birthday

I lost the concept of consent. Not due to any formal negotiation or roles, not due to any protocol (I was too overwhelmed by being back in around kinky people to remember protocol), not due to fear or absence of judgement. I was perfectly capable of saying "I don't have a good relationship with my urethra!" when threatened with sounding, but if they'd decided to go on with it, I'm not sure I would have said no. I don't know if I would have been able to tell if I didn't want it (this is not a safe place to be).

And I was perfectly capable of getting bitchy that it was time to leave and there was nowhere to play. I'm not such a submissive that I stop being a prick.

During the scene Alex was squeezing my hand every once in a while, making sure I'd squeeze back, making sure I was present. I knew my safewords, and I squeezed his hand, but he could have taken it as far has he wanted; I'm not sure I would have used a safeword. I remember thinking, "You know, he could pull me off this bench, throw me to the cement floor, and start kicking me in the stomach, and I'd probably just lay there." I don't know if I would have been aware of when I should stop (this is not a safe place to be).

Usually when we play I have a definite limit - depending on the time or my mood or the situation, and I'm usually very loud. Usually I feel everything coming at me, and I feel like I have to watch out and make sure nothing hurts too badly.

During the scene, I might have found trust, or I might simply have let go of fear (and self-preservation?). I remember thinking a few strikes into the scene, "this is supposed to feel good," and I'm not sure if it exactly did, but I certainly stopped processing the pain through a filter of fear and a label "this is pain." Instead I was using anger to feel it - which is a complicated, dangerous thing to say. It wasn't anger at Alex, or anger at the pain, or anger at myself...

This raises too many questions, and I don't want to know the answers. I enjoyed myself, I left happy, and that's what matters.

yes, but...

Yes, XX Factor, these ads are creepy.

But they're also kinda hot. Eight-ball ball gag? Cute.

romance

How would you feel upon learning that an author whose books you've just thrillingly devoured isn't actually involved in what she wrote?

If she were writing nonfiction, something about mathematics or science, you'd know immediately if she was uninformed.

But fiction comes from imagination, not experience, so should I be disappointed that Pam Rosenthal, who wrote erotic S/M fiction as Molly Weatherfield, imagined it all?

That's not to say that she doesn't do kink - just that when pressed to provide informative resources for a fan, she blanked. She's too shy for community, she said, and that's alright, but in her (still quite entertaining) essays, she refers to books she read and modeled her story after, not her own experience.

As much as I adored the first half of Carrie's Story, especially because of it's potential to be a starting point for discussions with my partner, I now hesitate.

Well, this is all imagination anyway, isn't it? And I was a little disappointed that Carrie went along so willingly with everything, that she had no darkness to confront, that she trusted blindly without commenting on the requirements of trust, and that although she imposed her sexuality on an unsuspecting date, it wasn't quite what I expected (because there is a painful truth, for me anyway, about finding a sex partner after an intense immersion into kink, assuming that kink is normal, and scaring the bejeezus out of them). I was also dissapointed that the author, in her introduction, confided that she wrote her first kinky erotic fiction after turning down an invitation to a "Take Back the Night" march, characterizing the event as "anti-porn" when I thought it was "anti-sexual violence,"

I lose trust (and interest) in an author whose essay demonstrates near derogatory unfamiliarity with the reality of the territory explored in her novel:

"Don't they sometimes stage elaborate, costumed rituals -- pony shows and slave auctions -- perhaps like "X-Files" or Trekkie conventions? "

Yes, it's all fantasy. Yes, it's all silly. And I'm one of those people who doesn't like the fantasy broken: I want to pretend that the author actually has some kind of insight beyond her own imagination.

(Alternate explanation - I'm just being egotistical and elitist. Hm.)

leather buddha

I am reading "Carrie's Story," the erotic S/M novel about "Victorian D/S" and pony play. It's very well written, and although I'm only twenty pages in I'm enjoying it very much.

I am reading today at work "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry," Jack Kornfield's spiritual account of life after enlightenment. To quote the introduction:

When I found myself becoming a Buddhist monk in a forest monastery of Thailand over thirty years ago, I had to learn how to bow. It was awkward at first. Each time we entered the meditation hall we would drop to our knees and three times respectfully place our head between our palms on the stone floor. It was a practice of reference and mindfulness, a way of honoring with a bodily gesture our commitment to the monk's path of simplicity, compassion and awareness. We would bow in the same way each time we took our seat for training with the master.

