever not pound its way almost out of my chest as I proceed through "the telling." For me, this is all so "normal" ... I am, to some degree, no longer capable of conjuring just how strange this my life must seem to her.

6/18/2009

I don't know if you listen to NPR but if you do, they have a series called "This I Believe."
"This I Believe, Inc., was founded in 2004 as a non-profit organization. Its mission is “to contribute to the improvement of society by enabling people to think about, express, and share their deepest beliefs.” The main way the organization realizes this mission is via an international multi-media project that engages youth and adults from all walks of life in writing, sharing, and discussing brief essays about the core values that guide their daily lives."
So a year or so ago (maybe more actually) I started writing an essay for the show. I never submitted it - I never wanted to get on the radio. I just wanted to know what it was that I "believed."

This I believe

I believe in change and I believe in the courage that exists in the moment before change. Unlike like other qualities like generosity or even hypocrisy, courage exists not in the act itself, but in the moment before you act and I believe in that moment and in the change that results. Tradition and history are strong suitors - they wine and dine my emotions as well as my logic, leaving me romanced by all the familiar things in my life, all the things I have come to know and love. It takes courage to change – to break with tradition, to move against the judgments of others or even to move away from the known and into the unknown. Safe and secure in “how things are” it is difficult, to say the least, to find my way out of those comfy quarters and into the bright light of what is different, strange, new. It’s so easy to say “that’s just how I am – that’s just me.”

When I look back at my life, I think I have seen quite a lot of change. I guess it is really no more or less than anyone else, but to me it feels significant because it has been, as the saying goes, the only thing constant in my life.

Recently I decided to change careers – I decided to become an ASL interpreter. A career change is hardly an uncommon event and, having reached my mid forties, it's perhaps the least unique thing I have ever done. Going back to school has been completely exhausting and totally exhilarating. But underneath the excitement are all the anxieties around the ramifications of the decision I am in the process of making. Will I be able to support myself? How long will I be able to do this? Will my body hold up or will it betray me and take from me this thing that I am working so hard to obtain. Will I ever be any good? Every day I hold these anxieties in the palm of my hand and every day I put them down. Some days the decision is easy – as obvious as taking my next breath. But some days, in the moments before I decide, I can feel a physical weight in the air around me – my lungs filled with the fear and doubt surrounding this change. But it is in those moments that I can actually feel myself – and I believe in those moments. I believe in the courage I continue to find and in the sheer delight and downright terror I feel every day when I decide that this day, I am stronger than fear. This day, I will keep on breathing in the courage to change.

It’s the same with M/s / D/s in my life. I was always intrigued by Dominance and submission but it’s been only the relatively recent past that I’ve decided to breathe in the changes that living in this way might bring. One failed relationship, one friendship turning D/s, many many discussions about the changes I want. Not much to go on except the certain knowledge that this is in me, part of me, undeniable. Change is coming, I can feel it.

8/17/2009

This started with 100 words ….

I keep imaging the conversation. “So, what do you like?” I hate that question … I never know how to answer it. I could list the objects and activities I like, but so much of that is tied up in who I’m playing with. I guess the problem is that some of what I like is very intimate and some of what I like is “anything that scares me” and the rest is whatever pleases “her.” It’s not very specific information, but it leaves me feeling wonderfully vulnerable whenever I say it. And isn’t that the real goal?

And then I got a comment from J saying something I didn’t quite understand … something about feeling a lot of importance around going on the vulnerability trip with the other person ...

Feeling wonderfully vulnerable? To some extent, yes, I think that can be the goal. But should the goal be realized before the scene even begins?

I think negotiation, which spurs the dreaded "what do you like?", is a step to securing that such vulnerability will not leave you emotionally, physically, or spiritually damaged. And furthermore that the individual you're playing with understands that is the goal, that it's where you going, because I feel like that deals in expectations of what they're doing as well.
I think it's admirable, striving to feel completely vulnerable to someone who appreciates that. I would say that the way I play leans in that direction. But I don't think that everyone plays that way, and that it's about being clear on where you are and where you're going, so that while you may not know specifically the destination, or the stops along the way- you know at least that you're both headed in the same direction.

So the short answer is this: if we don't know each other, then there's simply no possibility of emotional or spiritual damage. If I open myself to you and there's no connection, I just shut it down. In terms of physical damage, I'm simply not going to play with you if I don't know you (or at least have a gut feeling about you) in a situation I cannot control.

The long answer is that, without that vulnerability, I don't get the experience I'm looking for (and that is true in any situation, not only play). What I want (ultimately) is to connect and playing is one way to do that. So, for me, "safety" isn't all it's cracked up to be. I agree that in pursuit of that connection, there is risk, but I own that risk - you can't hurt me if I don't let you. And there's no chance for connection if I don't open myself and become "emotionally available" but that availability doesn't have to be (and quite frankly can't be) dangerous if we're still at the "so, what do you like" stage of things.

Ultimately, if we don't know each other very well, letting myself feel vulnerable in a scene isn't all that risky to me. What it offers me is the opportunity to connect for a moment and see if there is something there to pursue. If there isn't, so be it. Most of the time that's what happens and I probably wouldn't have it any other way. If we do connect and find there is something more there worth going after, that's when the actual risk starts. But it's only after I really know you that there's any real risk of emotional, physical, or spiritual damage but by then, the risk is worth it and even then, I still own it.

8/17/2009

In some ways, Daniel and I play harder than I have ever played before and I always get what I need from the experience. The other night we were playing and it was the first time in a long time (5 years or more) that I had needles in my back. I was kind of nervous about it but you know, after the first needle goes in, it all comes rushing back and the familiarity almost overwhelms me. But what I’m after here is something that happened during the scene because, (as is well documented by now) I don’t think of myself as a masochist. I don’t like pain – I don’t crave it – I don’t want it – I don’t get off on it – and I wonder, seriously sometimes, about people who do. Or I did.

But this time was different. I somehow figured out that what I needed to do was release the pain and quit holding it inside me.  Suddenly the pain changed into something good (wow!) and I realized I was pressing back against his hands, pushing hard against needles that felt like fire against my skin. Somehow I was releasing the pain and letting it go, rather than holding it in and trying to manage it. And somehow that pain changed into something … pleasurable.  I cannot summon any of that now – the moment it stops, it’s gone. I can pull up the feeling of the transition, but it’s elusive at best. So somehow in that moment I was willing (and finally able) to accept the sensation and let it pass through me rather than clutching it tightly, trying to manage it and finding instead that it was managing me. What’s funny in retrospect is that there was a moment before I had finally let go of it that the pain slipped out of my grip and got away from me. I banged my fist on the dresser and said “damn it!” “Do you think it’s like letting go of control?” she asked me. Yea – I think it’s exactly like that and I think my reluctance to give up control is tightly bound to my experience with pain.

”So what do you get from playing?” he asked. Yea – good question. Truthfully, most of the time, I haven’t gotten what I wanted. Sometimes, I got something but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Some of what I wanted was to learn to make the pain into something else but I never really believed I would. And some of what I wanted was something like a means to an end - a path into the experience and the sensory processing that I always crave.
But the other night, I realized what I had always known but never managed to put into words – that a lot of what is happening for me is that, when I’m playing, I feel everything. EVERYTHING. I am “right there” the whole time. The chemicals never fully kick in so when the pain does send me flying, it’s only for a moment or 2 and then I’m right back with you – whether you were ready for that or not.

So what’s really going on for me is that playing is partly about processing everything.  I hear everything, I feel everything, and all of it demands processing “right now.” Everything you say, everything you do (and don’t do), everything happening to me, every reaction, everything goes through my “analyze it” filter. It’s not like that experience is so much different from my everyday life, but I think that is what keeps me from flying (which is just as well because I have had that subspace experience too and it’s a duller sensation and one I’m not that interested in). The other thing that happens with all this processing is that having to process things I don’t want to process (like sensation play or things that cut me off from the ability to connect) takes me right out of the experience.

We talked for a long time about all of this and came to the conclusion that most people really don’t experience playing and pain the way I do. Most people fly more (and they want to) and most people come down a lot slower than I do. It’s an interesting pace I guess and he did say that one cool thing about playing with me is that I really let out his inner sadist. I guess we all want to be special, but I really never figured I’d be special in that way.

8/18/2009

“So, what do you like?” I'm actually not necessarily looking for the right answer - although, admittedly, it would be nice to figure out what the hell to say when I get asked that question. As it turns out, there is a lot about the way I play that isn't like other people - chief among them: the way I process pain and what it is I "like." But these are very hard to explain when the question being asked is really a request that is something akin to "I want to be sure you'll enjoy yourself." That's a good thing to want to know and I want to be sure my play partners enjoy themselves too - but what people fail to understand (in so many places in life) is that there is so much more information in what we don't like (in what we fail at) than in what we do like.

If I tell you I like to play with canes, what does that tell you? I like stingy pain and I like a decent amount of intensity but not much more. It doesn't really tell you anything about me - about the experience of me and perhaps in just some casual scene you don't think you need to know that. But that is what I really want - the experience of "you" and for you to want to experience "me." I don't have a lot of expectations about that - how could I? Listing activities that I like is no assurance that I will enjoy myself because what I crave is not really stingy pain or anything else you can pull off those horrid checklists. But most people don't want to play that way.

