August

This is the beginning. The highly efficient divestiture and distribution of food, board games, alcohol, and personal belongs. Lining up the Malibu rum, pineapple juice, port, Berringer white zin, cheap amaretto, desert wines that taste like grapefruit, Jaggermeister, and a veritable army of beer bottles. Dead soldiers will replace those sent off to perform their duty, and a glass graveyard will stand in place within just one week. The first cigarettes are smoked on the deck.

This is love. Watching NE dance with her husband to Spiderbait’s Black Betty; she stands on the coffee table as the music makes her free and she sheds clothes until she has been reduced to the essentials, the beat riding her hard and bringing her closer to her husband who stands in front of her like an open and closed doorway, dressed only in swimming trunks that can be zipped into a pocket and a cowboy hat that looks oddly appropriate.

This is serenity. Skinny dipping on a hot August night with five of your best friends. Fish nibble at your calves as you drift along on your back; the chorus of crickets and the pinpoints of stars overhead provide context for the moment (time is thin here, and the warm embrace of the water is dangerously comforting).

This is lust. Hands on SB’s waist as she presses along NE’s back. Feeling NE through SB, through the rhythmic pressure of thighs along thighs and something deeper, something more…more because it is the wanting of it, the wanting more of it, that makes it feel so very fucking good.

These are the moments in between. The card playing, the book hiding, the wine splashing, the trampoline wrestling, the fish saving, the long discussions about crippled brothers, traffic, balls (size), C sharp, threesomes, and being controlled from behind; the languid days that are so correctly similar that they blur like an out of focus movie reel until they make one long continuous ribbon of memories.

This is vacation.

Sleep Slut

O sleep,
blessed is your embrace.
though fickle can your affections be,
I remain, as always,
your disciple.

***

I am such a slut for sleep.

I know a lot of people who see more then six hours of sleep as a waste. They mock my complaints when some activity requires me to forgo a few hours of sleep. To be honest, I am not sure why I need eight hours of sleep; I believe it is because I abuse my conscious mind so much that it requires several REM states just to stretch and work out all the kinks my active mind busily creates.

But it matters not why. I am content to just adore sleep and not question my affections for her.

I love waking up gradually and stretching luxuriously in bed as consciousness slips in like an old lover, inhabiting my limbs once more.

I love the feeling that comes with waking up too early and then finding out that, for one reason or another, I get another half hour or so of sleep. I greedily draw those minutes to me, all the more precious because they shouldn’t be there.

Give me eight or nine hours of sleep every night and I can handle anything. Angry, frustrated co-workers become people who just need subtle nudges in the right direction to succeed. Cat-ravaged curtains become an excuse to buy something in a deeper shade of green. Bumper-to-bumper traffic becomes a way to catch up on the intriguing audio book I am in the midst of listening to. Harsh criticism becomes creative critiquing. Broken processes become puzzles of efficiency. Proposals become a game of wordcrafting. Bratty submissives become convenient excuses to practice innovated spanking techniques.

As the narrator says in Fight Club: I become the calm, little center of the world. I become a Zen Master.

With just six or seven hours of sleep, I become…a normal human being. With less then six hours of sleep…bad things happen. Mogwai eating after midnight-like bad things.

I haven’t been getting much sleep the last few days. But – as of tomorrow, I am off to a lake house for a week. I plan to get a lot of sleep. And then I plan to use my calm little center to toss stones into the gentle tranquility of others. Ripples can be so much fun. Especially when they have affects unexpected by those who think they know better.

Light in the Dark

I have always had a fascination with Edgar Allen Poe; his short stories and poetry have a consistent air of morbidity that appeals to my darker half. It was a horror short story that got me accepted at the college I went to, and it was the narrator of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ that conversed with users as part of my artificial intelligence senior project that got me my degree.

This was written several years ago – my Edgar story.

***

Some would call the view a gift: long streams of crimson and gold meeting a horizon carved by the ridge of mountains to the west; the rolling surf, crests of white atop of a blue to make the sky jealous; miniature ships that grow to belong to this world, drawn into shore by a swath of light.

Yes, some would call this view a treasure.

I call it hell.

Truly, there is nothing worse than a cage with a view of paradise. I feel no shame in admitting my hunger for that gold, the need to catch the blood in the ski as the sun sets. I can not deny my desperate yearning to rush into the grip of the ocean.

And this desperation grows until you feel that brittle point, twisted by time and hunger into a fine knot pulled tight enough to vanish into something more than solid. You begin to realize that the one thing worse than being in a cage with a view of paradise is the hate that turns paradise into something darker, something that begs for purification.