After I had been in the monastery for a week or two, one of the senior monks pulled me aside for further instruction. "In this monastery you must not only bow when entering the meditation hall and receiving teachings from the master, but also when you meet your elders...it is traditional that all who are older in orientation time, who've been monks longer than you, are your elders," I was told. It took only a moment to realize that meant everybody.

So I began to bow to them. Sometimes it was just fine - there were quite a few wise and worthy elders in the community. But sometimes it felt ridiculous. I would encounter some twenty-one-year-old monk, full of hubris...or I had to bow to a sloppy old rice farmer who had come to the monastery the season before on the farmer's retirement plan, who chewed betel nut constantly and had never meditated a day in his life. It was hard to pay reverence to these fellow forest dwellers as if they were great masters.

Yet there I was bowing, and because I was in conflict, I sought a way to make it work...I began to look for some worthy aspect of each person I bowed to.

Once again I'm struck by similarities between certain spiritual practices and kink. One could certainly replace some of the context, and add more sex, and this could be a passage from an erotic novel or a journal of a slave's experience. Maybe it shouldn't be surprising, but it's exciting to realize that each practice can have the same potential for self improvement.

To quote further:

It is the spirit of bowing that informs this book...we can bow to both beauty and suffering, to our entanglements and confusion, to our fears and to the injustices of the world. Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom. To bow to what is rather than some ideal is not easy, but however difficult, it is one of the most useful and honorable practices.

Oh!

Perhaps we could say:

It is the spirit of submission that informs this book...we can submit to both beauty and suffering, to our entanglements and confusion, to our fears and to the injustices of the world. Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom. To submit to what is rather than some ideal (as Carrie, in the book, is rather memorably encouraged into do during her initial training) is not easy, but however difficult, it is one of the most useful and honorable practices.

Exciting.

sexualization

(This began as an entry for my library blog, but digressed, so I'm posting the edited version there and the complete version here . Ask privately if you'd like the link, by the way)

Like with the already-published "No Logo," "So Sexy So Soon" describes a culture destroyed by advertising. While "No Logo" details the worldwide implications, "So Sexy So Soon" narrows its focus to the media's use of sexuality and violence to make children into consumers, the effect of this immoral marketing, and how to address it.

Two chapters into this book I'm shocked - but the shock is familiar, because I'm learning again what I already know. That children's programs exist mainly to sell products. That children's media and products reinforce stereotyped ideas about behavior, convincing girls as young as four that they must be sexy in order to be liked and boys to regard girls as sexualized objects. That children under ten cannot tell the difference between advertising and content, and don't understand that an actor on a commercial is smiling because they're paid to. That the patterned play enforced by toys like Barbie Dolls and Power Rangers, unlike open-ended toys like Legos (before they came in kits that can only be assembled one "right" way), rob children of the ability to develop independant thought and create a generation of robot consumers, people who believe happiness (and sex) is attained by consuming ever-changing and ever-more-necessary products.

I'm young enough to remember this as normal, to have grown up surrounded by the media. I remember crying because the local Burger King didn't have a toy I wanted - I compulsively desired it because it was a character in a movie.

I can't protect my son from everything - and I don't want to, because he needs to learn to inhabit a complex society. But I want him to be an adult who is capable of analytical thought, someone who is not a victim of capitalism. Egotistically, this is because I want a way to correct the mistakes made in myself, and continue my chosen ideals. But I exist this way because I believe it is the best and most moral way to exist. Our public schools do nothing to prepare our children to exist as conscious members of this society - because our very existance rests on a mass of uneducated consumers incapable of rational evaluation... I could go on about this for days.

But the creation of a culture of robots who exist only to work, get paid and consume is not the point of this book. It asks a deeper question: how does the sexualization of childhood carry into adulthood?

I feel hypocritical reading a book proposing that children should learn, in order to be fully functional humans, that sexuality is part of a caring adult relationship, when I struggle with my own feelings of objectification. Is my exposure to sexulity in the media (in the form of my father's omnipresent television), along with my parent's nonexistant sexuality and complete negativity about my sexuality (although what is on the television goes by unchallenged) why I found myself as a teenager in a "lifestyle" of sexual violence? This book does what books should do: provokes thought.

And here are the uncomfortable thoughts: Do I have the right to choose a lifestyle of submission and service, after a string of abusive relationships and no information about a healthy sexuality?