8/26/2009

She always calls it an “energy exchange” and lots of other folks call it a “power exchange.”  I've been turning around in my head and trying to figure out how to connect with the idea of an “exchange.”

Maybe we're using 2 different words - connection and exchange - to mean the same thing? I'm not sure because I don't think I sense the same "flow" that she does (and it’s certainly not visual).  I'm not sure what I'm trying to unravel here ... I think something that's relevant is my reaction to people who come up to us after a cutting scene and say, with strong emotion, "thank you for sharing that" and, of course, from my perspective, I hadn't "shared" anything. That's a tough example because of how I feel about playing in public (that it’s a pleasure and a responsibility), but my point is that the "connection" (the exchange??) is all in your head and may or may not exist for the other person. Perhaps when it does exist for the other person too, then the effect is the same - you become bound together by the experience.

I'm struggling a bit here trying to figure out what I'm trying to say. I think what I want to know is this: Does the exchange / flow you feel linger after the scene? For me, the connection exists partly in the moment and partly afterward. In the moment, I'm also very much in my head (as I always am) but what I can feel so acutely (other than pain / pleasure lol) is myself reacting to “you” – and that is the path to my connection to you. Now that I think about it, how else would I do that (connect)? Even if I'm just watching you do something, I'm having a reaction to that in my head and that is my access point to "you." But my point is that whatever is going on is happening in me and not "in between us" (if that makes sense). Perhaps that's part of my desire (and I'm not alone in this) to rehearse and "debrief" and share again what we did, felt, experienced. The connection isn't complete without some language around it.

Oh also - and it's like this for me with every experience I actually end up "sharing" with someone - of course in the moment I'm unaware of any "sharing" - I'm just there, experiencing it with you, so I'm not feeling the connection because I'm busy feeling the experience. It's only afterward, when we discuss it or remember it or think about it that I can feel the connection itself. I think that's why your expression about energy "exchange" is so hard for me to grasp - because for me, in the moment, I'm not aware of the connection, I'm only aware of the experience. Trying to touch the connection takes me out of the experience and of course that isn't the goal. I still feel connected to you (and that connection informs all the processing I'm doing), I just don't need to be aware of the connection itself because we're busy sharing something. It's the classic problem of "flow" - that when you're in that state, you're not aware of it. The moment you become aware of it, you are no longer in that state. Perhaps my "ability" to stay so very present in the moment means I rarely leave that "flow" state. And that means I'm rarely aware of the connection I'm feeling - I'm just feeling it and being present with it.

Whew ... I'm not sure any of that makes any sense at all and I'm not even clear the coffee has kicked in yet.

8/31/2009

I have so many mixed feelings about poly - I can deal with the jealous feelings around sex because I understand where they are coming from. I guess my “problem” with poly boils down to emotional fidelity as it relates to time. I agree that love knows no boundaries but I disagree that it’s unconditional. I think that parental love is the only unconditional love that exists. Everyone else (imo) is subject to conditions. There ARE things you can do that would make me stop loving you. They might be extreme sorts of things that challenge my value system, but they do exist.

For me, the issue with having emotional connections is that those are based on time – the more time you spend with someone (usually), the deeper the connection. And there is only so much time every day. So when my ex stopped spending time with me so she could spend time with her new girlfriend / play partner, that ended up destroying our relationship because we stopped nourishing it. She stopped “showing up.” So while I’m “ok” with poly, it has to be done in the exact correct way for me where I don’t end up feeling like there really isn’t time enough for more than 1 strong partner-like emotional bond.

BTW: I really thought I had made up that term “emotional fidelity.” I was shocked to see that it was a term from a poly website.

8/31/2009

Am I a … a what??  Only had to read the description once and the words came tumbling out of me. “Does your face feel more like "you" than other parts of your body? More personal?”
I do feel my face is more intimate and more personal than other parts of my body - not surprising really. In this culture (and in others I assume). "we" are our face - we live in our heads. Think about it - "where" in your body are you? Your head, right? I'm there for sure - so my face is VERY much an outward reflection of "me." My voice comes out of my face, my laughter, my tears, my emotions - all come out of and are literally ON my face. Food, wine, kisses, everything I see, the sound of my lover's orgasms - all go into "me" through my face (yea I'm extending my ears as part of my face). For what it's worth, in ASL, grammar is literally on your face. If you make the "wrong face," your meaning is garbled; your intention is lost.
So yea ... I'm a face slut (who knew? lol)

"Do things done to your face sometimes get you very hot?"

Sometimes .... I was with someone for a while who liked to slap my face and to be honest, I wanted it to work for me but it didn't because she was tentative, unsure of how she felt about it, I guess, and so ultimately it never accomplished what I would have liked. I think that is something I'd like to try again with someone (with her even if we ever reach that place again) who knows what they want from that experience.

As far as bodily fluids (of any kind) on my face - I'm not a big fan. Not at all. Even something as benign as sloppy kisses are a turn off. Spit, piss, cum, etc - no way. Howevah, having someone lick my lips is actually a turn-on for me (as long as she doesn't go crazy doing it lol).

9/13/2009

It always starts with 100 words – but of course she asked me for more – for transparency and disclosure (though not in exactly those words) – and where there are 100 words, there are always more.

It was a bit of a shock – I really hadn’t expected it to come to this so quickly, but she understood that, for me, connections come up fast – strong and hard or not at all. It became clear much more quickly than perhaps either of us had anticipated that we had to make a choice: one path or the other; one relationship or the other. I suddenly understood what I had wanted all along was something so much deeper and so much more intimate than romantic love and I was surprised to find myself so firmly grounded in that understanding.
As I was driving her to the bus she said to me “You realize in her mind it’s a done deal – to her, you are Ma’am and girl now.” I guess I hadn’t thought about it quite that way but it had all only happened last night and it was still sinking in. We’ve known each other for a week and on some level I cannot for the life of me understand why either one of us (or our friends and family for that matter) isn’t more shocked or guarded or freaked out. But the truth is I’m feeling calm, centered, grounded and without fear. There’s a family forming here (not just between us but between us and our extended family) and if I were someone who believed in fate, I’d be feeling all justified in that belief right about now.

Honestly, resisting a connection like this one has never been my way I guess – I’ve always swallowed whole these sorts of connections and relationships when they presented themselves to me – completely and without question. When I met the girls it was the same way. Daniel too. So in a way, this was no different. She and ziggy slipped into my life as if they had always been there – they just never seemed out of place. So when I said to her that I felt the moment for making this decision was slipping away, I wasn’t surprised that she understood and felt it also. And it wasn’t like she hadn’t acknowledged it too – she said that if we didn’t tend to it, the moment would pass us by. So when the moment presented itself and I became clear that it was, well, not “now or never” but more like “soon or never,” I was compelled to bring it up. Connections like these (though rare when they occur) really do come up fast and hard. And I happen to be very sensitive to the distribution of power in any relationship and this one was no different. From the start I could feel it fluctuating and I know myself – if I wait too long, I’ll get too casual, too comfortable and the moment will be lost. We’ll be friends and perhaps lovers, but there will be no going back and you know, I just wasn’t connected to her in that way. This thing is DIFFERENT.

When ziggy talked about not being interested in romance I struggled to understand that. With very few exceptions, that is all I see – that is the primary role model in my life and though I never could make it make sense, I couldn’t understand how else it could be. And even when he said it, I still wasn’t able to make it snap into place. But then when we decided (omg over chat for fuck sake) to change our relationship – to press it one direction and not the other, I suddenly understood. I never once doubted that the separation and formality wouldn’t bring us closer. The interesting part, and the part you almost never see, is that M/s does in fact manifest as a certain kind of formality; but embedded in that formality is the intimacy and commitment that I crave. Now that I’ve had a chance to think about and wrap some words around it, I feel like the truth is what I want is not romance, but intimacy. I want emotional fidelity. I want a relationship whose foundation is not based on a feeling steeped in mystery, flight of fancy, and hot sex. I’ve had that, many times, and each time it’s failed because the foundation is all wrong for me. And as we opened that door, I became very clear that I cannot layer M/s over anything else. M/s has to be the foundation – and not the other way around. And I know I want to and I believe I can form a partnership out of the love and devotion that develops in an M/s relationship.

9/18/2009

Having "grown up" in a strange mix of the het and gay Leather and BDSM communities, my own experiences went something like this:

I see many (most) people in my community who say they are in M/s relationships also dating, getting married and obviously being "in love" with each other in a romantic way. Even tho they say M/s is first for them (and I'm not trying to dispute that), the romantic aspect of their relationships is overwhelming to me. I'm not knocking that at all - I'm not inside those relationships and cannot see them as they do, of course. However, I just never felt anything like that resonate in me. When I looked around me, I was not able to point to any of the relationships I saw and think "I want something (more or less) like that."

And then every once in a while I'd meet someone (usually at an event) whose relationship DID resonate but I wasn't able to be around them long enough to get the connection / language for what I was feeling. You can't just walk up to someone and say "Ummm excuse me but something about how you are behaving makes a lot of sense to me - can you talk about that?" /laughs

So I knew I was looking for something DIFFERENT but I wasn't able to parse it out. I long since begun to feel like maybe I was crazy ... maybe there was something wrong with me or maybe it was just that I simply couldn't relate to a het role model. I even tried to be in an M/s relationship with someone I was also obviously in love with - we tried to add M/s on top of the undeniable sexual / romantic / personal chemistry we had. I really thought that because we connected so strongly in this other way that we could "add M/s" and in doing so, change our relationship. And, of course, that was just a raging disaster (there's more to it than that of course, but I see now that this was a big part of why it failed).