Oh, they thought they were clever. Lock him up where he can watch that ocean that he loves so much. Let him watch the ships, the ones he used to sail, come into port under the blazing white gaze of his home. Lock him up, lock him away from the ocean that was his!

But they are not that clever by half. Ha! And soon it shall be shown just how truthful that is. When I darken their lives much as they stole mine.

I move my fingers, like threads of silver through the molasses night to touch the rim of the lighthouse cage. Fool-proof they thought. The light hidden from my touch, locked to protect those toy ships out there. And fool-proof it might be; but I am no fool. The time has come for me to show them how wrong they were.

Rolling up the cuffs of my shirt, exposing soft white to the touch of darkness. Laying bare my skin, I place the edge of the razorblade along my wrist and slit carefully. A well of crimson quickly rose and spread across the skin, destroying all semblance of what might have been truthful in flesh. Quickly – and yet carefully again – I repeat this along my other wrist.

Intent on my purpose, what pain is felt quickly passes into gleeful anticipation of my moment. I place my slit wrists over the top of the lens encasement and watch the blood drip down upon it, pooling at the top. Slowly, the blood found its ways through the cracks and into the encasement itself. I watch the blood slide down, washing over the lens. The light, that light! darkened with the lens, blood coating destroying life as the light shrank in halves, quarters, an eclipse, until…until…

…the light went out.

Seeking :

Trying to define the perfect submissive would be like trying to objectively decide the single best flavor of ice cream. Because everyone has different tastes, it is just not possible. I can't tell you what makes the perfect submissive. But I can tell you what I enjoy. If I were to write an ad looking for a submissive (and no, I'm not actually looking), it would go something like this:

***

Seeking:Ready

Intelligent, sweet, witty, whimsical, content with simple sacrifices and offerings made in her name such as poetry whispered in the dark;

worships in a glance, sings in the shower, walks in the rain;

unafraid of words and what they mean, gets caught up in an idea, a voice, a moment, devious, stubborn, beautifully self-absorbed, divinely giving;

as desperate in her hunger as she is coy in the chase, petulant and bratty, intensely driven, wildly exploring, somewhat domesticated, submissive.

Game of Inches

Some of my friends are going through a rather hard time in their lives. Life has a habit of throwing curves balls and it never throws them one at a time. It likes to keep hitting you until you feel yourself begin to buckle under the strain of trying to hold things together.

What do you tell a friend who has reached the last, last straw? What do you tell a friend who is juggling so many issues that they can’t sleep at night for all the catching up their mind tries to do? What do you tell a friend who is making a decision that will tear them apart?

You tell them the simple truth.

Life can be fucking hard. For everyone. Yes, most of the time, when things go wrong, it’s because of decisions we’ve made. But nobody is perfect. We all make bad decisions. Sometimes we don’t have any choice – all of the available options are bad. The lucky get a few free passes on the consequences.

The unlucky…don’t.

Don’t obsess about making the one right decision for every issue you face. Focus on issues one at a time. Make the best decision possible with what you know, and move on.

***

Let’s talk about football.

No, seriously.

In the movie ‘Any Given Sunday’, Al Pacino’s plays Tony D’Amato, an NFL coach. His personal life has gone very badly, due in large part to bad decisions. Towards the end of the movie he gives a speech that does a remarkable job of explaining how to get through when things are beyond hard, beyond painful, beyond acceptable.

You get through by fighting for every inch. It’s when you stop fighting, stop caring, that you falter.

Never give up. Never stop trying. Never stop believing it can get better. Because it can. It will. If only for a little while, you can find respite. You can find those moments of joy that make everything else fade to yesterday’s memories, pale and wane in the face of new love, a live concert of your favorite band, the tight pleasure of being bound and taken, or the smile of a friend who is just happy to see you.

[audio:AnyGivenSunday_Inches.mp3]
Al Pacino, Any Given Sunday

“I barely had to touch myself, just thinking of you…”

And so I invoke the Lady – Whereto now, lady risk, wrist taking, listless in swift tender bites? – and offer up my stake in sweetest arrays found in carefully crafted plans.

Imagine this.

A room, a lady, and a place to hold words.

There are days when I read the writings of others and I think the cup doth runneth over. How can this vessel, these bits, these electrical volts and fiber-guided lights, bring to my fingers the promise of temptation and the implements of hell?

This conversation takes place about a week after this conversation. I had spent some time with her a few years earlier, and in the interim she had married. We had plans for lunch in a week or two. Just lunch between old friends.