Am I only furthering what was taught to me by the common culture of the day: women are valued if they are sexually attractive, sexually availble (but not sluts - not too coy but not too loose), while men should be violent and emotionally distant?

Is this the natural course of society, mirroring the traditional and fundamentalist family structure, enforced by the omnipresent media of the Bible and the Church (and religious traditions in other societies as well) that women and children are property and violence is an appropriate way to solve problems (but sometimes men are submissive)?

I defined myself as a feminist by adopting the right to choose my own lifestyle, even if it is a traditional "anti-feminist" one. But while I spent three years in a consensual (but unhealthy) power exchange relationship, in which my value was as a sexual object and I indulged my need for structure and service, and the next year in a nonconsensual power exchange relationship in which my partner viewed himself as the intermediary between me and God with a God-given right and responsibility to beat me into submission if I was noncompliant, can I with sanity choose this again?

visualization

So, what would I want, if I could have it?

Roughness, with the assurance that it is sanely chosen, that I trust Mr. A., that for these particular moments I needn't worry about someone else walking into the room or waking.

Service oriented in respect and trust.

The best moments, all over again, when I've been giving to Mr. A. and suddenly found myself topping as a service, controlling his responses and thrilling in his release and tension, but still aware that if he grabbed my hair and shoved my face down on his cock until I gagged painful and humiliatingly loud, I'd only be more turned on.

Knowing where and when to sit, to walk a step and a half behind him, to ask before refreshing my drink if I can get him anything while I'm up.

Time to spend three hours relaxing into the soft safe space I used to find as Mr. A. pinched my skin and slid needles, brightly painful, in pretty designs.

Structure. And frankly, spiritual practice to get myself back into a consistent functional headspace.

I don't want Mr. A. to be responsible for my life - that's not fair to him, because he doesn't want it and I can't handle it. But it's difficult to be self-motivated.

Picked up a book from the advance copy stack today - a novelization of Petite Anglaise's blog. I recalled coming across her online, not being terribly impressed, but was quite charmed that she snagged a book deal. I'd already been introduced to the blog-to-book phenomenon when A. lent me Belle de Jour.

I'm halfway through the book and feeling guilty, tired, burned out. Reading her descriptions of her affair, her decision to resign her daughter to a life shuttled between two parents, it's hard to remember that I left my son's father for a number of very good reasons. A. and I have had a rough couple of days, although we've planned a picnic tomorrow to try to regain some balance, and it's hard to remember that with him I feel the same skin-tingling passion Petite feels with James.

Now that I've been accepted to university thanks to serendipity less like grace and more like an elephant in a china cabinet: I gracelessly barreled into the situation, declaring with barely convincing confidence, "I can handle it!" like in a year my son as a toddler will insist that he can put his own shoes on by himself even if he gets them backwards and collapses in a crying pile, but I was the reverse of that. Things that should have been taken weeks were handled in hours, the people I spoke to believed me, and I'm enrolled in a few online classes this fall with plans to move in the spring. I'm not having a tantrum (yet - I don't know, ask A.) but I am having fallout: after weeks of nervous organization so intense I could barely sleep (not that I sleep much anyway, with my darling sweetbean Boober up every three or four hours) despite my life aligning with a purpose I feel lost. I have no fight left to fight for the moment.

I can settle here, finishing this summer's classes, taking my son to supervised visits with the man who beat me (and is on his best behavior now), waiting for the next court date that might finish the assault hearings, waiting for classes at Rural Hill to start in the fall, waiting to move in the spring, waiting for the hearing in the winter to modify the custody order to allow us to move...

Petite Anglais resigned herself to her daughter's life shuttled between two parents. Leaving the abusive father of my child I've done the same, and finishing my degree might mean giving him my son for weekend visits once he's a year old, depending on the judge. The less I comply the less the court will think of me. And although I'm fairly certain he cannot find this journal, the father has been threatening A. Staying with A. could mean risking my son's safety - the less immaculate I am, the more time the father will have with my son.

Nothing's ever settled, is it?

Like Petite Anglais, I'm taking a risk on my son's future in order to feel loved and wanted and powerful in someone else's arms and life. I'm trading unknown threats for how bright the world becomes after I've been with A., for his help with my son, for his support. I'll finish the book tonight, and likely get little sleep.

A. and I are picnicking tomorrow - not on occasion of the fourth, but because we need to remember each other. So tinybean on a blanket between us, a shady place, asparagus and radishes and tofu, if I can get Alex to eat it.