So now I (finally) have some language to wrap around what has always made sense to me but I had, in the past, no way to articulate. It's a huge relief. What I find happening now is that the intimacy I feel is born out of the (albeit developing) trust, respect and emotional fidelity that is required for M/s to function in ways that manifest as "correctly" for me. I am getting what I need out of the formality and separation of roles - something that I think scares a lot of people. Romantic love (to me) forces the relationship dynamic into a different place where it (romance) and M/s are mutually exclusive. And it's not about the sex - I think solid M/s relationships can include sex, but that has to be layered on top of the M/s foundation, and not the other way around.

9/18/2009

When I start a relationship with someone (any kind really), there is often a "moment" where the relationship comes into view and I can feel it moving in one direction or another - one type of relationship or another. I've experienced this with relationships as they move to include (or exclude) D/s, sex, service, mentorship, and maybe other things too.

OK - I do feel I have to come clean and admit that, for me personally, connections with people come up hard - fast and strong, or just not at all. So understand that for me, these "moments" are very short (a few days or maybe a few weeks - but, for me, not much longer than that). For you they may be longer - if you feel them at all.

Now I'm NOT saying relationships, once established, are stuck and cannot change. I'm not suggesting that, once established, you will never develop feelings for someone that are different than you started out with.

My point is this: For me, at least in terms of M/s (or D/s), the moment to take that particular step comes up very quickly and will pass (perhaps forever) if we do not tend to it.

10/16/2009 (reaction to a MAsT meeting discussion)

It was interesting to discover that people were so confused about what “Leather” means and, in that confusion had re-defined it (separately and together) as a kind of solidarity – a concern for humanity in the larger sense. For example, those soldiers in France who protected the Jews from the Nazis during WWII (you will recognize the reference if you were at the last meeting) – we consider their valiant behavior as distinctly “Leather.” This notion of “Leather” seems more universal and feels correct and right precisely because it summons the feelings that grew out of that original “Leather” culture and community in the US. And it’s not that I disagree with this new definition; rather it seems adjacent to the point.

“Leather” at its base is a set of core values based on US military customs that included rituals, protocols and a mindset about one’s place in a structured community. Today, being “Leather” means participating in a kind of mindfulness about the history that encircles all O/our lives (yes, yours too, even if you don’t think of yourself as “Leather” per se). Being “Leather” means actively engaging in the (sometimes modernized version of) rituals and protocols started in another time and place. This life W/we live didn’t make itself up out of thin air.  It started with the men who returned home from WWII, craving a way of life that didn’t yet exist. Those men made up the life they wanted in ways that suited their distinct needs and desires (remember at the time, what they were doing was strictly forbidden from a social standpoint, so some of the way they lived was setup to accommodate those “special” needs). However, their desire for a structured community (including community responsibility) based on "Trust, Honor, Respect, and Loyalty" is what now, so many years later, still binds us together and encourages and breeds a modern community that everyone responds to – a “Leather” community – the kind of community that has the solidarity we crave, not just as kinky people but as human beings.

It’s very important to understand that “Leather” is not “a gay thing” and it’s not outside of M/s. “Leather” is what O/our modern day M/s grew out of – it is what feeds and nourishes the way W/we live. “Leather” is not just a community, it’s a culture that exists not outside of WIITWD, but rather beside and inside of it.

Most of those men, our “Old Guard” teachers, are now dead, but it is their culture and their values that we call forward into our future when we identify as Master/slave or as “Leather.” What you do – how you live – the rituals and protocols that feed your M/s relationships are based in “Leather.” So even if you’re not Old Guard – even if you don’t want to earn your leather or train to be a Master by being in service; even if all the rituals and protocols you follow are things that are completely personal to you and seem to have nothing to do with that original history, it is “Leather” that binds you to those protocols and it is “Leather” that binds us together. Y/you don’t have to “be Leather” to understand it – it is the source of what resonates inside Y/you every time Y/you see the collar that expresses Y/your Ownership.

10/16/2009 (reaction to a MAsT meeting discussion)

Someone at the last MAsT meeting asked the question “What is service?” and I think that term bears defining. Actually I think it bears re-defining because I believe that what we call service – the things that slaves do for their Masters – is not the same thing as what Masters do for their slaves and I firmly believe we should stop using the same words to mean different things. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to use the terms Master and slave to refer to anyone in a Dominant or submissive role – feel free to insert your own terms as you see fit.

According to the dictionary, service is (among other things unrelated to this topic): “an act of helpful activity; help; aid: to do someone a service.” More specifically, we think of and define service, in general, as: 1: the occupation or function of serving; employment as a servant; 2: the work performed by one that serves; help, use, benefit; contribution to the welfare of others; 3: the act of serving: as a helpful act. That may be how we generally (in a vanilla way) understand the definition of service but I think that’s an inadequate and wholly unsatisfactory definition for what W/we are doing.

I believe that how we feel about service, and how those feelings affect how we use the term, indicates that “service” in M/s and D/s relationships flows in one direction.

Service, as W/we use this term, is not just a set of actions – it’s an attitude and a mindset. Generally we talk about slaves performing service for their Masters. We talk about being “in service” and we talk about “providing service” – these terms are used to describe one aspect of M/s or D/s relationships and they are unique to those types of relationships (even strict maid/butler service which, even if it’s for hire, is a D/s relationship, albeit a vanilla one). Other people may provide “ ‘a service’,” but when we speak about “providing service,” that is more than a semantic difference.

Within a D/s or M/s relationship that includes service, there is a feeling that some unspoken “expectation of service” is not only acceptable, but perhaps required (people at the meeting talked about this as a sort of “taking service for granted” but I think that “expectation of service” is what was really intended). Masters often expect service from their slaves and many slaves thrive in response to that expectation. Masters are, of course, expected to contribute to the relationship, but I think that we go somewhat out of our way to avoid saying that Masters perform service for their slaves, except when we’re discussing the topic of service itself and then we seem to use that term for lack of a better one.

“Anticipatory service” is often a highly praised and sought-after skill among Masters and something that gets discussed often, in terms of development, among slaves. And again, it doesn’t work the same way the other way around. For a slave, it should be a requirement that your Master think about your needs and anticipate them, but we correctly call that “taking care of your slave” and NOT “anticipatory service” on the part of a Master.

We also talk about the difficulties that some Masters have around “accepting service” and the importance of understanding that service plays a pivotal role in the structure of M/s or D/s relationships. But, when we discuss the difficulties slaves can sometimes feel when their Masters do things for them, we do not say slaves have trouble “accepting service.”

Lastly I think it’s important to recognize that when we talk about what a Master does for his or her slave and we use the term “service,” we always do so with some qualification and again, this isn’t the case the other way around – we don’t qualify what slaves do for Masters when we talk about their service. We want to say this behavior from Masters toward their slaves is “service” because it feels good to help other people and we’re correctly recognizing the help, care or assistance given. However, I believe we’re incorrectly using that vanilla definition of service which boils down to “helping” and that is not, in my opinion, “service” as W/we understand it in the ways W/we live.

12/30/2009

So J wrote this to me on FetLife - we were having a discussion about a class Ma'am and I were teaching about identifying and resolving problems in M/s relationships and we started down the path of trying to figure out how best to teach this class (as a "how-to" or as a philosophical approach that encompasses "doing the work" as a methodology to problem solving. And so way leads on to way and we started discussing why it is that people want to be in roles they seem to be ill suited for - and why they hold themselves to external standards they can't (or have no interest in) actually achieving. You know - people who say "these are the qualities of a slave therefore I must have those qualities" rather than looking at themselves and deciding what they want and what feels right. So Jacs wrote the following to me as an afterthought .... my response below.

People are very rarely who they should be.

One of the greatest challenges of loving someone- in any dynamic, platonic or not- is seeing and recognizing who someone is, who someone could be, and the fact that one is not the other.

Potential runs parallel with flaws. They intermingle and create frustration.

Carving marble is tricky because to start the artist needs to understand the stone. The artist needs to understand every flaw and every weakness of the stone or the stone can shatter with the first strike.

How many people can face the flaws and the weaknesses, not just enough to know they're there, but to understand them well enough to work with them to create something greater?
After understanding the artist needs vision. They need to know before chisel touches marble what the final piece will be. Another catch- the vision is the second part. The understanding has to come first or the vision will be unachievable. What they are trying to achieve needs to be planned with that understanding so that one can carve to work with the flaws and to the best of the potential of the stone.

For some people it's a life time creation. And some people will die without finishing.

People are very rarely who they should be, but they are, quite often, who they are.
I think for most people the greatest challenge of loving someone (in any sort of relationship) is seeing the other person for who and what they are and simply accepting that without making a lot of attempts to predict or control who they might be or who they should be – without trying to manipulate them into being who they want/need them to be. Even in a D/s relationship, I think it’s important to realize that making someone into the slave you want is a far cry from molding (guiding, shaping, mentoring, manipulating, choose your favorite term) someone, in general, into who you think they should be – who you think they seem to want to be. It’s a terribly tempting thing to do, in part, because it’s true that we see others so much more clearly than we can see ourselves. And sometimes, in some ways, this molding, guiding, shaping, mentoring, manipulating is a very good thing. I sincerely wish I had properly thanked the people who said things to me that helped me change my life.