***

Karin pages: how are you…feeling

D’jaevle pages: ‘I could tell you…that I can feel myself getting hard. ‘

Karin pages: and I could tell you that I was starting to get wet the moment I said something

D’jaevle pages: ‘I could say that thinking of you there…getting wet…God, I want to reach down and feel it. How are you dressed?’.

Karin pages: in jeans, and a sweater tank top…I can just imagine your touch

D’jaevle pages: ‘You could slip off your jeans. You are at home…it wouldn’t be uncomfortable…’.

From afar, Karin slowly unzips her jeans and slides them down over her ass, letting them drop to the floor.

From afar, D’jaevle takes a deep breath…I can feel my cock twitch, pressing against my thigh when I read that. Tell me how it feels to be sitting naked and wet, talking to me while your husband sleeps. It makes you even wetter, being bad with me, doesn’t it?’.

From afar, Karin reaches back up, hooking her fingers under the bands of her panties, slowly sliding them down over her ass as well. “I can feel the shiver emanating from my clit. I can imagine your cock, hard against me…My skin is flush, and I can feel my nipples hard against my shirt. I am running my hand over my clit, imagining your tongue there instead…hungry and wanting…hot and wet – practically feeling your hands holding me.

D’jaevle pages: ‘Is that what you want? To feel my tongue along your pussy, hot and rough as it drags over your clit? To slide one leg over my shoulder as you feel my face pressed tight against your wet heat, licking deep and hard? I want you to feel my teeth grazing your clit, nibbling as you clench your thighs around my face, fucking up against me. Do you want to cum for me, Katie?’

Karin pages: god, yes…and I want you to come for me…to know how much it excites you – god, I’m getting so close…mmm…I’m dripping, and so close to coming…

D’jaevle pages: ‘God….yes…I want to hear you cum, I want you to hear me cum with you, to know my hand is moving faster. Tell me you’ve thought of that day we meet. Tell me what you want when we meet. Finding your bare skin, your naked thighs…fingertips brushing against your pussy. And you’re going to spread your legs for me, aren’t you?’.

Karin pages: I’ve fantasized about it while masturbating…playing with my clit and imagining you there instead. I want to sit at the table, feeling your hand sliding up my thigh, your fingers brushing against me. oh yes, giving you access to anything you want to take…feeling your finger, inching their way closer, imagining them inside me.

D’jaevle pages: ‘You really want this, don’t you? Want it bad…like me. You’re going to be wet before we even sit. I might put my hand on your thigh, to feel your warm skin under my fingers. I might slide my fingers up under your skirt to see if you kept your word on your outfit….’.

Karin pages: just enough to check

From afar, D’jaevle looks into your eyes….think of my fingertips right there, pressing against you. Feel it. Cum. Cum on them for me. Hard….God.

Karin pages: oh god, god. I barely had to touch myself, just thinking of you…

Leonard Cohen

What are some the differences between the written and the spoken word?

The written word is more trusted, deceptively so, being safely static on the page. But once tasted on the tips of our minds it lingers underneath, giving birth to fetishes our conscious self is not ready to accept.

The spoken word is more personal, bringing timbre to the notes in our hearts, voice to the secrets that strangers share. It promises and lies. It strokes our egos and our sex. It commands in whispers, delivers in breathless surrender.

Poets are the worst of us, bleeding their issues all over the page like common gossips. Poets are the best of us, providing glimpses through the looking-glass at the chaotic promise of life. Poets are philosphers, touching reality with deft strokes of their wordwise verse. Poets are saints, prayed to, adored for the way they carry us with them, tugged by verse and by vanity into their dreams and desires.

Leonard Cohen is my kind of poet.

[audio:LeonardCohen_HeardOfAMan.mp3]
Leonard Cohen, intro to Silent All These Years (with Tori Amos)

Slumber

It’s why people cut themselves; some literally, most against those closest to them; anger, joy, desperation – these things slit deep enough to let life slip through like a breeze, too delicate to hold on to for very long.

Awake, awake!

I fear my personal knife is lust, but as vices go, there could be worse. I beggar myself for a hint of skin; the whole is often not as desirable as the small parts that are hidden, locked away – taboo. Forbidden things twist the senses just as well; breaking rules is often an aphrodiasic too subtly addictive to escape.

***

I led the silence with a gesture.
And followed with a kiss.

Holding too tightly lest
I bleed my hunger all over the page

This one hunger is an ache
Like a wordless play
Or a silent choir.
Reaching a slumbering sin somewhere deeper then my heart can touch.