But I digress. Why is it that people so often seem to be not who “they should be?” Why do they seem to spend so much time trying to be something or someone they’re not – and perhaps never can be? They seem to reach for what they think they should want when in fact quite often those things simply don’t (and won’t ever) make them happy. Some of that is us putting out there, because we can, our assessment (judgment) of what’s good, bad, better and best. And some of that is them, foolishly, taking our assessments and judgments for their own without stopping to consider if those things are really what they want or make the slightest bit of sense to them or their lives. Why people don’t do that is one of life’s greatest mysteries, I suppose.

I find it curious that, being uniquely capable of making judgments, we find that to be a compelling – and somewhat distasteful – activity. But it is that very judgment-making capability that allows us to “carve” ourselves out of the marble that we have been given. And, like the artist, what we are making [namely ourselves] must take on a life of its own and, happily, has many surprising results along the way.

Potential doesn’t run parallel with flaws – rather it runs parallel with curiosity. Frustration is born of a failure to accept and act upon the truth. Perhaps what people fail to realize is that understanding their flaws is as important as understanding everything else. Looking only at the flaws and trying to work around or with them is only part of what needs to be accommodated. Vision is only a jumping off point – what is needed is constant re-evaluation of everything using those well-honed judgment-making skills we dare to love and to loathe.
I believe it’s true that “a mistake is simply another way of doing things.” It’s impossible to know what will happen before the chisel touches the marble, and if you live that way, you spend your life studying the marble and never really allowing it take shape. I say “let the chisel fly!” It is apathy, not weakness, which shatters the stone.

1/6/2009

There needs to be a whole lot more Ma’am’ing going on … I can tell you that. More protocol – not less. I would rather not have a “punishment necklace” as a reminder that my mouth gets the better of me way too often. I would much rather be able to stop behaving like an ass and stop acting in disrespectful ways BEFORE it gets to the shovel & bucket / “rolling stone lips necklace” stage of things. It’s not like I don’t know I get like that – I really need to learn how to clench my oral sphincter. I can and will learn to be mindful – She is Ma’am, and if I like it like that (and I do, very much so), I will learn to be mindful of that always and keep that in the front of my mind.

Last night someone said something about not really needing a collar because the collar (like the wedding band) is in your heart and mind and not on your finger or around your neck. That’s true and yet I find the physical / visual reminder of Her collar around my neck (and finger) to be so powerful and so intimate that I wouldn’t choose to live without it. Also it’s a protocol that I wouldn’t want to live without either. It’s interesting to see so many other people with necklaces and other vanilla jewelry that functions as a collar – I never wanted that for myself, but you know you don’t really get a say in these things (as it should be). Sometimes the connection between Her and me is so striking, it’s a little bit frightening.
I wanted to write something about how interesting it is to have conversations about M/s – about how they are SO much more interesting than conversations about BDSM (and you might think it would be just the opposite). Where else do you get to hear conversations between adults that traverse subjects like punishment, discipline, and hierarchical structure (when NOT referring to children)? I sat last night listening to people talk about those very things and again, the audacity of it all hit me – we really do just roll that way. It’s not “fair” and no one wants it to be. As I mull it over now, I see so clearly how these relationships are more formal and thoughtful and deliberate than vanilla relationships but they are also so much more intimate and satisfying. I’m really not sure that I’ve ever really had a vanilla relationship – I’ve tried, but in the end, someone has to run it and that someone was usually me. To live this way deliberately – unapologetically and unabashedly – is the only way that really makes any sense to me.

1/6/2009

I think this term "Old Guard" can be elusive and my experience is that many non-Leather folk find it very tempting to say it's an "umbrella term" (like every other term we use /grumble) or that it's simply "the past" - a part of history that may or may not have anything to do with WIITWD today. I think that it might be interesting to talk about what this term / identity really means and to try to define it (as best we can).

One thing I find particularly interesting is the idea that "old guard" is really an adjective that got "noun-ised (noun-ified?) into "Old Guard" in much the same way that Google, a proper noun, got "verb-ised" (we talk about "Googling" rather than "searching").
So for the record, "old guard" (the adjective) means:

1. A faction that is unwilling to accept new ideas
2. A conservative, often reactionary element of a class, society, or political group
3. The conservative and especially older members of an organization (as a political party)
4. The influential, established, more conservative members of any body, group, movement, etc.
5. The original or long-standing members of a group or party, esp. ones who are unwilling to accept change or new ideas

I think it's clear that an "Old Guard" identity (the noun in the Leather sense) is derived from those definitions and it's interesting to me to see it described as a "conservative" viewpoint (which it certainly is, given the context, but I have to admit that to associate "conservative" with anything that W/we do is a fascinating position).

So my understanding is that the "Old Guard" were NOT the original Leathermen who came from the military and biker clubs craving a way of life that didn’t yet exist (and so made up the life they wanted in ways that suited their distinct needs and desires - a structured community with structured relationships and a protocol for doing just about everything). Those men, if you called them Old Guard would look at you like you had 12 heads and have no clue to what/whom you were referring. The first Old Guard Leatherfolk were those who came up after those original Leathermen men and who were trained and mentored by them. The first people who referred to themselves as Old Guard were those who chose to reject new (read: more relaxed) ways of behaving in the larger kink community and instead adopt and live within the culture developed by the Leathermen who invented it.

If it helps, think of it like this: The original Leathermen were like any first generation immigrants to this country - they had a different way of life born of a culture that made sense to them and which suited their needs. Some of their "children" eventually rebelled (as second or third generation children often do), preferring to join the cultural majority and let go of the "old ways."

But, again, like any second generation, some "children" accepted, and wanted to keep alive, the culture they got from their "parents" and they have been (and still are) passing that down to the "grandchildren" (of whom I am one because Ma'am, who is training me, is one of the aforementioned "children") who are interested in keeping the fires burning.

But wait, there's more. If you identify as Old Guard (or "Old Leather," as slave david put it) now, you not only live within the constructs of that original culture with its distinctive protocols, but you can trace your roots back to those original Leathermen - you can claim your heritage as one might do by finding blood relatives born in the "old country." I must admit that I very much lament the fact that the structured community that existed in the 50s and 60s is all but gone now - most of the Leather bars are filled with men in leisure suits rather than traditional Leather gear. I feel like I missed out on something very special and something that will never come this way again.

1/14/2010

I read her questions about transparency – how do you increase it,  does it just evolve naturally does it have to be equal and what if some people are just “not inclined to share”? Looking at the replies I was interested to see that no one had talked about what transparency really means (I know it seems like it would be obvious but when you start to really define it, it becomes more murky).

The metaphorical meaning of transparency implies openness, communication, and accountability – and as I was pondering that,I was struck by the notion that transparency is not the result of those things (openness, communication, and accountability). It is not the result of a series of activities – talking, discussing, communicating, answering questions, etc. For me, transparency is really more like a state of being than the end product that is the result of some activities. So increasing transparency is more about changing your perspective than it is about finding tools to up your communication input. In other words, communicating more frequently won't necessarily result in greater transparency. Rather, greater transparency is embedded in the desire to know someone intimately – in wanting (and allowing yourself) to be intimately known.

For the rest of it, from my perspective, the only ethical relationship is one where the Master and slave are (ok, almost) equally transparent.  I don't think that "not inclined to share" is a viable option in a healthy M/s relationship, but I suppose that the degree to which that extends really depends on the nature of the relationship. Lastly, I don't know that this perspective "naturally evolves" exactly … rather it’s more like a byproduct of “doing the work.”

1/19/2010

It all started with Her writing “In a Nut’s Shell” – a short piece about what’s currently on Her mind.  She said:

We spend so much time stressing and teaching COMMUNICATION. But, how do we teach effective communication, the absolute necessity of self knowledge and exploration, and the knowledge and exploration of each other? By further self examination and knowledge, I think.

J asked "do you think the necessity of self knowledge and exploration can be taught?" She didn’t think so but I don't think we even need to teach that - on some level, everyone already knows that. We all pursue that necessity to varying degrees but, to my mind, we stop short of where we could go for a variety of reasons (one being as Ma'am said, because "ignorance is bliss" and there is safety in not knowing too much). Howevah, to be honest, I am finding more and more that there is a kind of "glossing over" that happens when we talk about concepts like communication, transparency. We just go on talking without stopping to make sure we understand the terms themselves i guess because we just think those words seem too obvious to stop and define them. i mean really - we all know what communication means, right? Actually - not so much. It *seems* obvious but in fact it's not. What EXACTLY is communication? Once we start to dig in and define it, other things come to light and we find (or i do anyway) that our assumptions were the problem all along - that until we do this kind of work, we are left talking *around* these concepts and not ever getting anywhere with them - which is why we keep having the same conversations (e.g., about the importance of communication and transparency) over and over again.

So in the end, I’m not clear that "teaching passion" is the goal - as I said, I don't believe we really need to teach people to want to know themselves because we all do - to some degree. In fact, I don't believe you even can "teach passion" - unless of course you can because by simply being passionate - by being someone on that path, you will, inevitably, infect others with the same desire. It's the "wake up call" that Ma'am referred to - everyone has that spark, it's just that not everyone wants to set themselves on fire I guess :) Flame on!

1/21/2010

J asked Ma'am: "Do you think we are effectively communicating here? ~_^"

My gut reaction is: not really.

I think, as usual, we're talking around the topic and rehearsing it to death. We continue to state and restate the obvious "people are different - they do things differently. What works for one isn't going to work for another. Knowing yourself is something we all want to do only to differing degrees." We could go on like that forever - and we usually do (I’m no less guilty of this than anyone else). Is that effective? Maybe - depends on what you mean by effective. Ugh - we'll all have different definitions of effective and we'll go on discussing that ad nasueum. I can already predict what will get said: Someone will define effective (probably me) and then I'll have to ask what the goal is of communication (because we can't discuss if it's been effective unless we know the goal). And of course we'll have to agree that the goal of communication depends on the situation and we'll give a ton of examples of the different communication goals and what we would consider effective and we'll wander away from the topic because way always leads on to way. It's what we do and I'm not necessarily griping about that, but I AM griping about this relentless consumption of so many recycled pre-digested ideas. I suppose that discussing everything like this is effective if you want to have a discussion that is completely predictable and your goal is to only share ideas we already have embedded in our perspectives. Same ol shit. I think it's a lot of "magic words" - that is the notion that if we just toss around the words (like "effective communication" and "better transparency" "relationship maintenance") we'll reap the benefits without having to stop to really look at them or ourselves.

My theory of technique, if I have one, is very far from original; nor is it complicated. I can express it in fifteen words, by quoting The Eternal Question And Immortal Answer of burlesk, viz. "Would you hit a woman with a child? — No, I'd hit her with a brick." Like the burlesk comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.
- e.e. cummings

I am craving something else entirely. What I've come to is this: I am always trying to hit everything with a brick and so I often find myself stumbling around, picking my through things bit by bit - unraveling them word by word and sounding like a functional retardate in the process. I find the relentless banter about ideas we all have already have consumed insufferable.

David Viscott

1/22/2010 (from a post on FetLife)

I want to say that if you find yourself offended by my words, don’t be. I’m not trying to attack anyone personally and I’m certainly guilty of everything too – I am part of the “we” to whom I am always referring.

My theory of technique, if I have one, is very far from original; nor is it complicated. I can express it in fifteen words, by quoting The Eternal Question And Immortal Answer of burlesk, viz. "Would you hit a woman with a child? — No, I'd hit her with a brick." Like the burlesk comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.
- e.e. cummings

We so often have discussions that seem to me to be little more than a rehearsal of ideas with which we are already intimately familiar. We agree, expound, agree to disagree but we never get anywhere and I am often left feeling like the conversation was little more than story telling because we like to hear ourselves talk. When asked for our input, we continue to state and restate the obvious.

I am always craving something else entirely. What I've come to is this: I am always trying to hit everything with a brick and this goal is deeply embedded in my process. Doing the work is something like looking at anything that strikes me (or whatever is being discussed in front of me currently) and trying to see it with “new eyes.” It feels like a sort of “picking everything apart” process – I’m always examining everything to see if it is what it appears to be. At the base of what I’m doing is a sort of constant comparison of what I think and feel about ideas compared with what I’m hearing from other people / sources. Now, after having said that, I feel like saying to myself “Well DUH! In English, we call that ‘conversation.’ ” /shakes head … I’m not the sharpest bulb on the tree sometimes, huh? But, having stopped to think about that, I realized that there really is a vast difference here – it looks like “conversation” might be a case of “you call it corn, we call it maize” but it’s not really the same thing at all. I think that many people consider “conversation” to be something far less intense and “vigorous.”

Anyway, I often find myself stumbling around, picking apart and examining my thoughts and feelings bit by bit to see if they are what they appear to be – unraveling them, word by word sometimes, and sounding like a functional retardate in the process.
Also, for the record, I am certain that doing the work ultimately resides in the desire to be intimately known.

---

I wrote this a few months ago in an effort to try to begin the process of developing a class about “doing the work.” That class has turned into a weekend emporium but the topic keeps showing up in my life over and over again. I finally started a thread on FetBook about “doing the work. I’m excited to see if other people can articulate what they are doing.

For me, doing the work is tantamount to and manifests as a kind of "picking stuff apart" process. And I’m not unique in – I see other people doing this (we do it together of course lol) – we’re the ones picking everything apart. Everything. All the time. Questioning everything. Wondering about everything everyone says about everything all the time. And unless you are someone who also does this, it makes us exhausting to be around (to say the least). I've been told on many occasions that I'm a handful, I'm intense, and I get a lot of "Wow ...why don't you tell us what you REALLY think!?" I usually advise people to "try to think of that as a feature (of me)" but, although that remark gets a laugh, they also usually walk away. Nothing ventured, nothing gained - but if you're like me, you hardly notice that "feature" about me except that I'm always asking people to "talk about" this or that about themselves and their lives (being invasive I guess but you can always safeword out if you want to). So my point here is only that it might be important to understand that, although you might end up pissing people off, there is a process here, and I want to be able to pick that apart and talk about it intelligently. Something more tangible and explicit than "well duh - you just think about it." Is this really just a skill that anyone can learn?

This picking apart thing I do is something I was born into (you can thank my dad for getting me into this shit early on) - which, for what it's worth, has had 2 distinct effects: I am horrible at the empathy / sympathy thing unless I'm actively making the effort. If not, I'm quite prone to just picking everything apart from a logical standpoint and leaving go the emotions and irrationality of humans, including myself when I get into the thick of it. 2. I have an extremely low tolerance for chronic emotional pain - mine or other people's. For example: very long painful breakups just aren't my style and if they are your style, you really need to go have that kinda shit elsewhere because I'm a cold hearted bitch I guess and just lousy at offering a shoulder to cry on more than a couple of times. If that makes me a terrible friend, then so be it. I try to warn people at the outset of knowing me that this is who and what I am. OK so for others, there was someone(s) who "woke them up" and I think perhaps this is the more common experience. I'm not sure if this difference is significant, but it might be, with regard to "teaching" people how to do the work (if it ever comes to that). There’s an empathy factor here that I can't ignore - I do wish I was better at it but since I'm not, I have to wonder what part it plays in others who also do the work.

I think that (if we take laziness off the table), people don't do the work because they associate it with only the bad times. If the goal of doing the work is to be a happier, more fulfilled human being, then when times are good, we don't tend to do any work. We reserve that for the bad times and use it as way to get through the bad times. So people aren't used to doing the work because they associate it with negative feelings. I think one thing this class could do is teach people how to (and the importance of) looking at the good things - everything - and doing the work around those things too. For example, I often ask people why they are involved in the BDSM and/or M/s lifestyle - what do you get from it? Why do it? You can live any way you choose - why choose THIS way? Most of the time I get this answer: "It feels right." That answer sucks by itself and what I find, in general and in principle, is that people have not pushed themselves to know even that little about themselves and their lives. I think if you're going to live this way (or some other way), you damn well better know why / what you get from it. See where I'm headed? Maybe the class could even include a demo - let's talk about why you do this ... why you live this way. "See kids? Just do that pick apart thing about everything and you'll live happily ever after. The End." Actually I think that it could be a a very good thing to share the perspective that doing the work is something positive - and that if you do it all the time - about everything - then, when the bad times come, you'll be that much more prepared and used to the process. And that means, the bad times will get shorter, less intense and easier to manage. And hopefully less frequent because you will make better choices in your life all around.

There is something special and specific about M/s relationships. They require a different type of tending to perhaps than vanilla relationships. Or maybe not .... maybe the truth is that entropy affects us all and the trick is how you reduce entropy. So for the sake of clarity, the law of entropy states that in any given system, disorder is always increasing. Obviously if you don't tend to it, that increasing disorder will eventually dissolve your relationships. In order for the system to become more orderly (for entropy to decrease), you must transfer energy from somewhere outside the system. For those of us in M/s relationship, it is the rituals and protocols of this lifestyle that continually remind us of what our relationship "looks like" and creates order from the chaos that wants to ensue. For some, it also includes (or in the case of vanilla relationship, more strongly includes) romance. And I am guessing that for some, they also use these vanilla relationship skill building classes to clean house, sweep up the entropy dust that always starts to settle after a while. So for the class I think it might be important to say "There are things you can and must do to battle the constant invading deterioration (familiarity in the case of M/s) - doing the work will tell you what things resonate for you and which things don't - and why."

1/25/2010

 "As far as M/s .... For me it's been about the headspace, where I'm connected through service ...."

I cut the phrase there because the rest of what she said (time spent together and growth) obviously connects people but I had to unravel why service would do the same thing. I know that some people rejoice in doing household chores, finding that those tasks provide great headspace and some people "trade" service for play,  but those things are very far away from what's going on for me.

So to try to answer my own questions:

* What is service?

For me, service, as W/we use this term, is not just a set of actions – it’s an attitude and a mindset (no, headspace isn't the same thing - headspace is more of a temporary shift in perspective). Generally we talk about slaves performing service for their Masters. We talk about being “in service” and we talk about “providing service." These terms are used to describe one aspect of M/s or D/s relationships and they are unique to those types of relationships. Other people may provide “ ‘a service’,” but when W/we speak about “service,” there is more than a semantic difference.

* Do you think that Masters provide service or is service something only slaves provide?