My hand, your neck,
In a tighter embrace then air or blood or skin.
Captured in a fist, in a glance, in a shiver of skin and
I move you, consume the expression on your face with my fingers

Chapter and Verse, Part I

I’ve gone over my first time engaging in ‘hot chat’ (which is BBS slang for tinysex which is MUSH slang for – and I’m using the technical phrasing here – getting nasty on-line), discussed how I learned about sex through pretending to be older then I was (by, oh, fifteen or twenty years), and I’ve even discussed how I got hooked on phone sex.

One interesting ancedote from that period: I remember the exact conversation when I learned in a very personal way the difference between first person and third person narrative. Forget high school English – this is the way to learn about story telling. I was having a conversation with the person to whom I would eventually lose my virginity to (not that great a story and a rather forgettable experience). Until this point I had written all of my prose as such:

“Shadow strokes her hair gently,” or, “Shadow presses her down to the floor.”

After a bit of this, my partner gently suggested, “Why don’t you address these missives to me instead of…her? It is me you want to be doing these to, isn’t it?” Well, yes. Of course. Why hadn’t I realized this before?

I still do use third person at times – it has some very specific uses, such as when I don’t necessarily want to scare the person away by making it too personal – but I learned a very valuable lesson that day: I want to fuck you, not her.

So where did I go from there? Aside from honing my skills and learning some valuable lessons about relationships, two highpoints stand out: actually meeting some of the people I spent hours writing erotic missives to and gaining an understanding of the kinkier aspects of play (D/s, B&D, S&M, and half a dozen other impressive acronyms).

The first highlight – meeting people in person – was tricky at first. Most didn’t know my true age. A few did. Most of the women I was speaking to were in their thirties. I was about seventeen. When I came clean (which only happened because I wanted to meet them), some reacted in shock, some in anger, some in amusement. All of them got over it and eventually agreed to meet me, despite how young I was (I wonder what that says?). I lost my virginity this way. Not all encounters ended in sex, but enough did that I realized something important. Real life sex was a bit of a disappointment.

Bad and mediocre sex didn’t even come close to what I could experience with words, voice, and imagination. And while some of the experiences were fun and exciting, none of them were great. With this understanding came another important realization – it wasn’t the medium (real life vs. virtual) that was at fault. It was the fact that in a world of words, I had a lot more control in how things would work out. I needed to learn how to make this work in reality.

In time, this came. And with it came the true rush of fulfilling expectations and enjoying the sins of the flesh. But it came with me in control. While some of my most blissful moments have come when I flirted with relaxing control with someone I trusted, I have yet to abandon myself completely to someone else’s vision and promise of pleasure. There are times I will think about this and feel something akin to wistful regret…but I have long accepted it as part of how I live my life today. Some day perhaps.

But not yet.

The Allegory of the Cave

Understanding people’s motivations is important to me. In the context of D/s, it is perhaps *the* most important thing. The thing is, us humans are a funny bunch. We’re both much simpler and much more complex then we often assume.

Let us start with why we are so complex and go with the following premise: most people don’t fully understand why they come to the decisions they do. Even those who spend time in self-reflection have difficulty separating the significant threads of desire from the constant barrage of wants and needs that we experience. And it is never a single thread. Our decisions are born in a cauldron of animal instinct, upbringing, institutionalized thought-patterns, education, experience, peer pressure, and pure chance.

Percentages of truth. There is no answer we give on why we do something that can cover the whole truth. If someone asks you why you ate at Happy Fortune’s, the Chinese take-out place down the street, you may answer:

1) Because you like Americanized Chinese food.
2) Because they make a mean fried rice dish.
3) Because it’s right down the street.
4) Because one of the girls working there is cute.
5) Because you’re too lazy to make your own dinner and it’s convenient.

…and have each of these answer be as true as the rest. If we are attempting to answer the question as honest as possible, we decide, internally and most often without thinking about it, which answer is the most true – the fact that was most influential in coming to our decision – and give that as the reason. More often then not, we’re not concerned with being that honest, so we will eliminate some of the possibilities – being lazy, liking Americanized Chinese food, ect – and whatever answer is left, that we feel most comfortable admitting, we give. Does this make the answer a lie? No. It is a truth. It’s just not the whole truth.

I demand a lot from my submissives. And one of those things is the whole truth. Which is tricky – because more often then not, they don’t know themselves all the reasons they have for making a decision. The human subconscious is quite good at hiding the way we tick. But in forcing ourselves to evaluate the presiding motives behind our decisions, we learn a great deal about how the human mind works – and not all of what we learn is particularly pleasant.

But why is this perhaps the most important tool for me in the context of D/s? Because by delving into these motivations with a specific person…I gain insight in how to bring their hungers and needs closer to the surface. And once you have mastered this…well, I can tell you that if someone were able to understand me at that level, even I would have difficulty resisting.