I understand that Masters do things for their slaves - take care of them and make contributions to the household, but I feel VERY strongly that this is not "service." For me, service, as W/we do it, flows in one direction, echoing the hierarchy in the relationship. In fact, I think that we go out of our way to avoid saying that Masters "perform service" for their slaves, except when we’re discussing the topic of service itself and then we seem to use that term for lack of a better one. When we talk about service, we use terms like "in service," "anticipatory service," expectation of service" and "providing service." None of these phrases are normally applied to what Masters do for their slaves.

* If you are in service, does providing service connect you to the one(s) you serve? How so?

I know that the service part of O/our relationship pulls us close, but it took a bit of discussion to figure out why. I don't always feel that "slave" headspace as I move through my day "doing things for Her." Mostly, it's just what I do - more like breathing than anything else I can compare it to. Of course there are times when it comes up to the surface and I feel it more acutely, but much of the time it just "is" - I just "am" and if I had to feel the headspace to enjoy it, I'd go crazy. And yet I do feel like service connects U/us and so I had to unravel that. I'm well aware that doing things for other people makes you feel close to them but it also creates a kind of indebtedness and I wondered if that was what was appealing.

What it comes to is this: For me, service is NOT its own reward. my service comes at a price - and that price is intimacy. When someone does something for you, even in a vanilla sense, there's a degree of indebtedness that gets created. M/s relationships revolve, in part, around this indebtedness. I don't provide service because it makes me feel fulfilled to do things for other people. I don't need to be in service to make me feel fulfilled. I feel fulfilled doing things for Her _because_ She accepts my service in ways that make sense to me. She has the audacity to not only accept my service, but to expect it - and that expectation resonates in U/us and draws U/us close.

1/27/2010

She’d written about devotion – that was what drew her to D/s relationships. That was interesting to me – I never thought about it just like that. It seems so simple: devotion … and she’s right – people do this all the time and devotion is a noble gesture. It derives its attractiveness from altruistic intentions (which I don't believe in akshully, but that's a whole 'nother discussion) – to give your life and your energy to someone else and all you're asking in return is to be appreciated (accepted and respected). If that's your thing, it's all good and I can see how it would be attractive to you. Howevah ....

Devotion as a D/s structure is missing one critical aspect: surrender to Another's authority.

She did say at the end: "to obey, to serve, to work, to support, to submit ...." but there was no mention really of living under someone else's authority. That might be inherent in "to obey ... to submit" but I guess I was expecting something more explicit because surrender is not inherent in devotion itself.

If you are devoted to something, you may feel as if you’re surrendering to it, but that surrender is always conditional. It may try to dictate, but you don’t have to listen. And if you choose not to obey, the relationship doesn’t necessarily deteriorate. You can pick and choose, at your own whim, to what degree and how often you will participate. You own the authority in that relationship. This is simply not the case in an M/s relationship.

Devotion, in and of itself, without surrendering your authority, is a very egalitarian approach. Even if you've taken the "extra" step of determining that the other person deserves your devotion, that just doesn't speak to the issue of surrendering your authority. Trusting the other person to care for you isn't the same thing either. Ma'am and I are "present" in the relationship and care for each other and trust each other to pay attention to what's happening in each other's lives. You can call that devotion if you want to, I guess. The difference is that O/our relationship rests on a hierarchy that exists regardless of the situation and the circumstances. The moment it exists according to my whim (or Hers, for that matter), the relationship, as W/we know it, is over. We might still be devoted to each other, but the D/s structure would be non-existent.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you're drawn to a D/s or M/s lifestyle, there has to be something about surrendering or taking authority that appeals - otherwise there's no hierarchy and you might as well be living a vanilla lifestyle, perhaps with a penchant for SM.

1/28/2010

Ma’am said:

I can't understand why so many people are adamantly adverse to just being what they are. Everywhere I look I see Tops trying to be Dominants, Dominants trying to be Masters, submissives trying to be slaves, and on and on. People seem to think there is a progression, and for some there is^. But really, there have to be Tops and bottoms, Dominants and submissives, Masters and slaves, and whatever other configurations are out there. Those labels exist for a reason; because those people exist."

This is one of those things that keeps coming up over and over and it's almost incestuous. The issue here is not that people should or shouldn't label themselves - they/we should, as far as I'm concerned - how else will we talk about what we do and how we think and how we live? The problem is that more people than I'd expect seem to be trying hard to be something they aren't - and never will be. And WE are the ones putting all that pressure on them to be something they're not.

As I'm thinking about it now, it occurs to me that the problem almost always occurs with people who want to be a Master but act more like a Top/Dominant/Daddy (I do see it with "s" types, but more often in reverse - people who really are slaves tend to call themselves submissives). There's a reason that there's a mystique about being a Master - it's different. It's intense. It's BIG. And, as perverts, we tend to like that sort of thing /laughs But the truth is, not everyone is cut out for that kind of life and that's perfectly ok. If we have only Masters, what will all the people who want Tops, Dominants, and Daddies do?

People seem to think there is a progression, and for some there is^.

Obviously, I feel like there is a progression - not everyone is cut out to be a Master or a slave. There, I said it - that's just the truth and we all know it. There IS a difference between being a Master and being a Dominant - if there weren't, we wouldn't have two different words for those roles. The fact that we refuse to pin down a definition of what a Master or a slave (or what anything else is, for that matter) is a testament to the current cultural climate of open-ended inclusiveness which has, to my mind, its ups and downs. To be sure, I much prefer the freedom to choose to live my life the way I want and with whom I want, but if the price for that is a lot of pressure to be something I'm not, that really takes the shine off the prize, doesn't it?

For me, the goal is to stop making people feel bad because they don't want to, or aren't wired for, the most intense role there is. We're all in this, at least in part, for the intensity - and our American culture teaches us that "more is better." That is simply not the case. To my mind, being a Master is more intense than being a Top (or a Dominant or a Daddy but sheesh - all that typing lol), but more intense isn't better - it's just different. The energy is different. The mindset and perspective are different. The intention is different. The goals are different. The roles are different - as it should be. As You said Ma'am, all those labels exist for very good reason: we exist, and we need a way to talk about what the hell we are doing.

2/1/2010

intrinsic: a quality belonging to a thing by its very nature

That is the piece I believe cannot be taught. You can be given the "recipe" for Mastery or Dominance, for slavery or submission, but that doesn't mean you'll ever own it (read: be any good at it). Personally, I'd rather be an excellent slave than a pretty good submissive.
People often draw together BDSM activities with D/s roles and the two seem unrelated to me. As is pointed out again and again, one's vanilla life has little to do with any proclivities in the bedroom or dungeon (note the over-used example of the powerful CEO who likes to be submissive in the bedroom or is a real masochist). In addition, I’ll go one step further and say that the D/s relationship roles themselves have little or nothing to do with sex or play. I believe that Mastery and slavery can (and often do) extend to the dungeon or bedroom, but they are not rooted there. When I hear people talk about developing their Mastery or slavery in terms of what goes on in the bedroom or dungeon (and I’ve been hearing that a lot lately), that's a red flag for me and tells me that they are on the wrong path, trying to be something they aren't or don't (yet?) really understand (read: aren't wired for) Mastery and slavery.
Yea ... I said that - some people really don't understand and are not wired for Mastery or slavery (or for Dominance or submission or for Daddy or boy, etc etc). I’m really very weary of accepting that the terms Master and slave (and Dominant and submissive and every other term we use) mean whatever you say they mean because it makes conversation impossible. We continue, in the spirit of openness and inclusion, to use the same words to mean very different things and that thwarts every attempt at meaningful discussion. These words mean different things or we would not have 2 different words for them. As I am so fond of saying, we don't have 2 different words that mean exactly "snow." A Dominant and a Master are 2 different things - as it should be. Some people are not cut out for a D/s relationship. Some people are not cut out for a Daddy/boy relationship. On this we can all agree. Like light that can be measured as both a particle and a wave, Mastery/slavery and Dominance/submission are different from each other like apples and oranges AND they are each at either end of the D/s relationship scale, with M/s being at the top (or right, if you live in Western culture). The problem is that we (correctly) ascertain that Master and slave are the top rung of the ladder, and as perverts we pressure each other to be more, do more, push the envelope all the way, making sure we save death for last. We press that dialogue onto D/s roles and I think this is inherent in the lifestyle and not something to be prettied up with a lot of inclusive language. For some very good reasons, no one wants to be told they will never be a Master (seems slaves have the opposite problem – many who call themselves submissives are really slaves and will never be any good at submitting).

So if it’s the case that Mastery and slavery cannot be taught, what, exactly, are we teaching?
What I would teach you (what it breaks down to) depends, of course, on where you are in the process already, what your goals are, whether or not I think you have a clear vision of yourself and how willing you are to listen to the advice you are seeking from me. Do you actually want to see yourself or do you just want to barrel down the path you have set for yourself without stopping to discover if it's actually right for you? We're not talking about teaching skills here - it's got nothing to do with learning to flog someone correctly or learning how to set a formal dinner table. You can teach someone how to kneel and you can teach someone how create opportunities for service. But what makes someone a Master or a slave (really - at least for the purposes of this discussion) is more about learning what to do with the authority you own  - whether you want to give it to someone else or own another person's. To my mind, it's more about understanding the audacity it takes to do either of those things. And having that audacity is simply not something everyone intuitively gets or even wants to get.

2/3/2010

For these terms, I find the dictionary useless with the exception of helping to qualify submission and surrender.

Submit: to defer [temporarily] to another's judgment, opinion, decision, etc; to give over or yield to the power or authority of another

Surrender: to yield (something) to the possession or power of another; to give oneself up, as into the power of another; submit or yield

The key difference here is the temporary or non-persistent nature of submission vs. the persistent, non-situational/non-circumstantial sustained submission that becomes surrender.

This was helpful too …

Dominate: to exert the supreme determining or guiding influence on

Master: one having authority over another; (1) : one having control (2) : an owner especially of a slave or animal

OK so – let’s see where we end up when we try to define these terms.
I keep defining these words (Master and Dominant) in terms of their key differences – I have been thus far unable to say, in any concrete terms, what a Master is (or is not). Let’s try it this way:

A Master:

• Is one who has, above all other things, Mastered him/herself.
• Is one who can/has the desire to Master another.
  
  What do these phrases mean: “Mastered yourself,” “Master another.” Doesn’t a Dominant have to have “mastered him/herself” as well? Maybe … of course, it never hurts. I think what I mean here is that you are on that path of self-exploration – you are “doing the work.”

• Desires / is engaged in and by hierarchical relationships.
  
  That is, finds trust and intimacy that is significantly different (better, more intense, more desirable) in these types of relationships and strives to setup and maintain hierarchical relationships.
• Understands, owns and takes joy in engaging the authority of his/her own life.
• Is willing to and engaged by fully accepting the authority given by the slave / submissive – that is, understands, owns and takes joy in exercising the authority of another.
• Understands and desires to own/control another’s right to exercise authority.
  
  The above 3 bullets seem like the same thing and they are in fact deeply related. But my point here is that engaging the authority in your own life and engaging the authority of another and wanting to control someone else’s right to exercise authority in their own life seem like 3 distinct things. Or, at the very least, they are semantically involved.

• Is capable of the audacity to own another person.
  
  This is about self-confidence and the feeling we call “owning” the authority in the Master’s life as well as the slave’s life. This feeling manifests as the fully-embedded feeling (that results in actions) that one has the right to make decisions for and about another adult who has self-confidence, self esteem and is fully capable, knowledgeable and competent to make these decisions for him/herself.

• Respects his/her slaves judgment and decision-making capacity and values those, in terms of quality, as equal to his/her own.
  
  It is my contention that Masters and slaves actually respect and trust each other’s judgment making capability as equal in terms of quality (although not equal in the right to exercise it). If you feel your Master’s judgment is better than your own, than I wonder if what you’ve really got isn’t a Daddy/boy (pick your gender) relationship? Perfectly respectable, just not Master/slave.

• Is looking for, drawn to, most engaged by surrender, rather than submission.
• Sees a web of inter-related circumstances that guide every intention and action.
• Views structure (and hierarchical structure) and protocols as something inherent in the relationship and not something present in activities (sustained or otherwise).
• Demands MORE (not less) responsibility from his/her slave(s).
• More … other??

A slave:

• Is one who has, above all other things, mastered him/herself
  
  What does this phrase mean: “mastered yourself.” Doesn’t a submissive have to have “mastered him/herself” as well? Maybe … of course, it never hurts. I think what I mean here is that you are on that path of self-exploration – you are “doing the work.”

• Is one who can/has the desire to surrender to Another.
• Desires / is engaged in and by hierarchical relationships
  
  That is, finds trust and intimacy that is significantly different (better, more intense, more desirable) in these types of relationships and strives to setup and maintain hierarchical relationships.

• Understands, owns and takes joy in engaging the authority of his/her own life
• Is willing to and engaged by fully surrendering his/her authority to Another – that is, understands, owns and takes joy in the process of surrendering his/her the authority to Another.
• Understands and desires to have his/her right to exercise authority owned and controlled by Another
  
  The above 3 bullets seem like the same thing and they are in fact deeply related. But my point here is that engaging the authority in your own life and engaging the surrender of authority to another and wanting another to control their own authority seem like 3 distinct things. Or, at the very least, they are semantically involved.

• Is capable of the audacity to surrender another person
  
  This is about self-confidence and the feeling we call “owning” the authority in the your life. This feeling manifests as the fully-embedded feeling (that results in actions) that one has the right to surrender final authority for all decisions to Another adult who has self-confidence, self esteem and is fully capable, knowledgeable and competent to make these decisions for him/herself.

• Respects his/her Master’s judgment and decision-making capacity and values those, in terms of quality, as equal to his/her own.
  
  It is my contention that Masters and slaves actually respect and trust each other’s judgment making capability as equal in terms of quality (although not equal in the right to exercise it). If you feel your Master’s judgment is better than your own, than I wonder if what you’ve really got isn’t a Daddy/boy (pick your gender) relationship? Perfectly respectable, just not Master/slave.

• Is looking for, drawn to, most engaged by surrendering, rather than submitting
• Sees a web of inter-related circumstances that guide every intention and action
• Views structure (and hierarchical structure) and protocols as something inherent in the relationship and not something present in activities (sustained or otherwise)
• Expect that MORE (not less) responsibility will be demanded from him/her.
• More … other??

A Dominant:

• Is one who can/has the desire to Dominate another.
• Desires / is engaged in and by hierarchical circumstances
• Desires / is engaged by guiding, nurturing, “helping” others
• Understands, owns and takes joy in controlling another
• Is willing to and engaged by accepting under limited circumstances the limited authority given by the slave / submissive – that is, understands, owns and takes joy in temporarily (or circumstantially) exercising the Dominance over another.
• Is not interested or engaged by owning/controlling another’s right to exercise authority in their own life
• Views his/her submissive’s judgment and decision-making capacity as less competent than their own (even if only slightly), and values those, in terms of quality, as not equal to his/her own
• Is looking for, drawn to, most engaged by submission, rather than surrender
• Uses direct goals to exert Dominance; intention and action are guided by fulfilling the submissive’s own goals
• Views structure (and hierarchical structure) and protocols as something present in activities (sustained or otherwise)
• Demands LESS (not more) responsibility from his/her submissive(s). That is, assumes responsibility for sustained guidance in tasks and responsibilities.
• More … other??

submissive

• Is one who can/has the desire to submit to another.
• Desires / is engaged in and by hierarchical circumstances
• Desires / is engaged by being guided nurtured, “helped”
• Understands, owns and takes joy in being controlled
• Is willing to and engaged by giving limited (or temporary) authority under limited circumstances to a Dominant or Master – that is, understands, owns and takes joy in temporarily (or circumstantially) submitting to the Dominance of another.
• Is not interested or engaged by owning/controlling another’s right to exercise authority in their own life
• Views his/her Dominant or Master’s judgment and decision-making capacity as more competent than their own (even if only slightly), and values those, in terms of quality, as not equal to his/her own
• Is drawn to and most engaged by submitting, rather than surrendering
• Expects the Dominant to direct goals as a method of exerting Dominance; intention and action are guided by fulfilling the submissive’s own goals
• Views structure (and hierarchical structure) and protocols as something present in activities (sustained or otherwise)
• Expect that LESS (not more) responsibility will be demanded from him/her.  That is, expects sustained guidance in tasks and responsibilities.
• More … other??

2/7/2010

Jacs said:
I'm curious, in regards to other people, what do you value in regards to friendship, or other relationships. What things matter the most to you, and what do you invest in people that you are closest to? Are those things the same? Do you find that people in your life have different value systems, and if so what would those be?

For her: Communication, Time, Physical Affection

For Ma’am: Trust and integrity

For me: This is an interesting question and one I never stopped to ponder because you can’t get what you want from other people – you can only get what you get (what they give). /laughs I can suddenly hear that Rolling Stones song in my head … “You can’t always get what you want … But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.“
Obviously, with every relationship/friendship, if I stay in it, I’m getting what I need and what I want. At the base of that – what I require and value most are mutual trust, integrity, communication, respect, intelligence and a shared value system. But that is not what I would list as what I value because if we don’t have that, we don’t have anything. It’s like asking if there is love in M/s – well, why the hell else do we do it? If you haven’t got that, you haven’t got anything. Duh.

What I really value most and what I invest in relationships and what I expect back in return is intelligent conversation – in other words, you must be “doing the work.” I need to be able to really talk about the ideas in my head and what’s currently on my mind with more stamina than just a cursory glossing over. I need you to challenge me to re-examine myself and my ideas and I need to feel that I can do that for you too. “Those who look, they unblind us all.”

MAsT: Member Perspective (for July 2010)

5/16/2010

When I was volunteered for this member perspective, (Thank you Ma’am, Thank you Brick)  my first thought was … well … actually … my mind went totally blank and I thought damn – what the hell am I going to talk about? And then immediately following that moment of panic was the rush that always shows up and it quickly became nearly impossible for me to choose just one topic.

I wanted to talk about service – about how slaves manage that and often try to own it and make it about themselves, and about how Masters accept service and how important it is to learn how to do that gracefully.

I wanted to talk about transparency and how critical and deeply satisfying it really is to know someone and to be intimately known; and how fascinating and sad it is that so many people are so damaged that they cannot stand to reveal themselves without feeling dangerously vulnerable.

I wanted to talk about SSC and how despite how good it seems to be, the price for it has been too high. We’ve unwittingly traded in the Master’s ability to have the audacity to actually own another person for what can only be construed as a minor capitulation to the greater moral majority.

I wanted to ask you all if you know why you are here – why you want to live this way, what you get from it beyond knowing that it feels good and seems “right.”

I wanted to talk about structure and protocols and about how those things bind us together and keep us mindful – about how much joy and intimacy there is in the separation of our roles.

I wanted to talk about slave guilt and about how damaging that really is and about how, if we would all follow through with it, Masters could end that in one moment by saying “Let go, and let me.”
I wanted to talk about history – about how important it is to know our past, where we came from and who we have been so that when we look to the future, we don’t forget how we got here – and so we don’t leave ourselves, as the famous expression goes, “doomed to repeat it.”

I wanted to talk about Leather and Old Guard and how inside each one of you lives the soul of an old Leatherman who brought his love and his life into our culture, and who, without meaning to, made it possible that we could be here today, in a public restaurant, openly discussing M/s, D/s and SM.

I wanted to talk about what it is we are actually exchanging, because although we call it power exchange, what we are really exchanging is authority. We don’t like to call it that because it’s not as sexy I guess, but I wonder all the time if that misnomer causes a shift in our perspective about what we’re doing.

I wanted to talk about terms and definitions and how much sympathy and anger I have as every precious word we have in this community gets used as an umbrella term, ultimately signifying nothing, lost in the abyss of our greater inclusive politically correct culture. And actually although that is what I chose to talk about, I have to point out that you can see how exhausting it is to be near me. I want to talk about everything all the time and somehow I had to find a way, even in this “perspective,” to say something about everything and even though I tried, I didn’t even come close to saying everything I wanted to say.

At any rate, since I wanted to choose one thing (ish) to talk about, I chose to talk about language because I’m a big fan of language. What I really want to talk about are labels. I see a lot of talk on FetLife and elsewhere about how much people hate labels and resent being asked to pick one (or more than 1) – and I have to admit I understand that. No one wants to be profiled – it’s terrible to feel “accused” of being something we’re not. And since we can't agree on labels and we seem to have a general dislike for them, we’re hard pressed to embrace them at all, really, and yet most of us spend a good deal of time struggling with them. 
We don’t seem to want to agree on them for a couple of reasons (at least) – mostly I guess because we don't want to offend anyone – and I get that of course. I mean, if *you* call me a slave and I really don't know what you mean by that, I might be hesitant – and rightly so – to define myself according to your terms. And if I want to define myself as a slave, under the system we have now (where we have as many definitions for that word as there are people in the world), I must take into consideration what you will hear when I say that word. What if your definition of slave is like the one from “Metropolitan slave?” Well, I’m not into that – I don’t agree with that philosophy and I won’t, ethically speaking, support it. In your terms then I’m not a slave, but in mine I am. So there’s that problem.

Also – we want everyone to get along and feel included and get a nice warm fuzzy when we’re together because we’re all “one world” these days – and I can get behind that too. And – in this country anyway – we’ve a pretty sordid past when it comes to excluding people from anything worth doing because they have the wrong genitals or the wrong color skin. So in order to “do the right thing,” we’re all really quick to jump on the inclusive bandwagon – “yea sure – you can call yourself a Master even though you’ve only been around for 2 weeks and have never owned a slave and are only into kinky sex – no problem!” We wouldn’t want anyone telling us we can’t be who we want to be, right? Don’t tell me I’m not Her slave – that’s for U/us to decide, right? So there’s also that problem.

And what you might or might not know is that the Leather community got started and has its roots in this very sort of exclusivity (albeit for other reasons, I admit). People were quite willing to say “this one is vetted and this one is not” – and they were happy to have that exclusivity. And from what I understand, that sentiment is sorely missed by many. It’s true that their exclusivity was based on skin color and genitals at first, since that was the cultural conception at the time. Eventually that changed and you were vetted, accepted and welcomed if you had what it took to belong. It’s still the case today that not everyone is cut out for every role and every task they might set before themselves. The difference is that today, we’re not willing to set any standard at all – I can call myself any dammed thing I want no matter how I behave. I have seen people show up in our community, brand new, fresh off the turnip truck and 2 months later they are being addressed as Master So-and-so. That seems wrong to me but we keep quiet because we don’t want to be branded as elitist or exclusive. There’s so much peer pressure to be all inclusive, “come on down and pick your honorific, no standard too low!” It’s intense and it’s hard even for me to deny its allure because I’ve been there – I have my own way and my own style and I’m not apt to let anyone tell me I’m not a “real slave.” I’m suddenly reminded of that scene from Poltergeist where Zelda Rubenstein who plays the psychic tells Carol Anne, the little girl lost in a parallel universe inside her home, to run into the light. “All are welcome!” she says.  You know, I spend a good deal of time in a couple of sub-cultures where all are not welcome – and sometimes the one who is not welcome is me.  So it’s not like I don’t know how it feels to be excluded. But in all honesty – I understand the need to be, at times, around people whose value system or experience matches mine in very specific ways. It’s why we have VFW halls, sororities, Gay Pride parades, and groups like Black Deaf Advocates and MAsT.

I was talking to a friend of mine about this issue of labels and I used this analogy – perhaps it will make sense to you in a non-threatening, non-judgmental sort of way.

I’m going to form a group, I told him, called “Buttery Spread Enthusiasts.” Now, we don’t care what sort of buttery spread you like. You just have to be willing to say that some things are Butter, some things are Margarine and some things are that fake soy crap like I eat. Even though it’s true that each of those things can be used in very similar and sometimes identical ways, when we’re at the table and I say “please pass the Butter,” you have to know not to hand me that fake soy crap I keep in my fridge. If it’s not Butter, it’s gonna have to have a different label or we’re going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what “pass the Butter” really means.

So there’s that.

Also, in this culture, we don't like labels in general because we think they rob us of our individuality. It's why we have so many words for everything - are you a girl, a gurl, a grrl, or a grrrl? Imagine if we had even 2 different words for what we mean when we yell for fire or help. Thank goodness the Eskimos don't really have over 100 words for snow, because we have more than enough to think about right here. For as long as there has been language (as far as I can tell), if it’s a different thing, it gets a different word – or in some cases, a different spelling. If it’s the same thing, it doesn’t get a different word or the whole system breaks down.
Ultimately, if you’re a person in the world, you know it's impossible to go around without labels because they allow us to correctly set expectations for interpersonal interactions. From the day you were born, you were given a gender label because that is part of how we understand how to deal with people – by all the categories and labels they fit into. Labels give us a set of behavior guidelines, rules and protocols to follow. What’s interesting to me is that we’re all willing to settle on *some* “universal” labels (or symbols) but not others. We’ll all agree that a collar means you are Owned – maybe a slave, maybe a submissive, maybe just being trained or protected – but in the end, a collar means that someone else other you is responsible for you, and to you. So why won’t we take the next step? Is it the language itself that’s the problem? Why is it that we’ll agree on some terms and not others? It’s ok to call a whole myriad of somewhat dissimilar objects a “phone” – we all know what that word means even though there are a zillion styles of phones and that is because all phones share certain universal characteristics that make them a phone and not, say, a toaster, or a PDA or a computer (although I have to admit that the iPhone makes that last particular distinction between a computer and a phone, less clear. If I could only get a mouse for my iPhone I might actually lick it). Anyway, isn’t it possible that all slaves share certain characteristics that make them a slave and not, (I know you’ll be shocked by this comparison), a submissive? I think it’s important to understand the distinction – to recognize that there IS a distinction, and it’s important because it’s integral to who and what we are. And it’s simply the case that if there is no meaningful distinction, we don’t bother with other words. Notice that we do not have 2 words that mean exactly “snow.”

We are – as living creatures go – quite sensitive to subtlety in language and meaning – and rightly so. We have only language with which to really communicate (sure I can grunt and groan but that isn’t going to help Tiffany, our waitress, know what I want for dinner). I need words – specific words. I need names for things – labels that we can all agree on. 

And labels are only names – other names – for ourselves. To be honest, and I know this perspective is unpopular but it’s where I am today and if you give me 5 minutes I might change my mind, I think labels are critical for understanding how to interact with people. Labels help clarify who and what we are. They help me to understand myself and my place in the world and my place in my relationships. And it helps me understand all of that about you. I am Her slave and not Her submissive, and in O/our lives, that is an enormous and critical difference. That word – that label – defines my place in O/our lives and sets all O/our expectations for each other and for other people. But because of all of this unrest around these words, we are all subject to a constant re-shaping of our behavior and expectations depending on time, personality, circumstance and situation – depending on what you or I happen to mean by this or that label. It’s an extremely interesting and engaging way to live actually, because, as humans, we are capable of, and actually hard wired for, engaging in the very vigorous exercise called “social interaction.” And so, not surprisingly, that reshaping happens a lot anyway. But when it happens because of intentional non-agreement over terms and definitions (ok, labels), it is a source of constant irritation to me (and maybe to you too). Within our sub-culture and within our various alternative lifestyle communities, we spend so much time defining and re-defining these critical terms that we’re sick to death of the discussion, but we still do not know what item to reach for when we’re asked to “please pass the Butter.” You’re probably wondering how much longer you’re going to have to sit here and listen to me go on about this seemingly unending and tired discussion that will never ever get settled or resolved, not even within myself. You have only to live through 4 more sentences.

To hell with political correctness. I think we do ourselves a grave disservice by agreeing to let the spirit of inclusivity tear our language to shreds. We hold ourselves back from really delving into the discussion if we continue to allow different words to mean anything – everything – the same thing, if we say they do. Who lives like that? :)

 

 

 

 

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